Metasploit Update - 2.5 Released

The Metasploit Framework is an advanced open-source exploit development platform. The 2.5 release includes three user interfaces, 105 exploits and 75 payloads.

The Framework will run on any modern operating system that has a working Perl interpreter. The Windows installer includes a slimmed-down version of the Cygwin environment.

This is a maintenance release - all updates to 2.4 have been rolled into 2.5, along with some new exploits and minor features.

This release is available from the Metasploit.com web site:
- Unix: http://metasploit.com/tools/framework-2.5.tar.gz
- Win32: http://metasploit.com/tools/framework-2.5.exe

A demonstration of the msfweb interface is running live from:
- http://metasploit.com:55555/

Information about version 3.0 has been posted online:
- http://metasploit.com/projects/Framework/msf3/

iPod Video paves way for Porncast Explosion

From cable television, to the VCR, and even the complexities of streaming media we enjoy on the web today. Porn has not only helped with tech advancements, it has been a very strong revenue generator along the way.

Sure, research has shown that if you want to have a successful podcast, just throw in a moan or two, but audio only tickles us a little bit (though it may be a bit better for women). But now with the iPod Video on the market, the Podfather Adam Curry predicts that porn is "going to be huge" (pun intended) in a recent Daily Source Code podcast.

Expect to see a huge jump in Vidcasting now that the iPod Video is on the market. And expect to see the real trailblazing in RSS media delivery to be made by the Porn Industry. The porn industry will take RSS with Enclosures to the next level, simplifying, improving - and yes - making a profit along the way.

How long will it be, before the first big iPod exploit?

Changing Environment?

I don't subscribe to the notion that the security environment is changing. There is nothing new about encryption, two-factor authentication, or even fraud prevention. The basic technologies being deployed now have been around for decades. The essential security tenet CIA (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) is just as applicable today as it was 25 years ago.

Then what has changed?

What has changed and/or is changing, is that because of external pressures (be it regulatory, customer, etc.) businesses are being forced to do what they should have been doing all along. Because in the past they weren’t force to do so (couldn’t find the magic ROI for security, etc.), folks are getting caught today with their pants down and paying the price.

Use encryption as an example: Many security pundits have promoted the encryption of “production data” for years because it was the right thing to do and until recently this idea was unwaveringly rejected by business management at many levels, including by some of the very same individuals that are promoting it today. Promoting it today why? Because it was the right thing to do or because of regulatory and industry pressure? Or is it due to some individuals practicing a little CYA?

Certainly there are always business implications, priorities, and risks to be considered and evaluated. However, today we need to be especially aware of doing things more securely from the start. To be forward thinking in evaluating the risks and ultimately the cost of doing so will be much less than trying to play catch-up later.

We don’t need to look at what is new as much as we need to get back to basics. We need to look at CIA first and a little less CYA after the fact. Often doing the right thing first isn’t always the easiest path, but it sure makes it easier to sleep at night in the long run.

Hacking Sleep - Or How to Get Thru the Weekly Maint. Window

Polyphasic Sleep, also know as the Uberman Sleep Cycle is a method in which one sleeps 6 times, every 4 hours, for 20 minutes, during every 24 hour period. Why? Well, only sleeping 2 hours a day instead of 7 or 8, give you 3 extra months of awake time each year! This Blog follows Nick Busey's attempt at trying to convert to, and live under this sleep schedule.

Microsoft Consults Ethical Hackers at Blue Hat

As part of its second "Blue Hat" conference, Microsoft invited white-hat hackers to campus to try their hand at cracking Microsoft's code. Six white hatters and more than 1,000 Softies were in attendance for the two-day confab.

Six ethical or "white hat" hackers attended, including noted security expert Dan Kaminsky, Brett Moore of Security-Assessment.com, and David Maynor, a researcher at ISS (Internet Security Systems) Inc., Toulouse said.

Maynor, who works for ISS' X-Force team in Atlanta, Ga., said he showed Microsoft developers and executives how an attacker could use a USB device to load attack code directly into the memory of Windows machine and force it to run by taking advantage of the DMA (Direct Memory Access) rights assigned by Windows.

"The DMA vector was the most devastating in my talk because it is hard for just Microsoft to address it. They need support from hardware vendors as well," he said.

Maynor said Microsoft is working on a more secure model for handling peripheral devices, and may add security checks as a component of the company's USB device driver signing program in the future.

Personal Security - Body Found After Crash

Places not to wreck your car...

The body of a Walton woman who died in her van as the result of an accident Sunday afternoon was not discovered until Monday morning, Delaware County Undersheriff Douglas Vredenburgh said.

Mary Ellen Martini-Butler, 38, was found under the dashboard on the passenger side of her van more than 18 hours after the accident, deputies said. The van had been towed to Fred'’s Body Shop in Walton.

On Sunday, authorities, relatives and residents were unsuccessful in a search for Martini-Butler in the vicinity of the crash on state Route 10, and deputies said it was believed she had left the site.

Deputies said her body was discovered after Fred Babcock, owner of the body shop, sent someone to retrieve the registration from the van at about 8:45 a.m. Monday. When the person moved a pile of boxes, he found the body.

