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Consider a drive with Opal 2.0 support that works with Microsoft Bitlocker's "eDrive" feature. In this case, supposedly, the encryption key never leaves the disk (which might increase security, although the RAM of the machine obviously needs to have the "unlock" code stored somewhere). Is there a certification that sho...
What are some reasons (if any) one would choose WEP over WPA? Clearly, WPA offers more security, but when can WEP be a good or even better choice?
As a way of backing up big amounts of data (about 1-2 TB) I thought it's good idea to bury a hard disk drive (in a damage-preventing shell) to be able to dig it later and read all the data from it if all other backups are gone (for example, if my laptop is stolen and my house is exploded). But I'm wondering if it's rea...
we have found an issue with some production systems that the Anti-Virus causes the program to become slow a lot of the times and generally interferes with the activity of our software. Now as far as I know, this is exactly what the anti-virus is suppose to do in order to protect the machine from files coming in from th...
Thinking about these below two cases, which one is best and most secure one 1st case //key1 generated from static salt and user password, because in case attacker don't know about source code (bad assumption, but still my assumption), attacker have only hashed or encrypted data + random generated salt staticSalt = "Sta...
I am learning system security in an online course. In a practical experiment I tried to monitor the traffic through my router using wireshark1.10.3. But I have a feeling that it only sensing traffic from my windows laptop to the router, but not all systems connected to the router. Do I need to have a Airpcap adapter to...
I'm trying to inject javascript into a js scriptfile but it's not working. I have the following setup: html file with javascript-file include (all inline js is blocked!) Welcome, <script src="js/domxss.js" type="text/javascript"></script> javascript source of js/domxss.js: var pos=document.URL.indexOf("user=")+5; var ...
I'm reading Post-Quantum Cryptography, and in the page 106 in the beginning of the Section 3 it says: In this section we consider the message security (opposed to key security) of code-based cryptosystems .... What's do Message Security and Key Security mean? What's a difference between those?
I am looking for a way to isolate two different networks from each other. Suppose we have 2 different networks (public and private). I am looking for a way to connect to these two networks via a single network wire in a trusted way. I did some search and I found that there are two solutions for this purpose: Multilev...
How am I supposed to match vulnerabilities with services fingerprint, with string like these? Is there a public database to match these versions with original versions? > 5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 > 5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.04.2 > 5.5.31-0+wheezy1 > 5.5.31-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 > 5.5.31-0ubuntu0.12.04.2 > 5.5.31-0ubuntu0.13.04.1 >...
How can I get nmap quicker in scanning UDP ports? This kind of scan is incredibly more slow than TCP ports (at least 2-3 times)
So I have this web app where I'm supposed to generate my own session key to use in the session manager. I just have few questions about safe approaches to this. I believe to make this safe it should be a randomly generated key and is unique in every instance of my web app processes. Is my assumption correct? I'm using...
Here's the idea: I have a website where I offer to users to log-in/sign-up via social networks(in this case Facebook and LinkedIn) When a user authenticates with either provider I look-up the users in my DB and see if there's already a user that has the same social network ID added to their profile. If there is - the...
I am a developer and I therefor I have very little knowledge on security. So I need some help understanding the attack on website which we launched recently for one of our client. Website is built on Ruby on Rails and hosted on EC2 Ubuntu. In website log I see lot of requests which are unusual, below are few examples. ...
From CVSS v2 complete guide : "Security (Risk) Management: Security Risk Management firms use CVSS scores as input to calculating an organization's risk or threat level. These firms use sophisticated applications that often integrate with an organization's network topology, vulnerability data, and asset database to pr...
When using Google's two-step verification with services that can't use it, such as mail clients on smartphones and desktops, the solution is to create application-specific passwords for those services. Does that make things less secure than just using one password as this opens up the account to more that one password...
I am using ZAP 2.2.2 and I have generated a dynamic SSL certificate and added it to my Firefox browser. I then started a proxy on localhost with port 8090 and configured Firefox to use it. When I browse https://google.co.in it works, i can see the result in "Sites" tab. When I try to browse http://google.co.in it gives...
