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Block Ads & Malvertising on pfSense Using pfBlockerNG (DNSBL)

Block Ads & Malvertising on pfSense Using pfBlockerNG (DNSBL)

This walkthrough uses the DNSBL portion of pfBlockerNG to remove ads/advertising and more importantly, malvertising. It essentially creates a functionality similar to the pi-Hole project except it doesn’t require a separate piece of hardware. Instead, you just use your pfSense + pfBlockerNG! If you’re interested in a write-up on installing/configuring the pi-hole on Ubuntu, I have one here. Please note this walkthrough is for the devel version of pfBlockerNG. The pfBlockerNG-devel package is in the standard list of available packages…

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Installing pi-hole on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Installing pi-hole on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

In this guide, I will walkthrough how to install and test the pi-hole on Ubuntu and more specifically, Ubuntu Server. These same instructions may work on Ubuntu Desktop, but I strongly suggest Server. Why Ubuntu instead of a Raspberry Pi? I love Raspberry Pis and I probably own at least 10 of them. But sometimes I want to perform DNS blocking/blackholing and I either a) don’t have a Raspberry Pi in an environment or b) I have a virtual environment…

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Configuring Quad9 on pfSense

Configuring Quad9 on pfSense

Quad9 is a DNS platform that adds several layers of security. It does this via standard DNS queries/responses.Basically, if a machine on your network queries a known bad hostname, the Quad9 DNS server responds by stating that domain does not exist (NX DOMAIN or non-existent domain). Quad9 also allows you to use DNS over TLS. If you would like a bit more info on Quad9 including some speed benchmarks against other DNS services, I would suggest an earlier article, Quad9 – First…

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Installing OpenVAS (GVM) on CentOS 7

Installing OpenVAS (GVM) on CentOS 7

This is a walkthough for installing and configuring OpenVAS (GVM) on CentOS 7. OpenVAS (Open Vulnerability Assessment System) is an opensource vulnerability scanner. Greenbone has deprecated OpenVAS version 9 and version 10 is now known as Greenbone Vulnerability Manager (GVM). Likewise, the new rpms are called ‘greenbone-vulnerability-manager’ and ‘gvm-libs’ which replace the ‘openvas’ and ‘openvas-libraries’ rpms. If you are upgrading from 9 to the latest version, you may lose your previous tasks and reports so beware! Also, if you are…

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An Open Letter To Ransomware Authors

An Open Letter To Ransomware Authors

Dear ransomware authors, Thank you! No joking, no saltiness, no BS. You may think this is in jest, but I whole-heartedly want to say ‘thank you.’ I’ve been around security long enough to see *many* turn the corner from “we’ll get to security when we get to it” to genuinely being interested in improving. I cannot begin to describe how disheartening it is to do back-to-back yearly security assessments for a bank [or countless other businesses] and have the same…

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Mysterious outbound UDP traffic on port 8888… Help!

Mysterious outbound UDP traffic on port 8888… Help!

What is this traffic on port 8888? Or a device is infected and trying to communicate over port 8888 to IP addresses all over the world?!?! I’ve seen forum posts with similar titles a handful of times now and the final result is often someone discovering the Private Internet Access (PIA) client on a device or computer. I get a chuckle every time I see it because I was once in their shoes so I figured I would make a…

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Monitor For Expiring SSL/TLS Certs with Nagios

Monitor For Expiring SSL/TLS Certs with Nagios

We’ve all been there. Your SSL/TLS certificate on your webserver, mail server, or <insert service name here> has expired and your users are miffed!!! Expiring SSL/TLS certificates have been a problem as long as I can remember and that was at a point when SSL certs could last for several years. Now we have Let’s Encrypt (@letsencrypt) in the fray of SSL/TLS certs and their certs only last a maximum of 90 days. Do you really think expiring certs won’t…

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Block Ads & Malvertising on pfSense Using pfBlockerNG (DNSBL) – Old

Block Ads & Malvertising on pfSense Using pfBlockerNG (DNSBL) – Old

This walkthrough uses the DNSBL portion of pfBlockerNG to remove ads/advertising and more importantly, malvertising. It essentially creates a functionality similar to the pi-Hole project except it doesn’t require a separate piece of hardware. Instead, you just use your pfSense (pfBlockerNG)! If you’re interested in a write-up on installing/configuring the pi-hole on Ubuntu, I have one here. I love pfSense and if I could only install one package to enhance its capabilities, it would undoubtedly be pfBlockerNG. pfBlockerNG is a pfSense…

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Redirect outgoing NTP traffic to an internal NTP server

Redirect outgoing NTP traffic to an internal NTP server

Tired of seeing outbound NTP blocks in your firewall logs because you restrict outgoing traffic? Or maybe you are receiving alerts because some device uses NTP pool resources (such as pool.ntp.org) and one of those IP addresses has ended up on a blacklist, blocklist, threat intelligence feed, etc? Either way, few things in the life of an IT or security professional are as frustrating as false positives. This write-up will help you change that with a little NAT magic, aka…

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Adding HSTS To Your Website

Adding HSTS To Your Website

So you’ve moved your website to use SSL/TLS and that’s it? Not quite! Your next step should to test your site and enable HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security). Changelog 19Dec2017 – Originally posted 5Apr2018 – Added speed difference verbiage between server config and functions.php or .htaccess for high volume websites Testing via Qualys SSL Labs I *love* the SSL Labs server test from Qualys. It’s free and it does a fantastic job of testing (and subsequently grading) your website for…

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