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I am working on a device that should sit between the end-user and the server, and that will do deep packet inspection. It is basically a parental control node. This device will be sold to the user, so they will have full knowledge of what it is and what it does. Getting this to work over HTTP is fairly straightforward,...
Our software contains two executables that need to serve data over SSL (and several that need to do requests over HTTPS)). I notice that it is distributed with some .PEM files created with OpenSSL. These files are read by the software when it needs to consume or serve over HTTPS. The second file says: BEGIN ENCRYPTED P...
Debian (stable) is a well respected server Linux distro. I was surprised to see that in their hardening walkthrough (https://wiki.debian.org/HardeningWalkthrough) they do not support position independent executables (and ASLR and a few other useful security flags) in the latest stable build (Wheezy), while most other d...
I read about XSS attacks and its prevention mechanism on server-side. It seems only protection is to sanitize the input by escaping special characters on server side (Using some PHP functions such as htmlspecialchars() ). I have read this here. So now suppose some input like 3<2hello 4>3 or something like that. This is...
Many questions have already been asked about Claims-based authentication and the differences with other approaches: Role-based vs Claims-based Explain claims-based authentication Now, my favorite answer is one given on stackoverflow: Using claims-based authentication. However, after reading through them, my question is...
How to automatically search and download exploits which matches for example with kernel release ? Is there for example a public REST web service which provide data in XML or JSON format to a client program ? Thanks in advance ! EDIT : Solution 1 : @Lucas_Kauffman Parse HTML search results of db-exploit or mitre.com usi...
As per PCI-DSS 3.4 requirement: For storing Credit Card Data Strong Cryptography should be used. I decided to use AES Encryption which is a strong and mostly recommended crypto for encrypting Credit Card Details. I saw that AES has Cipher Mode and Padding Mode in it. When I searched i found that according to NIST Sp...
According to the July 2009 cyber attacks Wikipedia article, US & South Korean governments suffered a DDOS attack on their websites. However, up till now they have not been able to find any substantial evidence to prove who the culprit is. Why is it so difficult to prove who did it? No doubt the attackers may have used ...
My question is inspired by apples goto fail; bug. I am wondering if the bug is really as dangerous as it is propagated everywhere. The reason I am in doubt about that is that there is a MITM attack required to abuse the bug, isn't it? And if this is the case then the only point this becomes dangerous is in public WIFI'...
All this while, I assumed that switchport security is enough to prevent DHCP dos attack. If I set it maximum 1, there can be no more mac addresses packets. But, a friend told me that using the tool, DHCPStarv, we can bypass that? I want to know how it works? I figured a way to prevent it by DHCP Snooping, but how does ...
In my Django template, I have a link like this: <a href='{{ my_model.some_url }}'> The some_url bit is a Django URLField that a user can influence. Can this be exploited in any way? (What comes to mind is including a quote in the URL and then arbitrary HTML.) What can I do to protect this code?
I have read many articles advising me to use OpenID, including on Stack Overflow, for authentication. Unfortunately I can't use OpenID because my auth is not based on an email - it is based on a username and password. Currently I am doing authentication like this: User enters username and password. If the user login i...
According to wikipedia, a transient cookie (aka session-cookie, in-memory cookie) is forgotten when the user closes the browser. These are also recommended for session cookies by OWASP. I've seen a lot of sites that recommends that you close your browser window to log out (thus deleting this cookie), but that wouldn't ...
If there is a need for source code to have a password in it, how should this be secured? This is purely an example, but say there is an app that is using an API, and you don't want to expose your API key, yet you need to have it in the source code, because it is used. How do you effectively have a string that ...
Certificates are a fantastic way to prove the integrity of a file - provided that they have been signed from the beginning. This methodology can prove the files authenticity, in addition proving it's source. My question is how would you prove the integrity of a file is in tact that has not been signed? Say, for instanc...
I'm looking at ways to use .NET to prevent XSS attacks and have come across the following methods to encode data: string asdf = WebUtility.UrlEncode(code); string asdf1 = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(code); string asdf1a = HttpUtility.UrlEncodeUnicode(code); // OBSOLETE string asdf1b = HttpUti...
