What is Samba and why is it important?
Samba is a freeware app developed by Andy Tridgell. It is a great tool for helping integrate Unix into Microsoft Windows and Lan Manager environments. The main idea is that you can, with Samba, allow a Unix machine to access file and directories. The other handy thing about Samba is that like most Unix freeware you get the source code. Most hackers seem to have Linux up and running, so loading up Samba allows you several tactical advantages. A number of the exploits described here require access to a privileged port (< 1024). If you are root on your own Linux box, you can start exploits from those needed ports. A lot of the tests in the NMRC lab were conducted using Samba. In fact when World Star Holdings Ltd in Canada had their lame Cybertest '96 contest on June 12th, yours truly used Samba to break in (but I wasn't first). Samba talks SMB and can directly access Windows NT hardware, and Hobbit (hobbit@avian.org) has put together a very interesting paper entitled "CIFS: Common Insecur