Interview With Fyodor Creator Of NMAP

A Whitedust interview with Fyodor, the creator of one of the most famous (infamous) security tools in existence: NMAP

Open Source Digital Forensics

The Open Source Digital Forensics site is a reference for the use of open source software in digital forensics and incident response. Open source tools may have a legal benefit over closed source tools because they have a documented procedure and allow the investigator to verify that a tool does what it claims.

Personal Security - Pillows: A Hot Bed Of Fungal Spores

Damm GP look at this... Researchers at The University of Manchester funded by the Fungal Research Trust have discovered millions of fungal spores right under our noses -- in our pillows.

Aspergillus fumigatus, the species most commonly found in the pillows, is most likely to cause disease; and the resulting condition Aspergillosis has become the leading infectious cause of death in leukaemia and bone marrow transplant patients. Fungi also exacerbate asthma in adults.

The researchers dissected both feather and synthetic samples and identified several thousand spores of fungus per gram of used pillow - more than a million spores per pillow.

Google Earth: The Black Helicopters Have Landed

The results of The Register's "Spot the Black Helicopter" competition are in, but before announcing the winners, they thought it would be a lovely idea to have a look at some of the other entries which prove just why Google Earth will eventually provoke the complete collapse of Western civilization...

TSA for Fun!

Now you and/or your kids can re-enact the excitement of airline screening! Yes, the airline screening playset pictured here is real. But unfortunately, the toy is a far cry from reality, since it doesn’t appear that the passenger comes with removable shoes. And sadly, it doesn’t appear that the set comes with a No Fly list...

An Unusually Slick Phishing Attempt

This one's victim-bank is Halifax Bank in the UK. The subject line reads "URGENT ATTENTION - Halifax-Online Fraud Notice" and the body begins by advising of recent phishing attempts against Halifax customers (which, according to Halifax's own site, is even true) and then asks the customer to contact Halifax on receipt of such e-mails!! (The customer service phone number quoted is even the real one.)

The e-mail continues by advising that Halifax has updated their security system. They are proud of their new SSL servers "where there is no risk of fraud and your account details are kept encrypted at all times." Naturally, because of this update, you are....guess what?..... asked to log on to the system and "verify your account info at the following link"

Such link being of the usual format -- an IP address (211.35.64.201) hidden behind a reasonable-looking URL -- which points to a real page on Halifax's servers.

The e-mail is unusually slick, as well as being cheeky. It's almost devoid of spelling mistakes ("unauthorized" should be "unauthorised" since it purports to come from a British company) and likewise of grammar mistakes ("securer" instead of "more secure" and one missing "to"). It could easily have come from a real person at the bank.

The image at the top of the e-mail actually comes from the real Halifax servers; as mentioned, the phone number quoted will actually get you to Halifax customer service, and if the URL is typed in by hand to a browser it will get you to Halifax's own servers.

This phishing attempt is almost perfect, a great use of social engineering and professionally put together.

A Different Look at Bagle

F-Secure attempts a 3D animation that visualizes the structure and execution of the Bagle.AG@mm worm.

The boxes in the picture are functions of the worm. The one on the top is the 'main' where the execution starts. The first ring contains all the functions that 'main' calls. The second all the functions that the ones on the first ones call and so on. All connecting lines represent the calls from one function to the other. Red boxes belong to the virus code while the blue ones are API calls library code that do not belong to the malicious code.

For the curious minded, the animation was created using IDA Pro, IDAPython, Blender and some custom scripts.

The animations can be downloaded in the following formats:
Windows Media 9 (9.7 MiB)
Quicktime (9.3MiB)

How to Foil a Phish

What happens after phishers strike? This CSO article provides an inside look at one midsize bank's cutting-edge incident response plan.

The death of a phish doesn't need to be extraordinary. It's just in a day's work...

Secure Air?

A 22-year old Georgia man was arrested Wednesday, accused of stealing a Cessna Citation and taking it from St. Augustine, FL, to Gwinnett County Airport/Briscoe Field. Police described the incident as a "joy-ride."

A jet with a 6-ton capacity on a 350-400 mile flight and the FAA and Homeland Security never noticed...

Big Brother Awards Later This Month

At the end of October, activists in many countries will hand out Big Brother Awards to people who've undermined national privacy and freedom. Here's a schedule of upcoming events:

Switzerland Zurich 29 October 2005
Czech Republic Prague 28 October 2005
Germany Bielefeld 28 October 2005
Austria Vienna 25 October 2005
Australia Sydney ?? October 2005

EPIC Page Describes "Theme Parks and Privacy"

EPIC has developed an issue page on theme parks and privacy. The page is a single source of information for consumers to learn more about theme parks such as Walt Disney World that use fingerprint scans to control visitor access. In this instance, the unchecked broad adoption of biometrics such as fingerprint scans threatens the privacy rights of adults and children as young as 10 years of age. For more information on related issues, see EPIC's pages on Biometrics, Children and Privacy, and the DOD Recruiting Database.

Personal Security - Bear Farmer Eaten by Own Animals

Score one for the Da Bears!

A Chinese man who raised bears to tap them for their bile, prized as a traditional medicine in Asia, has been killed and eaten by his animals, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.