Just came across this bit of ruby that can be used to decrypt Snapchat photos taken out of the cache on a phone, apparently adapted from here. To my surprise, it worked without a problem, considering the problems around Snapchat's security which have been well publicized lately (Mostly the stuff around the whole phone ...
As per PCI-DSS requirements, we have to use either HSM (Hardware Security Module), or Key Server to store the KEK (Key Encryption Key). If I'm storing encrypted DEK (Data Encryption Key) in an App Server, how can I securely store the KEK which encrypts the DEK? The two options: If I decide to use a Key Server, then if...
I'm using AES Encryption for encrypting credit card details and so I will store my DEK in Ecnrypted form and do we need to encrypt the Initialization vector for storage?
I have recently installed Tweetdeck, because my previous client stopped working. In my custom client, and in the third party client I have used previously I had to setup authorize the application in my Twitter account and the use generated PIN to validate the client origin. Now I have noticed that in Tweetdeck, I was o...
A common issue noted by security testers is that the Apache web server is reporting a version in headers which is older than the latest available one. This usually leads to CVE listings detailing the vulnerabilities present in that version of the product, and a typical challenge for black-box testers is establishing wh...
I was tasked with implementing a network security solution for a small real estate agency. They are a typical old-school mom and pops shop, about 15 employees with basic file sharing, printing, and web access needs. They also have their own web server which hosts a simple informational website. The current architectu...
Is there a security checklist for auditing JBoss configuration files ? CIS and DISA provides security checklist only for Tomcat and Apache server. Is there any other ressources ?
I was wondering, assuming a "The Invention of Lying" world, but where no one was able to steal or misrepresent themselves how much faster would computers be? Just to give two examples of what I mean, there would be no need for user permissions (because people would only access the files they were supposed to) and no ne...
When I opened ftp command prompt and typed open mydomain.com, it gave me the following and I think that this is a security vulnerable. connected to mydomain.com. 220----- Welcome to Pure-FTPd [privsep] [TLS] ----- 220- you are user number 1 of 50 allowed. 220- local time is now 13:18. Server port: 21 220- IPv6 connecti...
I recently found out that the company I use for shared hosting stores passwords for email accounts in plaintext (they mentioned this to me incidentally, while troubleshooting another issue). They're a major company that does business and e-commerce hosting, so I'm shocked. But I'm just a hobbyist, so I'm not completely...
I am designing a secure protocol (for academic/learning purposes) and I am at the point where I need to (re)design the key exchange step. In my previous implementation, I used to rely on RSA to encrypt then sign a couple of randomly generated AES keys that I would then use for traffic encryption. It has been brought to...
Recently, I ran across a website that requires me to change my password after X number of days had passed since I had last created one. Intelligently, the service made sure that the password did not (approximately) match any others that I had used before (something that clearly did not use permutations). However, I was...
Scenario: Cannot use previous 15 passwords Using PBKDF2 with iterations targeting 1 second execution time In this scenario, when a user wishes to create a new password, the server must combine that password with up to 15 salts from the previously used passwords. This means, worst case scenario, a user's password cha...
I'm trying to design the best strategy to achieve the following goals: Securing data-on-the-wire between my server and MongoHQ. Encrypting all data-at-rest with MongoHQ (possibly key values as well). And this is my current working strategy: Use a VPN tunnel to connect to MongoHQ using the mongodb protocol. I don't b...
Every three months, 7 people fly to a secure ICANN server building and go through an elaborate ceremony to generate a new signing key for DNSSEC. The entire affair appears to be based on politics and not any real security model. If the private keys have not been compromised then no-one else can sign any records, rega...
A century old adage: The more the merrier. In general, does this adage hold true in regards to the number of anti-virus software you should have on your PC? Are there any limits before it actually has the opposite effect?
I am reading the Debian Security How-To and came across a section that I found odd: it recommends to use md5 hashes for /etc/shadow passwords (http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/ch3.en.html#s3.5). This document was most recently updated April 2012, so I am curious why they would recommend md5 as th...
I am working on a device that should sit between the end-user and the server, and that will do deep packet inspection. It is basically a parental control node. This device will be sold to the user, so they will have full knowledge of what it is and what it does. Getting this to work over HTTP is fairly straightforward,...
