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Which IT security certifications are considered the most difficult to obtain?
loop-aes and dm-crypt are both used by partman-crypto for linux hard encryption, but dm-crypt needs no patch to kernel and is more supported. dm-crypt keeps it's key on first hard block, is it a security issue which make loop-aes better? which do you offer more?
I am trying to learn how an attacker can escalate privileges in Ubuntu 10.04. I have heard that this can be done but no one has ever said how to do it. The best defense is knowing how it is done and doing it yourself. So to find out, I set up a computer running Ubuntu 10.04, linux kernel 2.36 I am having an awfully ...
I need some help tracing a vulnerability on my server. For the second time, my server has been compromised with files being replaced with virus-ridden downloads. According to the filesystem dates, over a period of 45 minutes 4 exe files on my server were replaced with renamed versions of the same virus. My web server i...
I know that server overloads are caused due to excessive number of genuine requests and DoS due to malicious request. But, my question is, if you have designed a system for Overload mitigation, does it necessarily protect system from DoS? If not why?
I need some help to identify possible (and rational) threats that could apply to that part of IT infrastructure (WebProxy). I have a webproxy for my users, which behave like a classic webproxy and i'm ok with that (url filtering, flux analysis, etc.). I recently noticed that destination port (like port 80, or 81, or an...
I was reading SSH tips and tricks from http://blogs.perl.org/users/smylers/2011/08/ssh-productivity-tips.html There is a section on Onward Connections and the author warns not to use this unless you trust sys-admins on the middle servers. I wanted to know what are the security implications of enabling Onward connection...
I am looking for an example in the real world where only a portion of the entire data set is encrypted even though the entire data set is considered sensitive. Specifically the portion that gives context to the rest. For example (maybe a weak example). If you had sets of data on personnel, some of the raw data associat...
SHA is the hashing mechanism. However, RSA is the encryption algorithm. So does RSA algorithm use SHA hashing mechanism to generate hashing keys which in turn is used to encrypt the message?? Moreover, RSA itself gives 2 keys. One can be kept public and one private. Now, these keys can be used to encrypt as well as dec...
Is there a way to bypass escape function in javascript for exploiting a XSS vulnerability ?
In MS SQL Server 2005/2008 standard encryption all data in the database is encrypted using the SMK/DMK scheme. In this scheme a key is issued for each client connecting to the database. What would a hacker sniffing network traffic will see and what should be the strategy to prohibit this Would Applying Encryption insi...
Background: My organization has to find a removable storage solution. However, it is my understanding that the DOD is pretty strict about flash drives due to security considerations. Question: My users will always have connection to the internet, but may sometimes not be on our network. Are there any alternatives to ...
What role does paging play in respect to security? By paging I mean memory management technique of splitting file memory into pages I guess the question is does it make files more secure?
Most organizations today hold individuals accountable for their actions on systems and networks by unique user IDs and passwords. However, imagine working in a hospital environment where access to sensitive information is done frequently by many individuals and also used in emergency/extraordinary circumstances. For us...
I run an online gradebook. To keep student data private, I transfer all data over https. Now, I'd like to use localStorage to avoid redundant calculations and server requests. However, according to the HTML5 spec, local storage is unencrypted. Is there an industry standard for handling user expectations here? I coul...
My son has a downloaded copy of Ubuntu that he uses to "break" into my computer, bypassing Vista. I have two questions: Can this damage my computer or corrupt my files? (I have lots of pictures) Is there a way for me to block this disc from working as there are strict rules in our house for usage time on the computer ...
I've got a few boxes all networked together on Amazon EC2, each of which are in automated communication with each other via SSH (rsync, etc). As such, I've created SSH keys on each of these machines to allow them to SSH into each other without requiring a password. Likewise, my personal account is key-based and passwor...
I'm using Snort in a lab environmnet with artificially generated traffic. I'm looking to build a confusion matrix from known generated attacks. True Positives and False Positives are easy to parse out of the alerts file, but I'm looking for a way to quantify True/False Negatives. These would be instances in which Snort...