For an example say we have an application such as a client based application which connects to an API using an api key. We are saying for this purpose there is no OAuth. How would a string or in this example an api key be hidden from the client. To be used it needs to be in the code which is on the clientside. How do w...
Over the past few days, I'm noticing that the log of my wireless router is showing an ACK flood attack from various IP addresses. I use a D-Link DIR-600L. I've searched through the internet, also through this question. But I cannot come to any solution. My ISP advised me to change DNS IP addresses and enter them manual...
I am creating a mobile application which needs to interact on a per-user basis with an API. Having worked on several projects as a client of third-party APIs, my initial thought was to go with OAuth. However, I have been thinking about it, and I don't plan to open the API up publicly to other consumers - the only cons...
I'm currently using Diffie-Hellman to encrypt data sent across an arbitrary link (can be ethernet, Wi-Fi, USB, bluetooth, etc), and I'm not a huge fan of the potential that DH is vulnerable to an active MITMA. I came across Samy Kamkar's Anti-MITMA technique. Does anyone have any thought on how secure this is? From my ...
CA's are a key part of the internet's infrastructure few people are aware of. SSL was mostly hacked together at Netscape in 1995. I'd like to understand more about the organizational structure of CA's and the history. How did the current CA's come into existence? What organization decides who can become a CA? According...
This is a basic example of an Unix Pass Encryption. I have a little Hash of MD5 ARP: user50:$apr1$w7YNTrjQ$0/71H7ze5o9/jCnKLt0mj0 user60:$apr1$AIw2h09/$Ti0TRlU9mDpCGm5zg.ZDP. I need to find the pass of two users: user50 & user60. I was wondering, what is the best way to crack this hash? Maybe with John the Ripper? Is ...
Hmm, I was asking myself how to compute if we were given one day to try all possible keys for a 32-bit symmetric cypher, how long would it take us to break 128-bit key? My calculations suggest: 2^128/2^32 = 2^98/365= 217063458943189966009709452.97534 years! Is this correct?
I am installing Cisco firewall solution ASA5505. but cannot access user interface. I navigate to ASA5505 local website 192.168.1.1 from Windows 7 connecting to ASA5505. After the navigating, Java loads appliance but then says "Cannot Load". Please help. I try rebooting ASA5505 but problem persists.
couldn't you DDOS attack an firewall somehow so that it would shutdown and you could access the computer?
I'm testing a wifi de-authentication attack and it looks like my Windows 7 client is not getting kicked off the network during the deauthentication. Any explanations as to why that might be? I've got Kali running aireplay-ng and tested both a directed and broadcast attack. During the broadcast, my XP client very clearl...
I'm creating an application for Google Glass (technically it's Glassware, but whatever). The user will do the following steps when going through setup for the Glassware: Go to my website, redirected via the Glassware page. Get redirected to the Google OAuth page so that they can sign in. Get redirected back to my OAut...
To log into my online banking, I have to answer a basic personal question such as "What is your mother's maiden name" or "What is your grandfather's middle name", as well as enter a one-time code from a code-generator device. To me it seems that 99% if not all of the security comes from the one-time code-generator. The...
If my Hardware device is on the PCI list from here https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/approved_companies_providers/approved_pin_transaction_security.php Does my POS need to be PCI compliant since the POS cannot unencrypt the data since it is a point to point approved PCI encrypted solution? The Encrypted Point to P...
In relation to my previous question. I have this Warning again from both RKHunter and Chkrootkit. My VPS has been turned off for how many weeks, until I turned it on again to deploy my website. After the deployment, I did the RKhunter Scan and Chkrootkit and it warned me about; using Chkrootkit... The following suspici...
This past week, my traffic logs are showing many hits (usually with repeated tries) for a URL from perhaps 30+ different IP addresses all over the world. This is not a URL that should garner more than a single hit and it should only be accessed via a link from one page which contains rel="nofollow". The URL calls a PHP...
We have a rule in my company that all PC drives must be encrypted with BitLocker, including laptops. My own Windows 8 laptop has a tendency to hang at shutdown, black screen but the computer never stops (once waited for 30 minutes to no avail). I'd say it happens 25% of the time on average. The problem is, I then have ...
