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Any modern day browser provides feedback to the end user confirming whether or not you are using HTTPS and some basic validation of the cert.
When using a mobile application it seems the end user has no way to verify whether or not their comms are secure. Short of attempting a MiTM using something like ARP cache poiso... |
The web tools we are developing for a client require seamless interoperability with an existing user management sytem and commerce tools (the "mainsite"). The mainsite is built and maintained by a third party. We've developed a plan to interact with this third party but are not sure our plan is secure or how it could... |
What hardware is used to prevent a DDoS attack on a network layer?
This question is for my project which I am doing. I have a game server and I need to simulate an attack - an SYN flood. So what hardware should I use to prevent it.
My assumption is that to place a IDS after a firewall so that it will detect unwanted tr... |
Is there a way to explicitly configure OpenSSL to allow AES (or in general, block ciphers) only for clients that use a TLS version >= 1.1?
This would protect against the BEAST attack, while still allowing the use of ciphers more secure than the ancient RC4.
The suggested workaround for OpenSSL (enforce the server's cip... |
Recent developments have cast some doubt on the elliptic curves specified by NIST and used in many standards like TLS (for signatures with ECDSA and key agreement with ECDHE).
It seems like the standard allows for custom, server-generated ECDH-curves that are transmitted during the handshake (just like with non-ellipti... |
Ive been playing around with sslstrip, arpspoof and ip_forward.
I read about the whole process at: http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslstrip/index.html
My goal was to sniff HTTPS connections, passwords and such.
So i have a test setup with different IP´s and i can only see the passwords when i use Internet Explorer... |
Am I right If I claim on that there doesn't exist any reliable protection against CSRF for a stateles environment today? I have a RESTful service (build with RESTEasy) that needs to be secured against CSRF attacks. I googled for statless CSRF prevention but what I found was only this article which is about double submi... |
A RESTful service is currently protected against XSS attacks by applying XML schema- and entity validation. In both cases this is done via a regular expression like:
<xs:pattern value="[0-9]{1}[0-9a-z/\\ -]{0,7}" />
Can this validation be considered as a reliable countermeasure against XSS, or do I need to implemend f... |
Here is a question that I asked on "AskUbuntu" and I've been suggested to ask it here:
Searching for answers about ways to record Firefox passwords in Gnome Seahorse Keyring vault,
I found severals possibilities:
Firefox Gnome Keyring firefox addon
from https://github.com/ in this answer and this answer
Gnome keyring ... |
I'm developing an embedded application that delivers information through HTTP to my web server. These deliveries are secured by a hash
H(secret : data : nonce)
where the secret is shared between the two entities and the data is the data that is delivered. The nonce is for protecting against replay attacks.
My problem ... |
Flash and Flex clients can make RPC calls to a server using the NetConnection and AMF protocols. It's not uncommon to have these RPC calls setup to authenticate based on a cookie.
I've heard conflicting statements about whether this protocol (or any particular server-size implementation like BlazeDS, GraniteDS, etc) ad... |
According to OWASP the Man-in-the-Browser (Malware-in-the-Middle) attack uses the same approach as Man-in-the-middle attack, but the differences is that interception is done at the application layer by exploiting bugs in the browser.
So My question is that defenses like HTTPS,SSL which operates below the application la... |
So my calculus teacher, who also teaches computer science, claims that a computer's entire filesystem can be downloaded wirelessly by anyone on the same network?
As a Ruby on Rails professional, networking/security dabbler, and science/technology enthusiast, I am almost positive he is an eccentric conspiracy-theorist/d... |
Say a small company just earned an ISO 27001 accreditation. What happens if during one of the audits it is found that the company didn't follow the ISMS? Is there a certain warning process that company has to go through? I basically want to know if there are instances when an ISO 27001 accreditation gets retracted and ... |
I've compromised two Linux user accounts on a RHEL machine (neither of which have root permissions) and I want to determine which account is more 'useful' to me in terms of access and privileges. Is there any way I can quickly and easily compare permissions/access between those two accounts?
|
I'm in charge of IT at a students' organization. Let's call it FratA. FratA has ties to sister-organizations in other university cities in my country. Let's call those FratB through FratZ. These inter-organizational ties are formalized by an umbrella organization, of which FratA-FratZ are members. Let's call it SuperFr... |
I need to crack my own password. Advantage is that I know possible characters and maximum length.
