Into.the.Void.

For the past 1,5 years I’ve been messing (again) a lot with IPv6. The first time I started looking at the protocol was back in 2002-2003 when I was working at the Network Operations Center of my university. I had set up a couple of links between routers and tried various connectivity experiments mainly using some Cisco routers and Linux boxes. This time I started looking at it more seriously, mainly because I wanted to add support for it on the xDSL Linux-based routers/CPEs the company I currently work for produces. (GENNET, yes I know that the company’s website is UGLY…or worse than that…).

The task wasn’t easy, lots of backporting and fixing on both kernel-space and user-space had to be done. Luckily my colleagues were very helpful when I needed them. I have to say though that the main obstacle on working on it were not the technical difficulties but trying to convince our management that they had to give me time to work on it. It took a while (months…) to convince them but the end result is that all our models are now IPv6 capable. I am pretty glad that our product is referenced at the website of the first Greek ISP to start experimenting with IPv6 (Gennet OxyGen on ipv6.ote.gr). Being presented on the same page as the Cisco and the AVM CPEs is not bad at all!

Out of this process I learned quite a lot on IPv6, so when Dimitris Kalamaras, the editor of the new Greek Linux magazine Linux Inside, asked me to write an article for the first issue of the new magazine, there wasn’t actually a choice. I would write about IPv6, and so I did. I had written articles in the past for another Greek Linux Magazine called LinuxFormat, which was an adaptation of the English one. I’ve put the pdfs of my previous articles at my blog under Presentations/Articles.

My article is about the history if Internet Protocols (IPv4, IPv6), which were the needs that drove IPv6 development and a small intro to some of the changes that the new protocol brings to our life. There is also some information on how to connect using tunnels and so on. The article serves just as an introduction to IPv6, if there’s feedback I will write something more extended and maybe more technical. The timing of the article couldn’t be any better, magazine was out in the streets on 02 February 2011 and IANA pool run out of IPv4 addresses on 03 February 2011. Just perfect!

I will publish the pdf of the article along with my other articles on magazines/newspapers after a couple of months have passed, just to be fair with the magazine’s publishing company. Until then, go buy the magazine, there are many interesting and original articles inside it.

Filed by kargig at 13:47 under Internet,IPv6,Linux,Networking
Tags: article, ipv6, Linux, linux inside, magazine, Networking, publication, router
5 Comments | 8,348 views

During the past few weeks I’ve noticed increased brute forcing activity on various servers that I manage and run Plesk Panel. Most of the entries look like this:

189.205.227.115 - - [30/Jan/2011:07:14:19 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852
189.205.227.115 - - [30/Jan/2011:07:14:19 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852
189.205.227.115 - - [30/Jan/2011:07:14:19 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852
189.205.227.115 - - [30/Jan/2011:07:14:21 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852
189.205.227.115 - - [30/Jan/2011:07:14:21 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852
189.205.227.115 - - [30/Jan/2011:07:14:23 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852
189.205.227.115 - - [30/Jan/2011:07:14:23 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852

Since I already have ossec monitoring these servers the solution was quite simple. I just added a couple more rules to ossec in order to stop these attacks.

Two steps are necessary to stop these attacks:
1) Add plesk panel https log to monitor list in /var/ossec/etc/ossec.conf

  <localfile>
    <log_format>apache</log_format>
    <location>/opt/psa/admin/logs/httpsd_access_log</location>
  </localfile> 

  <localfile>
    <log_format>apache</log_format>
    <location>/opt/psa/admin/logs/httpsd_error_log</location>
  </localfile>

2) Create some custom rules to block (and notify me) of these attacks.

<rule id="100144" level="1">
    <if_sid>31100</if_sid>
    <id>200</id>
    <url>/login_up.php3</url>
    <description>Plesk Login.</description>
  </rule>

<rule id="100145" level="12" frequency="3" timeframe="60">
    <if_matched_sid>100144</if_matched_sid>
    <same_source_ip />
    <description>Attack on plesk panel.</description>
    <group>attack,</group>
  </rule>

That’s it. Ossec now monitors these files and blocks through iptables any attacks with active-response.

Example notification mail:

Received From: foo->/opt/psa/admin/logs/httpsd_access_log
Rule: 100146 fired (level 12) -> "Attack on plesk."
Portion of the log(s):

189.205.227.115 - - [02/Feb/2011:20:19:56 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852
189.205.227.115 - - [02/Feb/2011:20:19:55 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852
189.205.227.115 - - [02/Feb/2011:20:19:54 +0100] "GET /login_up.php3?passwd=setup&login_locale=default&login_name=admin HTTP/1.1" 200 5852

Filed by kargig at 22:03 under Internet,Linux
Tags: apache, brute force, https, iptables, Linux, log, monitor, notify, ossec, plesk, security
2 Comments | 10,238 views