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I have a public and secret key pair in my .ssh folder. How is the secret key being stored on disk? What I mean is .. Is it possible for someone to hack into my computer, steal the secret key and use it to decrypt all my messages which were encrypted with my public key? Secondly, gpg requires a password to make use of the secret key. Does it not mean that someone can brute force the password and use the secret key anyways? After all, passwords are never as secure as secret keys .. Or does the computer do some magic behind the scenes so that brute forcing the password that protects the secret key is simply impossible?
I just received a notification from Microsoft that my Microsoft account has been blocked because it's been accessed by an IP address that's never accessed it before. I received this notification as a text from a number that has texted me before about Microsoft Live-related stuff, then as an email from account-security-noreply@account.microsoft.com less than a minute later, so I can be reasonably sure this comes directly from Microsoft. When I traced the problem back, I found out, using speedguide.net, that the IP address, 209.85.212.146, is currently, when I'm asking this question, at Beacon, New York, and that it is allocated to Google. This is backed up by a couple other Google search results for the IP range 209.85.x.x. I think this is Google trying to get my MSN email to show it in my linked Gmail account. This brings up a couple questions: Is there another reason Microsoft blocked this address, besides it being a "new" address? Should I be worried? Could this actually be a Google employee and not an automated script, etc.? Worse, could it be someone pretending to be Google? If it is indeed from Google getting my email for my linked email address, why didn't Microsoft block the IP addresses Google used before this one? If it is the same address Google used before, why is Microsoft suddenly blocking it? Why does Google need my username and password to get my email? Why not use a cookie or something? I changed the password for my Microsoft account some months or years ago, but I never told Google the new password. Now, I still get some MSN emails through both addresses, but not all. If this is why this "breach" happened, because Google has tried my password too many times, why has it taken so long for Google to try it so many times?
I have a Grails app I'm working on that allows users to fill out a fairly lengthy application form. One of the requirements I've been given is to NOT require users to log in or create any sort of account. When they start filling out the app, I store their app ID in the session so it can be remembered from page to page. After one hour, the session expires. If they didn't finish the app, I send them an e-mail thanking them for considering us. What I need to do is give users the ability to pick up where they left off so they can finish the application...again, without an account, without a username/login combination. One way I thought to do this was to create a unique ID (like adbce-13428-etace-etc...) that is stored in the DB and maps to their application ID. I would then send them a link in the email that says "If you'd like to continue filling out your applicant, click the following link: myapp.com/continue/{their_unique_id}". When they click that, it looks up the unique ID in the database, gets their application ID, and puts the information back in the session so they can finish the application. My question is: Is this bad form? Is it bad design? Is it bad for security? Why?
In this article about increasing the security of LastPass the author suggests: For additional security, you can have LastPass send security-related emails to a special security email address instead of your normal email address. For example, password hint emails, account recovery emails, and multi-factor authentication disable emails will all be sent here. This email should be an extra-secure email address only you know about – if someone gains access to your day-to-day email account, they won’t be able to access your LastPass vault without access to your security email account. Is this good advice or is it just an unnecessary complication having another e-mail address? Is the idea that an e-mail address not frequently used would appear in fewer databases and is therefore less likely to be (randomly) hacked? This article focuses on LastPass, but would such an e-mail account be good for other things such as receiving password resets for other e-mail accounts?
I have a friend who has a website developed in PHP on which we can browse all his files one after one (of course, we can not read the content of the PHP files). Do you think this is a security hole? If yes, in which sense?
There are a lot of spywares for android and ios smartphones. Are there spywares for feature phones ? I am using this samsung phone, which is basic. I am wondering if somebody who has access to this phone for few hours can bug it.
I am currently diging deep into the IKEv2 protocol. In the description of the Authentication (RFC5996, p. 48), the following statement is given: "It is critical to the security of the exchange that each side sign the other side’s nonce" Can anyone explain this issue to me? It is clear to me, that I need some kind of signature to prove the knowledge of a secret in order to authenticate. Also the fact that each side signs their first complete IKE_SA_INIT packet to provide integrity.
Sometimes passwords/hash/keys & other private information is stored in variables and hence in memory/RAM during code execution. while some situations (i.e. Linux Kernels see here Is there any Linux distro or kernel patch that wipes a process memory space after the process exits? ) care about wiping used memory I was wondering more about the broader picture: Question is therefore: Should the programmer of code care about wiping (i.e. zerosetting) sensitive information by her/himself? More precise should I do something like this int main() { char bufferWithSecret [10]; sprintf (bufferWithSecret, "%d",generateKey()); // do some stuff // ... // ... sprintf (bufferWithSecret, "000000000"); // wipe the memory }
I am facing an issue regarding security projects, for example: last year we bought an antivirus licence for 500 (end point security), and made a policy in order to force everyone to install it, however, at the end of year, we found out that only 50 users were using the antivirus properly. I have discussed this issue and others regarding digital security, but the top management is not supporting us very well. I want to get full support from management, but I am confused about the way to do it. Additional Information: Organization: ISP provider. Size: 1000 employees My role: IT Security Manager/Technical Reporting to: IT Manager, Technical Director, CEO Is there a role/function dedicated to information security and/or information management ? This is still unclear, and all security projects started when I joined the company.
I recently did a university module on digital forensics and learned a lot about the process, and techniques, of digital forensics investigations. We didn't actually cover the cloud although I couldn't stop thinking about how it would work. Although we can access the virtual machine image, and all of the files/logs etc on them afterwards, there are a couple of things we don't have access to. First of all the physical disk (both RAM and the physical hard drive the VM was hosted on), and the network logs, are out of bounds to a user from a remote location. But I was wondering what else there might be that I haven't thought of which would be of use to a forensics investigator?
I've just found my notebook has a SmartCard reader. Would it be wise/possible/practical to buy a single SmartCard, transfer my private key on that (somehow), and use it as my primary private key storage? Or would I need a SmartCard "writer", which would increase the expenses for personal usage to an impractical height?
I'm using some popular commercial forum software and to help secure the admin area more I have changed the name of the admin folder; however I was wondering, with regards to robots.txt if I go ahead with putting: User-agent: * Disallow: /random_admin_name/ Then wouldn't I just be exposing the "secret" admin name now!? So my question is - how do I stop the admin from being indexed and found by someone else?
I just read about this new struts2 security problem. I want to tell our developers to patch it, but I wish for some more sources first. The only source he cites is in another language. I guess I could spend the better part of the day testing it, but if I could get confirmation from other sources, it would be better. The blog author claims to have discussed it with the Struts security team. How can I get confirmation from them that this is indeed a concern?
