COMPUTER AND NETWORK
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION
CNT 4603-01
Syllabus, lectures, and other materials — Fall 2016

Syllabus

Reading Schedule

Assignments

Assignment 1

Assignment 3

Assignment 4

Assignment 5

Assignment 6

Assignment 7

OPTIONAL EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT

Class Notes

Introduction

Building Blocks

Booting

Daemons

Daemons, continued

uid == 0

uid > 0

Networking

DNS

Other applications

Security

Other Material

Email lists, newsgroups, RSS feeds, and so forth

I highly recommend reading the ACM's Risks Digest (you can read it in rdf format at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/rdigest.rdf, or via email — instructions are at http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risksinfo.html) or adding its RSS feed at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/risksatom.xml to your feed browser. Also, you might want to join the FSU Nolenet mailing list.





Reference to the Tanenbaum-Torvalds discussion of micro versus macro: Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution; Appendix A, The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate

The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System

The Art of Unix Programming

Server Fault Forum

LWN

2008-06-09: An Email About A SAN here at FSU: SAN Issue -- root cause explanation

2008-06-09: An Email about a Mailman problem here at FSU: Mailman problem

2008-06-11: An Email about a ClamAV problem with respect to Selinux: ClamAV/Selinux problem

2008-06-13: Reference for enjoyable book on networking:

   Network Warrior, Second Edition
   by Gary A. Donahue
   Publisher: O'Reilly
   Pub Date: May, 2011
   Print ISBN-13: 978-1-4493-8786-0

2008-06-16: Morgan Stanley and AFS: When Your Business Depends On It: The Evolution of a Global File System for a Global Enterprise

2008-06-16: Relatively recent (2006) NFS operations resource: Linux NFS-HOWTO

2008-06-27: Recent article on top-level domains in the New York Times: New Flavors for Addresses on the Web Are on the Way

2008-07-07: Recent article on consumer views of service downtimes in the New York Times: As Web Traffic Grows, Crashes Take Bigger Toll

2008-07-09: Recent article on patching DNS flaw: Vendors form alliance to fix DNS poisoning flaw

2008-07-09: DNS patches prove fatal for some software: MS DNS patch snuffs net connection for ZoneAlarm users

2008-08-08: Press release from Dr. Bernstein on DNS cache poisoning: DNS still vulnerable, Bernstein says

2008-08-11: Plastic Keys to Physical Locks: Researchers Crack Medeco High-Security Locks With Plastic Keys

2008-08-20: An Email about an administrator failing to set permanent state after setting temporary state: Blocked Hosts List?

2008-08-22: An Email about an intrusion at Redhat's Fedora: Infrastructure report, 2008-08-22 UTC 1200

2009-01-05: Backup woes: Hard Lessons in the Importance of Backups: JournalSpace Wiped Out

2009-01-22: NSA Selinux link: http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/.

2009-02-10: Data breach at FAA: FAA reports 45,000 data records pilfered from server

2009-02-26: Man-in-the-middle attack that looks viable: SSL Strip

2009-03-06: Finally, a vulnerability found in DJBDNS: Security Issue in DJBDNS Confirmed

2009-03-06: And a second vulnerability also found in DJBDNS: Rapid DNS Poisoning in DJBDNS

2009-04-01: Spam Back to 94% of All E-Mail

2009-04-06: Carbonite loses customer backups, sues Promise Technology

2009-05-15: Backup woes at Avsim: Hackers 'destroy' flight sim site

2009-05-20: Microsoft IIS hole fells university server

2009-05-21: Microsoft IIS6 bug exposes sensitive files sans password

2009-07-15: U.S. Postal Service Gives Stamp of Approval to FOSS

2009-07-15: DHCP server can take over client

2009-07-21: More on the DD-WRT story mentioned brought up in class: Open-source firmware vuln exposes wireless routers

2009-07-23: Adobe Flash woes: New attacks exploit vuln in (fully-patched) Adobe Flash

2009-07-29: Major BIND bug: BIND crash bug prompts urgent update call

2009-07-29: FSU's response to the BIND bug: [Nolenet] DNS server code upgraded

2009-07-30: Data Exposure in the U.S. government: US Congress probes accidental top secret file sharing

