Historic

I had an idea today about how to make servers self destruct in case of some type of security breach. I guess this might be influenced by the Star Trek movie I saw the other night. They seem to blow up more Enterprises in the recent stories. My idea is to keep a blank CD-R in the drive of the server at all times. On hard disk there is an ISO file that is written to the CD-R on demand and then the server is rebooted. The server will ignore the blank CD-R during reboots until it is written with a valid image. The contents of the ISO needs to be a boot loader and kernel, like Grub and Linux plus a file system with a wipe program. The wipe program is started once the kernel is booted and it iterates through the collection of hard drives, which the kernel found during the boot process, and writes over them with a pattern.This kind of the self destruct sequence can be automated with a script and invoked through a terminal on the local network or through a VPN. It could also be loaded into cron and deactivated on a regular basis from going off.So, if your servers are under heavy attack, and you have no other choice, start the count down. :-)

I graduate in November and then I can grow up and get a job.I have been attending a UNIX course in school the past few weeks. This week we have been studying some cost configurations in running UNIX and Linux for various network serving roles. A topic that came up was the benefit of using the free Linux distributions and related software for low cost server operations. I have a home network, and I think I count as a low cost operation. I will not spend excessive money on my network, and I have never felt compelled to spend money because software I need could be obtained for free.For example, my primary server at home routes email, serves several web sites, and acts as a router between the public Internet and my home network. It is a big server. I run Fedora Core 3 as my operating system.The email routing incorporates dovecot, sendmail, amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, and ClamAV. The last three of these programs working in tandem keep dangerous email for passing through my server. The spam analyzer learns the difference betweeen wanted and unwanted email, while the open source ClamAV scanner automatically checks for updated virus signatures every hour. The amavisd program acts as the mediator between the spam and virus services and my email server. The best part is that tainted email is rejected in real time while the sender is trying to move it to my server.As a network router, my giant egg basket of a server watches both incoming and outgoing connections for suspicious activity on all network adapters using Snort.What would I pay to recreate this configuration with commercial software?

Jen and I spent our 10th Anniversary in Hawaii two years ago. 10th Anniversary in Hawaii

The first entry is dedicated to my big dog. We miss you. From www.thario.net