Since I have no experience with AV solutions on Unix-like environments, I would need help with suggestions on something that can be suitable for scanning files that are uploaded by anonymous users through a Web application. I'm mostly interested in providing an additional service to users to show that we care about wh...
I'm performing an port scanning on a range of IPs on our remote site. I tried running nmap scan on that IP range and some of the IP result are shown as filtered When I perform a nessus scan on the box, there is no result at all for some of the IPs. As such is it safe to assume that there is no open ports on some of the...
We have an internal lan (not connected to internet, all internal ip addresses, behind a firewall, no routing to outside), we also have a machine that sits on the edge of our lan (two nics, one on the internal lan, one on a public lan that can "see" the internet). I need to see machines on the public lan, from the inter...
I have a protocol where "A" initiates communication with "B". "B" then sends a challenge to check if "A" is really "A". "B" does not remember sending the challenge so "A" has to respond by sending the challenge back along with encrypted challenge with her key. Example: A ----Hi i am A-----> B A <-- challenge --- B A --...
I've taken, out of curiosity, the Phishing Quiz by OpenDNS that tries to teach the general public about detecting phishing: Ever wonder how good you are at telling the difference between a legitimate website and one that's a phishing attempt? Take this quiz to find out. I did it mostly because my phishing detection p...
I'm seriously confused about this, since the program is entirely developed by myself and has no means/functionality to connect to any network/the internet whatsoever. I'm a software engineer but not knowledgeable about computer security, so while I have it running in the debugger of Visual Studio on Windows XP Professi...
In spite of various online articles, I'm a bit unclear on the distinction between a "worm" and a "virus". Two related questions-- Is there a useful and clear distinction here or no? If so, what is it? If there is a meaningful distinction, are virus scanners just as effective for defending against worms as they are fo...
Does anybody have experience with Oracle ExaData Security? Client wants to move all of his Oracle DB to central Oracle ExaData server. So on same machine will be hosted DBs of different vendors and even competitors. What should we be aware of? (We = one of the vendors) I found following Oracle document: Oracle ExData D...
Ive enabled Windows authentication in my IIS. for the sample lets assume my Active directory username is \domain\John My task flow is like that : Iis won't forward the loged on user credential to webservice request? the Page1.aspx request some data from a WebService ( also in my iis ). However , it does NOT pass t...
"All you'd have to do is build a plugin and you could completely pwn the software." I'm building an application using plugins. I think all you have to do is build a plugin and copy it into the correct directory and my main program would happily run it. I'd like the main program to be smart enough to detect unauthorized...
Is there a cyber warfare equivalent to the JTLS? Is a "cyber range" the correct term for something like that?
I am having problems understanding how ssh really works. I know it uses a public key cryptography to encrypt messages. However, I can ssh to a server without first generating a public/private key pair for me. I checked my .ssh folder and there is no .pub file there so I assume I have no public key that the server is aw...
So it appears that T-Mobile in the UK are injecting a javascript file into the head of files that are transfered over their mobile data network. The file in question is 1.2.3.8/bmi-int-js/bmi.js (contents below) My question is this How does one defend (an app/website) against a carrier injected attack like this? I us...
I'm looking for a certification for Web Application Security and Web Pen Testing. Via Google I found the following two: Certified Web Application Tester GIAC Web Application Penetration Tester How well is there reputation? Are there other ones? How difficult are they? What is needed for preparation?
Just bought a 3G router from China and then checked the log: [1970-01-01 00:00:00] The system will be restored the factory value. [1970-01-01 00:00:00] The system current version: 1.0.5.1. [1970-01-01 00:00:00] The system restart all services. [1970-01-01 00:00:03] UPnP had been enabled. [1970-01-01 00:00:03] The IP&MA...
