Posted on the January 12th, 2008 under Editorial by digg
Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography and other books and articles on security and privacy, leaves his wireless network unprotected. My first reaction was probably the same as yours. What an idiot! He then goes on to make a few points that made me regret my first reaction. Bruce highlights the many other ways we take security for granted including leaving doors unlocked, drive in the rain while on a cellphone (whew!) and make other security sacrifices for the sake of convenience.
He explains that while it leaves your computers more vulnerable to leave your wifi open, you are exposed when you use your laptop in a public location anyway so you had better learn to secure your computer.
While I agree with nearly all of Bruce’s comments, I think i’ll keep my wifi secure. Oh yeah…i’m going to start locking the back door when I leave the house now as well!
I remember when the hoopla was about radio scanners eavesdropping on analog cordless phones. Every new technology seems to introduce a new way to violate our privacy. This little gem seems to allow capturing or recording audio while a bluetooth device is not actually in a call. This would mean that you can eavesdrop from room-to-room or with a laptop, from car-to-car at a stoplight even when someone is not using their bluetooth headset.
Here is a link to a useful collection of bluetooth hacking tools.
Posted on the June 5th, 2007 under Editorial by digg
Polish hacker Michal Zalewski has ratcheted up his ongoing assault on Web browser security models, releasing details on serious flaws in fully patched versions of IE 6, IE 7 and Firefox 2.0…
I don’t know what to say…this is huge! This is a very large, easy to exploit vulnerability that exposes a site’s cookies to any malicious web site on the net.
A harmless proof-of-concept exploit can be found here.
Another vulnerability has been found in OS X related to their disk image format. This is on an operating system that openly thumbs its nose at Windows for being insecure. There is even a commercial poking fun at the viruses that plague so many Windows users but seem to ignore the Mac.But the irony is that Windows is a victim of its success. Regardless of whether you like Windows or not, the fact of the matter is that it is the dominant operating system. According to the MarketShare service by Net Applications, the market share for Windows was 94% compared to 5% for the Mac for general usage.
This morning, I received a spam email with a worm attached that actually made it past my spam filters and I have to admit, it is pretty clever. In fact, the thing that impresses me is the amount of social engineering and creativity that goes into these attacks.
When I first read about Browzar, I was impressed by the hype. After further investigation, I found the product to be easy to use…no installation required and with the simplest and most straightforward of interfaces. A perfect browser for most people…just so long as you don’t expect to actually protect your privacy.
I've tried both expensive and dirt-cheap hosting services and finally settled on HostGator. I've been using them for more than 7 years now and never have to call in for customer service issues and my web site just works. HostGator is by far the best balance between quality and price you will find on the web.
The best source code repository i've found yet is SourceRepo.com. They provide the most control with the lowest cost for non-public source code hosting. I highly recommend this company.