What I need is to create a dictionary. The dictionary should contain all the combos of characters that I choose (for example I don't need word list which contain character T, because I didn't used T in my password).
How ca... |
I'm working on a project where websites are analyzed and rated according to password security (factors like min/max password length, alphabet size and more are then calculated into a score).
A great factor to know would be whether a site uses unsalted MD5 hashes to store passwords. To verify that, a collision could be ... |
Let's say I'm setting up a new account on a website. Should I bother using a strong password? My reasoning is this:
Password strength is a rough measure of how long it would take to brute-force my password from a hash. Brute-forcing even a 'weak' password is difficult via the authentication endpoint for the website - i... |
I'm trying to fuzz an ASCII file format. Specifically, I'm defining some HTML5/HTML structures to be used as definition file for a smart fuzzer to fuzz web browsers. This smart fuzzer allows to exclude some of the included mutators. The number of iterations and the slowness of my fuzzers invites me to exclude some of t... |
I often end up using netcafe's for browsing web (Windows 7).
I recently wanted to download some secure data from my gmail account on to the USB pen drive.
So, I went ahead and opened the attachment and copied it directly to the pen drive.
But now I am worried if any kind of backup or residue files may have been left on... |
As per the network policy, we have to block all torrent traffic from the network. To do this, I used to block all ports above 1024 on my firewall/proxy devices. But due to this, many other applications that use non-standard ports are not able to function, especially mobile applications, and users are complaining becaus... |
Let's take MD5 for example:
It outputs a 128-bit hash. Does it make sense (in theory) to choose an input (password) which is itself longer than 128-bit?
Does it increase the probability of a collision in any way?
I know that MD5 is broken, so what about more modern algorithms like bcrypt or scrypt?
|
I have a Jetty based secure http service, and I wish to support GCM cipher suites. I know that Jetty internally use JSSE based ciphers, and there are many GCM ciphers coming with JSSE as documented here - http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/security/StandardNames.html#ciphersuites
However, I can't get... |
"Linus Torvalds, in response to a petition on Change.org to remove
RdRand from /dev/random, has lambasted the petitioner by called him
ignorant for not understanding the code in Linux Kernel. Kyle Condon
from UK raised a petition on Change.org to get Linus to remove RdRand
from /dev/random in a bid 'to improve... |
what are the applications of multiple encryptions?
where the multiple encryption like double DES and triple DES algorithms are use?
|
I have the following example POST request as part of a feedback form for a website that allows for an arbitrary value to be supplied to the "done_url" parameter, allowing for an open redirect after the feedback form has been processed.
POST /cgi-bin/formproc2.cgi HTTP/1.1
Host: foobar.com
mail_to=support%40support.com... |
People still worry about BEAST quite a lot when configuring web servers to the point of preferring RC4 over AES-CBC. But most browsers mitigate BEAST even while using TLS 1.0.
Is there a browser that:
Is vulnerable to BEAST or to Lucky Thirteen
Doesn't have known vulnerabilities which are much worse, such as remote co... |
In the wiki link, it is mentioned that due to "chosen-plaintext" or "known-cipher" attacks, two key DES provides only 80 bits of security.
My question is how these attacks work and how did NSIT came up with 2<80> bits of security
|
An application runs on an embedded battery-powered PC, accessible to some restricted public, that stores secrets in RAM. To prevent cold boot attacks and that the PC is stolen to extract its secrets, it has temper-proof sensors. If tampering is detected, the application exists (but does not wipe all process memory befo... |
Considering the recent litigation in which Google apparently claimed that all the emails, all the data in them, are Google's property and can do with the data whatever they want, I get frequent questions from our employees how does this translate into Gmail for business which we're using. Is the data in our corporate a... |
Many products (e.g. notebooks, security doors and now smartphones) support some form of fingerprint authentication. That seems simple enough: A trusted system compares a stored representation of a fingerprint with the one presented to a fingerprint reader, and the authentication succeeds or fails.
