Australia's Leading Computer Emergency Response Team

AusCERT RSS feeds of Security Bulletins and Blogs
Date: 19 May 2005
Original URL: http://www.auscert.org.au/render.html?cid=1929&it=5102

Introduction

AusCERT is pleased to announce the availability of RSS 1.0 feeds of AusCERT bulletins. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML based format that allows new information from web sites to be summarised and viewed in a form similar to newsgroups or email messages. This means that anyone can now view RSS feeds of AusCERT bulletins, however certain items will require you to authenticate to the AusCERT website in order to view the full bulletin. If you are not an AusCERT member, please see how to become an AusCERT Member for further information. If your organisation is already an AusCERT member but you cannot log in, you may not have a user account or have forgotten your password.

Instructions

The following instructions describe how to configure Mozilla Thunderbird version 1.0 and later to receive AusCERT's RSS feed(s) - the procedure should be similar for other RSS readers.

If you've never subscribed to an RSS feed in Thunderbird before, do this first:

  1. Start Thunderbird.

  2. From Thunderbird's main menu, click File > New > Account.

  3. Select "RSS News & Blogs" as an account type, then "Next".

  4. Name the account something like "RSS feeds", then "Next".

  5. Verify the name you've selected, then "Finish".

  6. You should now see your new RSS account folder appear in the left hand navigation pane.

Once you have your RSS account in Thunderbird set up, do the following to subscribe to the AusCERT RSS feed:
  1. Right click on your RSS account folder and select "Manage Subscriptions...".

  2. Click the "Add" button on the "RSS Subscriptions" window.

  3. Enter:

    http://www.auscert.org.au/rss.html

    in the "Feed URL" field. Set the other options as required and click the "OK" button.

If this is successful, then please enjoy the AusCERT RSS feed "AusCERT Security Bulletins". If a bulletin is restricted to AusCERT members only, you will need to log in to the AusCERT web site through your web browser to view the bulletin's full text.

Configuring RSS for particular categories

By default, all security bulletins will be retrieved via an RSS feed. It is also possible to download only items from a specific category as an RSS feed. To do this, you use the URL of:

https://www.auscert.org.au/rss.html?cid=[category]

where [category] is replaced with a "Category ID". Every item on the AusCERT website is assigned to one or more categories. A category ID are numerical and some of the more useful categories are listed in the following tables:
Category type Category ID
AusCERT External Security Bulletin: 1980
AusCERT Security Bulletin: 10415
AusCERT Web Log: 7066
Category type Category ID
All Unix Advisories: 20
All Windows Advisories: 21
All Linux Advisories: 34
All BSD Advisories: 37
All Cisco Advisories: 3245
All Mac OS X Advisories: 46