For the moment we protect a directory on our site with .htaccess and .htpasswd. But I was wondering how secure this is? Are there things I should watch for or can do make it more secure? I don't know why but it don't feel really confident about it. I have the feeling this kind of security is easy to crack. From what I ...
In two weeks time, I will have to test a couple of computers that a client would like to provide to its employees. The main concern is making sure that the employees won't be able to use those computers for anything that isn't actually allowed. I won't have any information on these computers until I get there, but I ca...
If one of our employees has access to corporate email on a smartphone I want to make sure that if they lose the phone then whoever finds it can't get at any corporate email on that phone. For iOS devices there is the iPhone Configuration Utility which looks like it can do what I want. Is there other similar software av...
Is there any phycological research that appears relevant to making passwords easily forgettable under adverse circumstances? Circumstances might include when under duress, after some duration of non-usage, i.e. imprisonment, or willfully by silently rehearsing random wrong variations on its theme. You might for exampl...
Just five minutes ago I had an injection attack through Yahoo! Messenger. The only visible effect was the change of my status message. I also got a dialog message saying that a script cannot continue running because the string was not terminated, or something like that; when I looked for the script at the specified pat...
I am building a hosted (SaaS) web application that stores PII like name, email address, and employer of the user. As of right now, I don't intend to ever store credit card numbers or bank account numbers or social security #'s, etc. I would like to be able to claim that my service follows "industry standard" security ...
Instead of asking about the pros and cons of specific hardware, I thought I would ask a broader question: What are the differences between really expensive and inexpensive firewalls? What extra features/support will you typically get? And while firewalls (hardware) will need software to run, is it necessary to still us...
I manage a php app whose key variables (such as database server addresses, DB user names and passwords, etc) change depending on their environment (Dev, QA, Production, etc.). In order to simplify deployment, I have started moving some environment dependent variables out of .ini configuration files that are part of the...
Given a web application where user data must be properly escaped to avoid XSS, is it better to try to remove the "bad stuff" before it enters the database, or is it best to allow it in the database but be careful about escaping output when it is displayed on the page? I see some applications where the input is stored r...
There has been a lot of discussion about Carrier IQ, monitoring software that is pre-installed on many Android phones. Many allegations have been thrown out. My questions: What exactly does Carrier IQ do? What information does/doesn't it record on your device? What information does/doesn't it transmit off your devic...
I am designing an online multiplayer game and I am looking for a good tradeoff of secure communications with minimal CPU and bandwidth utilization. My ideal solution would only use UDP packets since TCP is a poor choice for the realtime requirement of the game. However, I have no problem falling back on TCP for the log...
I have a file (a stand-alone archive). I lost the password to it, but it has been encrypted using 256-bit encryption. The password is some 20-odd characters long (including non-alphanumeric characters). What are the odds I can brute-force it? The archive in question was created with WinAce and sports the obscure exte...
I am trying to figure an agreement protocol on an unreliable channel. Basically two parties (A and B) have to agree to do something, so it's the two generals' problem. Since there is no bullet-proof solution, I am trying to do this. A continuously sends a message with sequence 1 When B receives seq 1 it continuously r...
Traditionally at my place of work we have an internal subnet that is completely protected behind our firewall. No ports are allowed to be opened to direct connections from the public network. We also run a DMZ where we only allow specific ports to be opened as they are needed. In addition, we don't allow connections to...
Let's say I have one server that encrypts a file with a symmetric key, e.g. AES-CBC, and sends it to clients that decrypt it. Does that provide data integrity when decrypted? Or is it possible for someone to tamper with the file while it's still encrypted, and later when the client decrypts it, produce a modified fil...
I am doing VA/PT on a sample web application. I run the Nessus scanner and I found some high severity vulnerabilities that are related to HP System Management Homepage. The CVE-numbers are: CVE-2010-1917 CVE-2010-2531 CVE-2010-2939 CVE-2010-2950 CVE-2010-3709 CVE-2010-2950 CVE-2010-4156 CVE-2011-1540 CVE-2011-1541 I ...
