Tag Archives: VirtualBox

CentOS 8 with IceWM Desktop Environment

Do you need CentOS 8 with IceWM as desktop Operating System? Most likely not. Especially if you want it to work smoothly without any worries and troubles. However, if you enjoy playing with new desktop environments, you might find it fun.

CentOS 8 with IceWM desktop environment

My reasons were as follows:

  1. I wanted to use the same Linux distribution for server and desktop. Just to minimize possible surprises during the deployment.
  2. I wanted to know what is going on in the RPM-based part of Linux world. The only way to achieve this is to use such distribution every day.
  3. I was tired of problems with the Virtual Box guest additions in CentOS 7 (yes , I run it all as a virtual machine), especially after the 3.10 kernel updates. It was time to move on.
  4. I didn’t want to use Gnome 3, because it’s slow and ugly (however it’s fully functional!). And there were no other DEs in CentOS 8 repositories at that time.

So, I tried CentOS 8 with IceWM (installed it from source) and it worked. IceWM is small, very fast, ascetic, and in some ways quite intuitive. There were some problems with the clipboard (in xTerm and with VBox shared clipboard) and with language switching, but I figured it out and I think that I would probably continue to use it. Below are some notes on how I installed it and resolved the issues.

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Making CVE-1999-0016 (landc) vulnerability detection script for Windows NT

The fair question is why in 2018 someone might want to deal with Windows NT and vulnerabilities in it. Now Windows NT is a great analogue of DVWA (Damn Vulnerable Web Application), but for operating systems. There are a lot of well-described vulnerabilities with ready-made exploits. A great tool for practising.

Making CVE-1999-0016 (landc) vulnerability detection script for Windows NT

Well, despite the fact that this operating system is not supported since 2004, it can be used in some weird legacy systems. 😉

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Deploying VirtualBox virtual machines with Vagrant

I often use virtual machines for various tasks: from building software packages to testing software products or PoCs for vulnerabilities. Creating a virtual machine in Oracle VirtualBox is a time-consuming and annoying process: set parameters of VM, attach iso, make dozens of clicks in OS installation GUI interface, wait until everything is installed, configure network and install guest additions.

Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox

Of course you can create an image of the base machine once and clone it each time you need it. But from time to time you will still need to recreate this image, for example for a new Linux release. It would be much easier, if we could get a fresh and clean Virtual Machine that meets our requirements and with minimal effort. And this is what Vagrant by HashiCorp does.

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Potential RCE in Nessus 7 and attacks on Vulnerability Scanners

A few days ago I saw an interesting youtube video (UPD. 14.05.18 Not available anymore). It is demonstrating the exploitation of the RCE vulnerability in Tenable Nessus Professional 7.0.3. Currently we have very few information about this vulnerability: only youtube video, which is mentioned only on ExploitWareLabs.

Nessus 7.0.3 RCE

While there is no exploit in public access, it’s hard to say how it actually works. It’s also not clear what versions of Nessus are affected. 7.0.3 is the latest version currently. Because of API disabling in Nessus 7 many users are still on 6.11.3. It is not clear whether they are affected or not.

This even can be a fake video. Therefore, I specifically write “potential RCE”. I will update this post when more data is available.

UPD. 14.05.18 In the comments to my post anonymous account Destring Portal posted a comment with the second video of Nessus RCE exploitation and it seems, that it was made by the same author. In this video, the author runs a remote shell on the Nessus host and executes various commands. I will add review of this second video bellow.

Nessus RCE second video

UPD. 10.05.18 Renaud Deraison, Co-Founder and CTO of Tenable, commented on my post at Linkedin:

Our research team studied the video and we have several reasons to doubt its authenticity. We’ve conducted a thorough audit over the last 48 hours based the few details that are in the video and didn’t find anything. We reached out the researcher and instead of replying he removed the video*. We’ll communicate if indeed there is a risk.

In general, you are right though – the security of scanners is of paramount importance. This actually is a topic I’ve been extremely worried about ever since the early days of Nessus. We have a number of security mechanisms in place (interpreted language for the detection scripts, ciphered temporary files, very limited runtime environment) which really aim to limit the risk of being exploited but also to mitigate the risk should the scanner be compromised. I actually did a few talks in the past about scanning “rogue hosts” and we continue to treat all input as hostile.

Again, we’re continuing to investigate the matter and will let you know if we find anything.