Right now the internet is abuzz with news about a severe breach in GnuTLS. An update to the relevant GnuTLS packages has already been released. But I am worried whether some packages might have had GnuTLS compiled directly into them, instead of dynamically linking to them. Would like to know the likelihood of this- I...
I have a piece of code which contains an obvious buffer overflow at strcpy(buf, x) since it doesn't check if buf is large enough to fit the string x. I'm wondering how to actually exploit this bug. void fun(char *x) { char buf[10]; strcpy(buf, x); printf("You gave me this: %s", buf); exit(0); } And her...
I've tried to bring in collaboration tools at my company such as Evernote, Dropbox, OneNote, GoogleDocs etc. at our company but am finding it tough to get people on board. We use Sharepoint to store documents, mostly Word docs that can be edited by everyone. The problem is that when you have something to make people aw...
So I have read that 802.11 standard requires stations and APs to go through the authentication and association before communication can take place. I also know that WPA/WPA2 has its own authentication method which involves a 4-way handshake to construct the PTK out of the PMK. I am guessing these are two different aut...
I just registered for a race and the confirmation page gave me the creeps. See below for a screenshot with fake data. I know nothing about internet security. Other than the obvious fact that if I were signing up in a public place, anyone could look over my shoulder and see my password, what is wrong with displaying a u...
Is anyone aware of any major overhauls or security fixes to Team Viewer 9 (since v7) or does the popular accuvant blog (http://blog.accuvant.com/bthomasaccuvant/teamviewer-authentication-protocol-part-1-of-3/) still hold true? (This blog was written for v7). It seems from other SE posts and that the general consensu...
If I enable developer mode, then open a shell and create /some/directory/temp.txt, it is invisible to me through the Chrome Filesystem API. But does this mean that it's also invisible to Chrome OS itself? This is a follow-up to this question.
I found the following code in my Wordpress application, but I am not even sure in what is decoded. The first part of the file looks like this: <?php // Preventing a directory listing if(!empty($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"])) { $userAgents = array("Google", "Slurp", "MSNBot", "ia_archiver", "Yandex", "Rambler"); ...
Let us take the example of my already being logged in to, say, LinkedIn. When I access LinkedIn on a new tab, it automatically logs me in (using cookie info). Now, suppose I visit a forum and through an image that is loaded, a CSRF attack is run against my credentials. To prevent using my cookie-stored credentials for ...
A client of mine keeps getting hacked by seemingly SQL injection where a script tag containing a link to an in.js file is added. Sometimes from a domain called sportserve.co.uk, other times from exeterpress.co.uk. I have been unable to find out where the injection is taking place, but I am suspecting their ad provider....
For a few days my internet started being very slow. I checked my router logs and guess what! In the log where it is a record of DoS attacks it showed something like |Description |Count| Last Occurence | Target| Source | |TCP- or UDP-based Port Scan | 3 | [current date] |[local ip]|83.170.92....
while using google's phone verification code system, i have noticed that google phone verification code is always 6 digits cant it be brute forced for randomly generating the 6 digits?is it there any security design implemented over there while passing through second factor?
I searched for Oracle Web logic vulnerabilities and found this vulnerability: Oracle WebLogic Server Cross-Site Scripting and Manipulation of Data Vulnerabilities (http://secunia.com/community/advisories/51501) I want some sample attack scenarios to test My web site against this vulnerability, Any Help?
I am trying to think of the best way to encrypt and decrypt a message between two servers. I have found a lot of examples where people simply use a secret and PHP's mcrypt... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16600708/php-string-encrypt-and-decrypt But I am thinking of using certificates instead. https://stackoverflo...
I have a cryptographic device that supports the following mechanisms: How I could securely import RSA private key into it? Because there is no support for wrap/unwrap using symmetric key is there any other way? Could it be used CKM_RSA_PKCS or CKM_RSA_X_509 to unwrap private key to device? If so, how? Because: The RS...
I know that you can never be sure that you have done enough to be secure, and I also know that file uploading is hard to make correct. Before asking this question I read some of the related posts here like risk of php image upload, what steps should be taken to validate... and security risks of uploading. So I think th...
I read the wikipedia article and few others, however I still don't have some things clear. The main question would be what does hardware full disk encryption imply for the user, however I have more specific questions related: Can I use the Samsung 840 EVO with an external 2.5" USB 3.0 case? If so, would I be able to c...
