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I manage a single sign on solution (CAS) for a group of related web applications. The CAS specification states that Login Tickets are associated with every login attempt which can only be used once.
Our implementation of the login server (RubyCAS) auto-expires these tickets after 90 seconds. Ie. if a user takes longer ... |
Let's say you burn a CD-R and it is finalized. Later, if you put it into a CD drive with some OS running, is it possible for the OS to write to it ?
Obviously, this shouldn't typically happen, because of some conventions that are typically followed. But, can these conventions be disobeyed by some, possibly malicious, s... |
Last night I was browsing notable computer attacks and came across the Samy worm, which apparently affected a huge portion of the MySpace network -- over one million users in under 24 hours, according to the perpetrator's story.
On his website, he offers a step-by-step look at how he developed the code, as well as the ... |
Is GnuPG/OpenPGP a good solution to protect internal company email communication?
With PRISM and previous major company hacking news stories, I'm looking for a solid way to protect company confidential information while communicating by email?
Another concern is that most people are often need to access their email whi... |
I just installed a EV SSL certificate on my server. It has been done correctly and is working, the issue is that Chrome does not show the company name in the green address bar, just shows the green padlock and green https:// like you get when you have a standard SSL certificate.
IE and Firefox display the green bar and... |
I've been worried about this password manager, PasswordBox that seems to be gathering quite a bit of steam lately.
They seem to have raised VC funding and are offering a free password management and storage tool. Their team does not seem to have extensive crypto experience.
What really worries me is that their Security... |
Here is some code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
char globalbuf[256];
void function(char *argv) {
char localbuf[256];
strcpy(localbuf, argv);
strcpy(globalbuf, localbuf);
printf("localbuf addr: %p globalbuf addr: %p\n", localbuf, globalbuf);
}
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
function(argv[1... |
How can an attacker take advantage of a world where state is eventually consistent and vector clocks are used to settle disagreements?
For example, what are the security concerns of using a database like Cassandra to settle finical transactions?
Is anyone aware of exploit code that is leveraging a flaw in a distributed... |
Antivirus writers have agreed for their software to recognize a standard "fake" virus file - the EICAR file, to let users check, that the software is up and running.
Are there any equivalent test sites for trying out McAfee SiteAdvisor, Kaspersky URL Advisor, Norton Safe Web, Google Safe Browsing, and others?
Or can a... |
Someone, I think it was on Charlie Rose, said that anybody who wants to can currently discover what websites have been visited by some person of interest. That assertion was possibly made as a way of saying that one should not worry about the government doing what private citizens are already doing. It used to be that ... |
I'm probably just thick and sufficiently new to security related issues in software development, but since I can't find information and I've been stuck on Googling this for a while.
Recently I came across a book, Dynamic Secrets in Communication Security (also available in Amazon) and now wonder, if this technique has ... |
I don't know if this is the right place to ask but I heard that adult websites (porn) had viruses. I used to look up porn on my iPhone (I won't anymore) and I understand that there aren't viruses for iPhones yet, but if my iPhone gets a virus, can I affect other PCs on my network?
|
Self-Proclaimed Experts are quick to say that for every time a password is being transmitted from a webserver to a user and vv, you need to use SSL. Because there will be people each time trying to get your password who are always in between you and the server you request data from. If you are in a crochet forum, there... |
I understand that one can use for example PGP (or GnuPG) to encrypt emails and files. (And I understand that there are other programs out there that will do "similar things") This, though, requires that both the sender and recipient have PGP installed on the computer that they are using. And it requires, of course, sha... |
I am from a marketing firm which now has a development team, which i am part of. We have been tasked with finding a few freelancers who can come in and work when either me and the other developer is off, on holiday, ill etc. Now, in these circumstances, we don't want the freelancers to be asking questions all day, and ... |
imagine you secured your application with oauth2 and several oauth providers.
Now imagine someone using provider A with email bob@example.com to log in.
Next time, someone uses provider B with the same email bob@xample.com to log in.