Since iOS 4, Apple data protection supports hardware based encryption of confidential information on the device. I looked around for best practices considering the use of Apple data protection, but found nothing comprehensive. If I understood this article about the limitations of Apple data protection correctly, one of...
I understand how HTTPS connections work, and I also understand they they require a certificate to know that the secure connection you have is with the right server (and not someone pretending to be the right server). My question is, how are these certificates secure? Why is it hard to fake them?
Are there any realistic methods for verifying that Apple or whoever has not tampered with third party application distributed through their App Store? You might for example have an open source application with developers located in multiple jurisdictions who cooperate by publishing the SHA for every version distribute...
My question is related to vulnerabilities that allow installing a Linux kernel-level rootkit (for example, to modify the execution flow inside the kernel; for return-oriented attacks; or to modify some structures in order to hide certain processes). In the following site, I found a nice classification of the publicly-k...
I want to store an encrypted string of the password hash in a cookie and use the hash to lookup the user and log them in (if they want to be remembered). Is this safe? The password is one-way hashed with SHA-512, 1024 iterations, using a timestamp for salt. I imagine this would be unique because of the time-stamp salt....
My school network has blocked a lot of webpages, including TeamViewer, which I need. The IT department told me to find a proxy, because it was their ISP who had blocked the sites. To connect to the internet all the school computers are set up like this: http://screencast.com/t/AQehWSxRk2N (I have scrolled the URL to th...
I have forwarded port 80 to WAMPServer and 25565 to the MineCraft-server running Bukkit. Am I vulnerable to attacks. Can hackers attack me if WAMP-server is running or if it is not running, or will it be easier to hack me than if I hadn't opened the port at all? I have tried to learn about how people hack and how to pr...
I understand that very simply put a proxy is a sort of 'man in the middle' allowing/denying access to certain services/resources. Strictly in terms of security (I mean here privacy, parental control and the like excluded), can it offer any added security compared to a firewall?
When connecting to a public Wifi from a café for example, some don't use a password and some do. If they do use a password it is often publicly known to everybody around. Does having a password on the network, even though it is publicly known, make it more secure? Secure in the sense that it is harder for others to kno...
I am looking for an asymmetric encryption algorithm other than RSA?
I am currently studying how to setup DNS servers and all aspects of the DNS system. I would also like to study the security aspect. I want to use current DNS server attack on my test servers. Is there one place that lists the current attacks that are used by hackers so I can learn how to prevent them?
I would like to know, in case an attacker manged to capture some packets from my network traffic, can he build from them a file or any easy to understand thing? I know that the TCP/IP protocol is using the TCP/UDP for segmenting the files (or whatever is being sent) in order to send it over the network, so if the file ...
Is there any program that, given a cipher text, it would tell me what the encryption algorithm is? What if I have the plain text? Is there something that can be done in that case?
In Europe European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) define the standard requirements to handle a lawful interception. It's define all from the terminology and definition to the technical encoding of the payload that will be intercepted and given to the authority. What standards are used (if there is) in ...
I'm gonna be writing an app that connects to a server with sensitive information and one of the main requirements is that only my app will be able to make the connection. There is no user supplied username or password involved. Btw, this will be on the Android platform, but that shouldn't be too relevant for this que...
When I receive a payment in PayPal, it sends me an email about it (pictured below). The problem is that the email is shown to be coming from the money sender's email address and not from PayPal itself, even though the real sender is PayPal. Here is the text that appears when I select "show original" in Gmail: From: "c...
I’m looking for a source of on-line cryptographically signed date/time. I do not need a full timestamp service, as I am happy with the information « date/time was that », without a link to a challenge/hash that I provide. I do not care if an active adversary feeds my trusted device an old (even very old) date/time ; I’...
We're about to release a service that requires website owners to embed our javascript code on their site which will then serve the script from our server similar to Google Analytics. (yes I'm aware of the security implications) We obviously need SSL for this because it'll be embedded on SSL enabled websites so I'm look...
