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I am connected to my router and I want to know if it is a possibility to sniff a data from a router that is over my router?
The possibility to enable port forwards for any hosts inside the LAN has of course security implications. The problem from my point of view is not that there are bad users, but bad hosts/programs and of course the problem of CSRF. But for some applications it would be good to have such a thing. Other possibilities lik...
I have a scenario where I want to encrypt the file data on client machine along with smart card authentication. I have followed a link that states that for smart cards, private key never leaves The card. It further explains that File data encryption should be done using on-board smart card processor with the session ke...
How to find encryption method if both encrypted and decrypted code known? j1RSfCKUuvqjHLBtuIe9AOb03gkd2ENLj+KNkWUHff6duf1/iz2zNjU48B0v4O3PFWV3Q0scOPYDu7vuW2mvNKJWXQrIpHGCBEeqyXpihR1WWQo6hfe81YenVH35Gxp/7Xmltp5V8+XEhXOV8jyXtjBaKGVNgmA6F5kmQPAqCaA= this is a sample encrypted code, how could i identify its method if i...
The Story: Yesterday at 12pm a neighbor of mine was pulling into his driveway, and saw that his van's back-window was shattered. Well, this neighbor and I have had some trouble with each other in the past (only noise complaints though) because he is in a band, and plays in his garage; however, it was not me who broke t...
While connected to my hotel Wi-Fi, visiting the URL http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js results in the following content being served: var ga_exists; if(!ga_exists) { ga_exists = 1; var is_responsive = false; var use_keywords = false; Date.prototype.addHours = function (h) { this.setHours(th...
I get the OS type of a remote host by: connecting to an open port (telnet <host> 22); using Nmap (nmap -A <host>). What are techniques and how to hide or change the information about OS? I would like to get answers with respect to GNU/Linux or (and) BSD OS.
Lets say there is AJAX application where user can submit items - buy them. And there was a code IF ($_POST[items] > 20) { echo 'error'; } else { do_buy($_POST[items]); echo 'success' } So there is a check if items is not more than 20, lets say on client side it is not possible to choose more than 20 items, b...
I have a client that generates a csr, sends it to a server, the server then sign it and return the certificate as a String. the String is then decoded to a x509Certificate (using Bouncycastle's PEMParser) which is then imported to the client keystore. The questions are: Should i verify/validate anything before importi...
I'm testing a system which involves updating a database using files sent from external parties. These files sent from external parties are basically just large flat files to update a database. The requirement is that these files must be signed used a File Signing Key in accordance with the FIPS 186-4 Digital Signature ...
Considering the recent thread regarding anti-virus for the Mac I wonder how many of the arguments put forth are relevant today to Linux systems, specifically Ubuntu. There are no known Ubuntu desktop malware in the wild. GNU/Linux is a very tempting target for botnets, considering that powers a substansial fraction of...
This is my first question here in Information Security SE. Is there a recommendation to help telling the scenarios where authentication should precede authorization from the ones where authorization comes first? I experienced both situations at different workplaces (the situation was very similar, switching to a system...
If a user wants to login to a system/server, it's recommended to have the hashed&salted password saved in a database, along with its salt. So the user wants to login, types in the password, clicks on login and with his input and the salt the system checks if the correct hash is created. I understand this part. But when...
A Yahoo! answers user suggested that there are 5^5 possible unique configurations for a physical key, but the answer wasn't sourced. I wondered if anyone had similar numbers for how many possible key combinations there are. I ask because, it seems impossible that there can be a unique key for every lock in the world, a...
I'm starting a very large project soon. It must include a licensing system. The project will produced using PHP/Laravel/JavaScript and use many different libraries, a CMS, and a few databases. The software will be licensed out to other companies, which is why the ability to enable/disable usage is very important. For ...
I use LastPass for Android with the PIN option. After having entered my full Lastpass password the first time that I used the app, now when opening the application I have access to all my passwords just by entering a four-digit PIN. How secure can this be? Where might the data stored such that it is accessible by PIN o...