Let's start off with an example. Here in Canada, credit card companies cannot upgrade you credit card limit. You need to make a request, that will then get analyzed and then, depending on your status as a payer, you might or might not get your limit increased. Why? Simply because the best security system here to prevent clients to spend all their money is to prevent them from accessing such funds. Now in the SmartPhone world, Android is Open source and it allows you to run pretty much any APK you encounter. You can access the root and modify all that you want. This is a case where you can pretty much spend all the money you want and upgrade your limit. It is a fact that there is more malware on Android than on iOS but is this layer of security preventing the malicious softwares? Is the magic behind not getting much problems with malwares simply keeping users from doing dangerous stuff? Or is there something more to it.
A common theme in security engineering is that perfect security is impossible (or at least highly unlikely). Consider Johnston's Infinity Maxim: There are an unlimited number of security vulnerabilities for a given security device, system, or program, most of which will never be discovered (by the good guys or bad guys). With that in mind, how much sense does it make for penetration tests to be arranged on a "no hack, no fee" basis (analogous to "no win, no fee" legal engagements)? Put another way, does the Infinity Maxim hold true within the scope of real-life pen-testing scenarios? I'm interested in answers from experienced pen-testers, without reference to particular firms.
I'm no expert. Could someone please tell me if I'm overreacting? After the Heartbleed news broke, I changed a lot of passwords. Here's what I discovered when changing the password on my all-in-one bank/brokerage online account. Password requirements: - Include 6-8 characters and numbers - Include at least one number between the first and last characters - Contain no symbols (!,%,# etc.) - Cannot match or be a subset of your Login ID Yes, that's 8 characters maximum. The best my random password generator was able to do is generate a password which takes about 16 hours to crack. But, I figured, if they salt passwords then it doesn't matter. Here's their response to my question. I consulted with our Technical Services division and found that, while our passwords are not salted before storage, they are on a secure, encrypted channel. This is not a mom'n'pop operation, this is an old, large outfit with a lot of industry cred. (Which doesn't mean a lot with regard to technical competence, I know.) They provide security tokens on request, but why go to that trouble before something basic as salting passwords? Before I write back and tell them I no longer consider my assets safe with them, am I missing something or just overreacting? Thanks for any light shed.
After signing in Google 2-Step verification scenario, user should enter verification code which sends to his mobile. Without it, he couldn't access to Gmail account. Consider an attacker does session hijacking. Can attacker access to Gmail account if attacker uses hijacked session? Or he will stop at entering verification code? UPDATE: Attacker does session hijacking after user enters verification code.
Is it common to implement crypto software in such a way that sensitive buffers are overwritten before free'ing memory? For example when they contain a private key or the plaintext message.
Suppose, I have a static IP on my PC and is known to others. None of my softwares listen for remote connection. Is it still possible for someone to DOS attack me in such cases? If yes, how it is possible?
I am trying to enumerate a database, created specifically for the purpose of learning SQL injections. I am trying to discover the number of columns a particular select statement might be using. I do this by "Ordinal" ordering the result set. So, I start with ORDER BY 1, .. BY 2, and so on until I get an error returning 'Unknown column'. Now, for an injection like so: localhost/sqli?id=2' order by 7 AND '1 The resulting SQL statement is: mysql> SELECT * FROM table_name where id='2' order by 7 and '1'; This returns a result set, but I was expecting it to throw an error returning "unknown column '7' in 'order clause' ". Why does it not throw the error. The table that I am working with has only 3 columns.
I want to know how to ensure the most complete anonymity when browsing the internet and connecting to remote servers: I want to be as anonymous and secret as possible. I don't know exactly how VPNs differ from proxies, but are they safer? Is it possible to do a combo: proxy, VPN, Tor, etc.? Will combinations as such make it more difficult to be traced? For example, a proxy alone isn't completely giving me confidence. But what about a proxy-server, VPN and specialized kernel which has no device information, cookie blocking, concealed MAC address/etc., surf behind Tor and add more proxies to the mix, encryption of sent data, etc.? Like, on top of circumventing any simple IP, if data is passed anonymously, such as through Cryptabyte behind proxies, Tor, VPN, etc., this makes not only the illegal act hard to pinpoint, but the data which may've been used impossible, correct? I know I asked multiple questions, but I expect mostly one answer to my main one.
Are there any security benefits to having a different key(it is encrypted by a master key and that encrypted key is included in the metadata for the file) used to encrypt each file versus just one key that is the same for all? Assuming the crypto is fairly well designed, there shouldn't be any real security benefits, but from an architectural point of view I suppose it does provide some flexibility for changing keys. Is that right?
There are many methods for finding very large primes fast. Most of them have complete lists. Is it possible an attacker try to guess that p or q was generated using a such kind of method? If yes, shall I try to check my prime match a case like this one, when I generate primes by pure random numbers (generate a random number and check)? Even if the probability is too low (in the case I want to very sure of the quality of the key)?
We have a load balancer facing the Internet. It's balancing load towards two systems behind it in the back-end running apache. How many SSL certificates do I need to buy? - One for the load-balancer only - One for the load-balancer and for each server instance one (3 certs)+ - Only for the server instances (2 certs) - The certificates can be re-used Also, can I re-use the server certificate as a client certificate to make calls to other backends from the apache servers?
I recently found the following configuration settings: use-strict-mode hash-bits-per-character hash-function and I have some questions about them: Use-strict-mode says the following: session.use_strict_mode specifies whether the module will use strict session id mode. If this mode is enabled, the module does not accept uninitialized session ID. If uninitialized session ID is sent from browser, new session ID is sent to browser. Applications are protected from session fixation via session adoption with strict mode. Defaults to 0 (disabled). My rudimentary understanding is that it creates always a session ID for you, but I already saw another config option with does the same. So I assume that my understanding is wrong. So why do we need it? (The closest I saw is that it prevents OWASP A9, but it does not give me a lot of information) session.hash_bits_per_character: allows you to define how many bits are stored in each character when converting the binary hash data to something readable. The possible values are '4' (0-9, a-f), '5' (0-9, a-v), and '6' (0-9, a-z, A-Z, "-", ","). From my understanding this does not contribute anything to security, only tells what chars can be used for your session. The bigger the number - more characters and thus smaller string. So why not to put 6 (instead of default 4)? Hash-function This one is clear, but from the big list of possible functions, which is the one (I assume that default md5 is not good) is preferable? P.S. before asking the question, I read this answer.
Many websites including OpenSSL's website provide downloads along with MD5/SHA1 checksums sometimes in addition to PGP signatures for the files. Simply put, do PGP signatures provide file integrity verification in addition to file identity verification? I would assume so. If I've verified a file's PGP signature, are the MD5 and SHA1 sums of the file more or less irrelevant, as I've already verified integrity? If this is true, do PGP signatures provide better file integrity verification than other hash methods?
I'm interested in encrypting my Android devices for security in the (hopefully will-never-happen) event of the phone being recovered by an unknown/unauthorized person. How does Android filesystem encryption work and how does it stack up to other filesystem encryption solutions? Solutions I'm more familiar with are: TrueCrypt dm-crypt on Linux Furthermore, does Android filesystem encryption also protect external microSD cards, and if not, is there a way to do that in Android?