I am new to cryptography and this practice question is puzzling me. Please help!
I have an interesting case regarding protection against replay attacks. Under the assumption that Alice and Bob have used Diffie-Hellman key exchange to establish a secure temporary session, would it be safe for them to use the public portion of their DH keys as nonce seeders in combination with HMAC to protect from re...
In our product (embedded system), so far we were using diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 with hmac-sha1. But due to security concern we are planning to use diffie-hellman-group14 for key exchange and hmac-sha2-256 for HMAC. Is it ok to use diffie-hellman-group14-sha1 along with hmac-sha2-256. Would diffie-hellman-group14-sha1...
My new enterprise use the app "GOOD" for the emails. But to use it, I have to install a GOOD profile with description : "Install this profile to enroll to encrypted profile service". If I choose "Install", I'll get this warning (translated in english by me, sorry for the errors...) : Installing this profile, will allow...
Can you please help me in order to understand what exactly do this code and if it is could be vulernerable? <script type="text/javascript"> function getUrlVars(){ var vars = [], hash; var hashes = window.location.href.slice(window.location.href.indexOf('?') + 1).split('&'); ...
I've always wondered if it would make any sense to put fake characters into a hashed password? For example this is my password: 1234 and after hashing the password , this is the result: abcd Then add characters to the hashed password: aKbjczdx (every 2nd character is fake) Would this make any sense?
When visiting Gmail in Chrome, if I click on the lock icon in the address bar and go to the connection tab, I receive a message 'no certificate transparency information was supplied by the server' (before Chrome 45, the message was displayed as 'the identity of this website has been verified by Google Internet Authorit...
I'm currently studying BTEC Diploma in IT LVL3, and so far have basic command of C#, C++, and am going to learn Java basics soon, as we start a new class unit. I also plan on going to the university. I think this is the moment where I should jump into cyber security, as I'm still very young and very interested in penet...
Transferred a personal folder from an external HDD to a USB using my work PC. Just used a simple cut paste method between the two drives, never writing anything to the internal HDD. However, come to find out there were some content sensitive pictures within the folder I was unaware of as it was an older extern...
I want to confirm that this understanding is correct: A card has 16 digits plus a CV2 The first 6 digits are an issuer identification number The last digit of the 16 is a Luhn mod 10 check digit. This leaves 9 digits in the middle. Are these 9 digits random, as in, unguessable ? The last 3 digits, the CV2, are these ra...
Bit of background. Web Application that can generate Pub/Priv Keys and X.509 certificates. How would I make use of the certificate in a web application, username and password login form to provide secure authentication? This is for a part of a research project I'm doing so I'm not looking for 'better' methods of doing ...
I'm trying to access a website over HTTPS. However, it appears that it uses weak encryption: specifically, RC4. Is there a way to improve the security of my connection to the website? I've been looking into Tor, but unfortunately all exit nodes appear to be blacklisted on the website I'm trying to access.
This has been bothering me for a while, but I have noticed that some websites (the first one that comes to mind is XKCD) use HTTPS for no apparent reason. I mean, XKCD is free and accessible to anyone. Why on earth would they encrypt your session when all you're doing is looking at comics? It seems like the cryptograph...
Mac OS X ships with Xprotect, Apple's mechanism to detect and remove malware. System software security holes are patched decently quickly. In a world of fragmented, code-signed, sandboxed apps, what additional advantages would you get from a paid solution like Symantec's or Intego's suite on an actively supported Mac O...
I'm making use of google API for location (in Android, iOS apps).. Can the key be hardcoded? Or should it be protected? If It's sensitive, why is it sensitive and how can attackers exploit this?
Reading about the fast approaching end of support for Windows XP, I seem to come across a lot of articles which speak about bug banking. Of it being likely that towards the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, the amount of bugs and vulnerabilities appearing for Windows XP should drop, as hackers begin to stock up on the...
Obviously impersonating a law enforcement officer on an engagement is illegal but badguys don't care about the law. If a company wanted to allow impersonating LE and have it in clear writing in the contract does that make it so the tester won't go to prison? Has anyone ever been on an engagement or know of one where th...