I wonder if it's poss... |
I've recently heard about CVE-2013-4287, which can cause denial of service due to CPU consumption.
But earlier this year, I attended Hacking with Gems which showed all kinds of weird and wonderful things a hacker could do with a malicious gem.
If a malicious author could easily make a variety of exploits, why would the... |
What would be the security disadvantages of a single administrator checking every file permission in a network of computers? Obviously this is a theoretical question.
I'm thinking that the fact that one entity has control over every file in the system would mean that:
a) The administrator could accidentally or purposel... |
With such a big deal being made about the iPhone 5S's fingerprint reader (and formerly the Thinkpads' fingerprint readers) I really wonder how secure it is to use fingerprints in lieu of passwords.
If you can dust and photograph a roommate's or coworker's fingerprint off a coffee cup or desk surface or keyboard and the... |
I've asked same question on StackOverflow but topic passed away with no answers except few comments so I'll try to ask the same question here as it's probably more specific to security. The only (possible) duplicate I found is one here and here. Additionally, first question is pointed up to Apache and .htaccess (rewrit... |
An Activesync IT administrator has the ability to choose if the phone should require a password, and also how complex it should be.
Since the fingerprint scanner appears to replace the traditional password screen, how does that affect an Exchange-connected phone with traditional password policies?
|
I have found during testing that companies often use variations of their names for critical passwords (for example Microsoft's password might be M1cr0s0f+ or m1cros0ft etc etc).
So if I gave it the phrase "stack exchange' it would ideally compute as many logical variations as possible including things like:
stack_excha... |
I work for a large non-US based international organisation. Regarding the recent leaks about the NSA breaking most encryption on the internet, we now know the US and UK governments are actively involved in weakening encryption standards and backdooring hardware and software. Unfortunately what exact encryption is broke... |
Supposing you want the NSA to see something, what does one have to do to guarantee it. This means in their normal data collection it will be swept up, not in a targeted probe of an individual or with (or without) a subpoena. The restrictions are as follows:
No use of government resources (can't email to spam@nsa.gov... |
Most browsers block "active" content that's being loaded over HTTP on HTTPS pages. This includes stuff like javascript which can be modified with an MITM and compromise the security of the entire page.
However, "passive" content (i.e. images) are not blocked by default. I was discussing a feature request for Firefox h... |
Walked into my office an hour into a Remote File Transfer initiated by an unknown user.
I disabled it right away and looked through the files they transferred, which include a blank check with my routing and account numbers, my personal CV, and a few other items including my Chrome User Folder (hopefully not any passwo... |
Some well funded intelligence services with potentially untrustworthy employees intercept and store encrypted data for years, in hopes of cracking it with future technology. What can I do to make this more difficult for them, and how can I limit the scope of a successful attack? I already use SSL and store passwords as... |
I accidentally ran this arp -a on a public wifi network(because it is in my terminal history). I killed the process almost immediately. I want to know if this would raise an alert for the network administrator as I do not want any trouble. Will this be considered as arp spoofing? Will this be regarded as a malicious at... |
Cloud providers have a great infrastructure to perform DDoS simulations. You can get thousands of virtual machines with different IP addresses, fully customizable with the tools you need for testing. But as far as my research is concerned, most of them do not allow DDoS testing and explicitly forbid it in their ToS. Am... |
I need to sniff HTTP packet over the WiFi network. What kind of WiFi security protocol does not use encryption? I mean if I capture the WiFi packets, no effort required to decrypt wireless packets and get the HTTP packet data.
|
I need to secure an IMAP service running on dovecot.
Which wrapping layers of security can I enhance security with?
I am using most of the built-in dovecot-specific security features, like encryption and secure authentication/databases, so I am interested in OS-level tweaks that play well with offering IMAPS.
e.g. for... |
I'm new to cryptography and its implementations. I'm designing an Android app where an user enters a password to retrieve some encrypted data. After some research on possible solutions I ended up with bcrypt used like so:
User enter Password -> bcrypt(Password) -> key for encryption
And then storing it in the databa... |
I configure a new server right now and ask myself what is the internally effect if I set MaxAuthTries=1 in sshd_config.
The server only accept key authentication an no root logins.
Has this setting any effect to prevent brute force logins?