Our software contains two executables that need to serve data over SSL (and several that need to do requests over HTTPS)). I notice that it is distributed with some .PEM files created with OpenSSL. These files are read by the software when it needs to consume or serve over HTTPS. The second file says: BEGIN ENCRYPTED P...
Debian (stable) is a well respected server Linux distro. I was surprised to see that in their hardening walkthrough (https://wiki.debian.org/HardeningWalkthrough) they do not support position independent executables (and ASLR and a few other useful security flags) in the latest stable build (Wheezy), while most other d...
I read about XSS attacks and its prevention mechanism on server-side. It seems only protection is to sanitize the input by escaping special characters on server side (Using some PHP functions such as htmlspecialchars() ). I have read this here. So now suppose some input like 3<2hello 4>3 or something like that. This is...
Many questions have already been asked about Claims-based authentication and the differences with other approaches: Role-based vs Claims-based Explain claims-based authentication Now, my favorite answer is one given on stackoverflow: Using claims-based authentication. However, after reading through them, my question is...
How to automatically search and download exploits which matches for example with kernel release ? Is there for example a public REST web service which provide data in XML or JSON format to a client program ? Thanks in advance ! EDIT : Solution 1 : @Lucas_Kauffman Parse HTML search results of db-exploit or mitre.com usi...
As per PCI-DSS 3.4 requirement: For storing Credit Card Data Strong Cryptography should be used. I decided to use AES Encryption which is a strong and mostly recommended crypto for encrypting Credit Card Details. I saw that AES has Cipher Mode and Padding Mode in it. When I searched i found that according to NIST Sp...
According to the July 2009 cyber attacks Wikipedia article, US & South Korean governments suffered a DDOS attack on their websites. However, up till now they have not been able to find any substantial evidence to prove who the culprit is. Why is it so difficult to prove who did it? No doubt the attackers may have used ...
My question is inspired by apples goto fail; bug. I am wondering if the bug is really as dangerous as it is propagated everywhere. The reason I am in doubt about that is that there is a MITM attack required to abuse the bug, isn't it? And if this is the case then the only point this becomes dangerous is in public WIFI'...
All this while, I assumed that switchport security is enough to prevent DHCP dos attack. If I set it maximum 1, there can be no more mac addresses packets. But, a friend told me that using the tool, DHCPStarv, we can bypass that? I want to know how it works? I figured a way to prevent it by DHCP Snooping, but how does ...
In my Django template, I have a link like this: <a href='{{ my_model.some_url }}'> The some_url bit is a Django URLField that a user can influence. Can this be exploited in any way? (What comes to mind is including a quote in the URL and then arbitrary HTML.) What can I do to protect this code?
I have read many articles advising me to use OpenID, including on Stack Overflow, for authentication. Unfortunately I can't use OpenID because my auth is not based on an email - it is based on a username and password. Currently I am doing authentication like this: User enters username and password. If the user login i...
According to wikipedia, a transient cookie (aka session-cookie, in-memory cookie) is forgotten when the user closes the browser. These are also recommended for session cookies by OWASP. I've seen a lot of sites that recommends that you close your browser window to log out (thus deleting this cookie), but that wouldn't ...
If there is a need for source code to have a password in it, how should this be secured? This is purely an example, but say there is an app that is using an API, and you don't want to expose your API key, yet you need to have it in the source code, because it is used. How do you effectively have a string that ...
Certificates are a fantastic way to prove the integrity of a file - provided that they have been signed from the beginning. This methodology can prove the files authenticity, in addition proving it's source. My question is how would you prove the integrity of a file is in tact that has not been signed? Say, for instanc...
I'm looking at ways to use .NET to prevent XSS attacks and have come across the following methods to encode data: string asdf = WebUtility.UrlEncode(code); string asdf1 = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(code); string asdf1a = HttpUtility.UrlEncodeUnicode(code); // OBSOLETE string asdf1b = HttpUti...
For an example say we have an application such as a client based application which connects to an API using an api key. We are saying for this purpose there is no OAuth. How would a string or in this example an api key be hidden from the client. To be used it needs to be in the code which is on the clientside. How do w...
