UKUUG Spring 2009 Conference
24-26 March 2009 in London
Servers on the Internet are exposed 24x7 to new and sometimes exciting threats. How can you limit your exposure to attacks
Abstract
We're long into the 21st Century now, and the scene is 2009 where the Internet is largely akin to the "Wild West" of years gone past. Neutrality is a 'hot potato' topic at the moment in some circles, however the status quo is a series of interconnected networks between companies and continents which lacks a Sheriff packing six-shooters.
Roving bands of hackers (some may even be state sponsored) are conducting assaults against networks worldwide, and they want you! Unfortunately this isn't an invitation to sip champagne and gossip, they're after your servers to participate in their little army ('botnet') where it will join masses of feebly-protected servers conducting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), sending billions of spam messages advertising illicit narcotics, or trying to earn your 'leet hacker' some money by phishing card details of unsuspecting prey.
This is a "food for thought" topic aiming to arm you with knowledge. During a hopefully lively 45 minutes we're going to look at some of the most common attack vectors used today, and how to defend against them. With a bit of luck you'll walk away with your own six-shooters and perhaps a bulletproof vest to strap around your server(s).
Speaker biography
Alex Howells is a Senior Systems Administrator at gradwell dot com Ltd and has been using Linux for circa a decade, starting on Debian 'Slink' on a SPARC. Employed in a contract and full-time capacity as a 'multi-purpose geek' for the last 5-6 years, his current interests include "interesting" problems pertaining to scalability, availability and configuration management of servers and the services which run upon them.
Prior to commencing employment with Gradwell in March 2009, he was gainfully employed at Bytemark Hosting as a systems ninja, and during his spare time he has contributed to popular open source projects including Gentoo Linux and the freenode IRC Network. Over the last few years he has had the pleasure of contributing to work environments large and small, ranging from multinational corporations with thousands of users down to Silicon Valley startups with "The Next Big Idea".
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