Is there any effect more than closing the tcp socket after MaxAuthTries wrong a... |
I have an issue with support for a system and I don't know what approach to take.
It boils down to the question:
Should I know my users passwords so that I can check with certainty
that a particular user can logon and there is not a problem with their
account?
If I can view my users passwords I can logon as a pa... |
If OpenSSL is configured to use a DH for key exchange, e.g. TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, where does it take the size for modp (or even modp itself) from?
The following is a screenshot from wireshark. The server selected TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA from the client's proposals and sends its DH parameters.
Any ... |
I was just configuring IPtables and whilst doing so, had the default chain policies set to ACCEPT, but when happy with the generated rules I changed that to DROP for all chains.
I did not run iptables-save at any time.
After do this, I still had good access, but noticed that one of the rules wasn't right, so I decided ... |
Say a ASP.NET page, or any html page for that matter, has a drop down list with a bunch of prices. On posting the page, the code looks at the selection of the drop down list for a computation. Is it possible for someone to alter the values and post the page without the server knowing the page has been tampered with? ... |
I have a public key generated with ssh-keygen and I'm just wondering how I get information on the keylength with openssl?
|
While I realize that servers can easily detect brute forcing strategies via a single I.P, it seems that servers would be vulnerable to a distributed attack from a botnet, with each computer attempting a small portion of the password list at low frequency.
Is there an easily identified signature to these sorts of attac... |
When building a security policy (and implementing it) you must know who you are defending against. I would like to use proper terms, if they're already defined. I'm imagining a list such as:
Passive attackers - Those who aren't interested in you specifically but might intercept your data (like the NSA if it doesn't ha... |
One of the challenges with deploying ASLR for everything is that, at least on Windows, some DLLs (libraries) are not compiled in a way that's compatible with ASLR. (They're not compiled as position-independent code, and so the place where they are loaded in memory cannot be randomized.)
This is problematic, because if... |
Would someone please explain in depth what a stub is? I understand it as a file created by a crypter to keep a program encrypted and undetectable by anti-virus software. It is attached to the executable which is encrypted and read-only. The stub is used to decrypt the file.
I can't seem to find any online resources ex... |
I'm attempting MAC spoofing on a network I own. I'm connecting to a NETGEAR WNDR4300 wireless router from an Ubuntu Linux machine. The network uses WPA2-PSK [AES] security.
Connecting to the network with an un-spoofed MAC works fine. I can bring my network interface down with
sudo ip link set dev wlan1 down
and then s... |
I am a web developer and I use Adobe Business Catalyst. To use some of their services it is recommended you redelegate the domain. In other words change the nameservers to Business Catalyst.
I have been told that this is a security risk.
Why is this a security risk and what could happen?
|
Why is a “Timing Analysis Attack” a problem for a cryptosystem?
I've been trying to learn security, and have a question about timing analysis attack.
|
I am new to structured exception handling based exploits.
Why don't we put our return address directly in SE handler to jump to our shellcode? (with no safe SEH)
Can anybody explain the reason of using pop pop ret?
I read something that said SEH bypasses ASLR and DEP, but how?
Our shellcode will be located on the stac... |
I'm writing a simple HTTP server in Lua and while I can easily find resources on how to secure against Unix directory traversal, I already found some caveats in the Windows version. While I'm already looking for C:\ at the beginning (C being "any letter" here), ../ and /.. (with backslash as the directory delimiter as ... |
I am referring to The Underhanded C Contest and Hiding Backdoors in plain sight. They demonstrate, that you can with some cleverness, write Open Source code, publish the code and hide a backdoor in plain sight, which is very difficult and unlikely to be spotted by people looking at the code.
Is this an exclusive issue ... |
I am working on a site and I would like to add CAPTCHA to the user registration page to prevent user name enumeration.
I am working with a front end developer who feels pretty strongly that we should not add CAPTCHA to the registration page because it's a pain for users and will reduce our conversion rate.
I know that ... |
I've came across that question on StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18755713/how-does-final-play-a-role-in-security
The claim is made, that according to Wikipedia:
A final class cannot be subclassed. This is done for reasons of
security and efficiency.
and the OP asked, how the security is achieved... |
Hi i am a little bit worried that Google Chrome is logging my keystroke.
