WindowSecurity.com Articles & Tutorials Archive

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Articles & Tutorials for August, 2005

The Pharming Guide: Date - Aug 31, 2005; Author - Gunter Ollmann; Section - Network Security Library / Web Security; Exploiting well known flaws in DNS services and the way in which host names are resolved to IP addresses, Phishers have upped the ante in the cyber war for control of a customer’s online identity for financial gain. A grouping of attack vectors now referred to as “Pharming”, affects the fundamental way in which a customer’s computer locates and connects to an organisations online offering. Enabling the Pharmer to reach wider audiences with less probability of detection than their Phishing counterparts, pharming attacks are capable of defeating many of the latest defensive strategies used customer and online retailer alike. This paper, extending the original material of “The Phishing Guide”, examines in depth the workings of the name services of which Internet-based customers are dependant upon, and how they can be exploited by Pharmers to conduct identity theft and financial fraud on a massive scale.
Packet analysis tools and methodology (Part 1): Date - Aug 30, 2005; Author - Don Parker; Section - Articles / Intrusion Detection; There are untold billions of packets flying around the web today. A great many of them are of malicious intent. A prelude to malicious activity is often the port scan. We will learn about some of the more popular types of port scans in existence today, and the tools used for them.
Product-based Security vs. Service-based Security: Date - Aug 26, 2005; Author - Deb Shinder; Section - Articles / Misc Network Security; Security vendors today can follow either of two different models: they can sell a product (a firewall, an encryption program, etc.) that your company pays for upfront, or they can sell a service that incurs an ongoing fee. In some cases, they can combine the two: an antivirus program or anti-spyware appliance that requires an update service to function properly. The current trend seems to be away from the standalone product model and toward the service model. In this article, we examine the advantages and disadvantages of both.
Assessing Your Security: Advice on Assessing your IT Security Posture: Date - Aug 24, 2005; Author - Gunter Ollmann; Section - Network Security Library / Policy & Standards; Most people will agree that Information Technology (IT) is changing or altering business processes and work environments at a dizzying pace. Unfortunately for those responsible for maintaining the security posture of these processes and environments, security changes faster.
Ideal-to-Realized Security Assurance In Cryptographic Keys (Part 2): Date - Aug 23, 2005; Author - Justin Troutman; Section - Articles / Authentication, Access Control & Encryption; In the final installment of this two-part series, we'll cover two closely related collision attacks - the birthday attack and the meet-in-the-middle attack. We'll conclude by emphasizing the importance of simplicity through conservatism, and establishing a "golden rule" for instantiating the lengths of many cryptographic values.
Implementing Principle of Least Privilege: Date - Aug 18, 2005; Author - Derek Melber; Section - Articles / Authentication, Access Control & Encryption; The Principle of Least Privilege is not a new concept, but the push to implement it on production networks has never been so important. This article will go over some of the most common configurations that you can make to implement these principles and reduce the possibility of an attack from a typical end user.
Avoiding The Auto Dialer Virus: Date - Aug 17, 2005; Author - Darren Miller; Section - Network Security Library / Anti Virus; This article provides some thoughts and helpful tips on avoiding being scammed for hundreds or even thousands of dollars by "auto-dialers". Sometimes even experienced computer users can be caught off guard by this scam.
Ideal-to-Realized Security Assurance In Cryptographic Keys (Part 1): Date - Aug 16, 2005; Author - Justin Troutman; Section - Articles / Authentication, Access Control & Encryption; In the first installment of this two-part series, we'll cover key length, and relative concerns, such as entropy and how password etiquette affects key space complexity. We'll look at how the length of the key doesn't inherently equate to the security of the key, and why security isn't even just about keys, at all.
Product Review: Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner: Date - Aug 11, 2005; Author - Deb Shinder; Section - Articles / Product Reviews; We’ve all heard of vulnerability scanners, but as the spectrum of security threats expands, security tools become more specialized. Acunetix has created a vulnerability scanner that’s specifically designed to protect your Web servers and Web applications. It sounded interesting to us, so we installed the Acunetix WVS package on a Windows Server 2003 server to try it out. In this article, we’ll review our experiences with its features and functionality.
Tricks of the Spammer's Trade: Date - Aug 10, 2005; Author - hakin9; Section - Network Security Library / Anti Spam; Spammer's try to get their messages through spam filters by using trickery. Let’s see how these tricks work, and how up to date filters spot the trickery and use it to their advantage. This article takes a deeper look into what tricks spammer's use to get past bayesian and heuristic filters.
Bluetooth: Is it a Security Threat?: Date - Aug 09, 2005; Author - Deb Shinder; Section - Articles / Wireless Security; I’ve received a lot of questions from readers recently about security issues related to different types of wireless technology. 802.11 (wi-fi) security has been covered in detail in this and other forums, but you don’t see nearly so much discussion of Bluetooth security. Bluetooth is becoming more and more popular, and it’s time to examine its security implications. Is it secure? Can it be made secure? What are particular security concerns? We’ll take a look at those questions in this article.
Auditing user accounts: Date - Aug 04, 2005; Author - Derek Melber; Section - Articles / Authentication, Access Control & Encryption; With Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, GLM, and the other auditing compliance programs getting so much attention, all aspects of the network environment are under a microscope. For any operating system environment this includes the auditing of the user accounts and their related properties. Considering that many attacks are accessed through a user account that has one or more incorrect and insecure settings, it makes sense to focus on user account properties during the audit. Within a Windows Active Directory environment there are the standard user properties that must be audited, plus a few that may not fall into too many other network environments. This article will discuss the key user account properties that need to be audited, as well as the tools that can help complete the task.
Hacked: Who Else Is Using Your Computer?: Date - Aug 03, 2005; Author - Darren Miller; Section - Network Security Library / Misc; This article brings to light how people tend to be complacent with their computers and not understand the little things they have overlooked that have left themselves open to others on the Internet. Chat programs today are used by millions, and yet they offer an avenue of capability to someone wanting to do harm.
Installing and Configuring Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager (DPM) Part 2: Date - Aug 02, 2005; Author - Deb Shinder; Section - Articles / Windows 2003 Security; In this two part article, we show you how to install and configure DPM and evaluate how this can be integrated into your overall security strategy. In Part 1, we covered the process of installing the DPM prerequisite software, DPM itself, the file agent software and the end-user recovery client software. In Part 2, we’ll show you how to configure your DPM server to protect data, and how end users can recover their protected files without administrative assistance.