Monday

Preparing your laptop (or iPhone) for a security/hacker conference



With Blackhat and Defcon about to begin, I thought it might be a good idea to review an old article from last year: "Preparing your laptop for a security conference".

The 2 main resources from that article are still online:

The general advice is saw other bloggers give was:
  • Don't use the wireless, try to stick to 3G (and use tethering if possible)
  • Even if you use 3G, encrypt it (VPN, SSH-tunnel).... I read that an UMTS mitm was going to be demo'ed at Vegas next week.
  • Leave your data at home, backup the drive, reinstall a clean OS, reimage when you come back (also applies to iPhones)
Remember that even when using the wired access, there are risks (arp poisoning). So be careful or you'll end up on the wall of sheep. I'll mention one last article:
But never never use a service that doesn't encrypt all the traffic. The safest still is to leave your gear at home. Have fun.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some preparing to do for HAR2009!

Feel free to suggest additional tips below.

Update: Try to get a fixed IP. Running a DHCP client can get you in trouble. Two days ago, a vulnerability was found in dhclient. (hat tip to Jon). I'm guessing a lot of linux boxes will get owned in Las Vegas.

http://milw0rm.com/exploits/9265
http://vrt-sourcefire.blogspot.com/2009/07/dont-read-this-post.html

(Photo under creative commons from Blog Story's photostream)

Posted by Security4all at 27.7.09

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