question (and poll?) for security professionals

Hi,

There are a number of security specialized Linux live-CDs out there,
including:

* Knoppix-STD
* Local Area Security Linux
* Phlak
* Whax
* Auditor Security Linux
* Linux Defender
* Erpross Live (in German only)
* Arudius
* Operator

Which, if any, do you use? Why? Can you compare/contrat these tools?
Which would you reccommend to an aspiring security professional?

Thanks!

Alex

alex

I personally have used (among others) Knoppix, Local Area Security,
Auditor, one called AUSTRUMI (which has the NT offline password editor)
and a "windows-like" knoppix from Nu productions called Bart's PE.
Basically these are all good tools for different needs, but with
security on computers you have to have exactly the right tool for the
right need.

I will say that for overall hardware compatibility and breadth of
general tools, including a little security, and recovery, knoppix is the
best that I have used - it's compatibility with lots of hardware alone
makes it very handy. If you need to recover stuff (or write stuff) from
a windows disk with an NTFS partition, the windows-like one (you have to
make your self but it's very powerful/customizable) is great.

David

alex wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There are a number of security specialized Linux live-CDs out there,
> including:
>
> * Knoppix-STD
> * Local Area Security Linux
> * Phlak
> * Whax
> * Auditor Security Linux
> * Linux Defender
> * Erpross Live (in German only)
> * Arudius
> * Operator
>
> Which, if any, do you use? Why? Can you compare/contrat these tools?
> Which would you reccommend to an aspiring security professional?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Alex
>

ShadowEyez

alex wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There are a number of security specialized Linux live-CDs out there,
> including:
>
> * Knoppix-STD
> * Local Area Security Linux
> * Phlak
> * Whax
> * Auditor Security Linux
> * Linux Defender
> * Erpross Live (in German only)
> * Arudius
> * Operator
>
> Which, if any, do you use? Why? Can you compare/contrat these tools?
> Which would you reccommend to an aspiring security professional?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Alex
>

Hi Alex

Although i am not a security professional to the standard of many in
here, i can't help but respond. I use gentoo, a fiddly install but one
that allows different security levels to be applied and access to
hardened versions of common tools, and a number of forensic tools
available to be merged into the system.

http://packages.gentoo.org/packages/...=app-forensics

Use the search tool on the above link to find if other tools you need
are directly ported to gentoo. Gentoo also provides tools for you to
create your own livecd where you can create such a cd to *your* specific
needs.

HTH

Martin Spencer-Ford
(TpwUK)

Martin Spencer-Ford

I would suggest also looking at zenLinux and the pen testing version
ray has release w/ it... found

Releases:
ftp://acs-mirror.ucsd.edu/linux/zenlinux/current/

Zen Home:
http://www.zenlinux.org/zenlinux

0xception