I am trying to perform DOM XSS attack to exploit a vulnerability of localhost webpage. I am able to perform the attack successfully on IE-11 and Chrome. But Firefox is preventing me to perform the attack by encoding the script I put in URL. I am performing the attack as explained on official OWASP page. In order to by...
The "Phone State" permission on Android is widely requested by many apps. The explanation often given by the developer is that the app needs it in order to determine when you're on the phone, to stop doing stuff or making noise or the like. However, it also provides an application with your IMEI, phone number, and remo...
On our views in a Java web application, currently I am using hashCode as Id's for objects so that at server end I can get the same object back. However, I am wondering how secure Java's hashCode really is so that someone cannot hack it to retrieve other person's objects. I am not very inclined towards Encryption-Decry...
I am reading OWASP Testing Guide v3: Example 1: Magic Parameters Imagine a simple web application that accepts a name-value pair of “magic” and then the value. For simplicity, the GET request may be: http://www.host/application?magic=value. To further simplify the example, the values in this case can only be ASCII cha...
I want to use MD5 function (JavaScript library) to hash password before send it to server during logging in to website and during registration proces. I want to ask is it a secure method? I can't use https, and I wonder if this method will be safer? If someone has some remarks about this I will be grateful for advice...
I am trying to get a deeper understanding about the inner working of WiFi Protected Setup and its active attack using reaver, bully and other utilities. What I am really unable to realize is why it is necessary to set the network card on the bruteforcing device in monitor mode. Monitor mode allows to inspect traffic fr...
All (almost all) web browsers have TLSv1.0 enabled by default, moreover TLSv1.1 and even TLSv1.2 can also be enabled by default. What version of TLS will be used to connect to web server (e.g. Apache) with all SSLProtocol enabled? What order of protocols will be used for browser with TLSv1.0-1.2 enabled by default? For...
I have set up a remote ssh server on the cloud. I am newb at these things and have managed to bypass the required firewall using SSH. Now I plan on giving the access to only 2 more friends of mine so as to share the costs of data transfer so that only 3 users at max can connect and only the friends. So my question is t...
When visiting a url in Chrome, I saw in Fiddler, after the responses, calls to: http://api29.datarating.com/related http://api29.datarating.com/service2 For example after going to http://www.google.com I have this in Fiddler: http://api29.datarating.com/service2 with body: e=Y3oweE56azNKbTFrUFRJeEpuQnBaRDF5VlRselNXe...
I'm asking myself which one is better: Use the same PGP key pair for use with both private email addresses and business email addresses Use two separate PGP key pairs, one for private and one for business email addresses From a cryptographic standpoint there should be no difference (assuming that I keep my private ke...
I'm currently attempting to track down a problem with a Websense Web Filter breaking SSL connections for sites in a conditional forward. To do this, I need to know exactly how a conditional forward works. How its been explained so far is that a request is made of my company's DNS from a host within the private network...
I got that question on an exercise and I'm not sure what to answer. Without conventional brute-forcing and without a rainbow table, how could I find out the password? An improved brute-force algorithm is acceptable, but how could I improve it?
I am trying to pentest a webapp challenge. Is the following control code vulnerable to file upload? I would like to upload a php shell... I am able to upload shell.php.jpg file but I receive the error when I load the file location. function limitText(limitField, limitNum) { if (limitField.value.length > limitNum) ...
Imagine I have a website with user accounts. I want to authenticate users, so I need to know if the password they provide matches the one stored in my database. To protect the passwords from prying eyes, I want to obfuscate them, I decide to use AES in CBC mode to do so. I know that I shouldn't use AES-CBC to do this, ...
I want to use an OpenPGP smart card for signing releases, but I'm not sure what to do if I ever lose the card or it breaks. My idea is to generate the key using GnuPG on an isolated computer, encrypt it and backup that file. Then transfer the key to the smart card (is there a way to do this in GnuPG?) Any better ideas...
Assuming that the user is accessing/publishing related sensitive information over this period, and also assuming that they would take additional precautions in both scenarios, such as a Tails live USB, and an on-screen keyboard to prevent keylogging where it may be a risk. The main aim is to remain anonymous. Thank y...
Infosec has recommended us to use this header : Access-Control-Allow-Origin:http://domainA.mycompany.com,http://*.mycompany.com But I also own domain : http://domainB.mycompany.com So, if i just use Access-Control-Allow-Origin:http://*.mycompany.com Will this be enough ? or it needs to be domain specific ?
