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Managed security
It is funny (or sad, depending on how you look at it) when you realize that all modern OSs have the ability to run with a very high safety level (where 99.99% of the security issues don’t affect them), yet malware is so widespread. Some people who get blamed for this are: Microsoft for making…
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Full disclosure – repaired
That was quick. Thanks to my emails the blog posting which posted detailed information about how to root a given ISPs routers via an erroneous default configuration got sanitized. Just to be clear: I’m not against full disclosure. I’m pretty much in favor of it – if used for doing good. Because this sounds to…
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Full disclosure gone bad
I’m for full disclosure when (a) it makes the vendor put out a patch sooner than later or (b) it contains enough information so that the people affected can mitigate the risk and it is posted at places where these people are probable to read it. But this recent post on security team screams of…
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The Acunetix saga
As they say: better late then never. Here are my comments on the whole Acunetix saga. First of all, you should read the great posting at Computer Defense about the matter. It contains links to all the important events in this area, including the original press release, the reaction on Network World and others. So…
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Kernel malware on the rise!
Not to gloat (well, maybe a little 🙂 ), but F-Secure also thinks that kernel malware is on the rise. There is no better time to run as limited user and make kernel malware irrelevant
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Decoding obfuscated Javascript
SANS had recently a posting about methods to decode obfuscated Javascript, and I just wanted to mention 2+1 tools here: In Firefox you can use the View Source Chart extension to view the source after the javascript has executed. There is also the versatile Firebug, but IMHO that’s an overkill for this. For Internet Explorer…
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Distinguishing real and non-real security measures
This post was prompted by a post at Andy’s blog, where he complains about the lack of NAT’s and firewalls in cable modems. My opinion about it: NATs are not a security measure. VPNs aren’t either. And IPv6 isn’t inherently insecure just because it has the potential to give end-to-end connectivity to all hosts. These…
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Why rootkits and anti-rootkits are irrelevant
Given my recent (and probably ongoing) adventure with the authors of RkUnhooker, I thought that I post my opinions about the whole rootkit – antirootkit business. To put it bluntly: it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter at best and it is a misguided effort to stear up hype in which many people participate without even realizing…
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Grokking OpenID and Blogger
I just created my first OpenID account! If you don’t know what OpenID, it is a single sign-on solution (sometimes also called login federation), which ensures that you can have a single login name / password using which you can authenticate in may (web-)places. It is similar to the Microsoft Passport initiative, the difference being…
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Using rsync on Windows
First of all, what is rsync? It is a protocol and an implementation of it for bandwidth efficient file synchronization. In a nutshell it can synchronize two directories (one local and one remote) while making sure that only the minimal amount of data is transferred. It accomplishes this by breaking the files up in blocks…