Both provider state that the email address is verified and both are big companies (no ... |
Gnome 3 (under GNU/Linux, BSD or other Un*x) now offers a gnome shell with nice presentation, but where the configuration and theming are to be done via a web browser (and a public URL, on a public server).
I know that having two questions for one is not welcome there, but the link between the questions is strong.
Here... |
I have a very specific question.
A client verifies a server by taking the certificate and checking specific values and that the digital signature of the intermediate CA is correct (according to the public key stored on the clients computer).
Option A:
Does the client not make sure that the intermediate CA signature (... |
A Change Request from a client (in the commercial sense of the word) to an organisation supplying an IT system to that client, can add or modify requirements for that system. Are there any known examples where the content of such a Change Request has been tampered with by a malicious third party and the additional or m... |
In such articles as this one at Examiner.com, we see that Apple had long "advertised" the immunity of its desktop OS to viruses. It had to dilute that assertion when the Flashback virus appeared.
What was it about OS/X that made Apple so confident that it was immune to PC viruses?
|
I'm looking for a way to create a URL that allows a user to login to our application without providing a username and password.
We have created an API which is protected using OAuth 2.0. I want to take advantage of this and create the possibility to GET a URL when you provide a OAuth Token (Token is bound to a user) wh... |
I can access it via telnet from the internet once I get the IP of my phone
Probably an HTTP server
telnet XXXX 80
Trying XXXX...
Connected to XXXX.
Escape character is '^]'.
HELP
<HEAD><TITLE>Invalid HTTP Request</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="white" FGCOLOR="black"><H1>Invalid HTTP Request</H1><HR>
<FONT FACE="Helveti... |
I just made a new account with some eGov service (Belgian government).
I use LastPass (which generates long, random strings for each site),
But the system told me that the maximum allowed length was 16 ASCII symbols. Why do people do this? If they hash it, then the length should not matter, right?
Is there a reason f... |
In light of recent events, I've been learning more about Tor, and I have a lot of questions. Here's one.
Wikipedia's article states;
As of 2012, 80% of the Tor Project's $2M annual budget comes from the United States government, with the Swedish government and other organizations providing the rest, including NGOs and... |
Some spam messages fresh from my Wordpress filter:
Asking questions are in fact pleasant thing if you are not
understanding something totally, except this article gives good
understanding yet.
and
Thanks for any other informative blog. Where else may I am getting
that kind of information written in such an ide... |
On a Windows Server 2008 machine found registry key "潓瑦慷敲卜湹潣敶祲" under HKEY_CURRENT_USER of the administrator account. It contains a value "敓癲捩剥湵楮杮" of type REG_DWORD which is set to 0.
I scanned the machine without a result with Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10, Avira AntiVir Rescue System, F-Secure Rescue CD and Malwarebytes... |
Today I restarted my Mac book Pro and the guest user was on when has always been off before.
|
I understand that the MD5 algorithm isn't collision resistant, and that collisions between data of arbitrary size can be found with more efficient methods than brute-forcing.
However, I have read that MD5 is still a safe algorithm for, say, password hashing, because no method has been found to reverse-engineer the hash... |
I want to create a client & server package with the option of an encrypted connection.
From my limited understanding, to get HTTPS connections working, the user needs their own certificate installed on their machine and this means that the client software needs to allow all certificates (with a user-specified public ke... |
I am not sure this is a right place to ask this question or not.
I want to know in previous or modern type of buffer overflow attack, when the attacker succeeded to overwrite return address, where he/she set the new return address to point to? As we know today because of new protection mechanisms it's harder to inse... |
In one of the buildings I work in, there are lawyers and accountants, web developers and marketers, and numerous other small businesses. Everyone's (shared) internet is routed through the same server room (which doubles as a broom closet), which is left unlocked and could be accessed by the public during working hours.... |
I developed a stand alone application such a way that, application use a remote service (using SOAP/REST) which available WWW. I am using HTTPS though out the application calls. It was perfectly working fine. Recently I found that some users using a web proxy like Fiddler to sniff the application traffic and monitoring... |
I am trying to recover the password of a trucrypt volume.
