Hackers, Security, Privacy

Okay, I give up. I'm in the process of updating this page. It's linked to in so many places, the 404 messages are never going to stop. Please, if you are just finding it now, don't link to it here. I'm moving it back to its original home, on deaddrop.org. You may be seeing it there, now. Currently, it's based on deaddrop.com, but I copied it over, just in case. It'll just take a few days, and I'll move everything around.

In the mean time, I've added a couple of things. You will now find links to the best of the TLA sites, and also a nice overview of the virus scanning world. Yes, there's more than just McAffee and Norton, folks.

++ The Management ++

Hacker Sites

On-line Magazines
Yearly Conventions
The Sites
Old or retired Miscellaneous
Encryption

PGP

Key Servers
Distributions
Information and Documentation
Support Software Cryptography Sites Privacy
Security Sites

Intrusion Detection Systems
Multi-Purpose
Odds and Ends
Tools
Other Commercial

Virus Scanners The Feds (Why Not?)
Security Conferences
Publishers

Hacker Sites

Zines (Does anyone read these anymore?)

Welcome to WWW.2600.com: 2600 magazine is the grandfather of all zines. First formed in 1984 (or thereabouts) it contains articles on phone phreaking, hacking, and various archives on injustice and overreaction by the authorities. Buy it on the newsstands. Subscribe. See also HOPE, in Conferences, below.

Phrack Webpage: Phrack is the venerable journal of the hacking upper crust. The resurrected site now lives at www.phrack.org, for some small amount of time. Note that the site was hosted at infonexus for a while. The site www.phrack.com does not currently resolve, nor does phrack.infonexus.com (but you can still hang out at the packetfactory).

Yearly Cons

DEF CON Convention: Once a year, in vegas, in July, and they have hacker jeopardy too. The page is rich with links and information ... the links may not always be up to date, but those that are, are excellent. It's the granddaddy of them all.
Hackers at Large
What the Hack: HAL2001 was the fourth in a series, and What the Hack was number five. It's been running every four years since 1989. Many of the participants at "The Galactic Hacker Party" (1989), "Hacking at the End of the Universe" (1993) and "Hacking in Progress" (1997) have been instrumental in bringing about the changes that are upon us today. Stay tuned for the next event, expected in the year 2009.
HOPE 2002: Hackers On Planet Earth
HOPE 2004: The Fifth Hope: The Sixth Hackers On Planet Earth conference - has been confirmed for the summer of 2006, at The Hotel Pennsylvania. Keep up to date through the 2600 site (see reference above).
CanSecWest: This conference is held annually in Vancouver B.C., Canada, and focuses on newly emerging information security research, with a balance of both topics on auditing and pen-testing as well as security and defensive strategies.; The presenters are experienced security professionals at the vanguard of leading information security technology as well as experienced instructors who have prepared tutorials intended to help you stay abreast of the lastest developments in this rapidly moving technological field. The best, and brightest, have assembled unique new material to help you maintain your technological leadership.
TooRcon: TooRcon is a comprehensive three day computer security extravaganza featuring lectures from some of the top experts in the field, hands-on demonstrations of the newest approaches to computer security. TooRcon also features raffles for collector items and brand new equipment alike, and of course three days of enjoyment!
ShmooCon: An annual East coast hacker convention hell-bent on offering an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software & hardware solutions, as well as open discussion of critical information security issues. ShmooCon 2006 was January 13-15, 2006, in Washington, D.C.
LayerOne: Currently in its 3rd year, LayerOne is a computer security and technology conference held in the Los Angeles/Pasadena area. The purpose of LayerOne is to bring together the many different types of folks who make up the security community for a 2 day discussion of the technologies that impact our professional and personal lives.
CodeCon: CodeCon is the premier showcase of cutting edge software development. It is an excellent opportunity for programmers to demonstrate their work and keep abreast of what's going on in their community.; All presentations must include working demonstrations, ideally accompanied by source code. Presentations must be done by one of the active developers of the code in question. We emphasize that demonstrations be of *working* code.
SummerCon: Summercon is the oldest of the hacker cons. It has been hosted in such fine cities as St. Louis, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Amsterdam. Last seen in Austin, TX. They tend to be slow to update the site, but don't count them out for 2006; it's early yet.; The con audience is a wide mix from security professionals, military officials, socialists, hackers, parents, artists, etc... It is a social event with presentations to help get the conversations started. There is little attitude, lots to learn, and plenty of fun at Summercon; all in the name of hacking.
PhreakNIC: PhreakNIC is Nashville's *FREE* annual hacker con. Anyone is welcome to attend. We create an environment where people who are interested in the more underground elements of technology can meet, exchange ideas and hopefully teach/learn. The primary focus is on computers and computer security, but we also cover other topics, such as radio (ham, pirate & low-power/community), SETI work, robotics, high-power rocketry, satellites, phones and phreaking, cryptography, etc. We are planning interesting things for our fifth year - please join us.