Six black bears attacked keeper Han Shigen as he was cleaning their pen in the northeastern province of Jilin on Monday, Xinhua said.

"The ill-fated man died on the spot and was eaten up by the ferocious bears," it said, citing a report in the Beijing News.

In practices decried by animal rights groups, bile is extracted through surgically implanted catheters in the bear's gall bladders, or by a "free-dripping" technique by which bile drips out through holes opened in the animals' abdomens.

More than 200 farms in China keep about 7,000 bears to tap their bile, which traditional Chinese medicine holds can cure fever, liver illness and sore eyes.

White Paper - SQL Injection Attack and Defense

This paper focuses on educating the security professionals with the risks associated with this situation and tries to give brief understanding of various kinds of attacks that attacker may launch and outline of various strategies that can be evaluated and adopted to protect the valuable information assets.

Personal Security - Police Tazer Video

In this video a lady gets a little crazy because she got pulled over. The officer was forced to used his tazer gun.

(Audio also could be used to emulate a night with The Jackhammer)

The 5th Annual Texas Bigfoot Conference

The 5th Annual Texas Bigfoot Conference will be in Jefferson, Texas, October 15-16, 2005.

Hey Kids... Maybe you should be looking in NJ...

CNN Interview with Kevin Mitnick

To many (not me), the name Kevin Mitnick is synonymous with hacking, the cinematic sort where a snot-nosed kid thumbs his nose at authority. But, Mitnick says, the characterization is a bit overdone and the legend untrue, if not libelous.

Ok Interview, but I think CNN asked some darn silly questions and Mr. Mitnick's 15 minutes were up a long time ago...

Hoodie Sweatshirts with Integrated Masks

Closed-circuit cameras (CCTV) are everywhere making it hard to keep a low profile. How about using one for that next data center audit? Stay warm and undercover!

These handy, masked French hoodies will help get the job done. Heck on the way home, knock-off the local 7-11 for a bonus...

It Never Ceases to Amaze Me... (California at its Best)

Not much to say about this except what are people thinking when they create websites like this?

Provides an easy way to make your very own fake VIN tags or...

Try a couple of vanity plates... Something like CISSP or MCSE or maybe one that might be owned by someone popularized by a TV show etc. Once you have the VIN go to carfax and get the complete history on the vehicle...

Fridays are for Fun!

Secure Manhood - Man dubbed "ball-less wonder" after losing matches to female

A male caddy who lost two golf matches to a female coworker was subjected to a barrage of insults questioning his manhood and sexual preference, according to a lawsuit filed against a New York country club by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. According to the EEOC complaint, a copy of which you'll find below, Eugene Palumbo was denigrated in newsletters distributed at Long Island's Tallgrass Golf Club, where he caddied. The newsletters mocked Palumbo as a "ball-less wonder" and recommended, the EEOC added, that he move to "a particular summer vacation spot that is generally known to have a large gay population." Oh, and there was a reference to Palumbo, 25, doing "lap dances" for unnamed "boys." The EEOC's September 30 complaint, which does not specify the monetary damages sought on Palumbo's behalf, seeks a permanent injunction barring Tallgrass from engaging in any future discriminatory employment practices. (5 pages)

Nessus 3 will be Available Free of Charge, but...

A few weeks away from releasing Nessus 3.0.0, they are looking for testers. They also announced that Nessus 3 will be available free of charge, including on the Windows platform, but will not be released under the GPL.

Bruce Schneier on Phishing

Financial companies have until now avoided taking on phishers in a serious way, because it's cheaper and simpler to pay the costs of fraud. That's unacceptable, however, because consumers who fall prey to these scams pay a price that goes beyond financial losses, in inconvenience, stress and, in some cases, blots on their credit reports that are hard to eradicate. As a result, lawmakers need to do more than create new punishments for wrongdoers -- they need to create tough new incentives that will effectively force financial companies to change the status quo and improve the way they protect their customers' assets.

The Internet is Broken — Weird Situation Evolving

It appears as of today that the Internet itself is now two separate networks and some parts of the Internet can not talk to other parts. This is not a temporary outage. A major communication company, Level 3 has cut all traffic with another major communication company Cogent Communications.

I’ll be surprised if someone isn’t in court today asking for an emergency injunction to get this fixed.

The bottom line is that for now people who get their service from providers using Level 3 can’t go to the web sites who get their service from Cogent and vice versa. This also affects peer to peer applications like Chat and some kinds of voice over IP connections between Level 3 and Cogent customers.

The decision to disconnect is that of Level 3. They are the ones who pulled the plug fracturing the internet.

Related links:
Slashdot

Cogent Website

C-Net story

UK Study Shows Security Consultants' Rates are Rocketing

A massive increase in demand has seen security consultants' pay rocket by 25 percent over the past year, according to research...

Pay for qualified security consultants has soared over the past year as budgets return and demand grows around the critical issues of application and system security.

On average, security consultants are currently charging 25 percent more year-on-year, cashing in on demand in areas such as application testing, compliance and mobile device management as well as emerging technologies such as VoIP and Wi-Fi.