One time ago i had situation with chrome that when i clicked some where in input box he was writting key by key(even backspace) what i wrote, and searched in google(in past few days).
I use Kaspersky Pure 3.0. So i think that it would be hard to g... |
In the news, there are several articles (here, here, and the technical point of view) which have to do with a weakness in a random number generator.
The question is somewhat twofold. What symptoms do weak RNGs exhibit? Does this mean, for instance, that several different seeds give the same result? Or am I missing what... |
i see the following request-string (see complete example below) with the same request_parameters, but differing values, hitting all our sites/wafs. the scheme is always the same:
&sa=...&ei=..&ved=..&usg=...
UAs are varying from Libwww-perl to (probably faked) legit ones.
sometimes an url-based exploit-attempt is... |
If I visit the website which uses https, is there a point using an VPN? In places like coffee shop where internet is not secure. Because I think https already encrypts data?
|
Many services such as email and online storage have stated in their Terms of Service that they have the right to view and delete your files at any time. I'm wondering if they same applies to software and especially Operating Systems as well, since the software manufacturer essentially owns the software (we just have a ... |
What information can a malicious Android app observe about the behavior of other apps running on the same phone?
In more detail, suppose app M is malicious and is running in the background. Suppose app A is legitimate and is running on the same phone. What information about A can M observe? What can M infer, about t... |
On my friends website when I typed www.abc.com/?page=non existing page, I got page not found error.But when I gave www.abc.com/?page=www.google.com I got blank white page.So is this website vulnerable to RFI? Why did it show blank page instead of error page?
|
I'm working on a system that takes the customers credit card information before sending it to the processor. It requires me to ask the customer for cc#, CVV, date, one at a time and send that to my server between each request (https, no cookies, cache, or sessions used). How should I keep track of the data between re... |
I'm implementing a SAML2 Service provider that will be running on a public facing web site. The sign in functionality is publicly available, so anyone can get hold of a AuthnRequest from my site.
When I do receive a response from the Idp, do I have to validate the InResponseTo field to make sure that the response is to... |
I want to implement a ECC Key Agreement with a Brainpool curve brainpoolP512r1 or brainpoolP512t1.
I'm not clear about whichseed value to use (and how).
In this document http://www.ecc-brainpool.org/download/Domain-parameters.pdf are two seed values are mentioned.
And RFC http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5639.txt
5.1 Generat... |
I am wondering if is there any (secure!) cipher like AES or Camelia with keys longer than 256 bits (and offering higher security than 256 bits). I have not found anything except http://www.ciphers.de/eng/index.html where they say they have such cipher (but I have not found anything about that cipher).
|
In the system that i'm working on, we are having some session cookies on the client side that we need to protect against the replay attack ! So I find the following paper http://www.cse.msu.edu/~alexliu/publications/Cookie/cookie.pdf from this question Secure Session Cookies. I really like the way that they put things ... |
I'm looking for a solution to bring support to users from a big network to other users into little networks. The idea is to keep control of content (no VPN). Also it's important that always users who need the service authorise technicien's access (protect the password).
I was looking for some solutions as tightvnc, but... |
I want to know, if in my login form there is any SQL injection possible. If there is, what could the exploit's web form entry look like?
I send username and password by html form (POST).
The login function code is:
$username = $_POST['user'];
$password = $_POST['pwd'];
$password = md5(password);
$sql = "SELECT id_us... |
I have a software development kit which packages the data for the finished program in a series of LZMA packages. I want to ensure that my software is the only program that can read the packages, even though they're compressed in an open-source format. I also want to be able to encrypt it, if the user wants to, further ... |
Given the ongoing leaks concerning mass surveillance and the fact that the NSA is the original developer of SELinux, I'm wondering whether that means that backdoors should be expected in there?
As every other obfuscated C contest, not at last the Underhanded C Contest, shows, well-written backdoors can elude the review... |
Is there any way to cryptographically hash a human thumbprint into a form that can be consistently reproduced by thumbprint readers?