I have 2 questions that are somewhat related: When you try and guess the key in a program (in a brute force way), how does the program know if it got it right and it had deciphered the message (I'm not talking about the obvious files with headers, but just a long string of text)? What is the problem with cascade encryption/multiple encryption? If the only way to answer question 1 is to use something like a language processor, then aren't all multiple encryptions unbreakable using brute force methods?
I'm not sure whether self-signed Package Installer are supported by Mac OS X 10.8+ Using informations in How to create an Apple Installer Package Signing Certificate I could create a Package Installer self-signed certificate. But all (flat) pkg files I've tried to sign with this certificate are rejected by spctl --assess --type install. I've tried with packages produced by PackageMaker and pkgbuild, and signing them with productsign -s, pkgbuild --sign and productbuild --sign. Using pkgutil --check-signature, the resulting pkg files seems actually signed: Package "test.pkg": Status: signed by a certificate trusted for current user Certificate Chain: 1. com.xxx.yyy SHA1 fingerprint: FE 39 1E 69 C1 DC E8 F8 64 2A B1 C3 09 B7 27 94 2B 01 99 28 But is rejected by spctl --assess --type install: test.pkg: rejected <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>assessment:authority</key> <dict/> <key>assessment:remote</key> <true/> <key>assessment:verdict</key> <false/> </dict> </plist> which means (AFAIK) that any GateKeeper enabled system will refuse to install the it. I'm probably missing an obvious requirement, but I can't figure it out. Or, simply said, 10.8+ (I'm testing on 10.9) does not support self-signed installers anymore ? I would appreciate any clue or pointer (I've red the Code Signing documentation, but I may misunderstand it). Thanks.
Is there a way to detect a malicious JavaScript code within a webpage before the script runs on my computer ? I want to develop a Python script that prevents from 8 JS malwares that I can embed on my website (for test). But if the malicious script runs on my computer then I do not find it useful for my Python script to detect it. I would love to know if there is a method that can allow me to detect the JS malware before it runs.
The Windows RSA SecurID app allows the device seed to be determined and cloned from one machine to another (see this blog post). Do either the iPhone or Android RSA SecurID apps suffer from the same issue?
Suppose you have some malicious code on your linux laptop, for example a rootkit or trojan or something like that. Now restrict your attention to the case that the malicious code does transfer some information to the hacker over the internet, for example because the hacker wants to steal some files from your computer or your passwords via a keylogger or because he wants to use your machine as a base to hack for example a company or government server. Being a layman on network security I assume that it should be possible just to redirect (for example via ARP-spoofing or something like that) all traffic of your box (A) over another not compromised box (B) and see by sniffing if there is any suspicious traffic. This seems to be easy if you know that A shouldn't send any traffic at the moment (because you don't browse the web and so on...). However the malicious code could be a bit cleverer and send data only if there is some other traffic outgoing from (A), for example when you are surfing in the web. Then you would need a method to generate controlled traffic outgoing from machine A. Machine B then should know what traffic is when generated, i.e. to expect and should be able to find the additional traffic and detect this way the virus when it reports to the server. I guess this model is a bit naive, but I want to learn more technical details about this point: How close is my above description to reality? What other, more sophisticated methods may the virus use to mask its send of information? If the described sniffing is a good method to detect such code when the code reports back to server, how would one actually do this in detail (in linux)? And how to make sure to detect even very smart ways to mask the sending of information?
I know there have been similar questions about that topic, but I think mine differs from the others. I have this application which I am able to crash, but the error seems to happen inside of a shared object library, which gets loaded by the application. So my question is, how do I proceed further? I attached the application to GDB and let the application crash. But how could I find out if the error relies in the library?
I want to store some user's security information in cookie, but I want to encrypt it so that nobody can see what is really inside it. And when client makes request, I want to decrypt it. What mechanism I can use to achieve this provided I cannot store the "key" used to encrypt as I have stateless mechanism between client and server, so i cannot store the key somewhere in session. Thanks.
My application interacts with many other HTTPS based services. As we use them at considerable frequency, I am worried about the performance impact of using HTTPS. Is there any mechanism ( time bound or any other permanent) which I can use to prevent the HTTPS handshake and other potential bottlenecks ? Ofcourse I do not want to go with HTTP :)
Assume there are two internet users (A and B) that connect to the internet from the same gateway by using NAT. That means they use same IP address while passing through our firewall. Now assume we detect illegal traffic (such as DDoS) from this gateway and the attacker is user A. In this case, is it possible to block only user A so that innocent user B can continue to connect to servers behind our firewall? Surely we can not achieve this by IP blocking. If possible, which options do I have to do that? To clarify, I added a network topology.
I have a client's site (http://changewise.biz) being redirected to a Viagra store (mywifeishappy.com). We've gone through all the usual suspects but cannot find the culprit that's causing the redirection: First thing we checked all the .htaccess files; all clean. Checked robots.txt; again, nothing. Checked all 522 PHP files for malicious code (this is a WordPress site running at RackSpace); we did find a line of code that has a base64decode of some code in the wp-options table of the site. 76 instances of this, all of which were removed, with still no joy. Went to Google Webmasters to have Google re-index the site, in case it was holding faulty index data about the site; this may take a while. What's strange is that when I access the site via its direct URL in my browsers (http://changewise.biz) I see it fine. When the client does this in his browsers, the site ends up at Viagra. And - when both of us Google "changewise" and click the link that Google returns in its SERP, the site is redirected to the Viagra store. Anyone with any ideas about this? I've spoken to RackSpace tech support and they can't offer any ideas; they don't see any other vulnerabilities in the hosting setup. Client is very frustrated, as am I.
I have been in the market for a DisplayPort KVM. Most of these products come from small companies I have never heard of and possibly do not trust. I understand the risk of plugging in USB to any machine and what it can execute to compromise a machine. If I ignore the USB ports and only use the DisplayPort connections (this could also go for HDMI, DVI, VGA, etc), what is the possibilities that your computer could be secretly compromised with some form of malware through these ports?
I'm currently trying to understand secure connections inside a WiFi network without an Internet connection. I would like to use some sort of SSL tunneling inside a WiFi network between two clients. If I have multiple clients on the same secured WiFi, say WPA2 and two clients want to communicate safely without giving the other clients a way to interfere or listen, what's the best practice? SSL tunneling inside a WiFi exposes great vulnerabilities due to methods like ARP-spoofing or IP table manipulation. My searches on secure connections inside a WiFi had a very poor outcome. There are tons of articles on how to secure your WiFi in general or how to tunnel your connection in public WiFi networks (SSL/VPN), but is something like a tunnel inside the same network even possible? I hope this question isn't too basic; I'm pretty new to cryptography.