Skills such as penetration testing, computer forensics and ethical hacking are also increasingly in demand. With too few qualified consultants and high demand for their time, it is a situation in which the lucky few can charge a premium for their services.

Iraq Security - TDS on Iraq and our Generals

There have been a lot of questions being asked about the state of the Iraqi forces and some of the answers have not meshed with the facts.

Stewart takes a look at John McCain's reaction to some of the things being said by Rumsfield and the top generals that just don't seem to jive.

Windows: (Cut and Paste)
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/TDS-Iraq-Generals-MCain-10-03-05.wmv

QuickTime: (Cut and Paste)
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/TDS-Iraq-Generals-MCain-10-03-05.mov

Turning Off the Cameras Down Under - Call for Ban on Worker Surveillance

A ban on surveillance in toilets, change rooms, showers and bathrooms? To heck with global warming and terrorism - this is atrocious!

The final report of the Law Reform Commission has called for a new regulator to oversee the covert and overt monitoring of employees in the workplace.

The report, released today, called for new laws which would require employers to seek the permission from the regulator to test workers for drugs and alcohol and to install intrusive surveillance devices.

The report also called for the regulator to issue mandatory codes of conduct to cover video surveillance and monitoring of worker's emails.

The chairman of the commission, Marcia Neave, said an outright ban on surveillance in toilets, change rooms, showers and bathrooms was also needed to protect the basic dignity of working people - even if employees agreed to such a move.

N.C. Troopers Catch Ambulance Thief Transporting Deer with IV

A man reported missing from a Florida hospital was found in North Carolina dressed like a doctor and driving a stolen ambulance with a dead deer wedged in the back, authorities said.

Leon Holliman Jr., 37, was reported missing from a River Region Human Services facility in Jacksonville last month. The North Carolina State Highway Patrol found him driving the ambulance with the deer on Sunday.

``I don't know how the man got it up in there,'' said Sgt. Robert Pearson. ``It was a six point buck.''

It wasn't known where Holliman got the deer, which had been dead for some time, Pearson said.

Authorities tracked the stolen ambulance through three rural North Carolina counties and one county in southern Virginia before its tires were punctured and it wound up in a ditch, Pearson said.

Holliman was admitted to a North Carolina hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Police said they would decide whether to charge Holliman after that evaluation is complete.

Underwater Security - The Coast Guard's Integrated Anti-Swimmer System

The Coast Guard announces the availability of the Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) of the Integrated Anti-Swimmer System (IAS). The Coast Guard is proposing to deploy and operate the IAS for temporary periods at various U.S. ports throughout the U.S. Maritime Domain, when necessary. The purpose of the Proposed Action is to increase the Coast Guard's ability to detect, track, classify, and interdict, if necessary, potential underwater threats and as a result, protect personnel, ships, and property from sabotage and/or other subversive acts.

How Would You Respond to a Disaster?

As Michael Brown showed us (perhaps for different reasons) it ain’t easy running FEMA. Think you can do better? Try this interactive game created by the BBC for a TV show on supervolcanos.

Secure Handling (or what GP needs to know)

A study by the American Society for Microbiology has found, that one out of four men leave public rest rooms without washing their hands. Women are cleaner: Ninety percent wash their hands.

WHAX and Auditor = Backtrack

The folks over at Remote-Exploit were recently dropped from Google Adsense and need funding. Why should you be concerned? They’ve recently rolled the excellent Auditor and WHAX live cds into a new distro called Backtrack. Why be concerned? They were dropped for “Hacking/cracking content”.

Debian Firewalls

Sitting around like a Dan on the weekend with nothing to do? Then isn't it time you built that firewall you have been missing?

Most networks these days run behind some type of network router/firewall device. Most commonly home office and SOHO networks use small firewall/routers made by companies such as Linksys, D-Link, and Netgear to provide their network connectivity. The problem is these devices are often weak, underpowered, and feature limited. The solution? Building your own!

Sniffing the Air (or How I learned to stop worrying and love the Pig)

For anyone who wants to learn more about wireless network traffic "sniffing". Here is a pretty good how to guide.

Defeating Citi-Bank Virtual Keyboard Protection

Good site for vulnerability research, including PoCs.

Description: Early this year, Citi-Bank introduced the concept of Virtual Keyboard to defend against malicious programs like keyloggers, Trojans and spywares etc. However, the Virtual Keyboard concept can be easily defeated by using Win32 APIs to access HTML documents. Refer the PoC (Proof of Concept) for more details.

More details can be found at:

http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/21727

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB05-222.html

http://www.hackinthebox.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=17684

http://www.virus.org/Article151.html

Download link of the PoC:
http://www.hackingspirits.com/vuln-rnd/defeat-citibank-vk.zip

BatteryUniversity.com

Things that every geek should know... Battery University is an on-line resource that provides practical battery knowledge for engineers, educators, students and battery users alike. The papers address battery chemistries, best battery choices and ways to make your battery last longer.

The presentations are easy-to-read and are limited to about 1000 words. The material is based on the book Batteries in a portable World - A handbook on rechargeable batteries for non-engineers, and is written in condensed form.

Gas Thief Found Asleep at the Scene of the Crime

A Swifty gas station in Muncie wasn't open for business when the driver of a white van attempted to fill up.