Has anyone heard of the new HITECH Federal Act? I understand that it is an underscore of the HIPAA Federal Act but am unclear of the requirements that they are requesting. It targets companies that deal with the storage or movement of medical and financial files, which targets the small business that I work for. We wa...
I'm looking at implementing my own security mechanism rather than using SSL due to SSL being 'hopelessly broken' and also because it is an interesting exercise :) This is for a client-server internet application. Caveat - I am not a security expert - just been reading up on security. I will also be building the clien...
My question looks touchy, but I'll do my best to explain. You see, I live in country where democratic rules are quite, well, delusive. In theory, there is freedom of speech, democratic elections and so on, but in practice trying to do anything in opposition to the current government's political course leads to many pro...
Possible Duplicate: Enterprise Encryption Considerations I'm making a document on enterprise security. I'm looking for references and inspiration on the following topics: Enterprise encryption best practices; Encryption secure coding best practices; A checklist for encryption.
ACME makes a product that is used in some security-sensitive applications. There are no particular security regulations or industry standards in the domain of this product. ACME's business arm would like to claim that “we're 150% more secure than our competitors”. ACME's customers would be more prone to believing that ...
So I'm going to be graduating college in January 2013, with a double major in Compsci and Cell Biology (don't ask...). I'm really looking to break into the information security field as a consultant. (Ideally, risk management) I would like to start working straight out of undergrad... I'll have been in school for 6 and...
I'm worried when I send a password to a server, even with SSL or TLS, that the server stores the password in cleartext. Is this the case? If yes and the server gets hacked, all passwords are available in cleartext and can be used on other sites. Is there any mechanism that guarantees that the password is hashed before ...
I which forms can visiting certain sites compromise one's system security, taking into account that browsers keep a sandbox for each opened page? Nowadays, can a malicious -or attacked- site really, for instance, steal all stored passwords from a client or infect him with a virus?
I'm thinking of using my iPhone as a device combined with a low power bluetooth usb key. So when the phone is gone the workstation locks. (I don't want it to unlock the workstation though, I'd prefer if the workstation only unlocked if the phone was in range (there is a backup account of course)) However how best can I...
I repair a lot of computers with viruses, malware, and what not, and I have one problem that I am struggling to find a solution for. Whenever I connect my USB stick that has the tools I need for the repair process it gets infected and especially the exe files, so after the repair is done i have to scan the USB stick. M...
For those of you who don't know any developers and/or didn't go to MIT, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is the Canonical reference on it's title subject. It is often used as the text in begining comp sci classes. What, if anything, is the equivalent book in information security (please don't respo...
Providing all legal measures are taken care of, what are some of the ways someone can spoof an email "From" field address and actually get the email to the recipient without spam filters getting in the way. The following are the ways I currently know of: Telnet to a mail server and enter the from address and then the r...
I was performing an DNS brute-force on our company's domain and found entries like "html" "ww" and "wwww" resolving to IPs outside of our registered block. This sparked a debate about just how dangerous this would really be to let those entries exist. It would seem that someone could redirect users of our site to a cr...
I was playing around with Chrome and typed the following in the address bar: chrome://memory-redirect And saw the note: "If other browsers (e.g. IE, Firefox, Safari) are running, I'll show you their memory details here." After I saw the note, openned FF, refreshed the page in Chrome, and sure enough there Chrome was r...
I am wondering if it is possible to paralyze a network by sending out a bunch of fake ARP response packets. Some basis: I recently read a moderately detailed description of how ARP and ARP poisoning works (which is here, pdf). I think I understand how ARP poisoning works, at least in the level of detail presented in th...
Has anyone come across any good password dictionary lately? Some of the lists I found dated back to 90's! Some are simply too big that I doubt their quality. I am looking for something hopefully free!
