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Nick Anderson

What happened to sudo and who is Baron Samedit?

In January of 2021 Qualys security researchers discovered a heap overflow vulnerability in sudo, an extremely common tool installed in most Unix and Linux operating systems. Sudo allows users to execute programs with the privileges of another user but the vulnerability allows any unprivileged user to gain root on a vulnerable host. This specific vulnerability was nicknamed “Baron Samedit”. The Buffer overflow in command line escaping blog post on sudo.ws notes that the vulnerability can be tested by executing sudoedit -s /. When run as root a vulnerable version of sudo will display an error sudoedit: /: not a regular file.

Posted by Nick Anderson
December 16, 2021

Show notes: The agent is in - Episode 7 - Creating a module with CFEngine Build

Join us as we embark on an adventure to create and publish a new CFEngine Build module. Nick (Doer of Things) demonstrates he knows the proper offerings the gods require by writing and publishing a new CFEngine Build Module from scratch, live, with no safety net! Video The video recording is available on YouTube: At the end of every webinar, we stop the recording for a nice and relaxed, off-the-record chat with attendees. Join the next webinar to not miss this discussion.

Posted by Nick Anderson
November 26, 2021

Solving specific use cases with CFEngine policy and providing reusable modules

With the release of build.cfengine.com, I have been working to migrate some of our own security related policy into modules of their own. CFEngine Build and the cfbs tooling allows us to organize policy into modules, which are easy to update independently and share with other users. Let’s take the scenic route and look at what life is like with cfbs. One of our security policies requires that the password hashing algorithm in /etc/login.defs is set to SHA512.

Posted by Nick Anderson
November 25, 2021

Show notes: The agent is in - Episode 6 - Running CFEngine on IoT (Part 2)

Still interested in running CFEngine on IoT? Craig (Digger) shows building CFEngine Enterprise for Yacto and deploys a Raspberry Pi Zero with a sensor to measure the height of Nick’s (Doer of Things) desk. Video The video recording is available on YouTube: At the end of every webinar, we stop the recording for a nice and relaxed, off-the-record chat with attendees. Join the next webinar to not miss this discussion.

Posted by Nick Anderson
October 28, 2021

Working with external data, a look at classfiltercsv()

When working with CFEngine, it’s common to hear advice about separating data from policy. Separating data from policy allows for separation of concerns, delegation of responsibilities and integration with other tooling. Each organization is different, and a strategy that works well in one environment may not work as well in a similar environment of another organization, so CFEngine looks to provide various generic ways to leverage external data. For example, Augments (def.json) is useful for setting classes and defining variables very early during the agent execution which can be applied to the entire policy having differences based on system characteristics as well as being used for host specific data.

Posted by Nick Anderson
October 21, 2021

Show notes: The agent is in - Episode 4 - CFEngine Build system (cfbs)

Come see what’s new in CFEngine policy management! Herman (Product Manager) introduces and demonstrates new tooling, the CFEngine Build System (cfbs). cfbs is a command line tool to facilitate policy management and consuming modules written by others. Video The video recording is available on YouTube: At the end of every webinar, we stop the recording for a nice and relaxed, off-the-record chat with attendees. Join the next webinar to not miss this discussion.

Posted by Nick Anderson
August 27, 2021

Show notes: The agent is in - Episode 3 - What's new in 3.18?

Come see the new hotness in the latest LTS series, 3.18! Craig (Digger) and Nick (Doer of Things) take a tour of 3.18.0, the first release in the latest LTS series. Join them in exploring dark mode, compliance reports, host specific data via Mission Portals CMDB, manually triggered agent runs, report collections, and CFEngine Build. Video The video recording is available on YouTube: At the end of every webinar, we stop the recording for a nice and relaxed, off-the-record chat with attendees. Join the next webinar to not miss this discussion.

Posted by Nick Anderson
July 29, 2021

Show notes: The agent is in - Episode 2 - Community user demo with Jeff Carlson

Interested writing CFEngine policy faster? Jeff (CFEngine Community user) demonstrates his YASnippet library for CFEngine to make writing CFEngine policy significantly faster. Video The video recording is available on YouTube: At the end of every webinar, we stop the recording for a nice and relaxed, off-the-record chat with attendees. Join the next webinar to not miss this discussion.

Posted by Nick Anderson
June 25, 2021

Show notes: The agent is in - Episode 1 - Debugging with CFEngine policy analyzer

Interested in seeing promise results (KEPT, REPAIRED, NOTKEPT) overlaid on top of the policy itself? Craig (Digger) and Nick (Doer of Things) kick off the new series, “The agent is in” and take a look at the policy analyzer in CFEngine Enterprise Mission Portal. Video The video recording is available on YouTube: At the end of every webinar, we stop the recording for a nice and relaxed, off-the-record chat with attendees. Join the next webinar to not miss this discussion.

Posted by Nick Anderson
May 27, 2021