DVL 1.5 has now left planning status. Bug Fixing started!
DVL 1.5 has now left planning status. Bug Fixing started!
Some new additions:
- Lazarus IDE
- ArgoUML
- BlueJ
- Firefox Plugins updated
DVL 1.5 has left planning status!
DVL 1.5 has left planning status! Beside that we have to fix several bugs we will release the first DVL Wargame as training material. Additionally the first video series is under development.
Damn Vulnerable Linux Strychnine+605 1.4 final
DVL 1.4 final is ready to go and is uploaded at the moment. We hit the 1.6 GB size, including all necessary to train software development, IT security and Reverse Code Engineering. During the next time the mirrors will be informed. After this we post the links. As well we do a short intro video to show all features and on how to use DVL.
DVL Strychnine+E605 1.4 release in January 2008!
DVL Strychnine+E605 1.4 will have its release in January 2008! Includes many new tools, such as the ERESI reverse engineering framework, the Eclipse IDE for Java and C/C++. With this release we close the tool addition part and move to training material only. Stay tuned!
Damn Vulnerable Linux Strychnine+E605 - version 1.4 under construction
I just have remastered the base of DVL Strychnine+E605 version 1.4. Beside more tool additions I have done some bug fixes as well. The status is now between alpha and beta, I will do now more testing within the next time.
DVL included Mplayer Buffer Overflow Vulnerability (CVE-2007-2948 and SAID 24302)
A stack overflow was found and reported by Stefan Cornelius of Secunia Research in the code used to handle cddb queries. Two other similar issues were found by Reimar DΓΆffinger while fixing the issue.
Adding vulnerabilities can be so easy… just sit and wait 
Bug fixing for the next release of Damn Vulnerable Linux
Seems that the next release of Damn Vulnerable Linux will focus on two topics: (1) bug fixing and (2) adding more training material. Unfortunatly community is lazy by contributing tutorials.
At the moment I have encountered some minor bugs (e.g. menu items open a console but console closes immediatly) and some other bugs (SNORT is not running and makes trouble with the standard MySQL installation / .lock files).
More about the bugs during the next time, I will add the defects at the bug tracker.
No time to rest… the next Damn Vulnerable Linux release under development…
I thought I could rest some weeks… but I could not resist. The next release of Damn Vulnerable Linux (1.4) is under development. I added some more tools such as KDBG, a CHM viewer for ebooks and Acroread (some pdf files need this), and Latex to provide better support for writing tutorials with a DVL tutorial template (especially students need this). With this I will stop efforts in adding tools. We have all we need. Now we move to the challenges part. Some WarGames will come, so stay tuned Ups, and yes, the training will come now!
QT Vulnerability - Free provided with DVL Strychnine+E605
Trolltech, producers of the Qt library, have released a source code patch for Qt3, which fixes a security vulnerability. Bugs may lead to execution of arbitrary code during processing of crafted strings by applications which use the cross-platform C++ framework. QTextEdit element contain format string vulnerabilities and integer overflows. These can be triggered when an application linked to Qt issues an error message which incorporates text provided by the user. The bugs affect versions of Qt3 up to and including version 3.3.8. Programs using this version of the library include the KDE Desktop. Read More 1 | Read More 2
DVL Strychnine + E605 is final!
DVL Strychnine + E605 is final! I just remastered the ISO and we land at 1050 MB size which fits perfectly on a 2 GB USB stick (and gives us more free space to add additional stuff). I will upload the ISO today and inform the mirrors. Finally after all this installation part I can play myself with it
DVL E605 under work…
Damn Vulnerable Linux E605 is now under construction. I plan to release it around October since it shall include videos and they will take some more time. The DVL size exploded now to 1 GB - I am not lucky with such size. So we see how to reduce it. maybe we need to kick KDE, who knows. Overall some few more nice tools are installed including WebGoat, Boost, and FreePascal. With this we should be final with all these tools. The /pentest/ folder has a size of 230 MB size and without KDE we might hit 500 MB less in size. But I don’t want to drop the /pentest/ folder 
At least the last poll “Does size matters?” said: NO. Keep the size. So OK, we move to 1,5 to 2 GB DVD size.