Today I was purchasing a gift from Singapore Groupon website. And then I realized that what I have to do is simply login and hit the "submit order" button, because they store my credit card information from my previous purchase. By credit card information here I mean: credit card number, credit card validity date, and ...
How secure are wireless mice? Is it possible to control a wireless mouse from a different computer? Is it possible to know the mouse movements from a different computer?
We store user email addresses in our database, like many other websites. While we do take pride in the security measures in place, sometimes "just enough" is just not enough. We've begun looking into a solution which would let us store the email addresses in an encrypted format, and retrieve them in a readable format, ...
I have a RFID chip that has a digital signature using RSA and has data hashed using SHA1. I would like to compare data from the chip and user input in a program but I believe in order to do that I need the public key from the RFID (which I can get) and also the signature. Firstly is that correct, secondly, how do I get...
My workplace uses these SecurID tokens which provide you with a temporary password, the code will expire after a short time. I have always been fascinated by the things, because it seems as though all the logic to calculate the next number must be physically located inside the device. Given physical access to the t...
A little back story on the setup first; We have a Cisco VoIP setup at our remote office(where I'm at) and the main CCM/CCX/Unity setup is at the parent company across the US in Connecticut. We have MPLS tunneling the VoIP traffic between the two offices. Very inefficient, but that's the cheap solution they went with to...
Well I began with PKI a year ago with RFID system at school. Now I'm asked to implement this in my job. I understand most part of the idea. The doubt is about the certificate validation. I know it has a valid date "Not before" and "Not after". Is this enough to say that the certificate is valid? This is because the cer...
I have my pair of Public and Private keys and my certificate. Those where created in OpenSSL (why? because I was asked to do it in OpenSSL). Now I want to use those things to make a Java app that uses digital signatures. How can I use my private and public keys to encrypt/decrypt info (and use the certificate to se...
A group of student have been asked to do a bit of network security testing at college. Basically the college have just invested in some android tablets, more macs and more net books. The IT admins wants to just double check everything before they put the new equipment out. What would be the main things to check when d...
As a junior security professional, I spend a lot of time goggling for things such as 'wpa dictionaries', 'vulnerabilities...' , 'how to crack ...','and so on. I sometimes feel like I am calling for wrong attention (from ISP, google and/or agencies), regardless of my intention to increase my knowledge of what I am defen...
I'd like to preface this question by stating that I fully understand the dangers of writing your own encryption algorithms, and I would never, ever, use homemade encryption to secure the data of anyone except myself. Today I was assigned a computer science semester project that brings together everything we've learned ...
I've read RFC 5746 on the TLS secure renegotiation extension. However, I don't understand how it fixes the problem. Client and server are required to include the verify_data from the previous handshake in the ClientHello and ServerHello messages. The fix protects against an attacker who is an active MITM. Couldn't this...
I usually play Mafia Wars and use bookmarklets like Spockholm, Arum, etc. Can these bookmarklets get my Facebook data when I run them, they usually ask to unframe the Facebook page? I was just wondering if it was possible that they're stealing my friends' info from Facebook and selling it on to advertisers?
Background I am about to create a website which will have a registration/login area. After the user has logged in he/she will have the ability to buy one or many modules which consist of static content regarding a topic. Of course the security on these modules is important as I want to make sure only people who have bo...
I am concerned about sending long-term sensitive information over SSL. Someone who does not have the private key could record SSL traffic (with WireShark, Fiddler or some such) and store it for several years. They would not be able to decrypt the traffic now. But later, when attacks against SSL have progressed, or when...
I recently did a man in the middle attack on my college LAN (for purely educational purposes:)). I simply wrote a raw socket application that pumped ARP reply packets advertising my MAC address with the IP of the gateway. For the destination address I chose the broadcast address. Soon I was receiving packets from lot o...
I am doing research on Google's Blogger service and its privacy protection features. They say that Google complies with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Framework. I've read EU Safe Harbor on website. The first sentence says The European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection went in...

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