CBT Nuggets are short videos (nuggets) of information relating to specific areas of IT in relation to current exams. In short CBT Nuggets are a perfect accompaniment to the self studying students array of study guides, software and notes, great to quickly run through before an exam as well as providing the viewer with a good visual on the product/topic.

The videos are done by experts in the related fields, for example CCIE’s demonstrating various Cisco products and how to use them. Jeremy Cioara is one of the well known Cisco trainers, holding numerous qualification himself including multiple CCIE’s! His enthusiasm is present throughout the videos and really helps you to secure the knowledge, although it may border on fanaticism at times.

(Jeremy has his own blog at ciscoblog.com check it out! lots of interesting stuff)

Good Luck and get using CBT Nuggets!

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=17745&source=googleps

They aren’t cheap that for sure. Security also starts to become a concern, but I can imagine these being exceptionally useful. With the prevalence of Bluetooth in laptops it looks like a tidy idea!

Let us know what you think in the comments section!

Release notes here:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_4/12_4x/12_4_15xz/rn_SR520xz.html

Basically, the ASPROX SQL Injection attack appears to be quite commonplace at the moment, but also quite serious.
To cut it short, there is a 20,000 strong botnet out there trying these attacks against websites which use .asp.
The tool actually uses google to search for these sites and then attempts to exploit them by inserting an HTML iFrame which downloads a malicious Java Script which then installs a Trojan.

Carry on reading to find out how to block this on a Cisco router!

The config is as follows, please bare in mind that you will probably need a reasonably specced router and IOS for this. IP CEF is a pre-requisite. I have tested this on 7200 series, 1700 series and 2600 series so far, leave a comment if you have sucessfully tried this on another router!

Config:

The below access list and route-map is used to take any packets that have been tagged with a DSCP value of 1 and route them to a non-existant interface. You will learn how to tag them below!

access-list 130 permit ip any any dscp 1

route-map ASPROX_POLICY_ROUTE_BITBUCKET permit 10
match ip address 130
set interface Null0

The below class-map basically tells the router that we want to match when a specific string is seen in a URL. In this case, the string is part of the get request that the attack uses. Note the “\” which are needed before any bracket as a delimiter!

class-map match-any ASPROX_CLASS
match protocol http url “*DECLARE%20@S%20VARCHAR\(4000\);SET*”

The Policy-map below basically tags any packet matching the above class-map with a DSCP value of 1.

policy-map ASPROX_POL
class ASPROX_CLASS
set ip dscp 1

The rest of the config attaches both the route map and the Service policy to the interface.

Interface FastEthernet0/0
ip policy route-map ASPROX_POLICY_ROUTE_BITBUCKET
service-policy input ASPROX_POL

To confirm that this is being hit you can do a “show policy-map interface” on the router. You should see the packets incrementing. This of course assumes that you are actually seeing the traffic
If not, you could craft the URL yourself to confirm. So, taking this site as an example it would be:

www.cisconews.co.uk//?DECLARE%20@S%20VARCHAR(4000);SET%20@S=CAST

You should then see the packets increment.

Bare in mind that Microsoft released a tool to audit your source code for these vulnerabilities:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954476

Let us know if this was of any use to you in the comments!

Believe it or not ‘if like me you had never actually counted’, in the past Cisco have had 48 available packages boasting different critical functionality such as cryptographic features or advanced routing capabilities and protocol support. Choosing the correct package could prove quite difficult, now however Cisco IOS packaging has changed in an attempt to improve the customer experience.

Cisco have now reduced the packages available to 8!, some of which you may recognise from the original available options. There is also the same shift in switch IOS as there is now only a small selection of critical feature sets to choose from which start from basic L2 services to added L3 functionality. The aforementioned ‘critical service’ packages are designed in a hierarchical model and designed to sit on top of each other so for instance, should you choose a package at the top level you will inherently gain all the ‘critical service’ functionally of the levels below.

Please see the following Cisco links for visual representations of the currently available packages, and happy choosing!….

Routing - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/iosswrel/ps5460/index.html
Switching - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iosswrel/ps8802/ps5460/prod_bulletin0900aecd80281b17.html