naming convention for windows

tkim

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Dec 23, 2000
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does it say anywhere that the naming conventions for network resources should be disguised??

what i mean is...i know it is easier to name things so that they are easy to identify....LAPDC01 (los angeles, PDC, #1) but is this safe from a security perspective??

will this method give hackers an easier time finding vital network resources as opposed to naming it morpheus01??


thanks for the input!!
 

Nothinman

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Sep 14, 2001
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Neither will make it easier for them to find once they're on your network, just use DNS PTR records for your internal IP scheme and/or nmap or if the DNS is extremely open (as too many are) do a whole zone xfer and look over all the hostnames later.

Naming them oddly might slow the hacker down, but don't rely on hostnames to give you any security, that's not what they're for.
 

tkim

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Dec 23, 2000
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thanks!! ic ur point....i know it wont stop them, but i figured that i would make it one step harder than haniding them my data server on a silver platter.

i wonder if there are any best practices on this???
 

Nothinman

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Sep 14, 2001
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I would pick names that aren't relevant to the boxes duties and use DNS aliases for things like mail.network and www.network, that way you can move stuff around without anyone noticing or having something dumb like a mail server named webserver1.
 

tkim

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Dec 23, 2000
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from a common sense point of veiw, it makes good sense to use this kind of practice but does anyone know if it is a best practice..or if i can find it in some kind of white paper??

 

Nothinman

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Sep 14, 2001
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You have to take more into account than straight up security (which this would be security through obscurity, which is worthless anyway), like I said using names that don't tie services to boxes is probably the best reason to not use boring names, and you get to be creative =)