Over the past few days, I'm noticing that the log of my wireless router is showing an ACK flood attack from various IP addresses. I use a D-Link DIR-600L. I've searched through the internet, also through this question. But I cannot come to any solution. My ISP advised me to change DNS IP addresses and enter them manual...
I am creating a mobile application which needs to interact on a per-user basis with an API. Having worked on several projects as a client of third-party APIs, my initial thought was to go with OAuth. However, I have been thinking about it, and I don't plan to open the API up publicly to other consumers - the only cons...
I'm currently using Diffie-Hellman to encrypt data sent across an arbitrary link (can be ethernet, Wi-Fi, USB, bluetooth, etc), and I'm not a huge fan of the potential that DH is vulnerable to an active MITMA. I came across Samy Kamkar's Anti-MITMA technique. Does anyone have any thought on how secure this is? From my ...
CA's are a key part of the internet's infrastructure few people are aware of. SSL was mostly hacked together at Netscape in 1995. I'd like to understand more about the organizational structure of CA's and the history. How did the current CA's come into existence? What organization decides who can become a CA? According...
This is a basic example of an Unix Pass Encryption. I have a little Hash of MD5 ARP: user50:$apr1$w7YNTrjQ$0/71H7ze5o9/jCnKLt0mj0 user60:$apr1$AIw2h09/$Ti0TRlU9mDpCGm5zg.ZDP. I need to find the pass of two users: user50 & user60. I was wondering, what is the best way to crack this hash? Maybe with John the Ripper? Is ...
Hmm, I was asking myself how to compute if we were given one day to try all possible keys for a 32-bit symmetric cypher, how long would it take us to break 128-bit key? My calculations suggest: 2^128/2^32 = 2^98/365= 217063458943189966009709452.97534 years! Is this correct?
I am installing Cisco firewall solution ASA5505. but cannot access user interface. I navigate to ASA5505 local website 192.168.1.1 from Windows 7 connecting to ASA5505. After the navigating, Java loads appliance but then says "Cannot Load". Please help. I try rebooting ASA5505 but problem persists.
couldn't you DDOS attack an firewall somehow so that it would shutdown and you could access the computer?
I'm testing a wifi de-authentication attack and it looks like my Windows 7 client is not getting kicked off the network during the deauthentication. Any explanations as to why that might be? I've got Kali running aireplay-ng and tested both a directed and broadcast attack. During the broadcast, my XP client very clearl...
I'm creating an application for Google Glass (technically it's Glassware, but whatever). The user will do the following steps when going through setup for the Glassware: Go to my website, redirected via the Glassware page. Get redirected to the Google OAuth page so that they can sign in. Get redirected back to my OAut...
To log into my online banking, I have to answer a basic personal question such as "What is your mother's maiden name" or "What is your grandfather's middle name", as well as enter a one-time code from a code-generator device. To me it seems that 99% if not all of the security comes from the one-time code-generator. The...
If my Hardware device is on the PCI list from here https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/approved_companies_providers/approved_pin_transaction_security.php Does my POS need to be PCI compliant since the POS cannot unencrypt the data since it is a point to point approved PCI encrypted solution? The Encrypted Point to P...
In relation to my previous question. I have this Warning again from both RKHunter and Chkrootkit. My VPS has been turned off for how many weeks, until I turned it on again to deploy my website. After the deployment, I did the RKhunter Scan and Chkrootkit and it warned me about; using Chkrootkit... The following suspici...
This past week, my traffic logs are showing many hits (usually with repeated tries) for a URL from perhaps 30+ different IP addresses all over the world. This is not a URL that should garner more than a single hit and it should only be accessed via a link from one page which contains rel="nofollow". The URL calls a PHP...
We have a rule in my company that all PC drives must be encrypted with BitLocker, including laptops. My own Windows 8 laptop has a tendency to hang at shutdown, black screen but the computer never stops (once waited for 30 minutes to no avail). I'd say it happens 25% of the time on average. The problem is, I then have ...
Right now the internet is abuzz with news about a severe breach in GnuTLS. An update to the relevant GnuTLS packages has already been released. But I am worried whether some packages might have had GnuTLS compiled directly into them, instead of dynamically linking to them. Would like to know the likelihood of this- I...
