January, 2010

It was a nice day as every other day. The only thing troubling me was I had to make some urgent calls and my balance ran out. As expected I rushed to the nearest top-up vending machine. A note posted outside said “out-of-service”.

Well to give you a brief about the place I live in a small town (if I can call it that) near London where one has to literally “work” to get even his/her daily needs stuff. As it happens I stay in the campus and there is just one top-up vending machine which was “broke” as of now. The nearest cash top-up is around 2-3 miles down to the town centre. Walking 5 miles to get a top-up would have been the last thing I could have imagined.

In December 2009, researchers at the security lab of Fraunhofer SIT announced a new way of circumventing the drive encryption technology provided by Microsoft Bitlocker (found in versions of Vista, Windows 7 and Server 2008). In addition to previous announcements from other researchers on the same topic, Fraunhofer were able to bypass this security even when used in conjunction with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

Pentagon released a report about how e-spies, software that download information or worse alter information, is their greatest threat in cyber warfare. Of course, all even remotely associated with infosec could have told them this decades ago, and of course, Pentagon has known all the time.

Todays challenge is the way social networks are used as a transport means to infect computers, and systems, inside the military. After all, the operators are simply humans, and humans can so easily be dubbed into clicking on the link stating "Is that really YOU in this video?".

As stated:

If you are like, well me, then you watch porn. On the Internet. But unlike me, you may not know how to avoid all the creepy and itchy stuff that may arrive after having un-safe sex.

This movie clip shows how free porn (or even paid-for porn) may force you to download rouge video players that is used to infect your computer.

The Data Retention Directive, more formally "Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC" has caused a large amount of debate the past years.

It is argued that you would loose your privacy, that the directive will mean that all your data traffic and phone data is stored way too long, and that the directive is a huge threat to the society as we know it.

I disagree.

This cool device was showcased this week at the CES2010. At first glance, I lik e it. But at closer inspection, I dub it a geeks toy. Who would really want a table to run two different OS depending on whether you use it as a tablet (disconnected), or as a laptop (connected)?

Guest post by: Tony Ball, Senior VP, Identity and Access Management (IAM), HID Global
Organisations around the world are facing more security threats to their business than ever before. Breaches of confidentiality, crippling cyber attacks and data theft by their own employees are just some of the issues that companies now have to contend with and plan for. These security threats can also necessitate taking a more tangible a pproach to security where controlling physical access to premises is high on the agenda for many companies.

News from the security world!

Authentication is a process that verifies the credentials of a user. The verification may be carried out on basis of previously stored information within the system in the form of passwords, biometrics or challenge response mechanisms. A user here implies someone whse record is already created in the SAI (stored authentication information).  The user presents information to the system for comparison and such information is called comparison information authentication (CAI).

Music download & piracy have been in the sphere for quite some time now.  It causes lots of people to get what they want (easily) – music for free thus making it impossible for music companies to (supposedly) make the amount of cash they want to.