But 38-year-old Brad Hodson wasn't filling his tank. Police say a 55-gallon barrel was in the back of his van.

Muncie Police Chief Joe Winkle explains, "He had pulled up next to the underground tank and had put a homemade siphoning hose in the underground tank."

Hodson used batteries to do the actual siphoning. But in the process, Chief Winkle says Hodson apparently fell asleep. "The fact it was 5:30 in the morning, he may have just got tired trying to fill that large drum up with gasoline. I'm not sure how fast that happened, but it probably took a little while and he probably just sat back."

And that's how the station manager discovered Hodson when he came to open shop for the day just after five a.m.

Think Your Anonymizer is Foolproof?

Internet users hoping to protect their privacy by using Web anonymizers, false identities and disabled cookies on their computer's Web browser have something new to think about – a patent filed by the National Security Agency (NSA) for technology that will identify the physical location of any Web surfer.

A patent granted last week, describes a process based on latency, or time lag between computers exchanging data, of "numerous" known locations on the Internet to build a "network latency topology map" for all users. Identifying the physical location of an individual user could then be accomplished by measuring how long it takes to connect to an unknown computer from numerous known machines, and using the latency response to display location on a map.

Dolphin Assassins Menace Gulf of Mexico

Every once in a while, a story based on pure speculation starts circulating, and picked up and re-picked up by otherwise legitimate media outlets as if it were based on actual facts. Here comes a doozy. The UK's Guardian is reporting that killer dolphins, trained by the Navy in the art of DEATH and armed with poison darts may have escaped their tanks during Katrina and are now hunting down surfers and divers in the Gulf of Mexico...

Methods of Conducting Industrial Espionage

There is plenty of reason to believe that we do not notice many of the system intrusions that take place and that many of those that are noticed are not reported in a way that allows development of a statistical base. You can read a paper about this as an HTML file or as a PDF file.

The National Counterintelligence Center, which later became the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, has been reporting annually to Congress since 1995 about foreign economic collection and industrial espionage. Its reports are freely available as PDF files.

Personal Security - Katrina, When Poor People Have Lost it All

Last year, photographer Siege spent his life's savings on a trailer for his mom (above) and 13-year-old brother in Louisiana. Katrina destroyed their trailer home, and ate their belongings. Siege returned to Louisiana with his girlfriend to help them recover. He took this snapshot of his mom on Monday, September 12, and writes:

My mom was feeling very hopeful through all this. Then we met with FEMA this morning. After two hours waiting in line for it's cold bureaucratic embrace, her hope started to flicker.

This is what it looks like when poor people have lost it all, and are told to get in line. Which line? Did you fill out that form? I hear they suspended the vouchers. Who do I call for shelter? Call this 800 number to get your number. But sir, I don't have a phone. Go to this website to get a number. But sir, I don't have a computer, or a home to put it in, or a phone to connect it to.

Link to the blog where Siege is documenting the trip, and efforts to raise funds to buy his mom and brother a new home (he's auctioning off prints of his erotic, fashion, and portrait work for that purpose).

Homeland Security protecting a Honey Baked Ham store. I’ll sleep better tonight...

"All across the country, the ACLU is uncovering information about Americans engaged in peaceful protest being spied on by Homeland Security, the FBI and local police," said Debbie Seagraves, Executive Director of the ACLU of Georgia. "It is deeply disturbing that the government would use resources intended to protect national security to instead spy on innocent Americans who do nothing more than express their opinions on social and political issues."

Overall, Online Banking Sites are Laggards in Service Levels Compared to Credit Card and Stock Trading Sites

Keynote found banking industry Web sites as a whole performing poorly, lagging behind the performance of other financial services sites such as credit card and stock trading sites. On average, bank sites are unavailable to customers more than 15 hours per week because of technical issues. Bank of America, Wachovia and US Bank topped the Keynote ranking of customer experience. Washington Mutual, BankOne and Bank of America have the most reliable Web sites, Keynote says.

Crave privacy? New Tech Knocks out Dgital Cameras

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with an inexpensive way to prevent digital cameras and digital video cameras from capturing that secret shot.

The technology they've devised detects the presence of a digital camera up to 33 feet away and can then shoot a targeted beam of light at the lens, according to Shwetak Patel, a grad student at the university and one of the lead researchers on the project.

That means that someone trying for a surreptitious snapshot of, say, a product prototype or an amorous couple gets something altogether less useful--a blurry picture (or a video) of what looks like a flashlight beam, seen head on. (Info and video of how the system works can be viewed here.)

Greyhats Security is Back

After a bit of a hiatus, the Greyhats site is back with some changes:

- New layout and navigation.
- A promise that: Bias is gone. No more criticism to either Microsoft nor Mozilla will be found on the website unless it is deemed as necessary for the progress of computer security.

You can find Greyhats Security at its old address, http://greyhatsecurity.org.

Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder v1.41

Things that make you go hmmmm...

The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install windows from your registry. It has the options to copy the key to clipboard, save it to a text file, or print it for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Office 97, and Office XP. This version is a quick update to make it work with Windows Server 2003.

