L.A.S. is a research team specialized in information security research areas.
Local Area Security, a research group dedicated to exploring topics related to information security, is best known for L.A.S. Linux, their live-CD security toolkit. The project was initiated in 2002 when there wasn't an actual live-CD toolkit that focused on information security. At that point, Jascha, the founder of the project, built a toolkit from a minimalist version of Knoppix called Model-K, which was derived from Debian Linux.
Initially, L.A.S. Linux was purely command-line based until version 0.4. Thus, it had limitations on the tools that could be included since many tools required a graphical user interface. Subsequently, the FluxBox desktop was integrated into the toolkit, owing to its lightweight feature-rich nature. During the FluxBox integration, Jascha conceived the idea of making L.A.S. as concise as possible, setting its target maximum size at 180MBs. This size was selected because it was the size of the mini-CDs that were available at the time.
The purpose of the smaller size of L.A.S. Linux was to ensure that only tools and features that were crucial were included, instead of having an all-inclusive grab bag of applications in the toolkit. L.A.S. was intended to be a 'tool' specifically and not just any live-CD. The popularity of live-CDs was evident as many advances for live-CDs, such as 'to-ram,' came about making it possible to boot the live-CD into the physical RAM of a computer, and L.A.S. was perfectly suited for this. With just as little as 256MB of RAM, users could boot L.A.S. and free up their CD-ROMs. This feature was beneficial, especially for forensics, and helped with running other tools like Nessus or Nmap. However, to use the to-ram option on the full-size (700MB) CDs, you would need at least 1GB of RAM, making L.A.S. the better option.
All in all, L.A.S. Linux is an excellent toolkit designed explicitly for information security professionals who require only specific tools in their live-CD. Its approach of having a concise list of tools and features makes it useful for numerous applications like forensics, among others.
Initially, L.A.S. Linux was purely command-line based until version 0.4. Thus, it had limitations on the tools that could be included since many tools required a graphical user interface. Subsequently, the FluxBox desktop was integrated into the toolkit, owing to its lightweight feature-rich nature. During the FluxBox integration, Jascha conceived the idea of making L.A.S. as concise as possible, setting its target maximum size at 180MBs. This size was selected because it was the size of the mini-CDs that were available at the time.
The purpose of the smaller size of L.A.S. Linux was to ensure that only tools and features that were crucial were included, instead of having an all-inclusive grab bag of applications in the toolkit. L.A.S. was intended to be a 'tool' specifically and not just any live-CD. The popularity of live-CDs was evident as many advances for live-CDs, such as 'to-ram,' came about making it possible to boot the live-CD into the physical RAM of a computer, and L.A.S. was perfectly suited for this. With just as little as 256MB of RAM, users could boot L.A.S. and free up their CD-ROMs. This feature was beneficial, especially for forensics, and helped with running other tools like Nessus or Nmap. However, to use the to-ram option on the full-size (700MB) CDs, you would need at least 1GB of RAM, making L.A.S. the better option.
All in all, L.A.S. Linux is an excellent toolkit designed explicitly for information security professionals who require only specific tools in their live-CD. Its approach of having a concise list of tools and features makes it useful for numerous applications like forensics, among others.
What's New
Version 0.5-210: N/A