I just had this really strange experience with Amazon Turk, where suddenly I was logged into someone else's account. I was logged into the company's Turk account, left my computer for a while, refreshed the tab and BOOM, someone else's account. Does anyone have a clue what this could be? It was a real person, a real account, I saw all of their information. It's possible that someone who has access to this account also has access to the account I saw (not sure yet), but that shouldn't affect me, right? Bug in AWS? Problem on my end? I've been looking for the solution now for about 20 minutes couldn't find a thing. How is this possible? Should I be worried?
I have recently came across ISO 27000. Basically what I learnt is that it is used for audit purpose in organizations. Can you tell what exactly it is, if I am wrong? What tools are available for ISO 27001 audit and how can I learn about it? Can simple penetration tools be used for the purpose?
I share my wifi with my brother. Recently I came to know he is sniffing on my browsing. Is there a way I can prevent him from sniffing on my browsing? PS: I can't afford VPN.
I came across an interesting password policy online recently: "Please be sure to enter a password that meets the following criteria: must be 8 characters long must not be based on dictionary words must be different from previous 6 passwords must contain at least 1 uppercase character (A-Z) must contain at least 1 lowercase character (a-z) must contain a leading letter (a-z or A-Z) must contain at least 1 number (0-9) may contain up to 2 special characters ($ or # only) may not have repeating characters must be different from user ID" It seems to me that this narrows down the number of possible passwords so dramatically that it would take appropriately configured hackware all of two minutes to figure out someone's password. Is that approximately accurate?
I am writing my bachelor thesis in CS on cloud security and its weaknesses and started to do research today and got quite overwhelmed. I am mainly looking at IaaS and PaaS services and have decided to focus mostly on threaths caused by attackers. But it is really hard to decide where to start. What is the biggest security issues with cloud atm? Would be nice to hear from someone who has worked more with cloud than I have. Is there any scientific article released in recent years discussing this? I only managed to find older ones. Should I focus on encryption/decryption and what can be done there or are there bigger more pressing issues in cloud security? Any advice woul help. Some articles I found interesting so far: https://downloads.cloudsecurityalliance.org/initiatives/top_threats/The_Notorious_Nine_Cloud_Computing_Top_Threats_in_2013.pdf http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/risk-management/files/deliverables/cloud-computing-risk-assessment But even here there is just too much fo someone rather unfimiliar with the subject to write WELL about in 4 weeks. So can anyone with experience recommend the more common security risks that could be good for me to focus on.
First of all: I HAVE read the "Why does Google know my location?" posts but still in my case it is a bit weird / the solutions cannot fit. The Setting: Fresh installed linux. Never ever logged in into a google-account or something like that on that machine. VPN using OpenVPN. Working according to those "show me information to my IP" - sites Location Services Disabled in Chrome browser Still: Netflix displays "not available in your country" and google maps still displays my position (roughly) I know about the possibilities for google to save my Routers MAC etc. but the following is also true for my network: Netflix does NOT recognize me when connecting via Windows-PC Also not when connecting via Android- Device (with disabled gps) (All devices use the same VPN and the same LAN) So there must be something "in the machine" / the OS that offers Netflix the geo information it needs. Any idea what this could be? And especially: How to avoid that / fake it? (I would be fine if the OS also is tricked about my location) It is a clean Ubuntu installation with only XBMC installed if that matters.
Trying to understand S/MIME implementation, I see that sometimes you must have the other party's certificate, and sometimes its enough to just have their public key. I'm confused as to when you need a certificate and when they key is enough. Can anyone clarify? (I'm trying to understand the internals here, so my question is conceptual - I know that practically speaking, most email clients use the full certificate).
Every 15 minutes or so I get this message in my system.log Apr 25 22:05:36 Ivans-MacBook-Pro.local apsd[194]: Unrecognized leaf certificate Apr 25 22:20:57 Ivans-MacBook-Pro.local apsd[194]: Unrecognized leaf certificate Now I have figured out approximately what is what: apsd - Apple Push notification Service Daemon Leaf certificate - The first certificate in the certificate chain(Not sure, mentioned on some Microsoft site) But what does it mean? How serious is it? What exactly is the leaf certificate? Do I have a false/bogus certificate on my system? It's a pretty clean Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 install, only few apps from the official Mac App Store installed(Xcode and few other coding editors)
I want to design a scenario in which I have a web site which contains a link. If the user clicks on this link, it will save a file in a specific pat in his hard disk without his consent. Is this possible?
I've come to the conclusion that I need to up my security. I currently have a dozen memorized passwords I use for every device and website. I'm against KeePass/Lastpass due to having to trust they haven't been compromised. Same goes for using an RSA Key. My Idea of a Solution: I'd have a dedicated unix box (perhaps bsd, perhaps debian) hosted in my cloud. It would have gpg, pass, pwgen, and a ssh server. This box would only be accessible with the keyfile, and I'd generate a unique key for each client of mine. In case of a compromised device, I can revoke that key. I would generate passwords using pass, which generates, manages, and using a gpg key encrypts passwords. I would backup my password-store using git, rsync, or some sort of cron job to push the password-store through sftp, but a digital copy of my gpg key would never leave the server. I'd keep a copy of my gpg key as a qr code in a safety deposit box. Does this seem like a working model or are there already holes? Am I in over my head trying to roll my own password management system?
The answer https://security.stackexchange.com/a/25392 has seemingly shown that AES-256 will not be directly cracked for at least the next 200 years (unless we manage to harvest the energy output of distant stars). The only available attacks will continue to be indirect attacks like brute-forcing the original password, etc. Questions: I repeat the first question to the above answer that nobody answered: What about quantum computing? Does the same hold for RSA 2048 and ECDSA? Will those be cracked (factorable) any time soon? I understand that RSA 1024 will be cracked very soon - is that true? What about SHA-1 or SHA-256? Will those be cracked (reversed) any time soon? I'm sorry for my cluelessness. I'm essentially trying to understand whether my PGP encrypted emails (RSA 2048) whether Bitcoin (SHA-256 and ECDSA) will be safe for the next 200 years or so. Bitcoiners especially talk about its money supply after 150 years, so I'm wondering whether there is any basis for their confidence!
Is there any risk when connecting an Android Phone to a [Verizon] iPhone's Hotspot? If there are I'd like to know about solutions. The Android Phone will basically be tapping the data plan of the iPhone through its turned on Hotspot.
I'm looking for some really small apps on Ubuntu for some bufferoverflow exploitation training. I don't want to start off with some huge apps. I know some sites like http://www.oldversion.com.de/ where i could start but most of the apps are just to big or too hard to exploit for a beginner or just not available for linux. Most of the tutorial on the Internet or windows based. Do you know any app where i could start playing around? Which debugger do usually people use on ubuntu? As a .NET dev i already have the theoretical knowledge for exploits, but I need to do it myself to understand it better.