It is composed by a combination of 4 words (one invented). I remember 3 of them but not their order.
Do you know any tools that cold help me recover the volume? The most useful feature would be the possibility of creating /saving probable passwords by recombinin... |
We are categorizing the network traffic, like determining if it is Facebook, Yahoo etc...
Now I have been asked also separate mobile devices (like iPad, Nexus, iPhone).
It is easy to do that in HTTP with user agent information.
But I also need to consider HTTPS protocol. Is there any way I get any information about a u... |
My Files got deleted by any Employee . How to find what time it happened and whether done from another computer on network ? The files were in shared drive in the computer. I am using windows 8. What are best tools to recover the files.
|
Little time ago, me and my friends argued if TCP handshake can be passed with a spoofed IP address.
Assume I have a web server that allows only certain IP addresses.
Can anyone connect that web server by IP spoof?
|
So I have enabled 2-factor authentication on Gmail, which means that if I log in on a new machine, it sends a token to my phone.
Now, if I access Gmail from my phone, it seems like I have only one factor left; my phone.
What would be the most secure way to access Gmail from my phone?
I'm thinking an app-specific passwo... |
I have a security related question about storing some client information - specifically their database login credentials.
My app works based on the client and so the database details need to be set at the start. My initial thought was to hold it all in a MYSQL database table but if that gets compromised, then all my cl... |
Suppose a less-than-trusted server is used to store users' confidential data (encrypted at the client side), and both tasks - authentication and encryption/decryption - should be doable with a single password. Would it be enough to:
Strenghten the password with a slow key derivation function and a trivial salt [1], yi... |
I am working on a security-related project and have to make sure it is FIPS 140-2 compliant.
According to my understanding, FIPS compliance is compliance at hardware as well as software level. Currently there are 2 Samsung Android devices which are FIPS compliant, i.e. they have compliance at hardware and software leve... |
I'm running my TCP/IP protocol secured by encrypting each packet with AES128/CBC, bundling a SHA256 HMAC over that packet.
This causes quite a bit of space overhead for small packets, so at first I was thinking of running AES in CTR-mode and still use the HMAC, but it would be much better to run some sort of stream cip... |
How would one go about creating a secure email architecture?
I'm thinking specifically about protecting email from routine surveillance from oppressive regimes and corporations.
I had a think about what it might look like. I envisage an email server which receives an unencrypted email, then looks up the intended recip... |
This is an example attack scenario of OWASP for CSRF
The application allows a user to submit a state changing request that
does not include anything secret. For example:
http://example.com/app/transferFunds?amount=1500&destinationAccount=4673243243
So, the attacker constructs a request that will transfer money from... |
I am beginning to use GPG for email encryption. If I use
gpg --edit-key [keyID] to change the passphrase, what files will this affect? Will it only affect my private key, and thus I only need to rebackup this key? Will it leave my public key and the revocation certificate alone, or will these need to be regenerated an... |
It is easy to decrypt an encrypted textfile with:
gpg --decrypt /tmp/message
But how can I encrypt my own textfile?
|
This is mostly for my own education, but a scenario has came up at work that has me skeptical. I'd like for the security experts to tell me if this policy is overbearing or not.
I remote into a VPN from my home PC, non-company issued. It installs Aventail onto the machine and destroys all cached data upon log off. It a... |
Are there any services (free or otherwise) that provide information on new vulnerabilities for a given piece of technology?
For example, say I want to be updated of all new Wordpress vulnerabilities via RSS or email? What would be my best option?
|
I'm trying to get my head around 3.6.3 and 3.6.2 in the PCI-DSS standard, secure cryptographic key storage and distribution.
Would having two 256 bit key halves stored in separate, isolated locations which are XORed together to create the data encrypting key count? Is a key encrypting key strictly required?
The encry... |
I'm running latest gen Chrome (27) and preparing a demo that requires using a self-signed cert to support HTTPS on a local IIS website. The cert has been created with the correct common name for the website (good little guide here) and then added to the trusted root certs on the local machine.
In IE, everything is good... |
Say Alice publishes her public key and then disappears from public view.