Thanks to Vitor for providing the WebGoat plugin which I will release soon (oh, btw: it will NOT run under DVL Strychnine which has JRE and not JDK only! I provide a link to a JDK as well)
First plugin arrived
Josh Sweeney has submitted the first plugin for DVL. The Iodine module adds Iodine version 0.4.0 to BackTrack 2, Iodine version 0.4.0 is default. This module adds Iodine to /pentest/tunneling/iodine-0.4.0. It does not change the menu link in KDE or Fluxbox. Nor does it remove the old version. BTW: he has a nice website, check it at http://www.SecurityDistro.com.
DVL and the ASLR
Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is a method to prevent attacks like shellcode injection. DVL is now based on a 2.6 kernel which has ASLR enabled (since 2.6.20). This means that it is more complicated to train buffer overflows than with DVL 1.0 or 1.1 based on DSL with a Kernel 2.4. This makes it more realistic but not easier for newbies. But I believe that this forces trainees to think more instead of just to transcribe ready made material.
I will prepare an eLecture on the topic of ASLR combined with a real life example as video training as soon as possible.
As I believe DVL (BT 2.0) has PaX integrated but I am not sure about this - I missed to investigate this. So this is my Call for Contribution to the community: help to solve this problem 
BTW: If you are interested in how to bypass e.g. the PaX ASLR protection you should have a look at Phrack 59-0×09.
Damn Vulnerable Linux Strychnine - Success Story during two university lectures!
Damn Vulnerable Linux has been succesfuly used during two university lectures (University of Hannover and University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover).Β During the lectures DVL has been used to teach Buffer Overflow Analysis and Exploitation and Web Security. Additional it has been used as training environment to teach assembly language to-down using HLA (High Level Assembly). I have to say thank you to the students being good testers and for that they had really fun to learn assembly language with DVL.
DVL Strychnine final! Available very soon via BitTorrent (following via mirrors)
DVL Strychnine is finally final. The last pre-compilation is running at the moment, then the final compilation of the remaster will follow. Some nasty bugs fixed such as permissions problems of the pre-installed MySQL database containing first vulnerabe web examples. Click on the link below to see the current changelog. This shows you which additions have been added to the “classic” BT 2.0 release to build the base of the new era of Damn Vulnerable Linux. Some more minor unimportant features are left to install, however I believe it is time to go with the release to concentrate finally on the production of the most important: training lessons!
DVL Strychnine will be available via BitTorrent this weekend (never published before using BitTorrent… let’s see if I run into problems…) - Later I place it on the mirrors. File size at the moment 822 MB, sorry for that but let the community decide what to kill!
A short intro video will follow soon, maybe I can make it this weekend.
DVL Strychnine Cheat Codes
DVL Strychnine is based on BT2. These are the cheat codes which you can use to enable specific features in DVL Strychnine:
Useful Commands:
β? ati β initializes the ATI Xconf and starts KDE.
β? startx β starts KDE.
β? flux β starts Fluxbox.
β? share β mounts a windows share to /mnt/share.
β? leetmode β starts a KDE Sensor array (karamba) .
β? start-kismet-ng β auto configures kismet.conf and runs kismet.
β? fixvesa β restore original vesa xconf (not in beta).
β? sshd-generate β creates SSH Keys. Usually followed by /usr/sbin/sshd.
Cheat Codes:
β? bt β default boot.
β? dbt β dual core support (default boot has dual core disabled).
β? safe β loads BT with a failsafe configuration.
β? debug β load BT in DEBUG mode.
β? client β PXE boot cracking client (not in beta).
β? server β PXE boot cracking server (not in beta).
Taken from http://offensive-security.com/documentation/backtrack-intro.pdf