I have a web site hosted from my server. Sometimes, I upload database manipulation scripts to a folder which is three levels deep in the website and run them using my web browser. These scripts should not be accessed by outside users and I remove them within hours of uploading them. Is there a risk that these script...
I know that the following authentication protocol is vulnerable, but I can't understand why. A and B share a secret key K (64 bits) R1 and R2 are two 64 bit numbers A-->B: I am A B-->A: R1 A-->B: Hash((K+R1) mod 2^64), R2 B-->A: Hash((K+R2) mod 2^63) My thinking is that the two hashes don't line up, but I don'...
I have a folder that I don't want to be accessible from outside my network's LAN. It seems like all traffic from the outside world goes through my firewall (192.168.1.39). So I made my .htaccess as follows: Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from 192.168.1.39 My thinking is that it allows all traffic, except for tra...
One of my clients wants to provide an URL to each of his customers to register in a system. This URL would contain a query string parameter with some data (e.g. code, email and name) from his clients encrypted using AES with CBC, similar to this (IV is in bold): www.website.com/register?key=44a74fb9fad889496e970c604e54...
I am a Python / C developer currently working on a extremely important piece of software. The details of the code will not be mentioned, and the only place the code appears is on my own hard drive, in a virtual disk image used by a windows 7 virtual box (a hard drive inside a hard drive I guess). The algorithm represen...
In movies and TV shows, characters are often depicted using devices and applications that are able to determine an encryption key or passcode character by character (or digit by digit). I am a programmer and think I have a decent idea of how encryption works in general but I'm not sure whether to take this as a simple...
Having a more-than-elementary knowledge of internet security, I've realized that some web applications and websites I use implement a less-than-ideal password policy. Some examples include: Implementing a password-length upper-bound (upper-bounds I have seen are 16, 20, and 32) Requiring the presence of arbitrary char...
I recently came across an application that more or less does this: starts from a (supposedly unknown to others) key generates a random IV encrypts some smallish (~ 160 bytes) payload with the key and generated IV using AES256 in CBC mode [>=60% of payload is comprised of two or three ASCII words, chosen from a suppose...
I could not able to configure burp suite with browsers. If I use manual connection settings in browsers,I could not load any site.Because my company uses proxy. Following Methods I have tried but fails: I have set manual proxy as "127.0.0.1:8080" but my browser could not load any site after that proxy change.Though bur...
Our application is using loadXML extensively to recieve data(input) from the users. Other than the usual checks for SQL injections and XXS, are there any known risks in parsing the xml file using loadXML? The XML files are limited in size and will be under 2MB. Could someone potentially create an XML files with a malic...
So I was just reading up on the OWASP site about PHP Object Injection. According to their site, the suggested fix is to not use serialze and unserialize but to use json_encode and json_decode. However, after doing a few tests in a limited amount of time I have found that this isn't the case at all. For example (workin...
...its remote administration feature is locked down to a single IP/Range? If so, why? This has been an ongoing office debate for a while now, I claim that it would be possible as it is likely to be the internal web server and the technologies it uses (cgi etc.) that will handle that remote authentication, but I have m...
The situation comes down to this: When I enter in hotmail, it retrieves my messages connecting to other providers: they could only do so by using my email and password. Since I had signed in a couple of days ago, I do not need to put my email/password again: hotmail doesn't know any secret about me/this specific sessi...
I was curious on some best practices for securing Outlook against hackers. The data transmitted between the email server and client are almost always encrypted these days but I haven't seen a great deal of security when the mail actually is on the local machine. If someone were to gain access to your machine rather it ...
Does having a nonce in CTR mode actually improve security (vs. just using 1, 2, 3, etc. - basically a constant nonce of 0)? As far as I can tell, the best-case scenario security-wise is that the nonce could act as a sort of second key, which would also be shared securely between the communicating parties. But if the un...
I'm new to the IT Security Stack Exchange! This is my question: I've Skype installed on my Windows 7 computer. In the last few months I've noticed my mouse cursor blinks (I mean it shows that cursor that appears when the computer is processing something) every time I type or click while Skype is the "focus" of my atten...
