Searching for Privacy: How to Protect Your Search Activity
This guide explains how to perform searches anonymously, protecting you from increasingly intrusive tracking and analysis by corporate and governmental organizations.
The Genie in the Market
The Android Market is an open and friendly variation on the app stores spreading across the mobile phone industry. These applications appear safe on the surface, but they exact a price for developer accessibility that is paid by unsuspecting Android consumers and vendors. This article discusses the threats presented by native libraries included by Android Market applications and covers how these vulnerabilities were exploited by the Unrevoked app to jailbreak the latest generation of Android phones.
Securing the Smart Grid: To Act Without Delay
This presentation, delivered at Infosecurity Europe by Joshua Pennell, discusses risks identified, research performed, and remediation efforts suggested around the Smart Grid and meters.
Top Threats to Cloud Computing V1.0
The purpose of this document is to provide needed context to assist organizations in making educated risk management decisions regarding their cloud adoption strategies. In essence, this threat research document should be seen as a companion to “Security Guidance for Critical Areas in Cloud Computing.” As the first deliverable in the CSA’s Cloud Threat Initiative, this document will be updated regularly to reflect expert consensus on the probable threats that customers should be concerned about.
Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing
What follows is our initial report, outlining areas of concern and guidance for organizations adopting cloud computing. The intention is to provide security practitioners with a comprehensive roadmap for being proactive in developing positive and secure relationships with cloud providers. Much of this guidance is also quite relevant to the cloud provider to improve the quality and security of their service offerings. As with any initial foray, there certainly will be guidance that we can improve, and we will likely modify the number of domains and change the focus of…
Exploitation in the ’New’ WIN32 Environment
With the release of Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2003, Win32 auditing, exploitation and research became far more complex. Data Execution Protection, a host of new security measures within the compilers, and the .NET Framework’s implications on development as a whole all signaled the end of “simple” core system exploits. This paper focuses on these architecture changes-which were made to prevent exploitation of win32 processes-and how to break them. It reiterates what the author learned about general Win32 exploitation and provides detailed techniques to evade stack protections in Windows XP…
A Risk-based Approach to Determining ESPs and CCAs
To mitigate the possibility of one computer virus crippling an entire region’s transportation, emergency services, and power, the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection Standards (CIPS) requirements 002-009 describe the cyber security standards with which bulk electric power providers must comply. As part of this compliance effort, power providers must identify their Critical Cyber Assets (CCA) and applicable corresponding Electronic Security Perimeters (ESP). This document provides a detailed methodology for determining ESPs and CCAs.
Black Ops of PKI Black Hat USA 2009
Research unveiled in December of 2008 showed how MD5’s long-known flaws could be actively exploited to attack the real-world Certification Authority infrastructure. This August 2009 presentation demonstrates two new collision classes: the applicability of MD2 pre-image attacks against the primary root certificate for VeriSign and the difficulty of validating X.509 Names contained within PKCS#10 Certificate Requests. It also calls out two possibly unrecognized vectors for implementation flaws that have been problematic in the past: the ASN.1 BER decoder required to parse PKCS#10 and the potential for SQL injection from text…
Updated PCI Standards: Flexibility, Clarity and Common Sense 2.0
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) are a set of 12 requirements that merchants and their business partners are expected to follow to ensure the safety of cardholder data. Authored by the PCI Security Standards Council-an independent consortium of representatives from the major credit card brands-the PCI DSS covers data management, information technology, encryption, physical security, legal agreements, and business operations. When these standards were updated from version 1.1 to version 1.2, 30 changes were introduced to the existing requirements.