Given a certificate¹ and a private key file², how can I determine if the public key on the certificate matches the private key? My initial thought was to simply encrypt some text with the public key on the cert, and attempt to decrypt it with the private key. If it roundtrips, we've got a winner. I just can't figure out how to do this with OpenSSL. Alternatively, if I could generate the public key from the private key, I could just compare their fingerprints. SSH seems to have a command for this: ssh-keygen -y -f my_key > my_key.pub But the hashes don't match. (I'm nearly certain I have the key corresponding to the cert, as the webserver is serving with it, but I'd like an easier way that spinning up a server to check.) ¹ a .crt file, in x509 format, I think. OpenSSL can read it with: openssl x509 -text -in that_cert.crt ² An RSA private key.
What's the best way to sandbox an X application like firefox or thunderbird in ubuntu (going into the direction of what qubes os does, but only for single applications)? I know there are many different sandboxing technologies. For example Just using a virtual-box: This seems to be very secure but a resource overkill. You would need a minimal OS in VirtualBox just to run firefox. Using the SE-Linux sandbox technology. This seems to be the best option but as far as I know SElinux is available in ubuntu but not very well configured by default (in contrast for example to RedHat-linux). Furthermore the sandbox part of SELinux seems to be missing: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/67127/how-do-i-install-selinuxs-sandbox-utility-on-linux-mint-debian-edition?lq=1 so one would have to compile it. The apparmor equivalent seems not to be production ready and is currently not shipped with ubuntu as far as I know. However I cannot estimate what's the state of development and if it would be worth to wait for the next ubuntu release where it will probably part of it. The gnome desktop seems to support X-sandboxing. It is not clear to me if one can use this in a wm-independent way. The lightweigt tool mbox seems to operate only on filesystem level, which would be not sufficient for X-applications. The same is true for self made chroot solutions as for example the sandfox-script. A more lightweigt and secure option than chroot seems to be Plash. But I am not sure how well the X protection is implemented. Same Immunity and FBAC-LSM There is also a program called arkose which seems to be well supported for ubuntu, but at the same time there is very little documentation of how it works and I have no idea how secure it is compared to other approaches. Docker seems to be made more for server applications than for desktop ones. I don't see if it is secure for X applications. There is a newer project called kagome which seems to combine Docker with xephyr for X isolation. But the author notes that docker has some security flaws and it might be better to switch to another container solution such as systemd-nspawn, rkt or lxd. Other solutions are: seccomp-nurse, Rainbow, vagrantup Finally especially for firefox there is an apparmor profile for ubuntu but which is not enabled by default. This is not a sandbox but should give you some level of security when using firefox (but I don't know how it compares to the sandbox solutions above). So there seems to be many approaches but I don't how (and why) those compare in terms of security for sandboxing X-applications like firefox or thunderbird, in terms of usability, especially in ubuntu-linux and which are production ready and well supported. Would be gread it someone could give some details about this, how to categorize them and which of them would be worth for me to have a closer look at for my purpose.
I realized all of the phase of the handshake but I do not understand how it does that from the two randomly generated numbers are unable to generate a session key that the client and the server uses for symmetric encryption . if someone explain to me how it works I would be very grateful
Whenever I generate a new 4096 RSA key in my GPG program and export the public key to a text file, I get a text file containing a total of around 52 lines (it varies, one of them is 53 lines). However, I just imported a public key from another guy I found on his website. My GPG program shows that his key length is also 4096. However, his key was only 30 lines, not even close to 52-53. What explains this difference? How can he have such a short public key even for 4096? The line width is 64 characters in every case (where the key is at full width, which is most of lines). When I counted the liens, I started at "-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----" and ended at "-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----". Updates: I found the reason. My key contains both "sig" and "sig 3" with the same ID. The other guy's key contains only the "sig". This explains the difference, I guess. My questions now: Why should I keep the "sig 3"? Why where both "sig" and "sig 3" generated for me? When I export the public key, my program doesn't give me any option to pick only one of them. It's either all or nothing. Is there any good reasons to provide people with both "sig" and "sig 3"? What do you recommend I do?
I'm studying security in computers and in particular the URL Spoofing. I understand that a form of URL spoofing is phishing. Then I read that a countermeasure against phishing is the authentication key. But what is not well hocapito autenticcation key. On the notes I read: The key contains a seed related to users, a timer, a secret symmetric key and a counter. There is a timer on the server instead, the same symmetric key is a list of seed -related utilities and also a counter for each user. When the user clicks the button on the key, it generates an HMAC(Seed||K||Timer||Counter) that is generated on the server in the same way: if there is a match, access is granted. Clearly, the timer will not be synchronized perfectly, and then the server will generate some codes HMAC with some timer values ​​(depending on the gap between the user and the server timer) and will look for the matching among those. Each click of the user is recorded by the counter and thus the two are synchronized counter (between server and key). This causes an old code can no longer be used (the counter does not match). The key does not work if the opponent is particularly noticed and make a session hijacking that is the data you just entered on the phishing site is immediately re-shipped to the actual site of the bank. It's like a man in the middle, the opponent does an intermediary with its "fake" pages between the bank and the user. It is also for this reason that before carrying out of some significance is often request another password. The auth-key is a key (consisting of seed, timers, counters and secret symmetric key), which possesses only the client? What is meant by seed? And the counter is related to what? What is a HMAC? How can it be match if the key is secret? I understood very little. Someone would know explain it in a simple way? Or if there are websites where this subject is treated in a more comprehensive and easy? I read the Wikipedia page, but I have not found much more.
if we run the following code using the input "hi", the output will simply be "hi" main(int argc, char **argv) { char *secret = "This is a secret 1\n"; char *secret2 = "This is secret 2\n"; printf(argv[1]); } however, if we run the program with the input "%s" the output will be "This is a secret 1" from what I understand, the reason for this is that when printf is fed with the %s format string, it does not check to see if a string data has been pushed on the stack therefore if there is no string supplied, it will fetch the next data stored on the stack which in this case is our secret string. So for each %s it will fetch the next data on its stack frame and display it in string format. My question is, keeping in mind that (main) and (printf) each have their own stack frame, how can %s cause printf to display data that does not belong in its stack frame ??(both secret string are in main)
I am generating a random number and using the random am generating the AES key of 256 bit. If I use the same random number again, whether it will generate the same AES Key again ? If not means why ? Thanks in advance..
I am considering a protocol where you upload a one time pad to a server, using public key encryption and then the result (using the pad) is sent back in plaintext: Alice uses Bobs RSA public key to request a file Bob replies over RSA that it is 7MB Alice uploads 7MB of random bits to Bob encrypted by RSA During this, Bob is responding with the plaintext of (file xor random data) So I tried to run through the basic attacks to see if this was secure and I had to add: The response must be divided into blocks and each block signed otherwise Eve could modify the data on the way back from Bob to Alive but then I realized Eve could modify the encrypted OTP on the way to Bob - this would not allowed her to edit the message reliably but to corrupt it. So we need to add: Alice should provide a checksum for each block of the OTP sent So I tried to harden it up a little bit and I was wondering if there are any attacks against this?
