NOTE: For information on Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), refer to this article.
PT_DENY_ATTACH is a non-standard ptrace() request type available on Mac OS X that prevents a debugger from attaching to the calling process. This article will cover disabling PT_DENY_ATTACH for all processes on Mac OS X 10.4. For more information on how the request type is implemented, please refer to the previous article.
Below is the final tally of EFF donations. A big thanks to all those that donated to the project! If you are not listed, but should be, send me an e-mail.
Update! Thanks to Roberto Moreda of Allenta Consulting for the final donation of $180, bringing the final tally to $3000!
Donor: Amount:
WingNET Internet $500
Timo Neuvonen $250
Ed Grether $25
Charles Reinehr $100
Michael Proto $25
Phil Cordier $100
Dan Langille $100
Tom Plancon $65
Felix Schwarz $60
ClarkConnect $500
Andrew Ford $25
INetU, Inc $1000
Jo at Winfix.it $70
Allenta Consulting $180
Goal: $3000 Total: $3,000
I just committed support for cryptographic signatures in the File Daemon. The signatures are stored using the ASN.1 syntax I previously outlined. The code supports multiple signers, but the configuration file only supports the specification of a single signing key. You can, however, specify multiple trusted public keys, and any signatures made with those keys will be accepted.
Changes include the addition of an autoconf-based build system and support for Linux.
More information is available from the OpenVPN Auth-LDAP Plugin page
After spending last weekend studying the PKCS #7 and CMS (RFC 3852) specifications, I dedicated this weekend to assembling a Bacula ASN.1 syntax for signing file data and implementing the requisite changes in the backup, verification , and digest handling code paths.
While I would have liked to make use of either PKCS #7 or RFC 3852, OpenSSL's current BER encoder and PKCS #7 API are not capable of handling streaming encoding and decoding. As such, I've designed an ASN.1 syntax inspired by RFC 3852, working around the lack of streaming support by using detached signatures and session key information.
Additionally, I've added support for SHA-256 and SHA-512 digests when using OpenSSL 0.9.8 or greater and completed a great deal of code cleanup. You can find the full ChangeLog below.
Next Up:
The latest patchset is available here: bacula-crypto-3.diff.gz
In the interest of providing visibility into my on-going work, I will be posting regular snapshots of my encryption support diffs, along with some hopefully understandable explanations.
To get the project started, I've modified the OpenSSL autoconf macros to define an additional preprocessor directive, HAVE_CRYPTO. In conjunction with this, I've started implementing the abstract cryptography API in src/lib/crypto.c. As with the TLS implementation, I am attempting to abstract the details of OpenSSL from the rest of the Bacula codebase.
One of the first steps necessary to implement signed message digests is a refactoring of the digest code used by the file daemon. I've created a new digest API in src/lib/crypto.c, and updated all clients of the previous digest API. The new implementation supports MD5 and SHA-1 hashes for both basic digests and signing. If OpenSSL 0.9.8 is available, SHA-512 is used for signed digests.
Additionally, I've migrated the OpenSSL initialization code to crypto.c, and added code for reading -- and signing with -- PEM-encoded x509 certificates and RSA and DSA private keys. I've also added encryption configuration options to the various daemons.
If you would like to take a look at the current patchset in all its glory, you can find it here: bacula-crypto-1.diff.gz
The next task on my list is storage of signed message digests and per-session symmetric keys in both the catalog and volume. I will be out on holiday next week, but I hope to have another patchset available shortly after I return.
A few weeks ago we officially announced the Bacula data encryption project -- an endeavor to add data encryption support to Bacula and raise funds for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The community's response has been wonderful, and we've managed to raise a total of $1,165. Your donations are appreciated! With your continued support, I hope we can meet our goal of $3,000.
Below is a list of the donors to-date. If I have missed anyone, or any information is incorrect, please send me an e-mail.
Donor: Amount: WingNET Internet $500 Timo Neuvonen $250 Ed Grether $25 Charles Reinehr $100 Michael Proto $25 Phil Cordier $100 Dan Langille $100 Tom Plancon $65 Total: $1,165
The EFF has taken notice:
"In addition, huge thanks to Landon Fuller and the Bacula Project for helping to raise money for EFF..."
"Grassroots fundraising efforts like these give EFF the energy (and funds!) to keep on fighting the good fight - defending free speech, fair use, innovation, and privacy on the electronic frontier. By supporting EFF, you help carry the banner to protect digital civil liberties."
Thank you for your donations!
Bacula is an excellent backup solution available for the BSDs, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems.
As the original contributor of Bacula's network encryption support, I recently volunteered to implement on-disk backup encryption -- with one catch. In exchange for implementing data encryption support, I would like the Bacula community to donate $3,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
To quote the official announcement: "Can your company contribute $250 or $500? How about $100? And if your budget is really tight, why not forego a couple of fast food meals and contribute $20?. Bacula is a community project, and this can be your way of helping make Bacula an even better product for the good of the whole community."
Information on how to donate can be found in the official announcement.
Yesterday I implemented a LDAP authentication plugin for OpenVPN 2.x. OpenVPN's new plugin architecture makes it surprisingly easy to extend the software in very useful ways.
More information and the source code are available on this page
Yesterday, I wanted to gather bandwith usage statistics on my FreeBSD pf(4) based firewall in order to graph incoming and outgoing bandwidth utilization.
pfctl(8) provides the '-s info' flag, which can provide statistics on a single interface at a time. The interface can be chosen with the either the "loginterface" directive in pf.conf, or by using the DIOCSETSTATUSIF ioctl. However, I needed statics for all the network interfaces, not just one.
Fortunately, pf(4) also provides the DIOCIGETIFACES ioctl, which allows me to gather packet and byte statistics on all interfaces at once. This article will provide an introduction to using the pf(4) ioctl interface to gather network interface traffic statistics. Full example source code can be downloaded here. Note that PF does not maintain statistics on traffic that does not pass through PF. If you don't use PF, all the counters will be zero.