Assuming that it would be possible to create a database of thumbprint-hashes, my intent is to salt that hash with a "something you know", preventing the thumbprint database to be used f... |
For the next while I will find myself without a working private wifi connection. That leaves me with just a number of options, of which using an internet cafe is one of them.
What are the best security practices in an internet cafe environment, where I cannot reliably know what has or has not been installed on the com... |
I have just come across this sentence on apache log files documentation:
Anyone who can write to the directory where Apache is writing a log file can almost certainly gain access to the uid that the server is started as, which is normally root. Do NOT give people write access to the directory the logs are stored in wi... |
I know that you can sniff data which is transferred over wifi. Can you do that with broadband (wired)?
And how can you secure the network, so nobody could sniff data both over wifi, and broadband?
|
I recently purchased a Honeywell thermostat with a WiFi connection, and I haven't been able to get it connected to my network yet. According to a representative, the network name and password are required to be 13 or fewer alphanumeric characters. Before I go about changing all the passwords on the machines, I want to ... |
Is it possible to defeat software keyloggers?
I remember reading long ago about programs run from a USB which will defeat keyloggers.
The software works (if I remember correctly) by intercepting keyboard events to the system, and randomly replacing your keystrokes with random keys, and then counteracting the randomnes... |
As Bruce Schneider reported here...
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_sh.html
...the NSA reportedly performed a MITM attack on a company in brazil and decrypted their SSL traffic by compromising their router. The commenters also mention a similar attack against the DigiNotar CA a while ago.
My... |
I am concerned that my computer has been compromised because I sent an email out - but now I noticed that there is a link in the email I did not insert, and I am worried I have a virus or something. I am seeing an invisible image called cleardot.gif appearing next to the sender's name at the bottom of their email. (im... |
Are self-signed certificates actually more secure than CA signed certificates now?
I ask this because recent leaks about the NSA spy programs and the secret FISA courts mean that the US government can force Certificate Authorities in the US to secretly hand over their root certificates and the CAs can't do anything abo... |
I have a ZyWall USG 200 firewall. A few days ago there was a SYN flooding attack on it causing 100% CPU load. After investigating it turns out this was attack from a single IP address and while the attack was going on the WAN port was downloading at 30Mbit/sec. The uplink on the firewall is 1Gbit and the attack didn't ... |
One of the steps for setting up OpenVPN is running the command openssl dhparam -out dh1024.pem 1024. The man page tells me this 1024 value refers to the number of bits.
Why is the value 1024 suggested by the examples?
Should I use a larger value like 4096?
What value should I use, how many bits are enough, why?
RSA ... |
I cringe every time I am prompted with OAuth in an app because of the lack of ability to verify that the page is actually originating from the represented source.
Are most app OAuth implementations exposing vulnerability because of obscured URL/origin?
Below are OSX and iOS apps... a web view (embedded web browser view... |
What is the difference between include_path and open_basedir in PHP? My php.ini looks like this:
include_path = ".:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear:/var/www"
If, for example, I try using include('../../etc/passwd'); the file is included. On the other hand, when I'm modifying my php.ini like this the output is empty:
ope... |
I have been reading a security checklist for web application design which can be found on:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648647.aspx
One of the recommendations is to "use multiple gatekeepers". I have read the explanation for it but I didn't understand anything. Here is the explanation:
On the server side... |
Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but I wish to know more and asking (stupid) questions are one way. I was reading http://www.random.org/randomness/ and this idea popped into my head (before the bit about lava-lamps)
Considering the following:
Things like atmospheric properties and "real" life in general are suppos... |
A certain government regulation in my country mandates all non-resident donors to provide a copy of their identification (usually, the passport).
So, we ask the donors to upload a copy of their passports while making a donation on our website. (Which is then verified by our admin, internally)
We have taken measures to ... |
I'm looking for some alert correlation tool to reduce number of alerts about 50%. It should support IDMEF. I googled for alert correlation tools but just found ACARM-ng, TIAA and MACE and all of them are free or open source.
Is there any commercial tool or some benchmark I could use?
|
I have been reading this security checklist about web service design:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648304.aspx
One of the suggestions is that you should disable the following in production environments:
1) Tracing
2) Debugging
Now I know that both tracing and debugging are used to study the flow of the pro... |
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