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OIT Technology Meeting - October 2005

Announcements

Marianne Coyle, IPS
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. More information, including how to enter for a chance to win an iPod Shuffle is available on the RUSecure website.

Beth Binde, IPS
During the week of spring break, IPS will be hosting classes on Windows Hardening and Unix Hardening, which will be taught by Dr. Eric Kohl.

Randy Suchcicki, MSSG
In the near future, SecureID cards will no longer be needed to access Rutadmin/OFIS. Instead, QWS3270 Secure will be used. It was decided that since the communications with the servers will now be encrypted, one time passwords were no longer necessary. The account passwords will still change every 30 days. Anyone who currently has a SecureID card will get the software for free. Any new users will pay a one time charge of $20 for the software.

Ed Humprey, NBCS
Preparing to announce Rutgers Instant Messaging Service. It does secure messaging using Jabber. Users will use their NetID. The target for general availability is late October, though it is currently up and running. The system is using a dual server architecture for redundancy. Documentation on using the system is currenlty in production.

In the near future, SMTP Authentication on the central mail servers will be enforced. It is currently available, but not required from hosts within RU address space. This will change and all hosts will need to authenticate to send mail through the main mail servers. There will be a white list of exceptions for devices that need to send mail as some sort of reporting feature, such as a printer that sends an email when the toner is low. Departments should start compiling a list of such devices. Further communications will be forthcoming next semester.

Presentations

Windows Script 101, VBScript for Sysadmins
Dave Motovidlak, FAS
VBScript is used like batch files, but is more advanced. Support for VBS (and JScript) have been built into Windows OS since Windows 2000. The scripts are written in plain text and require no complining. It is very similar to Visual Basic for Applications as found in MS Office. For more information, view the PowerPoint presentation.

Recommended reference books:

Windows Script Host: Programmer's Reference, Wrox, 1999; ISBN: 1861002653
Sams Teach Yourself Windows Script Host in 21 Days, Sams Publishing, 1999; ISBN: 067231374X
Windoes NT/2000 ADSI Scripting for System Administration, Sams Publishing, 2000; ISBN: 1578702194

Autopsy Forensic Browser
Beth Binde, IPS
It is a GUI for other forensic analysis tools, and is part of the Sleuth Kit. It is Open Source, written in PERL and runs on *nix systems. More information is available on the handout from the presenation.

Ghost Techniques
Doug McCrea, Rutgers College
Ghost is a drive image utility. It is very useful for system roll-outs. A problem has always been with the handling of the system key on Windows. Ghost now includes a utility to address this problem; it copies a "like" system. You can use a "Ghostcast" server to install systems over the network. It can also be used to easily backup individual systems. "Ghost Explorer" allows you to access individual files in a disk image. There is some confusion with Ghost versioning. If Ghost has a year in the name, i.e. Ghost 2003, it is a home version. The numbered versions are the enterprise version, EXCEPT for the most recent version. Ghost 9.0 is a personal version. The current enterprise software is Ghost Solutions Suite. The manufacturer part numbers are SLA-102-95674 for the license and SYM-10287423 for the media.