My university's cybersecurity program allows one to take a course in ordinary differential equations as an elective. The course would be interesting to take, although I don't know how I'd apply it to anything. Are there any examples of cybersecurity problems that are solved with ODEs?
I'am wondering if it's really safe to use this structure of my web application. WEBAPP Application Controllers Models Views ... Framework ... Core Public ... index.php If I point a website root folder to the /public, so if someone comes to my web page i.e.: www.mywebsite.com ... he will be accessing the /public folder where the index.php is located. My question is, will it be really that safe to not moving my application's core files into the /public folder but into upper level instead ? Or is it possible to access the webapp/application/ and webapp/framework/ from webapp/public/ folders by some hackers ?
I am trying to make hard to a code to be modified. Security is my concern. Ok, I know what you guys will say about piracy, bla bla bla. Lets refrain from that discussion. I am trying to collect ideas to do things differently in code. Things like this for example: int delta = value1 - value2; if (delta > 0) { // code is fine } else { // code is tampered } can be easily patched in binary by simply replacing the binary equivalent to the ">" that would be the instruction JG (jump if greater) with JLE (jump if less or equal) or even by replacing the subtraction with addition. In this case specifically what techniques I can use instead? What tricks do you guys know to make simple things hard for crackers?
I am working on a client server application where to identify each user I was thinking of storing a single database entry: hash(email + password) In my opinion, this is enough to stop some known attacks like the ones with pre-compiled tables of hashes to passwords. My reasons for this approach are: Make the server client authentication more efficient. Not store the email in plain text on the server (more secure in case of breach). Store the same hash on server and on client (only calculate the hash once on each side)
I am setting up SSL on Nginx with a free StartSSL certificate. Based on the instructions given on this StartSSL page I created a unified certificate containing the CA's root certificate, Intermediate certificate and the one for my domain. Testing this setup on ssllabs the following sections caught my eye. So I thought if the root CA certificate is in the trust store why should I add it to my .crt file and removed it from my server. Checking again I found that the size of the certificate reduced and the Chain issues - Contains anchor disappeared. I tested the site on Firefox and IE11 and no SSL errors were displayed. Did I setup deploy certificate right? Why does that page on StartSSL instruct to add the root CA certificate too if it is already present in the browsers' certificates store?
Recently(more info) I've spotted a strange message in the logs on my quite recent, fresh installation of OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 Apr 27 15:26:47 Ivans-MacBook-Pro.local apsd[194]: Unrecognized leaf certificate It appears every 15 minutes or so. I've googled it and there are many other users that pasted their logs(many times not even related with that issue) on net that had that message. It seems it is appearing for at least half a year now. apsd is a constantly running Apple Push Notification service daemon and it connects to one of the following servers on random: 1-courier.push.apple.com 2-courier.push.apple.com 3-courier.push.apple.com 4-courier.push.apple.com . . . 200-courier.push.apple.com on port 5223 (custom, but SSL) every so often(to check for updates I guess) Trying: https://1-courier.push.apple.com:5223 in the browser however shows that there is an issue related to the server certificate. Namely "This certificate is not valid(host name mismatch)". Which I suppose is because Apple did not create a certificate including a wildcard in the common name. However using Wireshark I see that the communication between apsd and Apple's server continues. I though, that can't possibly be right. Is apsd ignoring the validity check?! I then tried to perform a man in the middle attack using a self signed certificate. And this is what I got in the logs: Apr 27 15:42:07 Ivans-MacBook-Pro.local apsd[194]: CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed (-9807) Apr 27 15:42:07 Ivans-MacBook-Pro.local apsd[194]: Failed to evaluate trust: No error. (0), result=5; retrying with revocation checking optional Apr 27 15:42:07 Ivans-MacBook-Pro.local apsd[194]: failed to evaluate trust: No error. (0), result=5; retrying with system roots Apr 27 15:42:07 Ivans-MacBook-Pro.local apsd[194]: Failed to evaluate trust: No error. (0), result=5 Apr 27 15:42:07 Ivans-MacBook-Pro.local apsd[194]: Untrusted peer, closing connection immediately It's also worth noting that I've spotted(when observing the actual traffic with Wireshark) that the server requires the client to send his certificate. And apsd sends: Subject Name Common Name XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX (UUID) Issuer Name Country US Organization Apple Inc. Organization Unit Apple iPhone Common Name Apple iPhone Device CA . . . It's strange that Mac OS X is sending what appears to be a public key presenting it self as iPhone? I do have Xcode installed, if it is somehow related to maybe having iPhone simulators installed. But I'm getting the mentioned log message all the times, regardless if Xcode is running or not. And evidently others are too, judging from the logs on the internet. So what is going on? How is apsd able to figure out my fake certificate and pass theirs? Is something wrong here? Note: My MitM implementation is quite simple, with DNS spoofing I give apsd a response that X-courier.push.apple.com is 127.0.0.1. I then listen with a self signed certificate that mimics Apple's server certificate(country, organization, common name...). BUT I did not implement requiring the client certificate from apsd. So I don't yet know if that is somehow related to my failed MitM. Could it be? Are you guys there on Mac OS X getting the same log message in your Console(It appears in 'All messages' just when you launch it, but is actually in system.log), type 'leaf' in the search box... UPDATE: I've implemented requesting the client for its certificate. It's the same(SSLHandshake failure/Failed to evaluate trust). So apsd is checking something, I'm just not too sure it's implemented in the right way. Hopefully someone with far more experience will look into this...
I am using GNU/Linux. Sometimes, I copy/paste code from the terminal (like user@hostname ..) to put it in a forum thread or a blog ..etc And I was always wondering that it is better to hide it . Is it safe ? What risks may I encounter when I share my local hostname when using a regular internet connection ?
I can think of where people use hashes and signatures. But where are MAC used in real life? Are there any protocol in cryptography that uses MAC? Or examples where MACs are relevant?
When implementing a web-based application, how secure are any session variables against manual manipulation beyond the scope of my code? i.e. when a user is authenticated, if I were to initialise a session variable authenticated as true I am then able to perform a simple boolean check against the session, and the user's authenticated status, prior to performing any sensitive operation. However, would it be possible for me to initialise a session variable authenticated and set this to true without actually passing a security check? Essentially, could somebody fool my app in to thinking the user was authenticated, when in fact they aren't?
This is one issue which I have came by in the world of Security, which I can not seamlessly wrap my head around. How is it a threat to one's security by showing them a picture of themselves to people online? On a lot of games which I play, from League of Legends to Habbo Hotel, if people find an actual picture of someone who is has an ego out of the ass, they see it as a security threat to themselves and their well being. I do understand a part of it, but that does with psychology and philosophy, but where does this play into security of using the internet? Maybe I am misunderstanding security overall here? Or a picture of myself over the internet is going to cause me some issues down the road with my security of my online profiles, such as here on StackExchange?