I have a piece of code which contains an obvious buffer overflow at strcpy(buf, x) since it doesn't check if buf is large enough to fit the string x. I'm wondering how to actually exploit this bug. void fun(char *x) { char buf[10]; strcpy(buf, x); printf("You gave me this: %s", buf); exit(0); } And her...
I've tried to bring in collaboration tools at my company such as Evernote, Dropbox, OneNote, GoogleDocs etc. at our company but am finding it tough to get people on board. We use Sharepoint to store documents, mostly Word docs that can be edited by everyone. The problem is that when you have something to make people aw...
So I have read that 802.11 standard requires stations and APs to go through the authentication and association before communication can take place. I also know that WPA/WPA2 has its own authentication method which involves a 4-way handshake to construct the PTK out of the PMK. I am guessing these are two different aut...
I just registered for a race and the confirmation page gave me the creeps. See below for a screenshot with fake data. I know nothing about internet security. Other than the obvious fact that if I were signing up in a public place, anyone could look over my shoulder and see my password, what is wrong with displaying a u...
Is anyone aware of any major overhauls or security fixes to Team Viewer 9 (since v7) or does the popular accuvant blog (http://blog.accuvant.com/bthomasaccuvant/teamviewer-authentication-protocol-part-1-of-3/) still hold true? (This blog was written for v7). It seems from other SE posts and that the general consensu...
If I enable developer mode, then open a shell and create /some/directory/temp.txt, it is invisible to me through the Chrome Filesystem API. But does this mean that it's also invisible to Chrome OS itself? This is a follow-up to this question.
I found the following code in my Wordpress application, but I am not even sure in what is decoded. The first part of the file looks like this: <?php // Preventing a directory listing if(!empty($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"])) { $userAgents = array("Google", "Slurp", "MSNBot", "ia_archiver", "Yandex", "Rambler"); ...
Let us take the example of my already being logged in to, say, LinkedIn. When I access LinkedIn on a new tab, it automatically logs me in (using cookie info). Now, suppose I visit a forum and through an image that is loaded, a CSRF attack is run against my credentials. To prevent using my cookie-stored credentials for ...
A client of mine keeps getting hacked by seemingly SQL injection where a script tag containing a link to an in.js file is added. Sometimes from a domain called sportserve.co.uk, other times from exeterpress.co.uk. I have been unable to find out where the injection is taking place, but I am suspecting their ad provider....
For a few days my internet started being very slow. I checked my router logs and guess what! In the log where it is a record of DoS attacks it showed something like |Description |Count| Last Occurence | Target| Source | |TCP- or UDP-based Port Scan | 3 | [current date] |[local ip]|83.170.92....
while using google's phone verification code system, i have noticed that google phone verification code is always 6 digits cant it be brute forced for randomly generating the 6 digits?is it there any security design implemented over there while passing through second factor?
I searched for Oracle Web logic vulnerabilities and found this vulnerability: Oracle WebLogic Server Cross-Site Scripting and Manipulation of Data Vulnerabilities (http://secunia.com/community/advisories/51501) I want some sample attack scenarios to test My web site against this vulnerability, Any Help?
I am trying to think of the best way to encrypt and decrypt a message between two servers. I have found a lot of examples where people simply use a secret and PHP's mcrypt... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16600708/php-string-encrypt-and-decrypt But I am thinking of using certificates instead. https://stackoverflo...
I have a cryptographic device that supports the following mechanisms: How I could securely import RSA private key into it? Because there is no support for wrap/unwrap using symmetric key is there any other way? Could it be used CKM_RSA_PKCS or CKM_RSA_X_509 to unwrap private key to device? If so, how? Because: The RS...
I know that you can never be sure that you have done enough to be secure, and I also know that file uploading is hard to make correct. Before asking this question I read some of the related posts here like risk of php image upload, what steps should be taken to validate... and security risks of uploading. So I think th...
I read the wikipedia article and few others, however I still don't have some things clear. The main question would be what does hardware full disk encryption imply for the user, however I have more specific questions related: Can I use the Samsung 840 EVO with an external 2.5" USB 3.0 case? If so, would I be able to c...