* currently video is still available on the same address; it could be probably blocked for some time. (UPD. 14.05.18 Not available anymore)

In any case, it’s a good reason to talk about vulnerabilities of such kind, how they appear and how to protect Vulnerability Scanners from attackers.

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VirtualBox GuestAdditions for Linux Guest OS

I often work with VirtualBox virtual machines and need to install GuestAdditions to use GUI applications comfortably. So, I decided to collect here some configuration scripts.

VirtualBox GuestAdditions

CentOS 8

See the section about VirtualBox in “CentOS 8 with IceWM Desktop Environment”

CentOS 7

In the configuration a new VirtualBox machine I add 2 network adapters:

  • Host Only Network
  • NAT

Installing clean CentOS (CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1611)

Activating network connections using `nmtui` and set the activation automatically

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I often work with VirtualBox virtual machines and need to install GuestAdditions to use GUI applications comfortably. So, I decided to collect here some configuration scripts.

VirtualBox GuestAdditions

CentOS 8

See the section about VirtualBox in “CentOS 8 with IceWM Desktop Environment”

CentOS 7

In the configuration a new VirtualBox machine I add 2 network adapters:

  • Host Only Network
  • NAT

Installing clean CentOS (CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1611)

Activating network connections using `nmtui` and set the activation automatically

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Scaner-VS: Vulnerability Management solution for Russian Military

Scaner-VS is a Vulnerability Assessment system developed by Moscow-based NPO Echelon. It’s pretty popular in Russian government organizations, especially in Russian Army, because it comply all government requirements, has all necessary certificates and is relatively cheap.

Scaner-VS webgui

As for requirements and certificates, NPO Echelon itself is an important certification authority, so they know how to do the things right. It’s not a secret product or something. You can request trial version freely at http://scaner-vs.ru/version-for-testing/. But note, that it is only available in Russian. I am also sorry, but screenshots in this post will be also in Russian. I will try to do my best to describe them properly.

When you fill the form on Echelon website, you will soon get a link to 3.3 gb .iso file by email. Run it in VirtualBox virtual machine (choose Debian 64 or Debian 32).

Here is a boot menu. Choose first default option.

Scaner-VS boot

Some seconds later you will see Linux desktop environment with Scaner-VS web-GUI opened in Firefox.

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GSM Community Edition and lagging OpenVAS Plugin Feed

As I already wrote in “Installing OpenVAS 9 from the sources“, since May 2017 OpenVAS 9 is available in a form of free virtual appliance. It is called GSM Community Edition (GCE) and is based on Greenbone commercial product GSM ONE.

What’s the difference between GSM ONE and free GCE? GSM Community Edition uses different Community Feed of NASL plugins, it can’t be updated automatically and does not have some management features. The most important, in my opinion, is that it does not support OpenVAS Management Protocol (OMP), API for managing scanners. Only HTTPS for WebGUI and SSH are available.

GSM start screen

Talking about different NASL plugin feeds, I need to mention recent message by Jan-Oliver Wagner in Openvas-announce list.

That seems like Greenbone is rather tired of developing OpenVAS by themselves and watching how other companies use theirs engine and feeds, positioning themselves as an “alternative to Greenbone’s product at a better price”. So, they decided:

  1. “OpenVAS NVT Feed” will be renamed to “Greenbone Community Feed”
  2. Public access to the “openvas-nvts” SVN repository will be forbidden, but the license of nasl plugins won’t be changed.
  3. Now Community Feed lags 14 days from commercial feed, but Greenbone would like to make an actual feed, but without some features for enterprise customers.

I really care about Greenbone and they, of course, do as they think is better for the company and OpenVAS community, but at the same time it reminds me situation with Tenable and Nessus. Maybe not so radical. But definitely in the same direction.

Feed delayed for 2 week can’t be used effectively for obvious reasons. If you see exploitation of critical vulnerability like WannaCry in the wild and will need to wait 2 weeks to check your infrastructure, it’s a nonsense! 🙂 That’s mean that you just can’t rely on OpenVAS anymore. And if you use it, you should think about migration on commercial solution, for example on Greenbone’s GSM, or think about getting actual plugin feed somewhere else.

The good thing, it might show customers once again that knowledge base of Vulnerability Management solution is important and stimulate other security content developers to make own nasl scripts and feeds.

But let’s go back to GSM Community Edition. Detailed description of installation process you can find on official site. I will just describe my own experience.

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