Linux-based Handheld that's Open, Powerful and Cheap

A Linux-based handheld that's open, powerful and cheap new Linux-based handheld computer/PDA called the GP2X:

It can play games. It can play your Movies. It can play your music. It can view photos. It can read Ebooks. It runs on just 2 AA batteries - And it can do all this in the palm of your hand or on your TV screen.

It runs the free Linux operating system. This means a whole world of Games, Utilities and Emulators are at your disposal. Quake, Doom, SNES, Megadrive, MAME, Media players and Applications to name just a few.

It's powerful - Two 200mhz CPU's with 64meg of RAM, custom graphics hardware and decoding chips. Takes SD cards and has 64M of NAND memory. Plenty to play with. One of the most powerful and advanced handhelds today.

It's cheap. Just $189.99.

It's open. You want to develop your own games for the GP2X? Go right ahead. The SDK is included with the system free. Not since the days of the Amiga has a system been so easy to develop for, commercially and for fun.

The GP2X isn't just another wannabe be Gameboy. Its a whole different design. A whole new idea for a handheld games system.

But wait, we're not new to the scene. Heard of the GP32? An accidental experiment in an open source handheld that went right. Some 30,000 units were sold worldwide, mostly in the UK and parts of Europe. The machine has an astonishing following. The GP2X is the successor.

An Introduction to Application Security Testing with Open Source Tools

A report on four open source tools: WebGoat, Firefox Web Developer, WebScarab, and Ethereal. By combining the tools in easy ways, testers can track down and close the gaping security holes that are often left in applications.

PASSWORDMAKER - Browser Extension

I am not promoting this software, but it seems like a handy password util...

How It Works

You provide PASSWORDMAKER two pieces of information: a "master password" -- that one, single password you like -- and the URL of the website requiring a password. Through the magic of one-way hash algorithms, PASSWORDMAKER calculates a message digest, also known as a digital fingerprint, which can be used as your password for the website. Although one-way hash algorithms have a number of interesting characteristics, the one capitalized by PASSWORDMAKER is that the resulting fingerprint (password) does "not reveal anything about the input that was used to generate it." In other words, if someone has one or more of your generated passwords, it is computationally infeasible for him to derive your master password or to calculate your other passwords. Computationally infeasible means even computers like this won't help!

Hackers target VoIP

Let's dump that old PBX and get on the Voip bandwagon today!

Malicious hackers are turning their attention to the technology behind net phone calls, says a report.

The biannual Symantec Threat Report identified Voice over IP (Voip) systems as a technology starting to interest hi-tech criminals.

The report predicted that within 18 months, Voip will start to be used as a "significant" attack vector.

As well as prompting new attacks, Voip could also resurrect some old hacking techniques, warned the report.

Spam Map

Mailinator(tm) is a service that gives you free, disposable email anytime, anywhere. No need to ever sign up. Send first - come to the site later. Mailboxes are created when email arrives for them (see the FAQ for more information).

Mailinator is about saving you from spam. But in the process it ends up getting plenty of its own (averaging over a million emails a day!). This map shows (in semi-realtime) ip addresses that are currently sending the most spam to Mailinator.

LA Power Outage

The crew did exactly as they had been told...

An inaccurate work order led a crew to cut the lines that caused Monday's power outage to 2 million people in Los Angeles, the city's Department of Water and Power has determined.

"It was a case of miscommunication," Henry Martinez, an assistant general manager for the DWP, said Thursday.

DWP engineers who planned the replacement of a control system at a Toluca Lake receiving station specified that a bundle of three charged lines should be left intact, but work drawings handed to the crew called for the lines to be cut and removed, Martinez said.

The wire cutters used by the work crew closed a circuit between two live wires, triggering circuit breakers that shut down the receiving station and began the power outage, he said.

The agency is still trying to determine who drafted the work drawings that differed from the engineers' plans.

Nation's Critical Infrastructure Vulnerable to Cyber Attack

It's not Holloween yet... but - BOO

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 15, 2005 – In testimony before the House Science Committee today, the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of major U.S. corporations warned Congress that the nation’s critical infrastructure remains vulnerable to cyber attack. The witnesses said the economy is increasingly dependent on the Internet and that a major attack could result in significant economic disruption and loss of life.

Urging action to address this vulnerability, the witnesses advocated increased funding for cybersecurity research and development (R&D) and greater information sharing between industry and government and among various sectors of industry. Witnesses also urged greater federal attention to cybersecurity and praised the creation of an Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The Next 50 Years of Computer Security: An Interview with Alan Cox

Author's note: Alan Cox needs little introduction--most will know him for his long-standing work on the Linux kernel (not to mention his appreciation and promulgation of the Welsh language among hackers). Cox is one of the keynote speakers at EuroOSCON this October, where he will talk about computer security.

According to Alan Cox, we're just at the beginning of a long journey into getting security right. Eager for directions and a glimpse of the future, O'Reilly Network interviewed him about his upcoming keynote.

Fridays are for fun... Do You Like to Watch?

If yes, this is the site for you... Global Desktop is a webcamera portal and combines several LIVE images from Webcams all over the World in a one page view!

National Vulerability Database (NVD)

NVD is a comprehensive cyber security vulnerability database that integrates all publicly available U.S. Government vulnerability resources and provides references to industry resources. It is based on and synchronized with the CVE vulnerability naming standard.