2009-07-30: Hardware security: Intel warns over bare-metal BIOS bug

2009-07-31: DNS: Wildcard certificate spoofs web authentication

2009-07-31: iPhone: How To Hijack 'Every iPhone In The World'

2009-07-31: Details on the Linux 2.30 NULL pointer problem: Fun with NULL pointers, part 1

2009-08-31: Warming server rooms: Intel says data centers much too cold: Frozen assets a waste of cash

2009-08-31: IIS bug gives attackers complete server control

2009-09-02: Why Gmail Failed Today

2009-09-09: Windows unpatchable: Microsoft: Patching Windows 2000 'infeasible'

2009-09-16: The Curious Case of the Failing Connections, The Curious Case of the Failing Connections, Part 2

2009-09-16: Microsoft starts warnings of support phase-out for older Windows Server releases

2009-10-07: A practical example of why you do not want to still be using 512-bit RSA keys: TI-83 Plus OS Signing Key Cracked

2009-10-12: Linux saves Aussie electrical grid

2009-10-16: Big-Box Breach: The Inside Story of Wal-Mart's Hacker Attack

2009-10-16: Maybe all's well that ends well? Microsoft recovers 'most, if not all' Sidekick users' data

2009-12-04: Test setup leaks into production: Bing dies (briefly) after Microsoft hits wrong button

2010-08-23: Why RAID 5 stops working in 2009

20109-09-07: Part one of Doomsday Weekend: who can you trust?

2010-09-07: A series of disorderly events

2010-09-08: DNSSEC versus DNSCurve OpenDNS adopts DNSCurve

2010-09-15: Stuxnet attackers used 4 Windows zero-day exploits

2010-09-16: Intel eats crow on software RAID

2010-09-20: Siemens: Stuxnet worm hit industrial systems

PSN was running on unpatched Apache server with no firewall .

2011-05-10: Why Sony's PSN problem won't take down cloud computing

2011-05-10: Summary of the Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS Service Disruption in the US East Region

2011-05-10: Global CIO: Why The Amazon Cloud Outage Is Irrelevant

2011-05-31: BIND Named woes again: Large RRSIG RRsets and Negative Caching can crash named

2011-06-06: How a cheap graphics card could crack your password in under a second

2011-08-02: Anatomy of a Unix breach

2011-08-30: Fixing a CGI-like Script

2011-09-12: Rent-a-Bot Networks Tied to TDSS Botnet

2011-11-04: Chaos Computer Club analyzes government malware

2011-11-14: Et tu, Boeing? FACT CHECK: SCADA Systems Are Online Now

2011-11-14: Underground call-centre for identity theft uncovered by security researchers

2011-11-14: The Dark Side Of Biometrics: 9 Million Israelis' Hacked Info Hits The Web

2011-11-14: The Underground Economy of Fake Antivirus Software (PDF)

2011-11-14: The Perfect Scam

2011-11-14: Who killed the fake-antivirus business?

2011-11-14: Russian police take a bite out of online crime

2011-11-28: Japan's continuing cybersecurity problems: Upper House confirms falling victim to cyber-attacks

2011-11-28: Japan's continuing cybersecurity problems: Only 45% of lawmakers changed passwords after cyber-attack

2011-11-30: Carrier IQ saga: Carrier IQ Tries to Silence Security Research Exposing Its Rootkit, gets Pinned Down by the EFF

2011-11-30: Carrier IQ saga: The Rootkit Of All Evil — CIQ

2011-11-30: Carrier IQ saga: Carrier IQ Tries to Censor Research With Baseless Legal Threat

2011-11-30: Carrier IQ saga: Smartphone Invader Tracks Your Every Move

2011-11-30: Carrier IQ saga: CarrierIQ

2011-11-30: Carrier IQ saga: Proof Published that Carrier IQ is Recording Key Presses and Location Data

2011-11-30: Carrier IQ saga: The Storm Is Not Over Yet — Lets Talk About #CIQ

2012-04-19: OpenSSL flaw

2012-06-11: US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet

2012-08-31: Finspy: Software Meant to Fight Crime Is Used to Spy on Dissidents

2012-08-31: Finspy: Egypt, FinFisher Intrusion Tools and Ethics

2012-08-31: Finspy: From Bahrain With Love: FinFisher's Spy Kit Exposed?

2012-08-31: Finspy: The SmartPhone Who Loved Me: FinFisher Goes Mobile?