In relation to an openpgp key on a smartcard: Besides revoking the key, is there anything else it can be (ab)used for? Can I just ensure it's reliably stored but not worry about it's confidentiality?
Apparently, a third party knew the contents of an email I sent to someone within an hour after I sent it. The following possibilities come into mind: The recipient forwarded the email to the third party. (I doubt this though as the email was sent to a business address on a non-business day.) The third party has access...
We are planning to deploy HSM with our application. The solution we are thinking is : Mobile applications talks to server application, Server application talks to HSM for authentications, encryption, decryption Clients are mobile application(Android, J2ME etc.) which communicates with server application. Every tr...
My girlfriend is an admin on a German speaking site that for some time has been harassed by what we presume is a disgruntled user. At first it was merely an annoyance but a couple of days ago the person started sending child pornography in PMs and in eMails to the board. The police have been alerted but yesterday they...
This is the first time I face a mobile app deployment at big scale. This app needs to connect to a remote server where to store and retrieve data. I discarded connecting directly to the MySQL database as it would be a very bad idea, so I put some PHP scripts in the server side that receives data from mobile devices as ...
When I try to create a virtual machine on Azure, and use the password P@ssw0rd I get an error message saying The password you provided is too common. Now, from my basic understanding, a provider should be unable to determine the most common password since the hashes will be different even if the password is the same du...
If I search stack overflow for how to safely encrypt data, one of the first hits is someone's custom encryption scheme. I've seen several similar questions on this site, and in general they are all doomed to be severely flawed at best. Most people naive enough to even try to invent their own encryption have no idea how...
I am new to this and want to ask a basic question. Suppose I used my password (say "ABC123") to generate a key using the PBKDF2 algorithm (or any such algorithm). For encrypting a file I'll input my password and a key will be generated. This key will be used to perform encryption. Now, suppose if I want to decrypt t...
We are deploying multiple copies of the same system (some devices behind a gateway with NAT), and we need to have continued access for some of those devices. Right now our strategy is to have a set of non-standard ports that are configured to route to specific IP addresses behind the NAT. This setup is essentially repl...
It's my understanding that using "normal" passwords, such as an easy to remember sentence, is bad practice. Is that because such a string will not be random enough, or something else? From Ruby's OpenSSL documenation There are a lot of ways to create insecure keys, the most notable is to simply take a password as the ...
I see that the new login mechanism used by some banks in UK and also used by visa debit authentication is to ask for three random characters from your password at login (for example second, ninth and forth) but this surely mean that the password is not hashed, right? Maybe encrypted at best... This is very bad, right?...
Below is my encryption implementation in PHP. It's based on mcrypt, and uses AES-128 in CTR mode along with a RIPEMD-128 HMAC for integrity checking. For brevity, I've inlined the functions for calculating HMAC, verifying HMACs, directly int encrypt/decrypt functions. On the other hand, I've added more comments below t...
When clients (which are using both Linux and Windows) block all incoming traffic in a network, and the router is also blocking all incoming traffic, are we (almost) 100% secure? Maybe excluding silly stuff, like when the user runs something in his PC that he found online, or got through email from an unknown source. Ad...
Could somebody please explain to me the differences between the following attacks? sniffing snooping spoofing My professors used them all in his documents, but I'm not sure, if those are 3 different attacks or just synonyms.
0xugm5chUcCO+KqKV58YwSwh3kMOHDFju8wtSIuZCbBAAFJaHkYDloRXz9qLEz3unGiAwZEyTvlRhnt6slOFZQ== Im wondering how to figure what this is and how to decrypt it.
There are many great articles explaining how SSL/TLS works on this site, but I would like to bring in the performance issue. The thing is that I am serving my web content over HTTPS and the SSL handshake takes a lot of time. As much I understand at the moment the connection thru HTTPS is created as follows: TCP hands...
From wikipedia article on password strength: NIST recommends 80-bits for the most secure passwords Is there any estimation of entropy for FIPS-181 automated password generator? Recommended length? It generates pronounceable passwords like erinthec therglaz adentory denybier taillass alkhoray malteake