Satellite Phone Encryption Cracked

Symantec source code for PCAnywhere stolen in 2006

Symantec reporting that source code stolen back in 2006

http://www.symantec.com/theme.jsp?themeid=anonymous-code-claims

Dilbert close to the truth again

Uncomfortably too close to the truth

Pass word xkcd style

vSphere 4.1 Hardening guide

VMWare just published a security guide to hardening vSphere 4.1

http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/15413-102-2-18829/vSphere%204.1%20Hardening%20Guide%20April%202011.pdf

Live malware analysis tool

Tool to look at for live exe analysis, Carbon Black.

http://www.kyrus-tech.com/faq-2/

Interesting IPv6 video

Informative IPv6 video and implications for security on VIMEO

Rick Hayes - Assessing and Pen-Testing IPv6 Networks from Adrian Crenshaw on Vimeo.

When is a VPN not a VPN?

When its based on SSH and just seems to work out of the box...

https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle#readme

IPv6 view from Cisco

Interesting article on IPv6 from Cisco Blog, with more to come.

Cisco Blog

Egypt severs Internet connection

Article on BBC News website about how Egypt has removed itself from the Internet whilst the unrest is ongoing. Interesting to consider the implications for companies that rely on the Internet for their WAN connectivity for any offices they have in countries like this.

Bypassing Applicatio/DLL whitelisting in SRP and AppLocker

Didier Stevens has an interesting article on the ability to bypass DLL whitelisting by making the appropriate call. Apparently the reason you can do this is to help developers, and malware writers too....

Link Here

Application whitelisting paper

Really good paper on the effectiveness of application whitelisting and the practical implications and limitations of it.

Paper here

Wipe a disk using dd

You may need to wipe you hard drive to clean

up partition errors, bad installations, or for privacy. This will show you howto do this

These methods use a command called dd

Wiping the entire disk

This will overwrite all partitions, master boot records, and data.

Filling the disk with all zeros (This may take a while, as it is making every bit of data 0) :

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

If you are wiping your hard drive for security, you should populate it with random data rather than zeros (This is going to take even longer than the first example.) :

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M

When's a password good or bad?

A reasonable article on when good passwords don't matter.

Story here

Another story on the ability to crack 'good' passwords
here

NSA and compromised networks

Apparently the NSA think that their own networks can't be considered clean and security and take the appropriate actions based on that position including increased audit, new network sensors and standardisation.

Story here

Mounting a dd image

Interesting article on how to mount a dd image from a backup or when a hard drive is failing or copied

http://rackerhacker.com/2010/12/14/mounting-a-raw-partition-file-made-with-dd-or-dd_rescue-in-linux/

Hashing tool

New Hashing tool http://secure1st.com/

Vmware vsphere achieves eal 4+ certification

http://virtualization.info/en/news/2010/11/vmware-vsphere-4-0-receives-common-criteria-eal4-certification.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Virtualization_info+%28virtualization.info%29

Interesting comment at end of article on what is not included

Because the vendor itself specifies the Security Target document, it’s really interesting to know what isn’t included, especially when you want to compare the product with comparable products which are also EAL4+ certified.

For ESX/ESXi functionalities not included in the Security Target are:

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet
The use of any authentication method on ESX(i) other than the local password database
VMware Software Development Kit (SDK) tools
The procfs interface (used to manage CPU resources) on the ESX host Service Console
VMware Scripting Application Programming Interface (API) on the ESX host.
VMware Consolidated Backup
Guest OS patch updates via Update Manager
By earning this certification VMware stays way ahead of Citrix for which XenServer 5.6. and XenDesktop 4.0 achieved EAL2 certification in September this year.

four pillars of endpoint security

Interesting article from Microsoft technet

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/magazine/gg213837.aspx

Java outstrips Adobe

Apparently Java is the new Adobe when it comes to malware attacks on PC's. According to a report by Microsoft, the attacks on vulnerable are magnitudes of order greater than adobe, previous number one target of malware.

Image: microsoft.com