I used encfs to encrypt some important files on my system, but sadly I forget the encryption key. I still have a version of some of the the encrypted files. Is there there a way to get the encryption key if I have the two versions of the file (the encrypted and decrypted one), so I can use this key the get the rest of ...
Following the breach of avast:forum.avast.com they decided to host the database externally@id.avast.com. My question is, what is the point of hosting the database externally since when you get remote code execution on forum.avast.com (which has access to the database hosted on id.avast.com) you can then steal the datab...
I would like to know how the ATM pin hole camera works.Whether the pin hole camera works only once the card is inserted in ATM or during the cash withdrawal or it works always?
Let's say we create a flyer in some desktop publishing software (e.g., InDesign, Illustrator), physically print it and post it somewhere. We don't want inauthentic claims of authorship. Is there a way to, say, put a [?] on the flyer that only we could have generated. Or, that someone claiming to author the flyer cannot...
I've understood that the following steps are taken when I log in to a site: 1. My password is hashed 2. The hash is compared to what's stored in the database. 3. If the hashes are equal, I can log in. I'm also quite certain that if attackers gain access to the password database, they can use brute force to find the cl...
As we all know, when an SSL Certificate is assigned, there is a trust chain that is created for verify everyone from the Certificate Authority to the actual website's SSL Certificate. Thanks to a good discussion with a security expert, I am lead to believe that this trust chain is flawed by the way it is done. After so...
It's "time to add a word" says Arnold Reinhold, the creator of Diceware, in his blog (3/2014). He advices to use 6 word sentences (or 5 words with one extra character chosen and placed at random) from now on. Reasons given include that he predicted the likelihood of a change in 2014 back in 1995, and that "Today crimin...
I am using Firefox browser version 28.0. To access https://www.yahoo.com, I put a proxy with a self-signed certificate in between and my client PC can access the HTTPS site. I then sniffed traffic in my client PC and observed a strange thing; Each HTTPS request sent from Firefox is split into two TCP segments. One is o...
Is checking the state of the supporting files of the Windows registry hives enough to detect if a new software/malware has been installed on the computer or a given Windows regsitry key has been modified ? By checking the state I mean verifying for example the last modification date, the size of the file and so on. It ...
After reading the question about a manipulated google analytics script I wonder how you would protect against this kind of attack. What comes to mind is setting DNS IP fixed in network configuration or using a tunnel, but in both cases you would not detect the attack. Is there a way to protect yourself and also be able...
I have a client who is looking to hold personal information such as Driving Licences and Insurance documents in order to verify if a user of the site is who they say they are and lives where they say they live (the site is a sort of brokerage) We were looking at storing this information in an offsite solution such as a...
The internet is full of guides of how to remove malware on already infected computers. Normally, step 1 is to enter failsafe mode, so that the virus can't interfere with the anti-virus program that easy. But if you got infected, you shutdown your computer, then the virus could have time to encrypt itself. And when you ...
Could someone please enlighten me, either on a technical level or high level if that detail is not feasible, on how tracker cookies and beacons work. Particularly, how information on my browsing habits (shopping suggestions) can be persisted between different machines even when I only use one for work, never logging i...
What is the relationship between the Suite B algorithms and FIPS 140-2 certification? Does OpenSSL meet both criteria? From what I've read, it seems that OpenSSL's crypto library implements many algorithms, and the FIPS 140-2 Object Module covers a subset of those algorithms. Further, it seems that Suite B is an even ...
Block http HEAD requests helps us to solidify the safety rules for a Apache webserver or this restriction would be an exaggerated? What kind of vulnerability can be exploited by HEAD method? Tests: lynx --dump --head http://www.terra.com.br HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 14:44:35 GMT Content-...
I have come across a few Android apps that provide various features for communicating with a desktop machine (sending text or typing in one direction or another, controlling the desktop pointer with the mobile device, sending mobile notifications to the desktop, etc). Most of them rely on both machines being on the sam...
I am running a Windows XP virtual machine on a Windows XP host machine. I use the VM for suspicious websites and software/applications. In the case a kaylogger will be installed on my VM: will this keylogger listen to the keyboard activities when I type on the host machine ?