I read this article today about an SSL MITM. I am trying to understand this attack. This may be a naive question. My understanding is that the WebView sends a request to domain name, the server sends down a X.509 certificate, which is invalid SSL certificate in this case, as the attacker might have already redirected the request to his own server. The WebView failed to identify this and accepted the SSL connection using the public key sent down and is now accepting code from attacker's server. I want to know if the above explanation is correct given the details in the article. Thanks.
For example, buffer overflow vulnerabilities in Flash are often discovered. Shouldn't a proper verification of all function parameters in Flash source code be enough to protect against buffer overflows?
I am looking at a text that mentions that the Secure European System for Applications in a Multi-vendor Environment (SESAME) was designed to address some of Kerberos weakness, with enhancements such as: Use of asymmetric cryptography Distributed authentication Role based authorisation I work mostly in the U.S. and Canada, but I also worked in Germany and Romania. I have used or implemented Kerberos everywhere but never heard of SESAME except in some textbooks. Is SESAME for real? All I find is un-dated wishful thinking with dead links. Is there any security analysis of it or a reference implementation ?
We are implementing an open source software package (copay, a multisig bitcoin wallet), that uses peerJS, which uses webRTC to allow peer-to-peer communication between browsers. peerJS (and webRTC) use a signaling server to help the peers establish the p2p channel. My question is: Do we need to trust that signaling server? Could that server compromise the p2p channel by doing a man-in-the-middle attack? thanks a lot. Our project home is: https://github.com/bitpay/copay
If I know that Data A is an encrypted form of Data B is that sufficient information to determine the private key?
I have some IP cameras set up on my home network, which is WPA2 protected. These cameras are setup to be accessible from the Internet thru my router's DDNS address, and port number. So for example, from my office PC I can go to http://urltomyrouter.com:12345 to see cam#1 after I input my username and password. These cameras are Foscams FI8910W's and they do not support HTTPS. My router by the way is an Asus RT-N56U. I assume that my credentials that I use to log into the cameras are being sent in plaintext and not encrypted, which is unsafe. What are my options to fix this and make my access more secure? I read somewhere that a "reverse proxy" is a possible solution but I'm not sure how that would work...
In my office, we have static IP's for each system. All the internet traffic from our systems are filtered with a Fortiguard firewall. Is it the default gateway where the firewall is installed? How can I find the open ports that are allowed to connect to the internet? I to ping websites but it always returns "request timed out". I guess the firewall has something to do with it. I have admin rights on my system and nmap and Wireshark installed. My static IP - 10.6.154.202 Default Gateway - 10.6.144.1 Subnet Mask - 255.255.240.0
It's my understanding that the purpose of .htpasswd files is to restrict access to some files in the server filesystem. If an attacker gains access to it, he probably has access to everything else too, so it seems like there's little point in using a slow hash in this situation (would only increse the server load). However, I've just seen that Apache 2.4 introduced support for bcrypt in these files: *) htpasswd, htdbm: Add support for bcrypt algorithm (requires apr-util 1.5 or higher). PR 49288. [Stefan Fritsch] The feature request does not offer any explanation about why using a simpler hash make "passwords stored in those hash functions vulnerable to cracking". Is this just "paranoia" or is there a good reason for using a stronger hash in this scenario?
Let's say, that I buy an *.example.com SSL certificate. I want now to generate subcertificates and include the *.example.com certificate in a trust path: host1.example.com, with an alternate name rr.example.com host2.example.com, with an alternate name rr.example.com host3.example.com, with an alternate name rr.example.com The questions are: Will those subcertificates be recognized by the web browsers and another clients if the *.example.com cert is recognized? Should I need to regenerate all the subcertificates when the major cert expires, or would I be able to prolong the *.example.com one leaving the rest intact, or issue a new *.example.com and sign my subcertificates with this one? I'm actually searching for a cheap way to migrate my network from self-signed certificates to the signed ones, that's why every server should have a different certificate and not a shared one. Besides, it should be also easier in maintenance if one of those keys leak.
My company offers a Javascript plugin that is meant to be embedded with websites. It works in a similar fashion to Google Analytics, in which you add a bit of Javascript and then it does some magic on the website. Contrary to Google Analytics, this plugin will have some visible side-effects for the end-user. These are expected. The JS plugin itself writes data back regularly to our servers but, same as Google Analytics, we do not hold authentication data for the end-users that will use our plugin. So, how can we secure user input in this situation? Updating definition of secure I want to minimize the amount of unwanted data our users can send to our system.
How is passphrase for a keystore to be stored? we have all passwords encrypted and the key to encrypt is stored in keystore , so how is the passphrase for the keystore to be stored? in clear text? if encrypted then where should we store the key to encrypt? ie seems recursive issue, how to solve without using Hardware security product HCM or whatever acroynm is for that kind of stuff. what is best practise in terms of storing the keys for encryption?
I am working on a client/server chat application that supports both single user chat as well as group chat. We planned to encrypt messages in single user chat with the public key of the receiver and decrypt them using the private key of the receiver. If we go by this approach, then we are clueless about implementing it in the case of group chat. Any thoughts?
Few days ago, FireEye has found a vulnerability, which affects all versions of IE (even the latest 11). Microsoft has official statement regarding this issue. FireEye wrote a technical article on their blog which explains details: The exploit leverages a previously unknown use-after-free vulnerability, and uses a well-known Flash exploitation technique to achieve arbitrary memory access and bypass Windows’ ASLR and DEP protections. and exploitation. Although I think I understood the main point, I would be happy if someone would explain it in a simpler terms. I really enjoyed reading explanation about heartbleed vulnerability in openSsl, and hope that someone can explain it in a similar fashion.
I am trying to come up with a solution for a system where i need to generate a key (Kn) from time to time and distribute it to a large number of servers in a private network. Since it has to be a scalable solution, i thought about using a KDC along with multicast to communicate with all servers in order to update Kn, but although it is a private network i am concern about security. Even if i have a private key (K) known only to the KDC and all trusted servers, used to encrypt Kn like M = E(Kn,K) (and decrypt to recover Kn), how should K be distributed to all trusted servers? Edit: What i am trying to do is, every time the KDC generates a new Kn, it will it send over multicast for all trusted servers in the multicast group. That means the servers will be passively listening for any key changes. Timing in this solution is not important. If someone could point me in the right direction, i would appreciate it! Thank you.
As part of a security research, I need to make my WiFi open, and to inspect the traffic of the ones who connect to it. Additionally, I need to be able to change the content of the webpages they see, and generally to act as a man in the middle. Do you know relevant tools or tools that already do this? Can someone give me some guidelines and relevant references? Which technical problems I might face during the development process? Which platforms/languages are recommended for such a project?