Serious

The Sites

Fyodor's Playhouse: One of the good guys (still), and the author of Nmap (one of my personal favorites); History has taught us: never underestimate the amount of money, time, and effort someone will expend to thwart a security system. It's always better to assume the worst. Assume your adversaries are better than they are. Assume science and technology will soon be able to do things they cannot yet. ...Bruce Schneier
The Nessus Project: Nessus was a free, open-sourced and easy-to-use security scanner. Recently, with the last edition, it was taken closed source by its author and contributors. It is still available for download, but not considered open source. There isn't space for the discussion here. Use a search engine, you'll figure it out. It currently compiles and runs under several flavors of Unix, such as Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and IRIX. It's still the dandiest thing since sliced bread.
Nomad Mobile Research Centre: Not everyone loses their ethics and idealism. Simple Nomad is a class act. All of NMRC's hack and cracks will bring forth the idea that you cannot secure a system for long ... sooner or later someone will find a way around the obstacle.
Chaos Computer Club e.V.: The one and only. Please understand most topics here are covered in German and only some in English.
Attrition: Commentary on almost everything. A section just for a "Security Advisory Library" which contains all sorts of advisories that remind us that buffer overflows and root compromises have always been with us.; Was home to the largest assortment of mirrors of hacked web sites on the planet. Home to archives of everything from text to old zines.
The Million Packet March: The Packet Factory, FKA projects from daemon9 (one of the most prolific and talented contributers to Phrack). Looking for libnet, or Loki? This is where they went.
SoCal Underground: The Southern California underground, by twentythreedotorg.
NEWORDER (used to be Hack.box.sk): Eastern Europe hackers site. Enter at your own risk.The search engine is named Astalavista. What's not to like?

Old or Retired

Access All Areas: The last (and only) happened in July 97. I keep it because I love the java anarchy toy (which is now gone). There is also a link to the mailing list, which was active, last time I looked.
L0pht Heavy Industries (R.I.P.): The L0pht (www.l0pht.com) was the home of luminaries such as Brian Oblivion and Mudge. It was dedicated to the improvement of security within Microsoft and other deserving organizations. Making the theoretical practical since 1992. It was the site of AntiSniff and L0phtCrack. It was acquired by @stake, which was in turn absorbed by Symantec.
LOD Communications Home Page: The Legion of Doom. They are now an ISP (hey, everybody's got to make a living, and at least you know they're competent). They offer security consulting, and various other services. Amazing.
Hack-Tic Magazine Archive: Mostly in dutch, but they were excellent resources. Hack-Tic is still out there, at least in part, just no more cool magazine.
The Cheshire Catalyst: Cheshire got his reputation playing with Marisat, the Maritime Communications Satellite System.

Miscellaneous

The Netninja are Everywhere!: Another really nice site (well laid out, and lots of information).
L.A. 2600: The Los Angeles 2600 Meetings, held near the Union Train Station.

Encryption

Crypto++ 2.3 - a C++ Class Library of Cryptographic Primitives

Privacy

Electronic Privacy Information Center: EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values. EPIC works in association with Privacy International, an international human rights group based in London, UK and is also a member of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign, the Internet Free Expression Alliance, the Internet Privacy Coalition, the Internet Democracy Project, and the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was created to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web. EFF is the first to identify threats to our basic rights online and to advocate on behalf of free expression in the digital age.; Based in San Francisco, EFF is a donor-supported membership organization working to protect our fundamental rights regardless of technology; to educate the press, policymakers and the general public about civil liberties issues related to technology; and to act as a defender of those liberties. Among our various activities, EFF opposes misguided legislation, initiates and defends court cases preserving individuals' rights, launches global public campaigns, introduces leading edge proposals and papers, hosts frequent educational events, engages the press regularly, and publishes a comprehensive archive of digital civil liberties information at one of the most linked-to websites in the world: http://www.eff.org.; Go read the story of their founding, and then contemplate how easy it is to lose everything.
GnuPG - The GNU Privacy Guard
Mixmaster Remailer: Mixmaster is an anonymous remailer. Remailers provide protection against traffic analysis and allow sending electronic mail anonymously or pseudonymously. Mixmaster consists of both client and server installations. At one time, the home of Mixmaster was http://www.obscura.com/, but it is now hosted at Sourceforge. There's also a mailing list.
FreeS/WAN Project: Home Page
The DataHaven Project: Both FreeS/Wan and DataHaven are really over. I just kept them here out of sentiment. The pages are still there; FreeS/Wan bowed out gracefully. DHP hasn't been updated since 2004.

