Brute force password cracking has been around for a while but in the last few years a new way to use your brand new graphic card has emerged which brings high performance attacks against passwords much cheaper and easier.
This is because the “brain” of those graphical card, The Graphical Processing Unit or GPU, is designed to handle mathematical and repetitive tasks very efficiently.
There is a very good article about this topic on the ERRATA SECURITY blog with some interesting facts:
– Although GPU are now found in most electronic devices (i.e.: phones), dedicated PC cards are obviously better
– Radeon is better than GeForce
– Although you can use more than one GPU, the benefits are not exponential and most people only need 1 or 2 GPU.
– This is because past 8 Characters, a password become near impossible to brute force....
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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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Hot Random Numbers!
#39 - Posted on
26 April 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Cryptography
The LavaRND project is a very interesting take on providing a cryptography strong random generator framework.
Both in terms of plans for physical devices to software library.
If only I had more time I would love to try building one of their device, nevertheless, I highly recommend this website as it is full of very interesting information related to randomness and they even have some interesting demo using their random framework. You do not require an interest in cryptography to appreciate the work done.
Next time I need a strong random generator algorithm, I will know where to look :)
http://www.lavarnd.org
...
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SANS Ondemand Training course: A few Tips
#38 - Posted on
21 April 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Conferences, Guides
I went to a SANS Forensic course (508) last year and a few weeks ago I decided to try something new… to stay at home and dedicate 5 days to do their Ethical Wireless Hacking training course (617).
Let me first say that the 617 training course was really good, the author of the course and the recordings were made by Joshua Wright who runs the http://www.willhackforsushi.com blog. He is very knowledgeable and his enthusiasm was even contagious through audio only. In fact this is a huge understatement! I was truly amazed by his skills, stories and training delivery!
So much that for 7 days I was up at 9am and worked until 2am each day on the different content material covered by the course.
As I almost lost my sanity and started dreaming of ToDS/FromDS bits and fuzzing I thought I would share a few tips on this type of training course.
– Check the last time the course was updated, and if there is an upco...
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An interesting attack on Voice Over IP Security
#37 - Posted on
21 March 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security, Hacking
I just came accross an interesting attack on the Secure Real Time Protocol (SRTP) using Variable Bit Rate codecs (VBR). That protocol is used to secure voice or IP communication by encrypting the transmitted data.
The attack is described in this draft paper but for the the full details you should take a look at the very comprehensive white paper here which dates back to 2008.
It usesthe phoneticpronunciation of words to identify patterns in the VBR encoding which can be used to bypass encryption and identify phrases as well as the language spoken. So this attack does not target individual words, but phrases or sentences.
Although the paper claims in some cases a success rate of 90% it has an average of 50% success, which is already good enough! What is ...
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