There’s a common mythos perpetuated by many security vendors (or, at least, by their sales forces) that you can buy a tool, install it, and problems will be solved. This mythos oftentimes short-circuits problem solving processes, jumping to “solutions” without doing earlier steps, such as defining the problem. More often than not we see this sales approach coupled with a heavy dose of FUD, intended to “prove” to a prospective customer that there is a great “risk” (term used incorrectly) that must be mitigated. If you buy their tool, then you’ll be saved! Or not, as the case more likely is…
Category: Technology & Tool Thursday
Each Thursday, Security Musings features a security-related technology or tool. Featured items do not imply a recommendation by Gemini Security Solutions.
Vavada - это онлайн-казино, предоставляющее широкий выбор азартных игр, включая слоты, рулетку, блэкджек и другие. Vavada привлекает игроков разнообразными бонусами и акциями.
I recall back in the 80s, when “computer virus” was a new term, “antivirus software” hadn’t been invented yet, nobody had coined the term “malware”, and Apple was still running incomprehensible TV ads. It’s ironic: Apple computers were the predominant home computers when computer virii and malware were invented. And yet, the first malware kit for the MAC OS (or, more accurately, OS X), Weyland-Yutani BOT, was only released earlier this month. For obvious reasons, I’m not about to download it and play around, but preliminary reports indicate that this kit may have caused a significant increase in OS X malware. And supposedly, kits for iPad and Linux are just around the corner. To be honest, I find the iPad[…]
OpenVPN isn’t anything new. But today I finally overcame a hurdle I had with trying to connect to our company VPN via my Android device. The OpenVPN for android project isn’t anything new; it’s actually been in the works since late 2009 if you follow it all the way back through a couple forks. The main issue that was holding me up wasn’t anything to do with Android-OpenVPN port itself. It was simply to do with the Android device I was using (thanks Samsung for crapping on us with the Galaxy S devices). A recent ROM update finally put the final pieces I needed into motion for being able to utilize OpenVPN. The main holdback was the lack of tun[…]
As you’ve doubtless heard, Sony’s PlayStation Network has been down for several days now. The exact cause of this outage, being apparently affected by hackers of some stripe, is doubtless worth investigating. However, since those details haven’t been fully divulged yet, it’s best to wait on that front. But this brings to light an increasing problem: the erosion of standalone functionality. PSN customers have not been able to access online content since April 20th. This is, of course, to be expected – if you shut off the network, the network is not available. Unfortunately, this extends to content which isn’t actually hosted on Sony’s network, since PlayStations use the PSN to connect to outside servers. Still, though, not surprising. Vexingly,[…]
So, last night I downloaded a version of the Low-Orbit Ion Cannon, the traffic generation tool which Anonymous has been using to attack various websites. The version I acquired, from SourceForge, was not one which had been modified for use by Anonymous – it didn’t have the “Hive” function which allows it to be utilized remotely. I should mention that although it was originally made by Praetox, and many versions available for download still have Praetox branding, Praetox no longer supports the code, nor is in any way affiliated with Anonymous. It’s not really a terribly complicated tool. All it does is flood out requests in one of three ways: http requests, TCP packets, or UDP packets. It allows the[…]
How do you know which ciphers your SSL service supports? The best way to find out is to ask, and that’s exactly what SSLScan does. SSLScan is a command-line tool that, given an address and port, will generate a long list of ciphers and report whether the SSL service at the location accepted or rejected them. You can find a Windows port here. The tool also displays preferred ciphers, supported protocols, and the server’s SSL certificate.