506 items tagged “security”
2007
The Psychology of Security. I haven’t even started on this yet, but I bet it’s worth reading.
If you found a hole in software that millions of people use, and is very high profile, you can sell that to the highest bidder for perhaps one or two million dollars.
Microsoft confirms Vista Speech Recognition remote execution flaw. “I have verified that I can create a sound file that can wake Vista speech recognition, open Windows Explorer, delete the documents folder, and then empty the trash.”
MySpace Allegedly Kills Computer Security Website. No need for the allegedly; it’s been confirmed. MySpace got GoDaddy.com to redirect DNS for seclists.org after a list of phished user accounts posted to the full disclosure mailing list list was archived there.
Solving the OpenID phishing problem
Most of the arguments I hear against OpenID are based on mis-understandings of the specification, but there is one that can’t be ignored: OpenID is extremely vulnerable to phishing.
[... 531 words]The NHL’s All-Star voting disaster. The NHL ran an online poll to decide which players are picked for their All-Star Game. The only authentication was a poorly implemented CAPTCHA. Unsurprisingly, it got gamed.
MySpace: Too Much of a Good Thing? CSS customization really was just the result of forgetting to strip HTML. They “eventually” decided to filter out JavaScript(!)
Details of Google’s Latest Security Hole. For a brief while you could use Blogger Custom Domains to point a Google subdomain at your own content, letting you hijack Google cookies and steal accounts for any Google services.
The JavaScript alert(), confirm() and prompt() functions in Firefox, Opera and MSIE (but not Safari) will truncate the message after any null character. So an unsuspecting programmer who inserts user-provided text into one of these dialog boxes opens up an opportunity for the user to rewrite the bottom of the dialog box.
The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability. If you host a PDF file anywhere on your site, you’re vulnerable to an XSS attack due to a bug in Acrobat Reader versions below 8. The fix is to serve PDFs as application/octet-stream to avoid them being displayed inline.
Choosing Secure Passwords. Bruce Schneier describes the state of the art in password cracking software.
If you are subject to an XSS, the same domain policy already ensures that you're f'd. An XSS attack is the "root" or "ring 0" attack of the web.
Why don't we have a .bank or .bank.country_code TLD that's regulated by the same people that regulate the banks themselves?
2006
How is Google giving me access to this page?
Google have an open URL redirector, so you can craft a link that uses that:
[... 35 words]A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection (via) Vista’s content protection is a nightmare for hardware manufacturers and consumers alike. It’s far worse than even BoingBoing readers would expect.
Rogues are very keen in their profession, and know already much more than we can teach them
Never store passwords in a database! The reddit.com developers just learnt this the hard way. It might be time to change some of your passwords.
Real-World Passwords. Random passwords phished from MySpace are surprisingly decent.
BT acquires Counterpane Internet Security (via) They just bought Bruce Schneier.
Better Metrics for Security—Understanding the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report. Mozilla defends against yet more spurious bug count reports.
Parsing XML can open network sockets (via) Yikes. Something to bare in mind.
Bruce Schneier Facts. “SSL is invulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. Unless that man is Bruce Schneier.”
Schneier on Security: New Airline Security Rules. “I’m sure glad I’m not flying anywhere this week” says Bruce. Now I wish I wasn’t!
On the total nondisclosure of the 8/9/06 [Rails] security vulnerability. The best argument I’ve seen in favour of full disclosure.
Rails 1.1.5: Mandatory security patch. Upgrade now, and spread the word.
Why is XSS so common? Because dev tools don’t escape things by default.
Don’t serve JSON as text/html. Another sneaky XSS trick.
Mozilla causing XSS in Livejournal. Their recent worm attack was caused by the -moz-binding CSS property.
Xanga Hit By Script Worm (in December) (via) Description of an XSS worm that hit Xanga last month.
DHS Funding Open Source Security. Paying for “source code analysis technology” coverage of Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL and more.