Hello,
when one has physical access to a computer, he can run something like tripwire, with keys and checksum on a separate, write-only media, to verify the integrity of the system.
What if the system is a remote one (in my case Centos 4.3 on a User Mode Linux VPS some hundred of KMs from here)?
Does it still make sense to run tripwire remotely? If yes, how, since you cannot plug a floppy or USB drive in the machine?
What if tripwire was never ran? Does it make sense, on a Centos system without physical access, to download there and run remotely one of those rootkit detection tools? Would its findings be surely accurate?
Generally speaking, how does one handle these issues on remote systems? Thanks in advance for any comment,
Marco
I would run an integrity checker like tripwire, one alternative is aide http://sourceforge.net/projects/aide. If you have another machine at the same location then you could create an NFS share with read-only permissions that you could mount and umount only when you are going to perform the checks, just make sure that the directory on the remote machine has the right permission set and is in an obscure directory. As far as the root-kit detection tools, I don't see why you shouldn't run those too.
On 6/12/06, Marco Fioretti mfioretti@mclink.it wrote:
Hello,
when one has physical access to a computer, he can run something like tripwire, with keys and checksum on a separate, write-only media, to verify the integrity of the system.
What if the system is a remote one (in my case Centos 4.3 on a User Mode Linux VPS some hundred of KMs from here)?
Does it still make sense to run tripwire remotely? If yes, how, since you cannot plug a floppy or USB drive in the machine?
What if tripwire was never ran? Does it make sense, on a Centos system without physical access, to download there and run remotely one of those rootkit detection tools? Would its findings be surely accurate?
Generally speaking, how does one handle these issues on remote systems? Thanks in advance for any comment,
Marco
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 06:32:03 AM -0600, Joshua Gimer (jgimer@gmail.com) wrote:
I would run an integrity checker like tripwire, one alternative is aide http:// sourceforge.net/projects/aide. If you have another machine at the same location then you could create an NFS share with read-only permissions
hmmm, no, unfortunately I only have that VPS in that location, and my home pc here. How would I proceed to use (securely) from the VPS a tripwire database stored here on my local computer? Only ssh would be available
TIA, Marco
On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 03:57:11PM +0200, Marco Fioretti wrote:
Hello,
when one has physical access to a computer, he can run something like tripwire, with keys and checksum on a separate, write-only media, to verify the integrity of the system.
What if the system is a remote one (in my case Centos 4.3 on a User Mode Linux VPS some hundred of KMs from here)?
Does it still make sense to run tripwire remotely? If yes, how, since you cannot plug a floppy or USB drive in the machine?
What if tripwire was never ran? Does it make sense, on a Centos system without physical access, to download there and run remotely one of those rootkit detection tools? Would its findings be surely accurate?
Generally speaking, how does one handle these issues on remote systems? Thanks in advance for any comment,
Hello,
You may be interested in Osiris: http://osiris.shmoo.com/data/osiris-4.1.5.tar.gz
It uses a client-server model to perform host integrity checking. The osiris daemon on your VPS communicates securely with a monitor console application at your location.
Come to think of it, it's a lot like how commercial alarm systems work.
Also I have found both chkrootkit and rkhunter useful, they are not as smart as a real person but may help warn you that you should check the system like a check engine light inside a car...
Marco
- Mike
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Joshua Gimer -
M. Fioretti -
Marco Fioretti
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Mike