Security News (110 Posts)

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Next Generation Firewall

#54 - Posted on 1 December 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

There is a good article on TECHNET on Next Generation Firewall (NGF) and the fact that most, if not all, companies accept port 80 in/out meaning traditional F/W are less and less effective against malware using this port as a mean to call home or come in.

The Article nicely summerize the need to look for more than IP/PORT/PROTOCOL but also for the type of Payload going through.

Although not a new technology, the evolution of Malware is a growing issue which makes that technology more and more relevant.

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I used to have one password…

#52 - Posted on 14 October 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

I used to have one password.It was the password to my Unix student account and it was in the mid nineties!

Since then, I must have dozens of passwords for work/home computers, websites, files, etc. Having a truly different password each time is almost impossible unless you use some kind of password safe application. Or you could use some kind of clever formula, I do emphasise on the “clever” because if your formula is to generate the same password with a simple variant at the end of it, a hacker who has access to more than one of your password could find out what that formula is quite easily.

Another issue is the username. Most security warnings are related to users having the same password, although it is indeed true, there is also an issue with using the same username everywhere. I would argue it is more important to start with a known username than a known password.

The recent ...
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An action on Data Privacy

#51 - Posted on 13 October 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

The Inquirer recently ran a story about a group targeting Facebook and their use of your personal information. This group called “Europe Vs Facebook” claims that Facebook not only stores information about you even after you have deleted it, in other words it never really get deleted, but that they also create ghost profile of users who opted not to be on Facebook in the first place.

I find this very interesting because technically it is quite possible… Even if someone is not on Facebook their photo can be uploaded and their name tagged to it. It would require much more intelligence though to be able to correlate some information about that person discussed in Facebook mails/messages but it is in theory possible.

Although many people have wa...
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New Dropbox Issues and a work around

#48 - Posted on 18 August 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security, Guides

More issues have been found with Dropbox, they were major issues and the researchers worked with the vendor to fix them before going public.
Although they are now fixed they highlight the time bomb Dropbox is for enterprise users as usage convenience and security risk ignorance means sensitive information is likely to be transferred centrally on Dropbox from many different companies and user profiles.

The 3 security issues discussed in the this article were:
– Hash value spoofing to access other customer’s data
– Stealing Dropbox hostID to access other customer’s data
– Potential replay attack when providing other customer’s data hash combined with any valid host ID (i.e.: the attacker’s host ID) to get access to the corresponding data.

One key point made in the article is ...
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Dropbox in the Enterprise

#46 - Posted on 5 July 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

In the never ending story that is more issues/concerns with Dropbox, there is an interesting article discussing the recent changes of Terms and Conditions with using Dropbox:

TechRepublic Post

In a nutshell, Dropbox is trying to protect themselves with what they do and can do with your data hosted in their data centre. So it means granting Dropbox and those they work with“worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works “ from your data.

The TechRepublic article stresses that it is already the case with sites such as Facebook. There is however a big difference. Facebook is mainly used for social content, personal “stuff” (to use Dropbox’s term). Dropbox is not only used for personal “stuff” but also for professional “stuff”....
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Worrying trends with Dropbox

#44 - Posted on 22 June 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

Dropbox is a very convenient way to synchronise data across locations and devices, it is one of the leader for in the cloud storage solutions. However, it has lately gathered some attention for the wrong reasons.

There has been a recent upset about the false claims (or incorrect depending where you stand on this) that no-one could decrypt your data on their data centre, including their staff. Well, it turned out it was no-one *excluding* their staff.

As explained in this article on TECHREPUBLIC

That’s fair enough, so as long as they have the right processes and due diligence in place your data should be safe into their hands, you can trust their staff.

Or can you?

Today, it appeared that while updating their backend code, anyone could connect to ...
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Turning point for Apple Products Security

#43 - Posted on 14 June 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

There has recently been an increase in blackhat attention to Apple products.
It would seem that what has been predicted for some time is about to be tested:
that one of the main reason for Mac/OSX to be more secure than windows is because it did not get the same attention from hackers.

This had to happen, and I believe that the time is right.
Indeed, Apple products are gaining more and more market shares and their hippy/cool image is being eroded by both their very strict view of the world and exponantial user base growth.
(On a non security related note, one could wonder how long can Apple be seen as different/cool if everyone has their product!)

This gives every reasons for hackers to take their attention to Mac OSX and iOS.
Recently a fake anti virus software for MAC was discussed on the excellent Intego blog and many other ...
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Free Forensic Resources

#42 - Posted on 13 June 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

Below are two interesting Forensic resources I got from Jess Garcia

– Some great free Forensic windows tools, i.e.: to convert time format
http://www.mikesforensictools.co.uk/index.html

– Zero Wine Malware; A promessing virtual environment to analyse malware behaviour and impact
Zero Wine 2.0

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Extreme Pen Testing

#41 - Posted on 13 June 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

Here is an amuzing story where prisoners in a maximum security prison managed to hack their lockdown computers.
Their computer seems to be more like a dumb terminal than a full featured one, and what they can do and where they can go is very limited (i.e.: watch television and receive call).
However, the prisoners found out that by opening 200+ windows explorer they could cause a buffer overflow which then allowed them more access!

http://gcn.com/articles/2011/05/30/colorado-prison-sidebar.aspx

and to go with this story here is a photo I came accross on the internet and that summerize the security state of many companies!

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Mobile device security questions

#40 - Posted on 19 May 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security

The security of mobile devices is receiving an increasing level of attention and many security vendors are now offering a Mobile Device Management solution. What seems to be leading the market is a secured container approach, which although providing a high level of security could potentially be flawed because it does not take into account what is driving users to buy smartphones and tablets.

A container approach is a very secured one with a strong legal aspect, however, the same way the consumerisation of devices is driving unapproved devices in companies today, there is a risk that users want a full consumer experience where different users will have different preferred apps to do a similar task. A container approach does not provide this full consumer experience and locks the user to the functionalities the secured container apps provides.
Therefore a secured container approach may be flawed through another layer of consumerisation, the apps consumerisation where user...
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