iCTF - UCSB International Capture The Flag

I was fortunate enough to be invited to join the QUT iCTF team. The objective of the contest is to ensure that a set of required services remain available and un-compromised. In preparation for this task, I decided to setup a dedicated laptop for the contest. I would have been far easier to install a distribution such as BackTrack, but I decided to take the painful path.

First, a friend sold me his old laptop, which was far better than my current notebook. It was a Sony VAIO SZ34GP. I installed CentOS 5.5 on this notebook, just a base install with development libraries and tools. The instructions below provide a brief list of tools and their associated configurations. 

Repositories
There's a need to set-up some additional repositories for CentOS to enable the installation of additional thir party applications. For more information refer to References 3Section.

1. sudo bash
2. cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
3. wget -q -O - http://www.atomicorp.com/installers/atomic |sh
4. wget http://dries.eu/pub/dries-el.repo
5. wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.1-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
6. rpm -ivh rpmforge-release-0.5.1-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
7. yum update

Installation

Install tools to be used for the competition. Most of the tools are penetration testing tools I have used in the past. I made a point of installing the development libraries and tools during the CentOS installation. This would be useful for developing and testing possible exploits.

1. sudo yum -y install nmap
2. sudo yum -y install amap
3. sudo yum -y install hydra
4. sudo yum -y install aide
5. sudo yum -y install snort
6. sudo yum -y install nikto
7. sudo yum -y install ntop
8. sudo yum -y install fail2ban
9. sudo yum -y install tcptrack
10. sudo yum -y install dsniff
11. sudo yum -y install ngrep
12. sudo yum -y install fragroute
13. sudo yum -y install hping
14. sudo yum -y install scapy
15. sudo yum -y install tcptraceroute
16. sudo yum -y install firewalk
17. sudo yum -y install iptraf
18. sudo yum -y install kismet
19. sudo yum -y install ettercap

ChaosReader

1. Download latest version from source forge (http://chaosreader.sourceforge.net)
2. sudo mkdir -p /opt/chaosreader
3. sudo cp chaoreader0.94 /opt/chaosreader/
4. sudo chmod 755 /opt/chaosreader/chaoreader0.94
5. sudo ln -s /opt/chaosreader/chaoreader0.94 /usr/local/bin/

John the Ripper

1. wget http://www.openwall.com/john/g/john-1.7.6.tar.gz
2. tar zxvf john-1.7.6.tar.gz
3. cd john-1.7.6
4. cd src
5. make
6.  clean linux-x86-any
7. sudo mv ../run /opt/john-1.7.6
8. sudo chown -R root:root opt/john-1.7.6
9. mv /opt/john-1.7.6/john.conf /opt/john-1.7.6/john.ini
10. sudo ln -s /opt/john-1.7.6/john /usr/local/sbin/
11. sudo ln -s /opt/john-1.7.6/john.ini /usr/local/sbin/

OpenVAS

1. sudo yum -y install openvas-server openvas-client openvas-scanner
2. sudo openvas-mkcert
3. sudo /usr/sbin/openvas-nvt-syn # Add as a cron job - refer to OpenVAS documentation
4. sudo /etc/rc.d/init.d/openvas-scanner restart
5. sudo /usr/sbin/openvas-adduser # Add rules "default accept" if unsure

Skipfish

1. wget http://skipfish.googlecode.com/files/skipfish-1.81b.tgz
2. tar zxvf skipfish-1.81b.tgz
3. sudo mv skipfish-1.81b /opt/
4. sudo ln -s /opt/skipfish-1.81b/skipfish /usr/local/sbin/
5. sudo ln -s /opt/skipfish-1.81b/sfscandiff /usr/local/sbin/
6. sudo chown -R root:root /opt/skipfish-1.81b

VMWare Server

1. Download the latest VMWare Server, at the time of this blog it was version 2.0.2
2. tar zxvf VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.tar.gz
3. cd vmware-server-distrib
4. sudo ./vmware-install.pl

References:

1. http://ictf.cs.ucsb.edu/
2. http://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge
3. http://www.backtrack-linux.org/
4. http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories
5. http://www.openvas.org/
6. http://www.alienvault.com/free_nessus_feed.php
7. http://www.hacktoolrepository.com/

Acquire - The Board Game

I decided to kick my blog off with a basic review of Acquire, the board game by Avonhill. More comprehensive reviews may be found on hard core board-gamer blogs and sites. http://www.boardgamegeek.com being a good one.



The game itself is an old one. Apparently it was first published in 1962. So basically it has been around for some time and may have enjoyed some popularity. The primary objective of the game is to become the wealthiest player by founding and/or investing in hotel chains.

The game comes with the game board, cardboard tiles for hotel chains, cardboard tiles for hotels, cardboard stand, hotel stock certificates, credit notes to buy hotel stock. Some of the older versions of the game appear to have three dimensional tiles and hotels. The current version that I have appears to be more of a budget edition. It has cardboard tiles, that need to be placed on a cardboard stand that needs to be made from punched out pieces. A scrabble type plastic stand would have been nicer.

During a turn, I player must perform the following (in order), place a chain tile on the board, buy up to three(3) stock, pick up tiles to replace the tiles used. The "randomness" is implemented via the selection of tiles by the players from the draw pile.

In my opiniuon, a number of strategies need to be employed during the game. During the start of the game there is larger variance in, unknown factors, however as play progresses, players need to guess the tiles that other players may be holding, based on the tiles that they currently possess as well as the tiles already played.

Therefore, in middle game, tactical placement of tiles is essential to realise the strategy employed, i.e. either acquire other hotel chains or setup your chain(s) to be acquired by others. Again, in my opinion, the key strategy at all stages of play, seems to be to maintain majority ownership in a chain.

The final, tactical point to note when developing a strategy is that during a normal player turn, you are limited to the purchase of only three(3) stock, however if your chain is acquired you can convert your existing stock into the new chains, i.e. more than (3).