I was wondering how PGP works with a CC. In my understanding, if I send an e-mail to foo@example.com and use baz@example.org in the CC, Enigmail would have to encrypt the e-mail once for every user and send two e-mails. But in reality, if baz@example.org checks his e-mail he is still listed as CC and not as the main re...
What's the best way to hash a credit card number so that it can be used for fingerprinting (i.e. so that comparing two hashes will let you know if the card numbers match or not)? Ideally, I'm looking for recommendations of which hash + salt might be well suited for this use-case. The hash would uniquely identify a par...
I have found a small encryption in a programm and would like to identify it, in terms of the public name. I have been programming with a DES and with TEA, but what i have here is not even similar with these. The Algorithm is en/encrypting (exactly, only) 4 byte blocks, is using 5 steps left and right shifting, and xor...
When a user is logged into a web-based application in multiple tabs, and changes their password, should it automatically log them out of the other tabs? The use case is an account is compromised, the attacker logs in, the user also logs in and changes their password, however, since the attacker was already logged in, t...
I am running a windows 7 virtual box without internet connected. Internet is, however, connected to the host, and I allow any internet access to and from the host. On the guest platform I am working with some sensitive documents that I do not want any viruses or attackers to get. Can someone look at the virtual box har...
I could use a password manager, but I don't like relying on another entity than myself to store my passwords, and it would screw me over if I find myself on the internet in a new location without the database. So I want to use the correct horse battery staple method for my passwords (don't tell anyone,) and memorise al...
Found this article on using Live Boot Devices to do sensitive tasks such as online banking. While the article discusses the benefits of avoiding a possibly compromised host OS, it doesn't mention lower-level threats. Given increasing prevalence of sub-OS malware (e.g. BIOS, NIC, etc.), is there still a substantial incr...
I'm looking to generate some new passwords for myself that are easy to remember, but hard to crack. By choosing a generation algorithm and generating one random password with it, I can be relatively confident of how hard to crack my password is. (I can calculate its entropy.) If, instead, I keep generating passwords un...
So I have a client-authencation cert installed on client PCs, which doesn't expire for 5 more years. Unfortunately, the cert on our gateway which is used to validate the client cert, expires this month. I know.... D'Oh! Plan A is to place a new cert on our gateway, and issue new client-auth certs to all of the clients...
For a cryptocurrency client implementation, I am serving a single page webapp to mobile clients. It is a client-side-only page. I would like to serve this page to clients, but I fear tampering by hosts to change the code so that user passwords are intercepted. The passwords, at least 128 bits of entropy enforced, are...
I have two different crypto libraries I created, one is in java and uses the standard built-in java crypto libraries. The other uses openssl and has been wrapped in java through the JNI. I'm currently replacing the default java library code with the openssl library code, and verifying the encryptions against each other...
If a user connects to an SSH server using an rsa private key, but does not confirm the server's fingerprint. What kind of information can a man in the middle attack get from the session?
My GF just told me she just sent some of her personal info over an email. She was trying to send her folks some documents. I guess the documents had some sensitive info on them, like her full name, SSN#, etc. The email was not encrypted. How at risk is she and what should she do from here? She is freaking out.
I'm currently following a small game to get more familar with linux and security and got the following task: The password for the next level is stored in /etc/bandit_pass/bandit14 and can only be read by user bandit14. For this level, you don’t get the next password, but you get a private SSH key that can be used to l...
I'm trying to understand SSL/TLS. What follows are a description of a scenario and a few assumptions which I hope you can confirm or refute. Question How can my employer be a man-in-the-middle when I connect to Gmail? Can he at all? That is: is it possible for the employer to unencrypt the connection between the browse...
How could I decrypt a file (encrypted with AES-128) using openssl ? I do not remember the passphrase I used to encrypt it, but I saved the key generated and used to encrypt my file. How could I use this key to decrypt my file ?
I am connected to my chat accounts via Empathy, a messaging program, and it has my password stored in it. I am really curious to know how it is storing the passwords, and if there is any they can retrieved back in plain text?
If you have a REST API, which when you log in from the client side, generates an access token for the client, which is then stored in local storage and used for all authentication from this point on. Is it secure to keep using the same access token, say you generate the access token, store it in the database, and keep ...