Bob then needs to send a message to her that's either "OK" or ":(" so he takes her public key, encrypts his message and then publishes it publicly on the Internet.
What's to stop Eve from taking the publicly encrypted message, and then brute force... |
Does USA government have the sufficient processing power to crack keys in matter of seconds? Let say 2048-bit RSA, for example.
Since the RSA algorithm was developed by USA government (NSA?), I wouldn't be surprised if there was a secret backdoor built in it.
|
I need something like physical POS terminal but online, for offline credit card processing without needing CVV code on my site.
Does something like this exists?
|
This is probably a very basic question. I've read about canaries, and how they work in theory. You have a global variable that you set to a random number in the prolog of a function, do your function, and then verify its authenticity in the epilog.
void foobar(int a, int b)
{
prolog();
int c = a;
int d = b;
... |
Okay, so storing digitized credit card information/records is a well documented process when it comes to best practices. I recently got asked how a company can store, retrieve and process physical credit cards. I'm not particularly familiar with PCI-DSS standards
The scenario is this:
A hotel wants to be PCI compliant... |
a user (can be admin) for example in a website has:
a password that is used for normal and everyday access (not security critical actions).
another password that is used for performing security critical actions.
does this two password design have any advantages so that it is worth implementing?
can it be considered a... |
I recently stopped distributing my software, so I no longer use the digital certificate (AKA digital signature) I created for it.
A couple of days ago, a large software company offered to buy the digital certificate and use it to sign their products (I don't know what for, probably AV issues).
The thing is, my compan... |
From my understanding if i am not wrong in session fixation attacks. The attacker login into the server as a legitimate user and creates a valid session. He then the tricks the compromised user to use his session which has already been fixed. My Question is how to detect session fixation attacks one possible solution I... |
You want to check functionality of your antivirus. virussign.com can do that for money. Is there a free virus base?
|
If a Man-in-the-middle has the private RSA key of the SSL encryption.
It should be possible for the Man-in-the-middle to decode the entire HTTPS datastream right?
So, then the encryption is essentially broken.
|
How does Perfect forward secrecy work in https?
How to check whether it is enabled or not?
Which big site actually use this? Paypal? Facebook? Amazon?
I have read this Wikipedia article, but I don't know how it is applied in ssl.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy
What are the weaknesses of this? How ... |
Let's supose i have an executable file a.exe and it uses stdlib for some operations.
Let's suppose an attacker changes the system stdlib to a "malicious" stdlib. The implications of this might be very bad, specially if the a.exe has SUID permissions. What are the main mechanisms already in place to avoid fake code lo... |
I'd like some feedback on the following authentication idea, does it makes sense, and is there a standard
way of doing this (or similar) so I can rely on a well tested implementation.
I've seen many answers here on how to secure the communication to the server, and most answers are to simply
use TLS properly. I'm looki... |
I just found an injection vulnerability on a live site of a client. It looks like this:
$sql = "SELECT * FROM users_dl WHERE Username = '" . $Uname . "' AND Password = '" . $Pword . "'";
I successfully "hacked" it using wikipedia examples, so it ought to be pretty bad vulnerability.
The site has been like this for... |
Looking into the details of Pretty Good Privacy, I'm confused as to the reasoning behind encrypting the message with a session key and the key with the recipient's public key via RSA. I fail to see how this is any safer than straightforwardly RSA-encrypting the actual message.
It may very likely be that I am simply too... |
My qualification is Masters in Computer Science and i am currently working as a Technical Support Associate (Network Support) with a MNC. I am good with JAVA programing and have worked on some small projects as well. I always wanted to get into security but I don't see a specific path to get into Security. I want to kn... |
How secure is the new Windows 8 anti virus known as Windows Defender?
Does it have a protection against malware which uses UAC bypass/process injection/rootkits/process persistence/running the binary directly in the memory? How much can I trust Windows Defender? Is it better than regular AVs like Kaspersky/AntiVir?
|
Are there any particular flaws in this protocol?
