There is an increasing level of noise in the enterprise about Bringing Your Own Device (BYOD). That you like it or not, it is most probably happening right now within your company unless your are “lucky enough” to be able to enforce strict controls as to what devices are allowed and able to access your data.
For a true BYOD concept, meaning with no restrictions on what that device might be, there are only 2 possible way to enable it:
1) To allow network access to your data/application directly from any devices
or
2) To make your data/application available from the Internet, and the easiest incarnation of that is through web applications.
With the first approach, focusing on the network access, the positives are that you can have more control over the environment from which the data/application is accessed from. Such as enforcing a minimum set of security controls and quarantine non compliant devices. The negatives, though, are the need for a ...
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Smile, you are being recorded!
#62 - Posted on
13 February 2012 - Author: SM - Category: Hacking
The BBC has recently ran an article about a hacker who has published details on how to hack a certain type of webcam. This story is interesting for several reasons.
First, it further highlights how fragile our privacy has become since we live in a digital world with details of our life being kept on the internet: personal blogs, twitter feeds, Facebook or Government/Health records, etc. All this data is available online if you have the right access to the system it is held on. But it is not just still photos or lines of texts, it can also be live pictures through personal webcams or state surveillance cameras. Again, that data is available if you have the right credentials. In this case, hundreds of Trendnet webcam users thought/thinks their live video feed was protected through the use of a userid and password, but a bug in its firmware allows anyone to access it by...
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Koobface, The dangerous game of naming and shaming
#61 - Posted on
24 January 2012 - Author: SM - Category: Security
There has been wide coverage of the naming and shaming of the supposedly perpetrators behind the Koobface botnet that has affected Facebook and other social sites for a few years.
The gang leader was first named on Dancho Danchev’s blog, then the Facebook’s security team threaten and did reveal the gang’s real identity, the New York times even ran an article on it and finally Sophos published another in-depth look at how they also discovered their identity. In between, many other sites jumped in to share that information.
I am slightly uncomfortable with this approach.
It appeared to have worked in this instance as the bonnet Command & Centre has been turned off, and it also appears they named the right perso...
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Most websites are vulnerable to a hash collision DOS attack
#60 - Posted on
3 January 2012 - Author: SM - Category: Hacking, Security
By websites, I should really have said Web Applications, but the end result is the same: A server which is serving pages on the Internet could see its CPU usage increasing to a level making that server unusable for a few minutes or more. All that from a relatively small specially crafted malicious HTTP request.
This vulnerability exists in most languages used to develop web applications: PHP, ASP.Net, Java, Python, Ruby, etc. And it has been known to exist in theory since 2003!
Last week, Alexander Klink and Julian Wilde explained at the 28th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany how exactly the theory became reality and the impact on the different web application languages were affected.
The core of the issue is the way hash lists have been implemented in those languages. By “Hash” they both refer to a specific type of data structure and the cryptographic function. A ...
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Encrypting DNS queries with DNSCrypt from OpenDNS
#59 - Posted on
27 December 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security
OpenDNS has just release a beta software to enable encryption of DNS queries called: DNSCrypt.
Not encrypting DNS queries can lead to two main type of attacks, as described by OpenDNS:
“First, it prevents man-in-the-middle attacks which can cause malicious DNS responses to be used to trick you into visiting a dangerous website or send traffic to an unintended third party. Second, it prevents snooping by your ISP or any other intermediary who might want to sniff your DNS traffic to see what domains you are resolving.”
DNSCrypt can significantly increase a user web security as until now there was no way to encrypt DNS queries. As stated by OpenDNS, DNSCrypt should be seen as complementary to Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) because the later is not use to encrypt DNS queries, but to provide authenticat...
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Twitter helping with Android’s Security
#58 - Posted on
24 December 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Security
Twitter has just announced they will be opening the technology from Whisper Systems they just acquired. This is good news for Android users, and Google. Their technology allows text messages to be encrypted as well as providing full disk encryption, the later will only be made available, well, later!
This has the potential to bring security enhancement to the Android’s mass.
The source code is now available here: GitHub
...
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My take on SANS 660, The HexFactor and Netwars
#57 - Posted on
15 December 2011 - Author: SM - Category: Conferences
I have just attended the SANS 660 course in London, it is one of the most advanced course SANS has to offer and it did notdisappoint!
Its bootcamp format means you will start your day at 9am and finish it at 7pm! The last two hours being called a “bootcamp”, basically 2 hours of exercises linked to the content of the day that really helps understanding the different techniques that were discussed.
Speaking about content, although they state that previous programmingexperienceis “recommended”, it is not, is it mandatory!
And for the last 2 days you really need some understanding of x86 assembly to get a chance to follow the fast pace. I have to admit that the last day I was lost after lunch!
But what do you get if you buckle up and go on the ride? You get an incredible amount of information as it goes into a great level o...
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