I'm unable to understand how arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities are supposed to work. Wikipedia mentions: Arbitrary code execution is commonly achieved through control over the instruction pointer of a running process. Say, the vulnerability is being triggered by some maliciously crafted file that said process ...
The traffic from Wireshark saved into a file with dumpcap. In this file a have for example : € X `þ $À6 @ íëÃNxXÀ¨£ P&E»kKí¨<`PEà; HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: private And I want to see only : HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: private On windows 7 and I use this commands : cd\pro* cd wir...
is it recommended to use both protocols together? In which situation?
We are currently using EasyRSA and OpenSSL to manage our user VPN certificates for OpenVPN. The process we have in place currently is: User generates a CSR on their laptop and sends it to us to sign We copy the CSR to the server, sign it, and return the signed CRT to the user We usually leave a copy of of the CSR and ...
What's the point of spotlighting wget on heartbleed dumps? I'm specifically talking about this which is the first page of wget occurencies in heartbleed dumps. They put this page as a link on the top of the main page like if that is relevant in some way. I can understand the reason behind exposing email= and password=...
I just visited a forum and a member knew what OS I was running without me saying anything (a not TOO common distro of linux). Now I'm not sure how he exactly he might have done it, or what information he might have been able to get out, but, for starters, I'm guessing that, besides information on my OS, they might have...
So, a bit of context before I start may be handy. I am developing a Java desktop application which will use an SQLite database to store/process data. The application will utilize authentication to access the program for editing data, adding/deleting data, etc. But I don't want an attacker to be able to pull the laptop'...
A framework for modeling password management risks and costs, and the beginnings of a good strategy for users to help them manage passwords for their often large portfolios of accounts is outlined in the paper Password Portfolios and the Finite-Effort User: Sustainably Managing Large Numbers of Accounts | USENIX Securi...
I want to have a simple application that is in .exe (executable) format hosted on a secure domain that, on my website, a user can click to download and run. However, I'm aware that many annoying viruses are in the form of a harmless-looking executable, so I naturally would want to also put, as a small notice for that d...
Soon I will be acquiring the event logs of the systems my company produces and expected to audit them. Multiple logs are generated from each computer and there are multiple operating systems to audit. The systems are isolated from the internet and have a significant amount of physical security, not to mention there isn...
I bought a domain few days before. but it came to my attention that my domain has been blacklisted by many antivirus programs and search engines as the domain for previously purchased by somebody and he misuse it. Though i have asked few antivirus companies and search engines to review the domain, but i want to know wh...
I was looking through the OpenSSL vulnerabilities list and came across CVE-2010-5298 as a 2014 vulnerability. At http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2010-5298, under Date Entry Created, it says 20140414. However, under http://cve.mitre.org/cve/identifiers/syntaxchange.html, it clearly shows that format a...
I'm new to SSL/TSL and was wondering if you could walk me through the following scenario. Scenario Let's say I am one of a thousand websites that has a certificate signed by some certificate authority (CA). Everything is fine. Breach Then, some evil hacker steals the CA's private key. Now, all of a sudden, all thousand...
Homework question The full question is the following: Suppose you are told that the one time pad encryption of the message "attack at dawn" is 09e1c5f70a65ac519458e7e53f36 (the plaintext letters are encoded as 8-bit ASCII and the given ciphertext is written in hex). What would be the one time pad encryption of the mess...
First of all, I apologize if these questions can be answered using a web search, but I'm sort of a crypto noob and don't know what to search for. Given N AES encrypted messages (where the message length is much longer than the key length), and the corresponding N decrypted messages (all encrypted with different keys),...
Ok I've worked with some penetration testing but it's all done in house where I work at on a secure network to secure servers and work stations before being deployed. But my question here is kind of vague on the laws of the U.S. I want to show my girlfriends son who is interested in my line of work some examples of ha...