Security Sites

Intrusion Detection

SNORT: The Lightweight Network Intrusion Detection System. Need I say more?
Common Intrusion Detection Framework: The Common Intrusion Detection Framework (CIDF) was an effort to develop protocols and application programming interfaces so that intrusion detection research projects can share information and resources and so that intrusion detection components can be reused in other systems. It was a good idea; pity it didn't take. The data is still there, however.
Structural Versus Operational Intrusion Detection: Interesting concept paper from John Kozubik of Network Command.
Port Sentry: If you run nothing else, you should use this. Portsentry, and its lesser known cousins Logwatch and Logsentry, were graciously released into the open source community by Cisco when the acquired Psionic.
Computer Associates ... SessionWall3 (fka AbirNet): AbirNet - The Next Generation in Network Protection Technology. Recently purchased by MEMCO, yet another leading provider of information security software. Even more recently acquired by Computer Associates. Who can keep up with the implosion? Now they're calling it eTrust Intrusion Detection. Whatever.

Multi-Purpose Security Sites

Talisker's Network Security Tools: This independent site lists every known commercial; Intrusion Detection System, Vulnerability Scanner and Personal Firewall plus a few other seasoned freeware campaigners. Lovely site, nasty java. Really one of the best, and very well-maintained and current. Recently made famous by providing a backdrop during a trip by some politicians to the NSA.
PacketStorm Security (formerly managed by Ken Williams -aka- Tattooman): Well, they've moved again. Kudos to the rescuers. Whatever you were thinking of, it's here. This is the best collection of stuff that I know of. The ezine that was known as Confidence Remains High is hosted here, along with every single piece of security information you need to know to survive.
VulnWatch: VulnWatch was created because the involved individuals felt the need for a forum which didn't currently exist: a non-discussion, non-patch, all-vulnerability annoucement list supported and run by a community of volunteer moderators distributed around the world.; VulnWatch is a computer security vulnerability disclosure mailing list. It is an announcement list, not a discussion list. The contents of the list are submitted by security researchers or product vendors to alert the Internet community of security issues that may effect them.
Security Focus: SecurityFocus.com is designed to facilitate discussion on security related topics, create security awareness, and to provide the Internet's largest and most comprehensive database of security knowledge and resources to the public...One of the backbones of SecurityFocus.com includes the Bugtraq mailing list - one of the most read security mailing lists on the Internet. Security Focus was acquired by Symantec (see @stake).
The Shmoo Group: The Shmoo Group was formed on or about March 1999 utilizing several ice cold Guinesses and some youthful idealism. We're a group of security, system, and network professionals who all have a bit too little free time and a few too many ambitions. To that end, we decided to start up a security resource on the web that would pretty much be a free-form, hippy-love event. What we ended up with is what you see here. Pretty successful for a hobby.
InfoSysSec: The security portal for information system security professionals. The most comprehensive computer and network security resource on the internet for information system security professionals. Well, maybe, but it is a nice site.
Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security: CERIAS is the world's foremost university center for multidisciplinary research and education in areas of information security (computer security, network security, and communications security), and information assurance.
COAST: Computer Operations, Audit, and Security Technology: A multiple project, multiple investigator laboratory in computer security research in the Computer Sciences Department at Purdue University. Computer Security, Law and Privacy. Subsumed by CERIAS (see above).
SHADOW (formerly CIDER): SHADOW was the result of a project that was originally called the Cooperative Intrusion Detection Evaluation and Response (CIDER) project, which was an effort to locate, document, and improve freely available security software. It's a bit long in the tooth, but interesting still.
ISAAC: Internet Security, Applications, Authentication and Cryptography: This was a small, but very influential, research group in the Computer Science Division at the University of California, Berkeley.
Emergent Chaos: Emergent Chaos is a group blog on security, privacy, liberty, and economics. We declared ourselves the Emergent Chaos jazz combo here.
CIAC Security Website: Computer Incident Advisory Capability. They frequently duplicate CERT and others, but have great information on Virii, and on hoaxes.
Computer Virus Myths home page: Read all about computer virus myths & hoaxes. P.T. Barnum was too kind. Send this link to anyone who sends you email about yet another Good Times variant. This used to be at http://www.kumite.com/myths/, but it's still the same trusty, amusing folk. Guess it's been around the block a few times. It's a wait and see game, for now (no updates in a while).
Wietse's collection of tools and papers: This is the newish site for Mr. Venema. All the stuff from the original at Eindhoven University, but more secure. If you don't use anything else, you should at least get tcp wrappers from here.
CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team): The CERT* Coordination Center studies Internet security vulnerabilities, provides incident response services to sites that have been the victims of attack, publishes a variety of security alerts, researches security and survivability in wide-area-networked computing, and develops information to help you improve security at your site. (But you'll probably see it in Bugtraq or Packetstorm first.)
United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team: Established in 2003 to protect the nation's Internet infrastructure, US-CERT coordinates defense against and responses to cyber attacks across the nation. Brought to you by the same folk who bring you CERT (see above).