(Yes I know about SSL)
Three participants:
Login Server LS
Game Server GS
Client C
Asymmetric key-pair Kpriv Kpub
Shared 128bit secret key Ksec
Shared 128bit signing key Ksecsign
Client secret Csec
Login Server nonce NonceLS
Client Login nonce NonceC
Game Server nonce ... |
The Dangers of Open Wi-Fi
How does one go about sending valuable information (for example inputting email username and password) over a free password-less public WiFi network?
The only option that I can think of is ssh-in into a secure server and home and using it as a proxy for all communication. Is this valid and pra... |
My organization is trying to move away from contact based smartcards (because our hardware vendor is no longer integrating them into their current systems) to some other form of two-factor authentication. We are looking into NFC, and we have the NFC cards (with built in contacts as well) in the standard ISO ID1 full-ca... |
I login to my router using the web connection but the session is not encrypted, is there a third party way to encrypt the web session so no one on my network can sniff the password?
|
I am working in a IT company. I am using LAN for all internet activities. I send some email from my personal gmail account. My network administrator sniffed all email I send from LAN and he shows the email to me.
I am sure no software installed my system and I used https to send email. How did the network administrato... |
This answer:
https://security.stackexchange.com/a/37319/10574
Mentions the issue of host-based security. To the end user, the web server is an untrustable black box.
Would it provide to needed transparency to make host-based security trustable if your users could read the live server-side code that runs the site?
So, f... |
I have WebSVN, Gitlab and phpMyAdmin hosted on my dev server. Now, all of it, I password protect the pages (not their individual login) using HTTP Basic Auth, is this the best practice that I can do?
|
I live in a large apartment building that provides a wireless service for residents. All of that traffic goes through a proxy server, and the domain name on that server contains the name of the apartment building and the city.
So, when I load a "what is my IP" service in my browser, it lists not just the IP I'm connect... |
Couple of days back spam mail(screenshot link) was sent to all my contacts from my yahoo account, and in my account activity page there is a yahoo partner logged in, from Peru (screenshot link) during that time.
I have reset my PW, security question, checked alternate email address and removed 3 links (e.g. tripit.com)... |
I have just read a passage in Zeilinger's book about quantum world.
My question is:
Suppose there exist quantum computers. Given that a quantum computer can use Shor's algorithm,
what key length must a user use today for secure RSA encryption?
|
I'm doing vulnerability research on a client/server architecture that uses a custom proprietary protocol sent over SSL (port 443). I need to be able to intercept the traffic, and be able to view it in clear-text in something like Wireshark, modify the traffic and then send it to the server. The "client" is a Microsoft ... |
I'm new to working with and using a backdoor/virus with a boot disk.
Can they be mounted to a USB drive?
What options are out there and what should I look for in one?
Are they practical?
Do they need to be upgraded/replaced every few months?
|
I'm trying to code up a encrypted communication program. Originally I was thinking that I would use public key cryptography and then I would keep the public keys in a database where users could query the database for another user's public key to encrypt their message. However this allows me to read their message if I e... |
I'm using asp.net 4.0 and MySQL. Last week my hosting firm changed security level of from full to medium. MySQL connector doesn't work correctly anymore. For this reason I'm using old version of ADO.net MySQL connector version number 6.2.5.
Does this situation make my site vulnerable for any attack?
|
I'm looking at possible options to build a secure channel between multiple embedded devices with limited cryptography capabilities and an HTTP server (It could be some sort of web service).
1. Context
The devices only supports HTTP, some Symmetric-Key Algorithm and some Hashes Function via a development framework on th... |
I have access to a system which I have been asked to create a data export routine for. However, the address details are encrypted and the original sourcecode/password are lost.
However, I am able to view through the application the decrypted text and via the database view the encrypted text. How can I work out the meth... |
I would like to securely erase the hard drive of a SSD in a MacBook Pro. The Disk Utility does not give me the option to wipe this drive even when I boot into the System Partition. (it is greyed out).
When I called Apple Tech support they said
"Secure erase is likely disabled because it will cause undue wear on the... |
I use sha1() to hash my users passwords, but recently a friend told me that if someone get the hash then they could use dictionary attack and he recommended using salts.
