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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…
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Manifesto of the ethical Anti-Rootkit writer
Rootkits are a controversial subject. When the book (Rootkits, Subverting the Windows Kernel) came out and the associated site (rootkit.com) was started, the subject exploded. Of course the Sony DRM fiasco did also plenty to generate media buzz. Because of this, many detection tools were born. Some were created by traditional security companies and some…
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Mismoderated RkUnhooker comment
And here is an other event in the RkUnhooker saga. Because of the controversy I’m involved in regarding my No love for RkUnhooker post, I wanted to come out and state publicly that I erroneously mismoderated (rejected) MP_ART’s comment on my blog. Before I get accused of censorship, I just want to say that it…
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And so the RkUnhooker saga begins
The RkUnhooker story gets worse and worse (from the point of view of its authors). They (EP_X0FF and MP_ART) are making threats Russian mob style (not that I would know how a Russian mob threat sounds :-D), stating that You have come against wrong people and that want, that you are not able to reach…
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Limited users – myth or reality
Fellow security blogger, Kurt Wismer, says that there are limited advantages to limited users. He is right in all his arguments: A program running in your account, even if it is a limited user account, still has access to all of your files. It can search in them for e-mail addresses, wipe them or do…
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No love for RkUnhooker
It seems that the author of RkUnhooker (you know, that guy named EP_X0FF) got very upset about my comments and first he wrote a comment to my blog – which I published a little late and I apologize for it. Then he got into personal mode and made a threatening post on his forum. My…
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New Hacker Challenge available
Just to give you a heads up: a new hackers challenge is available over at ethicalhacker.net. Good luck!