Amazon AWS Security Best Practices

This is a placeholder for links to information about securing AWS resources.

http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_Security_Best_Practices.pdf

http://stratumsecurity.com/2012/12/03/practical-tactical-cloud-security-ec2/

20 things to do after installing Kali Linux

Another nice summary of post Kali Linux install.

http://www.blackmoreops.com/2014/03/03/20-things-installing-kali-linux/

Top Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.04/13.10/13.04/12.10/12.04

Nice summaries on post Ubuntu install tasks.

http://www.unixmen.com/top-things-installing-ubuntu-14-0413-1013-0412-1012-04/

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/04/10-things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu.html

New iPhone Settings : Things that should be default for privacy

If you want to maximize privacy settings on your iPhone, here are some things to do.

Ad Profiling

Privacy > Advertising

You will see "Limit Ad Tracking". Advertisers want to personalize ads for you, but setting this on (green in iOS 7) will maximize privacy.

Location Profiling

Privacy > Location Services > System Services

These three settings should be turned off:

Frequent Locations
Location-Based iAds
Diagnostics & Usage

Safari Tracking

Settings > Safari

Turn on the 'Do Not Track' setting (set it green in iOS 7).

For more information, please see this ZDNet blog post:

http://www.zdnet.com/four-privacy-settings-you-should-enable-in-ios-7-immediately-7000020902/

Some additional preferred iOS settings

I don't access the Control Center from the lock screen, so I turn this off.

Settings > Control Center

I have noticed a big difference in batter life by turning off Background App refresh for most apps.

Settings > General > Background App Refresh

This is an obvious preference, but Apple decided to not make the battery percentage indicator a default setting.

Settings > General > Usage

Install Cinnamon into Ubuntu

This post on Cinnamon is obsolete as of April 2014.  Cinnemon 2.2 has been released and installation will be standardized.

More information here:
http://www.webupd8.org/2014/04/cinnamon-22-released-with-system.html

****** Information below obsolete as of April 2014, but included here for historical purposes.

Almost without exception when I am setting up a new Ubuntu desktop instance, I will install the Cinnamon to use instead of Unity.

After using Mint Linux with Cinnamon, really enjoyed the traditional layout offered by Cinnamon.

Installation into Ubuntu, or many other distributions is easy:
http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?page_id=61

Here are the commands for reference:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon nemo  #nemo is the default file manager for Cinnamon

This does not get rid of Ubuntu Unity. If you wish to remove Unity, there are instructions to do that here:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/292394/how-to-completely-remove-unity-and-replace-it-with-cinnamon

Install VMWare Tools into Kali Linux

Kali Linux is not yet distributed with VMWare tools.  When I am building new instances of Kali Linux in VMWare Fusion I am often not connected to the internet, which means I cannot get the mirror sites setup at the point of the VM instance creation.

If you are successful getting your mirror site setup during Kali installation, there is no need to re-set them up. If you can run apt-get update, you can continue installing the Linux Kernel Headers (below). If, like me, you need to setup mirror sites because you installed Kali Linux without an internet connection (or just skipped it), there are a few ways to add mirror sites after installation. It's probably best to add a mirror repository by using the command:

sudo add-apt-repository [repository]

An easy way (with a bit of risk) is to modify this file while in Kali Linux. Open up a terminal and open this file in your favorite text editor (vi, nano, etc).

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

This is what my file sources.list file contains:

deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali main contrib non-free
deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security kali/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.kali.org/kali-security kali/updates main contrib non-free

There is a good VMWare install guide for Kali here:
http://forums.kali.org/showthread.php?3974-complete-working-vmware-install-guide-with-sharing-copy-and-paste
You should then install the Kernel Headers Package. An overview of the install is here:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-install-kernel-headers-package/

These are my commands:

echo cups enabled >> /usr/sbin/update-rc.d
echo vmware-tools enabled >> /usr/sbin/update-rc.d
apt-get install gcc make linux-headers-$(uname -r)
ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/linux/

You will now need to get the VMWare Tools binaries mounted to Kali Linux.  In your VM menu, choose 'Virtual Machine' --> 'Install VMWare Tools'.  You should see VMWare Tools mounted.  Copy the contents to /tmp/.
Then, go to /tmp/ and expand the tar file and run the Perl install script. I chose defaults for all of the settings.

cd /tmp/
tar zxpf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
./vmtools-install.pl


apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse 

Then reboot. You should then have VMWare Tools installed.

Welcome to the notebook

The purpose of this blog site is to share reference material.  It will usually be clips of code or Linux commands that I reference often.

What you will find here will usually relate to information security, penetration testing, systems architecture, enterprise software, GIS, R Language, or anything else I happen to be working on.

Direct message me on Twitter.  @jasonsoroko