How do I hash the password for a keystore? How do I then use the hash to retrieve something from keystore? Similarly, how do I use a hashed password for accessing the database? I have encrypted the password and stored the key in a keystore and I understand that this is not good design and better solution is to store the password in a hashed way and then use that. Not sure how that is useful after it's hashed, i.e. how to compare and allow authenticated access?
At an organisation if their Wifi is secured with WEP? why is this particularly bad for the organisation/business itself, I know WEP is a weak security algorithm which easily cracked but why is this specifically bad for the organisation? In other words how does this impact a business?
I have noticed that the intermediate certificates on a web service are installed in the wrong order. What effects could I expect from this? I used the Symantec certificate checker which stated: Certificates installed in the wrong order. Some certificates in the chain are installed in the wrong order. See details below. Reinstall the certificates in the proper order. Would this result in SSL handshakes being rejected? If they're not rejected, would it result in requests/responses being encrypted incorrectly?
Looking over an overview of the newest published IE exploit, I noticed what I think is assembly. I don't know anything about exploit development, but I know a little about assembly. Seeing that assembly code, does that mean exploits target specific architectures on specific OSs? As in, does that mean that the IE vulnerability needs to be developed IN ASSEMBLY once for each OS( XP, Vista, 7, 8 ), doubled based on 32/64 bit, then doubled again based on byte order?
Are there any standards around what information should be included in a transparency report? I have reviewed what other companies have provided and would like to follow suit but I'm not aware of any standard. If there is no standard, please feel free to provide suggestions for a baseline of information that is helpful to users of a service. My thoughts are to release what information is gathered when using any one of our services, or when connecting to our network (we provide Internet access).
The calculation of RAVs in OSSTMM seem very useful as a security metric but, can they be the base for a risk assessment methodology compliant with the new ISO 27001:2013 and ISO 31000? ISO 27001:2013 risk assessment requirements are aligned with ISO 31000 so I think that we can focus on ISO 31000. ISO 31000 establish the following phases: Risk identification Risk analysis Risk evaluation Risk treatment I think that OSSTMM testing can be matched against risk identification (process of finding, recognizing and describing risks). The risk analysis phase (process to comprehend the nature of risk and to determine the level of risk) and risk evaluation (process of comparing the results of risk analysis with risk criteria to determine whether the risk and/or its magnitude is acceptable or tolerable) can be matched with the calculation of the attack surface and RAV. And risk treatment phase could be an additional phase where using the classification of vulnerabilities in OSSTMM we choose relevant controls that reduce the risk (attack surface, RAV). Is this matching correct for you? Is it possible to use OSSTMM, attack surface and RAV calculation as an ISO 31000 compliant risk assessment methodology? There exist any fundamental requirement in ISO 31000 or ISO 27001:2013 that makes impossible the use of RAV as its risk assessment methodology?
Why is important for a business to secure its email system?
In the window.crypto spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/#RandomSource-interface It says explicitly: "Do not generate keys using the getRandomValues method. Use the generateKey method instead." but generateKey does not support secp256k1/ECDSA (bitcoin related). Why does it say that? Because the random numbers are not crypto secure? or because the key needs to be verified afterwards? (if it is the later case, we can verify it).
Is there a difference between Attribute Based Access Control which is usually associated with XACML and Claim Based Authorization which seems to be a term coined by Microsoft? Is the latter simply Microsoft's name/implementation for ABAC? Or are the two completely different concepts? I came across both terms during my research and they seem like similar if not identical things to me, but maybe I am missing something? Are claims and attributes just different names for the same idea? Attributes: Attribute-based access control defines a new access control paradigm whereby access rights are granted to users through the use of policies which combine attributes together. (Wikipedia) Claims: Claims-based authorization is an approach where the authorization decision to grant or deny access is based on arbitrary logic that uses data available in claims to make the decision. (MSDN)
When I log into cPanel, I go to create a new MySQL Database with the wizard. Usually, it is recommended to assign the database user with all of the permissions from Insert, Update, Alter, Execute, etc. in the list. This has gotten me thinking. Please note: When I build my applications, all the permissions that are required is Insert, Update, Delete, Select and Alter. Which is very reasonable for doing everything we want to displaying data, and interacting with it. When do we ever want to actually allow an web application such as a simple PHP CRUD to execute, drop, create, trigger, and a few other privileges? Would that be more of a security threat to MySQL and our database?
We found a security vulnerability in a widespread product of big IT company (the company is listed as a CNA here: http://cve.mitre.org/cve/cna.html#participating_cnas). We notified the company, they acknowledged the problem and they are going to release a patch for it. We specifically asked to have a CVE assigned to the vulnerability we found, but they replied giving us an internal "bug identifier". Is this a "normal" behavior? How can we get a CVE if they do not assign one to the bug we found? Thanks
Is there a secure DNS provider? Kind of alternative to DNSCrypt.
I turned on 2-step verification and had to setup an application specific password for Outlook. I noticed the password generated is actually weaker than the one I had before turning on 2-step verification. Is it worth it? How exactly does the application specific password work, for example after the first time the app logs in does Google somehow remember some sort of finger print of the app? EDIT: after reading the possible duplicate it is a very similar question. However, even the answers to that do not address if 2-step verification it's necessarily safer. In a nut shell the answers given say that it is very difficult to brute force the generated application specific passwords, but the same could be said about a normal password (without 2 step verification) so in this sense 2 step verification would be pointless?
Consider the following scenario. Eve creates an access point in a public place. Alice connects to the AP via mobile phone and starts browsing the Web. Eve redirects Alice to a registration page and suggests to Alice to read and accept terms and conditions bla-bla and install an SSL certificate. As far as Alice is an ordinary mobile user, she thoughtlessly installs the certificate (she just clicks the Okay button since the registration message contains more than 140 characters). Most important is that it's a one-step procedure on most mobile devices. Now Eve can perform a MITM attack. She can hijack HTTP(S) traffic. Consider yourself as a Bob's mobile application developer. How can we prevent the described attack? Can we even do that? Feel free to suggest your solution for any mobile OS.
Fairly frequently, the contact form on my blog gets comments that look similar to this (each field represents a text box users can enter into the HTML form on the blog): Name: 'ceguvzori' Email: 'gwizwo@avbhdu.com' Website: 'QrSkUPWK' Comment: vaB5LN <a href="http://pepddqfgpcwe.com/">pepddqfgpcwe</a>, [url=http://hvyhfrijavkm.com/]hvyhfrijavkm[/url], [link=http://cwiolknjxdry.com/]cwiolknjxdry[/link], http://ubcxqsgqwtza.com/ I'd consider them to be spam, but the sites they link to don't exist, so they aren't helping SEO or spreading malicious links. Not even the email host, avbhdu.com, exists. What is the purpose of these comments?