2012-09-24: DNT: Why Do Not Track is worse than a miserable failure

2013-01-16: "Red October" Diplomatic Cyber Attacks Investigation

2013-02-18: U.S. said to be target of massive cyber-espionage campaign

2013-02-20: APT1: Exposing One of China's Cyber Espionage Units

2013-02-25: Code certificate laissez-faire leads to banking Trojans

2013-03-04: Where Apps Meet Work, Secret Data Is at Risk

2013-03-22: How whitehats stopped the DDoS attack that knocked Spamhaus offline

2013-04-08: How a banner ad for H&R Block appeared on apple.com - without Apple's OK

2013-05-14: The Case of the 500 Mile Email

2013-05-16: Network outage here at FSU

2013-07-11: US agency baffled by modern technology, destroys mice to get rid of viruses

2013-07-11: Netragard's Hacker Interface Device (HID).

2013-07-16: Fraudsters trick people into handing over cards on doorstep

2013-08-01: Trusting iPhones plugged into bogus chargers get a dose of malware

2013-08-26: The Guardian's NSA Files collection of articles (also related, The Guardian's general NSA keyword articles)

2013-08-26: They Know Much More Than You Think

2013-08-27: Snowden Interview

2013-08-27: Viewing PRISM: XKEYSCORE

2013-09-10: The NSA Is Breaking Most Encryption on the Internet

2013-09-10: NSA Foils Much Internet Encryption

2013-09-10: The NSA's Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security

2013-09-10: Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security

2013-09-10: The Factoring Dead: Preparing for the Cryptopocalypse

2013-09-10: How Advanced Is the NSA's Cryptanalysis—And Can We Resist It?

2013-09-10: A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering

2013-09-10: New Snowden Documents Show NSA Deemed Google Networks a "Target"

2013-09-24: The iPhone 5s Touch ID hack in detail

2013-09-26: UEFI Boot to Zork

2013-09-30: Meet the Machines that Steal Your Phone's Data

2013-10-10: A Computer Infection That Can Never Be Cured

2013-10-10: The Next Frontier of Password Cracking

2013-10-17: Analysis of the HTTPS Certificate Ecosystem

2013-10-22: The Privacy Challenges of Big Data: A View from the Lifeguard's Chair

2013-10-22: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service

2013-10-31: Meet "badBIOS," the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps

2013-10-31: The DEFCON21 Social Engineer Capture The Flag Report (PDF)

2013-11-01: Just Six People Got Insurance Through Healthcare.gov on Day One

2013-11-05: Top 100 Adobe passwords

2014-01-09: NSA ANT document in PDF format (rough OCR has been applied)

2014-01-09: The Danger of Rogue System Administrators

2014-01-09: NSA Codenames

2014-01-09: A new Dual EC DRBG flaw

2014-01-23: A First Look at the Target Intrusion, Malware

2014-01-23: Bluetooth Hackers Allegedly Skimmed Millions Via Gas Stations

2014-01-28: Spy Agencies Probe Angry Birds and Other Apps for Personal Data

2014-02-05: 7 Die in Fire Destroying Argentine Bank Archives

2014-05-13: Analyzing Forged SSL Certificates in the Wild

2014-05-13: Feds: Sailor hacked Navy network while aboard nuclear aircraft carrier

2014-05-22: The Naming of Hosts Is a Difficult Matter

2014-06-03: Filing by Computer: A Pillow Helped

2014-06-25: Mathematicians Discuss the Snowden Revelations

2015-05-12: Exploiting DRAM rowhammer bug

2015-05-12: Architecting Websites in the HTTP2 era

2015-06-17: Locked Out of the Server Room

2015-06-30: Stealing Keys from PCs using a Radio: Cheap Electromagnetic Attacks on Windowed Exponentiation

2015-06-30: Process isolation NsJail

2015-10-06: Latest filesystem hierarchy specification: Linuxbase

2015-11-10: The Future of Leap Seconds

2015-11-10: XKCD's take on the leap second problem

2015-11-17: Beware of Ads that Use Inaudible Sound to Link Your Phone, TV, Tablet, and PC

2016-09-08: Congressional Report on The OPM Database Compromise

2016-10-25: Dyn statement on DDOS

2016-10-26: IOT

2016-12-01: San Francisco Rail Ransomware

2016-12-01: Avalanche