Category: Security

Passwordless ssh keys

This is a common junior-engineer mistake.

You need to execute a program or access files on another computer with a ssh command in a background script, but a ssh key is required. Good security requires the key to have a password. Redirection tricks can be used to input the password to the ssh program. But now you have exposed the password in clear text. That is just as bad as having no password. Screw it; just remove the password. Done.

Mistake! Now, anyone who gets a copy of your private key will have access to ALL the places where you use that key!

Most of the time, passwordless keys are created because engineers are lazy. To be more generous, passwords slow down their development “flow.” However, there is a solution that has minimal impact (once set up), and it is more secure than passwordless keys.


Use ssh-agent

Continue reading Passwordless ssh keys

VPro Intel Chips Contain Back-Door Processor

vpro-pyramid

New Intel-Based PC’s Permanently Hackable

So you think no one can access your data because your computer is turned off. Heck it’s more than turned off, you even took the main hard drive out, and only the backup disk is inside. There is no operating system installed at all. So you KNOW you are safe.

Frank from across the street is an alternative operating systems hobbyist, and he has tons of computers. He has Free BSD on a couple, his own compilation of Linux on another, a Mac for the wife, and even has Solaris on yet another. Frank knows systems security, so he cannot be hacked… or so he thinks.

The government does not like Frank much, because they LOVE to look at everything. Privacy is a crime don’t you know, and it looks like Frank’s luck with privacy is about to run out.

The new Intel Core vPro processors contain a new remote access feature which allows 100 percent remote access to a PC 100 percent of the time, even if the computer is turned off. Core vPro processors contain a second physical processor embedded within the main processor which has it’s own operating system embedded on the chip itself. As long as the power supply is available and in working condition, it can be woken up by the Core vPro processor, which runs on the system’s phantom power and is able to quietly turn individual hardware components on and access anything on them.

Intel’s new Anti Theft 3.0, which put 3g connectivity into every Intel CPU after the Sandy Bridge version of the I3/5/7 processors. Users do not get to know about that 3g connection, but it IS there.

To read more: New Intel Chips Contain Back-Door Processor, Hackable Even When Computer is Turned Off | PopularResistance.Org

http://www.webcitation.org/6iaL5L0PS