Goolgle's Beta Blog Search Engine

Google has introduced its long awaited blog search service, becoming the first major search engine to offer full-blown blog and feed search capabilities. Google's new service (in beta, naturally) is available both at google.com/blogsearch and search.blogger.com. Google blog search scans content posted to blogs and feeds in virtually real-time, according to Jason Goldman, Google product manager for blog search.

Whax and Auditor Want to Merge

They are asking for help with a new name. One that can also be used in commercial environments and doesn't sound to hackisch.

Post your suggestions to the forum at: http://forum.remote-exploit.org/viewtopic.php?p=5488#5488

25 Mind-Numbingly StupiStupid Quotes about Hurricane Katrina

A listing of 25 stupid quotes made by various politicians and media personalities. Here's my favorite: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." –President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005

Marcus Ranum's "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security"

Always interesting and entertaining and thought provoking... This is Marcus Ranum's latest essay: "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security."

School Security

12-Year-old Girl Shot with Stun Gun by Cops for Arguing at School

A Cincinnati-area mother says her 12-year-old daughter was humiliated and eventually stunned with a taser gun by Cincinnati Police inside Burton Elementary School Wednesday.

Nmap Port Scanner Gets an Upgrade

After more than 7 months of solid work, Insecure.Org is pleased to announce the immediate, free availability of the Nmap Security Scanner version 3.90. Changes in this massive update include: the ability to send and properly route raw ethernet frames, ARP scanning (for faster and more reliable local LAN host discovery), MAC address spoofing, enormous version detection and OS detection updates, dramatic Windows performance and stability improvements, 'l33t ASCII art, OS/hostname/device type detection via service fingerprinting, dozens of bug fixes and much more. Read the Changelog for the full scoop. Or snag a copy from the download page!

Email Policy Enforcement Story from Australia

Secretaries sacked after cyber brawl...

TWO secretaries at one of Sydney's top law firms have been sacked after a catty email exchange that was circulated around the city's legal and financial district.

Allens Arthur Robinson has been rocked by the cyber brawl, which began over a missing ham sandwich and ended with one woman taunting the other for being unable to hold on to a boyfriend.

In a warning to everyone who uses email at work, Allens confirmed that Katrina Nugent and Melinda Bird had been sacked and other high-flyers were facing disciplinary action.

Survival of New Orleans Blog

This site is still providing a very interesting perspective on what is going on in NO (photos, live cam and story). Wanted to post it again so it would be at the top of the list.

also

FEMA Blocks Photos of New Orleans Dead. Apparently the First Amendment of the US Constitution is rescinded by decree. The fact is they do no want the public to witness the horror of their botched job. Where is the outrage? The bloggers will have to do it...

Nerd TV

PBS kicks off NerdTV - broadcast TV's first entirely downloadable series. It features PBS technology columnist Robert X. Cringely's interviews with personalities from the world of technology. NerdTV is available for download from pbs.org/nerdtv...

NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Guests like Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy or Apple computer inventor Steve Wozniak are household names if your household is nerdy enough, but as historical figures and geniuses in their own right, they have plenty to say to ALL of us. NerdTV is distributed under a Creative Commons license so viewers can legally share the shows with their friends and even edit their own versions. If not THE future of television, NerdTV represents A future of television for niche audiences that have deep interest in certain topics.

Who is Jamming Radio Communications in New Orleans?

Bloggers following the emergency communications flow in New Orleans report that some frequencies are being actively jammed. This post on Jacob Appelbaum's blog points to speculation that a government agency may be responsible for some of that activity.

Why?

It is hard to be sympathetic, when you see things like this...

He Picked the Victims From a Sheriff's Web Site

Satellite images to sex offenders, are we placing too much information for our own good on the web? In our zest to share, are we risking the safety of our workplaces and families?

Mullen told authorities he targeted at least one of the two men after checking the county sheriff's Web site July 13, according to the police statement.

Artists Against 419

Interesting site working to stop fake bank sites-

An international community of individuals dedicated to fighting advance fee "419" fraud through artistic means! The images on this site are loaded from fraudulent Web sites that are being used in active scams, defrauding people of their money; by visiting this site, you are costing a scammer money.

Everthing Comes in Threes - Ready for #3?

If FEMA goes three for three in its predictions — if the Big One rattles San Francisco — will we be ready?

In early 2001 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed what it believed were the three most likely disasters to face the United States in coming years. One was a terrorist attack on New York City. The second was a hurricane-spawned flood of New Orleans.

Kind of makes you want to know what the third one is, doesn't it? The third is a major earthquake in San Francisco.

The first two have come to pass in under five years. And in both cases, the post-mortems have had two main elements: How could this have been prevented, and could it have been handled better once it occurred?

Who Would Ever do Such a Thing?

Personal Security - Bet Your Life?

What do you think? Is life as we know it ending?

