In the April 28 edition of this newsletter, I mentioned the new version of Network Security Toolkit (NST), which is the creation of Paul Blankenbaker and Ron Henderson. NST is loaded with security tools and is available as a bootable CD-ROM. The toolkit is based on Red Hat Linux 9.0, and you can download it as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) image and make the CD-ROM yourself. http://www.networksecuritytoolkit.org/nst/index.html

This week, I learned about another free security-related tool that you might want to try. The Honeynet Project has released a new beta version of Honeywall CD-ROM, which as you might suspect, lets you create a bootable disk that offers the tools necessary to run a honeypot network.

Honeywall CD-ROM is based on a trimmed-down version of Linux and is configurable both before and after bootup. You can add items you might need or make configuration changes that suit your environment. For example, you could add Secure Shell (SSH) keys, set your IP address preferences, and so on, then burn a CD-ROM so that when you boot to the CD-ROM your system is already configured and ready for use.

To use Honeywall CD-ROM, you need a system with 256MB of RAM or more, an IDE hard drive, at least two network cards, and of course a CD-ROM drive to boot from. A Pentium III processor (or equivalent) is also recommended. The Honeywall CD-ROM ISO image is a little over 50MB, and you can download a copy by visiting the Honeynet Project's Honeywall CD-ROM Web site. http://www.honeynet.org/tools/cdrom/

If you're wondering what honeypots and honeynets are all about, we've published numerous articles about them--most recently, "Honeypots for Windows" by Roger Grimes in March. Grimes explains some basics about honeypots and offers an inside peek into four commercial products that let you build honeypots on Windows platforms. http://www.winnetmag.com/article/articleid/41976/41976.html

We have many other articles related to honeypots available online, including news and commentary. You can locate them quickly by using our search engine. I've included a couple of shortcuts below that list the most recent articles first. http://search.winnetmag.com/query.html?qt=honeypot&st=1&rf=1 http://search.winnetmag.com/query.html?qt=honeynet&st=1&rf=1