487 items tagged “security”
2004
IE in Windows XP SP2. An overview of the new security changes.
Race conditions in security UI. A vulnerability that is even more effective against advanced users (i.e. fast typists).
Bruce vs. Bruce (via) Schneier and Sterling discuss security and technology.
Daring Fireball: Security Cannot Be Spun. Apple’s communication handling of the recent security problem was atrocious.
Background Images Security Flaw? Styling :visited links can reveal a user’s browser history.
Mac OS X helpviewer security flaw fixed. Hit Software Update. Not sure if this fixes the telnet: variety though.
Defending against the OS X help: vulnerability
There’s a nasty OS X vulnerability under discussion at the moment which lets a web page execute code on your machine by taking advantage of a flaw in the “help:” protocol. There’s a non-malicious demonstration of the exploit on this page, and Jay Allen is hosting a discussion on the exploit and ways to avoid it.
[... 253 words]Mac OS X URI Handler Arbitrary Code Execution (via) Very nasty: affects all web browsers, allows compromise by malicious web sites.
Why Windows is a Security Nightmare. The pain of Windows Update over a 56K modem.
Bruce Schneier: We are all security customers. How can the US get the best return on investment for homeland security?
M.I.T Card Information (via) Who’s bright idea was it to introduce a poorly secured swipe card system in a school full of hard-core techies?
Will Trade Passwords For Chocolate (via) I’m not at all surprised. Most people see passwords as more of an annoyance than a security measure.
It’s only going to get worse
This analysis of the spread of the witty worm is fascinating for a whole bunch of different reasons.
[... 395 words]XP Service Pack 2 Review. Several welcome security improvements for those still suffering on Windows ;)
Bizex
I’m going to try not to turn this in to a blog about Windows security exploits but this one is genuinely interesting in that it actively tries to steal financial information and important passwords. Bizex spreads itself by spamming messages over ICQ advising the recipient to visit a specific URL. When they visit it, Internet Explorer exploits are used to download and execute the main payload which then infects their ICQ program and uses it to message their contacts. The worm also scans their hard drive for information relating to a number of well known financial services which it then uploads to a server via FTP, and it apparently snoops on their browser for any passwords travelling over HTTPS connections as well.
[... 216 words]Novel security measures
An article on SecurityFocus led me to this site about Port Knocking. Port Knocking is an interesting security technique in which a box sits online with no ports open to connections and awaits a specific sequence of connection attempts. A user wishing to connect to the box must first attempt to initiate connections to ports in a specific, secret order. Once they do, the box starts up the required service (such as an SSH daemon) on a designated port and allows the user to connect properly.
[... 145 words]“I’m Brian and so’s my wife”
I’m subscribed to a whole bunch of mailing lists, mostly as a lurker as I have a hard enough time just keeping up with some of them. One of those lists is Bugtraq, which is pretty much required reading for anyone with sysadmin responsibilities for a server connected to the public internet. Bugtraq is the central hub of the “public disclosure” security community and is actually surprisingly low traffic with only twenty or so messages a day. It’s fascinating to watch the latest exploits for all manner of popular software packages tick by on an hourly basis.
[... 285 words]Slouching toward Big Brother (via) Security is a trade-off
Election boxes easy to mess with (via) More on Diebold’s ludicrous security
Defending web applications against dictionary attacks
Over at Reflective Surface, Ronaldo M. Ferraz discusses the usability of an authentication system that locks down an account for a certain period of time after three failed login attempts. Ronaldo sees this as a trade off between usability and security, but I see it more as an added security issue in that it allows malicious third parties to lock other user’s accounts armed only with their username.
[... 398 words]non-consensual http user tracking using caches. Interesting security issue involving HTTP caching headers
2003
Blaster and the great blackout (via) Bruce Schneier writes for Salon.com
Microsoft Security FAQ (via) Point your less technical friends here
Nasty new IE vulnerability
Most people reading are probably aware of the common trick whereby spammers and other assorted ne’er-do-wells publish URLs with usernames that look like hostnames to fool people in to trusting a malicious site—for example, http://www.microsoft.com&session%123123123@simon.incutio.com. This trick is frequently used by spammers to steal people’s PayPal accounts, by tricking them in to “resetting” their password at a site owned by the spammer but disguised as PayPal.com.
[... 164 words]Debian’s Response. Praise for Debian’s handling of their recent security incident
Silly JavaScript Security. “Sorry, you do not have permission to press this key,”
High security is low security
Via Crypto-Gram, a great piece from Bruce Tognazzini about how tough security measures can actively reduce the security of a system:
[... 225 words]Signing comments on blogs
Adrian Holovaty has implemented reserved comment names in his blog, a feature that prevents anyone apart from him from using the names “Adrian”, “Adrian H.” or “Adrian Holovaty” when posting a comment. François Nonnenmacher suggests extending the idea to allow people to “confirm” their authorship of comments on any blog using a TrackBack sent to their site that in turn causes them to be sent an alert email, which they can then use to confirm their comment. I like his idea of authentication based on URLs (email addresses are no good; they should not be publically displayed for fear of spam harvesters) but I think I’ve come up with an alternative authentication scheme that removes the need for the user to manually confirm authorship. This is pretty complicated, so bare with me.
[... 762 words]Hashing client-side data
Via Scott, a clever PHP technique for ensuring data sent to the browser as a cookie or hidden form variable isn’t tampered with by the user:
[... 248 words]