I am new to cryptography and this practice question is puzzling me. Please help!
I have an interesting case regarding protection against replay attacks. Under the assumption that Alice and Bob have used Diffie-Hellman key exchange to establish a secure temporary session, would it be safe for them to use the public portion of their DH keys as nonce seeders in combination with HMAC to protect from re...
In our product (embedded system), so far we were using diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 with hmac-sha1. But due to security concern we are planning to use diffie-hellman-group14 for key exchange and hmac-sha2-256 for HMAC. Is it ok to use diffie-hellman-group14-sha1 along with hmac-sha2-256. Would diffie-hellman-group14-sha1...
My new enterprise use the app "GOOD" for the emails. But to use it, I have to install a GOOD profile with description : "Install this profile to enroll to encrypted profile service". If I choose "Install", I'll get this warning (translated in english by me, sorry for the errors...) : Installing this profile, will allow...
Can you please help me in order to understand what exactly do this code and if it is could be vulernerable? <script type="text/javascript"> function getUrlVars(){ var vars = [], hash; var hashes = window.location.href.slice(window.location.href.indexOf('?') + 1).split('&'); ...
I've always wondered if it would make any sense to put fake characters into a hashed password? For example this is my password: 1234 and after hashing the password , this is the result: abcd Then add characters to the hashed password: aKbjczdx (every 2nd character is fake) Would this make any sense?
When visiting Gmail in Chrome, if I click on the lock icon in the address bar and go to the connection tab, I receive a message 'no certificate transparency information was supplied by the server' (before Chrome 45, the message was displayed as 'the identity of this website has been verified by Google Internet Authorit...
I'm currently studying BTEC Diploma in IT LVL3, and so far have basic command of C#, C++, and am going to learn Java basics soon, as we start a new class unit. I also plan on going to the university. I think this is the moment where I should jump into cyber security, as I'm still very young and very interested in penet...
Transferred a personal folder from an external HDD to a USB using my work PC. Just used a simple cut paste method between the two drives, never writing anything to the internal HDD. However, come to find out there were some content sensitive pictures within the folder I was unaware of as it was an older extern...
I want to confirm that this understanding is correct: A card has 16 digits plus a CV2 The first 6 digits are an issuer identification number The last digit of the 16 is a Luhn mod 10 check digit. This leaves 9 digits in the middle. Are these 9 digits random, as in, unguessable ? The last 3 digits, the CV2, are these ra...
Bit of background. Web Application that can generate Pub/Priv Keys and X.509 certificates. How would I make use of the certificate in a web application, username and password login form to provide secure authentication? This is for a part of a research project I'm doing so I'm not looking for 'better' methods of doing ...
I'm trying to access a website over HTTPS. However, it appears that it uses weak encryption: specifically, RC4. Is there a way to improve the security of my connection to the website? I've been looking into Tor, but unfortunately all exit nodes appear to be blacklisted on the website I'm trying to access.
This has been bothering me for a while, but I have noticed that some websites (the first one that comes to mind is XKCD) use HTTPS for no apparent reason. I mean, XKCD is free and accessible to anyone. Why on earth would they encrypt your session when all you're doing is looking at comics? It seems like the cryptograph...
Mac OS X ships with Xprotect, Apple's mechanism to detect and remove malware. System software security holes are patched decently quickly. In a world of fragmented, code-signed, sandboxed apps, what additional advantages would you get from a paid solution like Symantec's or Intego's suite on an actively supported Mac O...
I'm making use of google API for location (in Android, iOS apps).. Can the key be hardcoded? Or should it be protected? If It's sensitive, why is it sensitive and how can attackers exploit this?
Reading about the fast approaching end of support for Windows XP, I seem to come across a lot of articles which speak about bug banking. Of it being likely that towards the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, the amount of bugs and vulnerabilities appearing for Windows XP should drop, as hackers begin to stock up on the...
Obviously impersonating a law enforcement officer on an engagement is illegal but badguys don't care about the law. If a company wanted to allow impersonating LE and have it in clear writing in the contract does that make it so the tester won't go to prison? Has anyone ever been on an engagement or know of one where th...