Utill yesterday I never saw any warnings on secure sites like twitter and many others but currently I am getting an exclamation in my chrome saying identity not verified but https is indeed used, hence what to do in this situation? following are the screenshots: Well it was resolved today
Note: This is not an actual situation I'm currently in. Assume your boss is one of those old-fashioned computer-illiterate managers and wants to store the passwords in plaintext to simplify development. You get 5 minutes to explain the point of hashing passwords. You also know from experience that your boss can be sway...
I'm not clearly understand technologies behind OpenVPN, so I have a question about OpenVPN security: What if I have client.p12 (PKCS#12) file and this file was leaked (with export password) to some evil person. Additionally this person can dump my encrypted VPN traffic (which was secured with leaked client.p12 file). D...
From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj709705.aspx In contrast to the DAC model, which is oriented around objects, the AzMan RBAC model attempts to orient the common administrative experience around user roles. Rather than assigning permissions to objects, an AzMan RBAC framework enables applications to present...
What is the difference between openssl and mkcert. Which one should I prefer. I want to create an IIS hosted WCF service. Which one should I use to create an SSL certificate. Also, there is another option to create an ssl certificate. On the iis we can create a self signed certificate. Can I use this instead of the one...
An anti tampering mechanism of a device relay on detect tampering mechanism when the device is powered down using the energy provided internally by a coin cell. Is there a way to uncharge rapidly a coin cell contained in a device without having access to the coin cell and the electronic that use it ? I'm trying to th...
I am looking to PEN test my application against XSS attacks. The application is a REST API... As such when you POST some JSON to /cart/add to see the result of that attack you would need to GET /cart. So far I have figured out how to successfully use Fuzzer to make XSS attacks to my application. However it expects th...
The requirements for a system like itunes store or google play are as follows; identify and authenticate the user determine if the user has paid for a given app if s/he has, securely transmit the app and install it on the device What is the strategy used in this situation? In particular, is the app transmitted in an ...
Years ago computer security analysts Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema wrote the security program S.A.T.A.N. Does anyone know what happened to it (or if it just went out of style) and what people replaced it with, if anything?
I was going to ask about how to educate users, but now that I think about it, I first want to know if it's actually possible to do effectively at all. Are there any amazing success (or horrible failure) stories floating around about user education, and different approaches thereto? Any statistics on whether companies t...
I need to set up an scenario where an attacker DoS attacks port 80 of an server while snort and others users try to connect to port 80 at the same time. Something like this: 1000 connections to port 80 800 analyzed by Snort 750 detected like DoS attack by Snort How can I get these values? What tools I need besides sn...
I am writing a paper on "The Role of Architecture and Design in Software Assurance" and a commenter asked "Provide a stronger case for using the CWE over the CVE. Explain how CVE vulnerabilities relate to the design phase and static code analysis." As the article is more for software engineers and developers, I am lo...
The author of https://stackoverflow.com/a/477578/14731 recommends: DO NOT STORE THE PERSISTENT LOGIN COOKIE (TOKEN) IN YOUR DATABASE, ONLY A HASH OF IT! [...] use strong salted hashing (bcrypt / phpass) when storing persistent login tokens. I was under the impression that login cookies served two purposes: UX benefi...
Start with a unique identifier String macAddress = "CC:3A:61:24:D6:96"; Hash the identifier via MD5 implementation String hash = md5(macAddress); //bd37f780e10244cf28810b969559ad5b Remove all letters from the hash String result = hash.replaceAll("[^\\d.]", ""); result == "3778010244288109695595" I am using MD5 to ano...
I am trying to balance good security practices against excessive logging of user metadata / Personally Identifiable Information. I am constructing a web app that allows for secure messaging. In part of my system design, I am trying to minimize leaking of user metadata. Part of my system design includes a module that tr...
So I'm running a private subnet where there is no internet connectivity, I understand the grave danger of running an ssh server on the internet without security. In short I would like to be able to login to another machine on my subnet without entering a password or fumbling with rsa keys. So passwordless, but not p...
I have a customer who wants me to "restore" his Wordpress page. I looked a little bit deeper in the codes and found the following code a few times in different files: http://pastebin.com/nL4i6t8x I'm not an expert in IT Security but for me this looks pretty much as "encrypted" code that does not belong to Wordpress. Ho...