So, SOPA is the news of the day, in terms of the Internet and security; it has been for well over a month now. In case you’re not familiar, SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act. It will “authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.” I won’t bore you with the typical arguments about how it’ll infringe on free speech, or weakens safe harbor, etc. These arguments have been made, and they may have some validity, but let’s talk technology. SOPA is the most recent in a long line of legislation intended to regulate the internet. Such legislation is doomed[…]
While I did my thesis on this topic back in 2001, I haven’t used the knowledge or skills I gained from it much – or really at all. But I think it’s an interesting topic, and one that security folks and system administrators should at least be passingly familiar with. The technology has certainly changed since I did my thesis. When you look at an IP address or even domain name in your logs – where is that person coming from? You might need to know for forensics purposes, or even “cyberwarfare” purposes. Keep in mind that spoofing an IP address isn’t rocket science, and just knowing if the IP address in your logs is the one doing the activity[…]
The current “hot word” in security is SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. The rumors of Russia attacking a water pump system in Illinois and the actual attack of a water treatment plant in Houston have all been in the news in the last few months. SCADA systems are used in many industrial applications – water treatment, chemical manufacturing, product manufacturing, etc. More and more industries are becoming automated with robots and all kinds of other neat technologies replacing humans (and theoretically human error). Something has to control these systems, otherwise, you’re just replacing the labor force with folks who know how to control these automation tools. But something important to take away is that SCADA systems can literally[…]
Around this time of year, many people receive new devices and gadgets as gifts, and some of those gadgets turn out to be smart phones. But smart phone security is very tricky to pin down, as there are multiple vendors and platforms to take into consideration, not to mention the speed at which smart phone technology is evolving. So when I came across this Top 10 iPhone Security Tips whitepaper (pdf), I knew that it was probably a good thing that it attempts to target a specific platform. However, after reading through it, I think that many of the things McAfee points out can also apply to a Droid or BlackBerry. And so, by stripping away the platform-specific details, we arrive[…]
Sometimes emails aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes they promise great things. Sometimes they follow through with these, but most times they do not. Read on for an example of what not to do in promotional emails and learn how you can further protect yourself from email fraud.
I’ve mentioned Whole Disk Encryption in the past. There are a number of products, both free and paid, which will allow you to encrypt your entire hard disk, or the hard disks on your servers. In a recent study whole disk encryption (referred to as FDE in the study) has been shown to significantly hamper investigation. Basically, the encryption is too good. Even with techniques like cryogenic RAM freezing it’s often unlikely that the encryption can be bypassed. But there’s a huge, gaping hole in such protection: you can’t USE encrypted data. For it to be accessible and usable, it has to be decrypted. (In other news, it is not possible to open properly locked doors, nor to pass through[…]