Greetings from the 2011 RSA Conference in rainy San Francisco, CA. Yesterday I attended the opening keynotes of the conference, and a certain statement by RSA’s Art Coviello caught my ear and needs some further discussion. The conference opened with a fantastic video called “Giants Among Us” which provided a brief chronicle of the rise of public key cryptography, from Martin Hellman, Whitfield Diffie, and Ralph Merkel, to Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adelman. It was well produced and is worth a watch. Note: updated link to HD version. Art Coviello then came out and started his talk with a brief history of the 20 years of the RSA Conference, which was entertaining in its own right. He brought[…]
Your own users, with no malice, regularly compromise security every day. Odds are, they train new hires to do the same thing. Why are they undermining your work?
The buzz around smartphone and tablet app hacking has started to increase even more since the beginning of the year. But also making some waves in recent weeks has been the application of existing technology to allow vehicles to communicate. Automobile companies have been in the news lately concerning the Vehicle-To-Vehicle (V2V) communication system. This tech basically allows cars to communicate signals to each other over a dedicated wireless infrastructure (the implementation of which is actually being funded). Among my concerns was the idea that such an infrastructure might attract the curious-minded. Certainly there would be concerns over privacy (tracking?), spoofed signals, hijacked systems, and other shenanigans. If manufacturers embrace this on a wide-scale (perhaps if it becomes a safety[…]
Stop and think about what an attacker could do if they gained control of your e-mail account. Many web sites let you reset your password via an e-mailed link. Poorly designed services may even send a copy of the password to your inbox. Much of your personal information is likely reflected in conversations you’ve had via e-mail, and services such as Gmail can store copies of all your messages. With all this in mind, protecting access to your e-mail has become an important priority. Using strong passwords is a great starting point, but that’s only one level of security. Many companies use another system, known as two-factor authentication, to protect sensitive data, but it hasn’t been widely deployed for consumer[…]
Last week, we received a fax at the office from a branch of Virginia Commerce Bank. It was addressed to “Katie” and had our fax number clearly written on the cover sheet. The cover sheet had this interesting quote: This facsimile, which may contain confidential or legally privileged information, is intended for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed only. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized delegate for the recipient) of this message, please telephone the number listed above to advise us, so that we can arrange for its proper destruction and resend it to the correct recipient. Thank you. It probably goes without saying that there isn’t a “Katie” working here at Gemini[…]
You know those Facebook applications that occasionally pop up on your news feed, promising to add a “dislike” button, let you view who’s been looking at your profile, or implement some other feature that Facebook won’t ever support? A lot of these applications are not much more than thinly disguised malware designed to harvest personal information or trick the user into participating in a click fraud scam. Well, it looks like we’re in for a lot more of them, thanks to a new, cheap toolkit that allows users with little to no programming knowledge or experience create these malicious applications. For the low price of $25, this application will guide you through the process of creating your own nefarious Facebook[…]