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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 t... |
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-... |
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.... |
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 authenticatio... |
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 si... |
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 wo... |
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 an... |
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... |
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!?... |
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. ... |
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 preven... |
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 guy... |
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 nu... |
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 verificat... |
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... |
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 ma... |
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, b... |
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 n... |
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)
- ... |
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 ... |
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 th... |
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:
Tr... |
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 encry... |
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 --asse... |
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... |
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 o... |
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 appli... |
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 clie... |
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 no... |
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 ... |
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... |
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 (... |
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 ... |
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 ac... |
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 lowe... |
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 secur... |
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 infor... |
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 ques... |
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... |
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 bs... |
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, ... |
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 lin... |
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 ou... |
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.... |
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... |
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 t... |
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... |
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, B... |
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 ... |
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) {
// cod... |
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 cl... |
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 though... |
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 t... |
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'... |
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 some... |
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 ... |
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 Ca... |
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 se... |
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 ca... |
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 t... |
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). How... |
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.examp... |
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 ... |
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 ... |
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... |
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 we... |
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, ... |
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 ... |
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 th... |
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... |
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 vu... |
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 helpf... |
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 t... |
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 ... |
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 ... |
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 requ... |
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 th... |
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 l... |
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 o... |
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://h... |
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