We are all vulnerable! Yesterday, it was my turn… Infected by a trojan. Up to 04:00 AM to fix the problem! The culprit was Vundo. A well-known (and quite old) Trojan which slows down the system, display pop-ups etc… Nothing very malicious but it was difficult to get rid of
Tag: Security
The Data Retention Effect on Citizens Behavior
In Germany, data retention is already in place for communication channels such phone calls, Internet access and e-mails. A recent survey (German document) demonstrated that German citizens are aware about the way there private data are logged and changed their behavior in this way. Read comments about this survey here.
Who’s the Weakness?
The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affaires, Maxime Bernier was forced to resign due to a scandal in his country: Sensitive information were disclosed. The problem was the Minister himself! He forgot documents classified “secret defense” in his girlfriend apartment. This is a big mistake but, unluckily for him, his girlfriend
Your iPhone has a Good Memory!
I don’t have a iPhone yet. I’m waiting for the version “2” which should support 3G networks. Take care if you sell your beloved iPhone to an untrusted person: Your phone (as any other PDA or mobile phone) knows everything about you: emails, calls, SMS, visited websites. When the owner
Google Safe Browsing
Google is never miserly in innovations. Their labs is full of nice tools for all of us. Google Safe Browsing is a tool which helps you to identify potential unsafe websites. Queries are in format: http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=<your url> Example: http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=blog.rootshell.be.
A Chronology of Data Breaches
After the Bank of Ireland, the Ulster Bank also loose notebooks with customers information. Data breach becomes more and more an issue today: As all our personal data are stored in electronic form, it’s easy for employers to take data away to work at home or attend external meetings with
nsa.gov Offline During a Few Hours
The name servers hosting the National Security Agency (aka nsa.gov) were reported unavailable during a few hours around May the 15th. How is this possible? Let start some investigations using dig. When you query a root-server and ask for the name servers (NS records) of the nsa.gov zone, you receive
Sesame Ouvre Toi!
New gadgets appeared on the access-control market: the online or “e-door locks”! New devices can be locked or unlocked from any browser (notebook, mobile phone, …), change the code or review the activity log. Read the news here.
CAPTCHA Me if You Can!
“CAPTCHA” ? What’s this? Everybody already used CAPTCHA (or “Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart“). You know those pictures made of deformed letters that you need to understand and type in a specific field to perform some operations like creating some accounts, authenticating, etc. Almost all
KUL + SANS = Safe Programmers?
The KUL is the first European university to set up a partnership with the SANS Institute. The goal is to train the students to be more focussed on security during the development of new applications. Programmers are very good in writing applications but, unfortunately, are not aware of security issues.