White Hackers

by: Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933 It might happen on your CCNA exam, it might happen on your production network - but sooner or later, you're going to have to perform password recovery on a Cisco router or switch. This involves manipulating the router's configuration register, and that is enough to make some CCNA candidates and network administrators really nervous! It's true that setting the configuration register to the wrong value can damage the router, but if you do the proper research before starting the password recovery process, you'll be fine. Despite what some books say, there is no "one size fits all" approach to Cisco password recovery. What works on a 2500 router may not work on other routers and switches. There is a great master Cisco document out on the Web that you should bookmark today. Just put "cisco password recovery" in your favorite search engine and you should find it quickly. The following procedure describes the process in reco...

by: Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933 Your BCMSN and CCNP studies will include mastering the details of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). While you learned some of these details in your CCNA studies, quite a bit of it may be new to you. Before going on to the intermediate and advanced STP features, let's review the root bridge election process and learn how to change these results. Each switch will have a Bridge ID Priority value, more commonly referred to as a BID. This BID is a combination of a default priority value and the switch's MAC address, with the priority value listed first. For example, if a Cisco switch has the default priority value of 32,768 and a MAC address of 11-22-33-44-55-66, the BID would be 32768:11-22-33-44-55-66. Therefore, if the switch priority is left at the default, the MAC address is the deciding factor. Switches are a lot like people - when they first arrive, they announce that they are the center of the universe! Unlike some people, the switches will soon ...

by: Dennis Nazarenko Just select some text, press the corresponding key combination and the search results are in front of your eyes. This is what the new free program Hotkey Search Tool can do for you. An advanced Internet user searches from 8 to 30 times a day. In the case of specialized search systems, such as on-line translators, dictionaries, and references, this value increases and totals from 10 to 60 requests a day. Often, you had to start the browser and enter the search phrase to get the search results. But if the text is already typed, why should you have to type it again? Suppose you want to search an encyclopedia for some unknown word or find the site of some product by its name. All you need to do is just select the text and send a command to Hotkey Search Tool. The program will copy the selected text to the clipboard and open the browser with the search results. If you do not select any text, the program will select the string typed before you pressed the ...

by: Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933 Policy routing is a major topic on your BSCI exam, and you'll find quite a bit of policy routing going on in today's production networks. But what exactly is policy routing? Policy-based routing, generally referred to as "policy routing", is the use of route maps to determine the path a packet will take to get to its final destination. As you progress through your CCNP studies and go on to the CCIE (or to a Cisco Quality Of Service certification), you'll find that traffic can be "marked" by policy routing in order to give different levels of service to various classes of traffic. (This is done by marking the traffic and placing the different classes of traffic in different queues in the router, allowing the administrator to give some traffic higher priority for transmission.) There are some basic policy routing rules you should know: Policy routing doesn't affect the destination of the packet, but does affect the path...

SMTP stands for simple mail transfer protocol. It is a simple protocol based on exchange of commands. There are lots of commands supported, you can view a list here . The first command used in SMTP is the HELO or EHLO (extended hello). This a way of greeting the server. The server will reply back with some form of greeting. You can use SMTP to send fake mails read on at... http://www.windowsecurity.com/whitepaper/How_to_Send_Fake_Mail_Using_SMTP_Servers.html

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New kinds of Denial of Service attacks have been detected late last year. They consist of using the DNS servers to flood the victim computer. More information here...

By Lance Spitzner Definitions and Value of Honeypots Lance Spitzner With extensive help from Marty Roesch and David Dittrich http://www.spitzner.net Over the past several years there has been a growing interest in honeypots and honeypot related technologies. Honeypots are not a new technology, they were first explained by a couple of very good papers by several icons in computer security, Cliff Stoll's book the Cuckoo's Egg", and Bill Cheswick's paper "An Evening with Berferd." This paper attempts to take their work further and discuss what honeypots are, how they can add value to an organization, and several honeypot solutions. There are a variety of misconceptions on what a honeypot is, how it works, and how it adds value. It is hoped this paper helps clear up those issues. Also, few people realize the risk and issues...