I implemented a random salt for each user and asked the users to reset their passwords. Is the passwords now protected against dictionary attack?
|
A common recommendation as part of web server security is to run the server daemon as an unprivileged user (e.g.: nobody) so that exploits executing arbitrary code may have less unwanted effects. However, since port 80 is a "privileged port" the server must be started as an administrator (e.g.: root) and drop privilege... |
A user logs in and is given a session token. This token is also stored in a database on the server. The user includes this secret token with each request, and the server will pull it from the DB to authenticate the user.
This scheme is vulnerable to someone (an angry DBA perhaps) sniffing the token out of the DB and h... |
A friend of mine has the following problem. She is an accountant and her clients frequently give her their login credentials so she could download their accounting data from various financial institutions websites. Also she has a part-time employee who helps her with some routine tasks. My friend wants her employee to ... |
Is there any way that an attacker can identify if a CCTV camera is on/operational without direct physical access to the cable/camera?
If it is on, is there any way an attacker can tell if its being viewed/recorded or not with access to the camera/cables but no access to the recording/viewing rooms?
|
I'm currently developing a web application using Node.js (server-side JavaScript) and MongoDB (NoSQL database).
I'm at the stage where I have to design the authentication and I had a question about asynchronous programming.
One of the advantages of using Node.js is that everything can be programmed to be asynchronous a... |
@D3C4FF has asked a great question and I would like to follow up on that. Basically he had asked whether "[...] an attacker can identify if a CCTV camera is on/operational without direct physical access to the cable/camera[.]".
I was highly impressed by @TildalWave 's answer, and particularly about disabling cameras: "... |
As a conscientious programmer, I put security as one of the core requirements of every product I develop. To prevent flaws from being introduced, I promote a culture of awareness (e.g. make sure that team members I work with know about common vulnerability types), keep myself updated by regularly reading specialized si... |
I am developing an open source software. This software generates content that is sent to a server for publishing. Anyone can get this software and generate content.
The API for publishing at the server is also public. (Can be changed if necessary).
Is there a way I can make sure the content was generated with this soft... |
This may be a common sense question, but I am not able to find any documentation on this after searching on google for a long time
When browser makes a HTTPs request, does it encrypt the data then and there, and any proxy (even on the same system) will receive the data in an encrypted form? Can that data be tampered su... |
Many modern cars feature Bluetooth connections and USB ports that allow passengers to connect them with mobile phones and digital music players (and smartphones, which serve as both). Is it safe to use these features in rental cars? Could data on the device be stolen? Could the devices themselves be compromised or dama... |
In Gmail, at the bottom of the screen if you click Details it will show you your recent account activity and there's a button to sign you out of all other sessions. How does this work? Are they somehow revoking cookies from the server side?
|
Let's first look at the book Microsoft Windows Security Essentials:
... the three As (AAA) of security: authentication, authorization, and accounting
... they combine to contribute to reliable accountability within an organization.
I'm a bit confused here, since it seems accountability is different than accounting... |
A Microsoft Security Essentials virus scan just finished on one of our computers and it shows two potential threats in Internet Explorer's temporary internet files:
Web page with Black Hole Exploit Kit
Specially crafted PDF file (part of Black Hole Exploit Kit)
The two items were downloaded on the same date about a y... |
I'm a little late, I'm 21 always been interested in IT and this past year I've looked here and there for computer security, but I don't have a diploma.
I never had any idea on what to do in my life until this year.
this year I'm going back to school and then I'd like to go study computer science to my local university.... |
I learned recently about man-in-the-middle attacks and came up with this question.
Let's say we have two computers who try to communicate over the network. Each computer has an encryptor and a decryptor.
Also let's assume that the ciper used by the two computers is unbreakable and that the computers use a pre-shared ke... |
I know the standard tricks, create a long password, numbers, symbols, capital letters, etc. My questions is how do I judge password security.
I heard different tricks to make secure passwords. For example, until the famous xkcd comic came out (correcthorsebatterystaple), that would be a perfect password. No cracker wou... |
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