Odds and Ends

FIRST: The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), brings together a variety of computer security incident response teams from government, commercial, and academic organizations.
Vendor Security Contacts: Just what it says. It's a list of security contacts for various vendors. I don't know when it was last updated, but it's still nice. Originally written by Aleph One. I've replaced the original with a local copy, but consider it historical information, only.
FTP Security Extensions: RFCs and thoughts on how to make FTP more secure.

Tools

WWDSI's Saint Information: On July 1, 1998, the Security Administrator's Integrated Network Tool was released to the public. There is absolutely no cost for this product. Finally, the son of Satan.Satan modules that you've written can be imported into this, by the way.
SRP: Secure Password Authentication for the Net: SRP stands for the Secure Remote Password protocol, and it represents a new mechanism for performing secure password-based authentication and key exchange over any type of network.

Other Commercial

SystemExperts Corporation: They provide practical, effective solutions for securing their clients' enterprise computing infrastructures. They develop network security architectures, perform network penetration testing, develop security policies, and provide emergency response to hacker attacks.
@stake: Split into two segments, the research arm occupied the vacuum left by the implosion of the l0pht. A little infighting here, a little dirty laundry there. An interesting event was the alliance with crypto and security luminary Bruce Schneier and Counterpane. Of course, it was acquired by Symantec (@stake, not Counterpane).
ISC2 CISSP Home Page: International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium. If you want certifications, this is the one to get.
Winn Schwartau's InfoWar.Com: InfoWar.Com is the premier resource on Information Warfare in its many guises. Well, maybe. There are lots of nasty graphics ... You've been warned (I hate animated GIFS and JavaScript).

Virus Scanners

You already know about Norton and McAfee. No sense even mentioning them. Here's a bunch you didn't know about (in no particular order).

Trend Micro
Kaspersky Labs
Clam Anti Virus
Fortinet
Panda Security
Sophos
Sybari: Antigen
F-Secure

Security Conferences

Usenix Events Calendar: Search for security. There's always something (and don't forget LISA).
The RSA Conference: The RSA (c) Conference provides a forum for information security professionals to learn, network and grow professionally with thousands of your peers, industry experts and leaders, all under one roof. The largest and most comprehensive of its kind, the RSA Conference brings together like minds and visionaries to exchange and collaborate in a dynamic, authoritative setting.
SANS ... System Administration and Network Security: The SANS Institute is a cooperative research and education organization through which more than 26,000 system administrators, security professionals, and network administrators share the lessons they are learning and find solutions for challenges they face. They have LOTS of conferences
National Information Systems Security Conference: Presented by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Computer Security Center. These conferences are no more, but the archives from 1977 to 2000 are still available.
The Black Hat Briefings: Brought to you by the same folk who bring you DefCon.

Last modified: Fri Feb 17 17:13:47 PST 2006

Hackers, Security, Privacy

Hacker Sites

Zines (Does anyone read these anymore?)

Yearly Cons

Serious

The Sites

Old or Retired

Miscellaneous

Encryption

PGP

Keyservers

Distributions

Information

Support Software

Crypto Sites

Privacy

Security Sites

Intrusion Detection

Multi-Purpose Security Sites

Odds and Ends

Tools

Other Commercial

Virus Scanners

Security Conferences

The Feds (Why Not?)

Publishers