Internet Security Information Sources

William Steen and Emmett Dulaney

Keeping up to date on the latest in security trends and breaches can be a laborsome job for a system administrator. Such concerns become especially high priorities when part of your network is exposed through an Internet connection associated with a Web server. Fortunately, there are a number of organizations that specialize in providing users with bulletins and advice on Internet security. They are basically divided between government-sponsored groups such as the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), university organizations, such as COAST, and vendors. All of these organizations can help you protect your systems or deal with intrusions. Vendors typically offer free security bulletins to recipients of the appropriate mailing list, along with a Web/ftp archive of previous bulletins.

This article provides a review of the major sites of interest that readers may find useful, and a listing of pertinent security-related RFCs.

AT&T

For information on research being conducted at AT&T - including the new (so-called) java-killer language, Inferno, (and its operating system counterpart, Inferno), check out the Web site at http://www.research.att.com/ or the ftp site at ftp://Research.att.com/dist/internet_security.

bugtraq

bugtraq is a popular mailing list that involves detailed discussion of Unix vulnerabilities. The amount of email traffic generated by this source is quite substantial. To subscribe, send the text subscribe bugtraq to: listserv@netspace.org.

CERT

The U.S. Computer Emergency Response (CERT) Team was founded in 1989 by the U.S. Department of Defense to protect the infrastructure of the Internet. Situated at Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, CERT consists of about a dozen employees who respond to reports from Internet users regarding network security, issuing bulletins, notifying vendors, characterizing the state of the Internet from a security standpoint, working with the mass media to publicize and address concerns, and researching solutions to Internet security problems.