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Month: November 2017

Quad9 – First Thoughts & Benchmarks

Quad9 – First Thoughts & Benchmarks

Quad9 is the collaboration of IBM X-Force, PCH, and Global Cyber Alliance. It provides a DNS platform that combines high performance with security by blocking known malicious domains. At the time of this writing, Quad9 was using 19 threat feeds. I’m not going to get into the marketing speak because quite frankly, enough folks cover that well enough. Quad9 <- Main Site New “Quad9” DNS service blocks malicious domains for everyone <- Ars Technica Instead, I’ll provide the bare essentials…

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Sending pfSense logs to the DShield project

Sending pfSense logs to the DShield project

Changelog 02June2017 – Originally posted 28Nov2017  – Updated due to script changes What is DShield and why would I send them my logs? According to the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC), “DShield provides a platform for users of firewalls to share intrusion information. DShield is a free and open service.” While DShield is often referred to generically as a “collaborative firewall log correlation system,” for all practical purposes, it is a bit of threat intelligence well before threat intelligence was…

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Testing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

Testing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

If you are interested in a step-by-step implementation of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, there’s a post for that! It’s on this site as well and it will walk you through the entire process. https://linuxincluded.com/implementing-spf-dkim-and-dmarc/ Changelog 17Nov2017 – Originally posted 25Mar2018 – Added more SPF tests specifically for lookups 19Nov2018 – Clarified some test steps and added a site Before you jump into testing SPF, DKIM, or DMARC, you need to verify where your authoritative DNS nameservers are. The easiest way…

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Implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

Implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

If you made it here, you might not be interested in the why’s of implementing the holy trinity – SPF, DKIM, and DMARC – of anti-email spoofing. However, if you’re still uncertain whether you should or shouldn’t, just do it! With the guide below, you’ll see it isn’t all that difficult and when used together, they provide great benefits like brand protection, reducing a phishing attack vector, less chance of your legitimate marketing emails ending up in spam, etc. It also…

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Securing Open RDP Ports

Securing Open RDP Ports

Mr. Mackey says it best — Open RDP ports on the internet are bad… mmmmkay. When you are architecting an environment, you should avoid them like the plague. Even on an internal network, you should avoid them. Otherwise, you are just asking for problems at some point whether it is someone pounding away looking for a username/password combination or a remote vulnerability in the service. Compromised servers (via RDP) are mainstays for criminal jump points and some are even monetizing…

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