Following these remarks is a brilliant piece of reporting by the American Progress Action Fund. It makes a clear case for what we are all now suspecting and seeing: the Bush administration is horribly mismanaging relief efforts along the Gulf Coast. Several things are now becoming clear. It is unlikely that New Orleans will ever be significantly rebuilt. When we talk about collapse as a result of Peak Oil, New Orleans is an exemplary – if horrifying – glimpse of what it will look like for all of us. In the case of New Orleans, however, it’s happening about two or three times as fast as we will see it when Peak Oil becomes an unavoidable, ugly, global reality. How long? Months. If we’re lucky, a year. As of August 2005 it’s not just a race to make sure that a particular region is not eaten by warfare and economic collapse. Mother Nature is obviously very hungry too. What region will be the next to go? What sacrifices can be offered before the inevitable comes knocking at our own personal door? Who can be pushed ahead of us into the mouth of the hungry beast in the hopes it will become sated?

How low can human beings sink? Keep watching the news. It’s not the first time civilizations have collapsed. This has all happened many times before. This behavior is not new. What is new — but is now dying — is our enshrined belief that there were to be no consequences of our reckless consumption and destruction of the ecosystem. What is now dying a horrible death is America’s grotesque global arrogance, brutality and cupidity.

(more)

Gumshoe chases Internet villains in Eastern EU

A good (albeit long) article about the 'good guys' chasing the 'bad guys' all over the virtual and real worlds.

Microsoft's Enforcement Team employs 65 people world-wide, including former policemen, lawyers and paralegals. The group, which gets a seven-figure annual budget, has 25 investigators including Mr. Fifka.

Hacking in Iraq, Interview with Jake Appelbaum

This is from back in April, but I think it makes for an interesting read.

Jake Appelbaum (ioerror) talks about the satellites he was setting up in Iraq on his vacation along with all sorts of hackery. A fascinating account of why he was over there and of hacking the border, internet connections, handing out Knoppix CDs, video blogging, and some other amazing stuff...

Incredible Tales Beginning to Emerge — told by bloggers

READ THIS NOW!

The Interdictor — A Live Journal Report from a blogger in New Orleans. These stories are going to get worse. I think blogging will be here to stay after these reports start to pile up.

More photos (here)

Cyberspace Law Web Guide

A very good resource for technology related legal issues.

Wil Wheaton runs a Poker Charity Tournament for Katrina

Wil Wheaton: "I sat in my living room, and flipped between CNN and The Weather Channel. My mind struggled to process the catastrophic devastation unleashed by Katrina. Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my face as the magnitude of this disaster set in. I realized that the last time I felt this way was during the tsunami, and 9/11 before that...."I have to do something," I thought, "but what?"...read on"

Will has all the information for anyone wanting to join the tournament.

Federal Data Mining an Invasion of Privacy

A new report says federal agencies using electronic data mining techniques are running afoul of Government rules to protect privacy rights. The report by congressional investigators says none of the 5 federal agencies who use data mining are following all of the rules for gathering such personal information, and as a result, there's no way to be sure that individual privacy rights are being properly protected. The Government Accountability Office says the failure to follow the rules has increased the risk that personal information could be exposed or changed, or has made it harder for people to keep track of their personal data. The agencies like the FBI and the IRS has been using data mining to track terrorists, catch criminals or prevent fraud.

We Should all Sleep Better Now...

When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.

Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it's obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.

Is it Possible to Have a Secure Disaster?

Natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina often pave the way for looting, price gouging, and other opportunistic scams -- including identity theft. Most Gulf Coast residents are still in survival mode, focused on keeping themselves, their loved ones, and their belongings out of harm's way. But as they deal with the devastation, how can they safeguard their personal information to keep identity thieves from compounding their problems?

Think about all of the data/information that is now lost and/or in the open in New Orleans. Think of all the fuss that has been made in the past over just one missing tape. How many tapes do you think are floating down Bourbon Street this AM?

How many corporate DR plans were up for the task? It is one thing to be a large company with just offices in the area, but what if your headquarters (and DR site) were in the path Katrina? Could your company operate in an area under water and Martial Law?

How to Secure your Wireless Network

A couple of good videos on securing your wireless network on a dlink and linksys router.

New Search Engine Based on Unintended Information Revelation (UIR)

I hope there is a lot of testing, discussion and debate before something like this is deployed. False positives could be very scary...

Existing search engines process individual documents based on the number of times a key word appears in a single document, but UIR constructs a concept chain graph used to search for the best path connecting two ideas within a multitude of documents.

To develop the method, researchers used the chapters of the 9/11 Commission Report to establish concept ontologies – lists of terms of interest in the specific domains relevant to the researchers: aviation, security and anti-terrorism issues.

"A concept chain graph will show you what's common between two seemingly unconnected things," said Srihari. "With regular searches, the input is a set of key words, the search produces a ranked list of documents, any one of which could satisfy the query.

"UIR, on the other hand, is a composite query, not a keyword query. It is designed to find the best path, the best chain of associations between two or more ideas. It returns to you an evidence trail that says, 'This is how these pieces are connected.'"

The hope is to develop the core algorithms exposing veiled paths through documents generated by different individuals or organisations.

Chinese researcher warns of nude Web chats

Practice safe chatting - do we need condoms for web cams?

A Chinese researcher has warned of a new threat to public health and morality - naked Internet chatting. Up to 20,000 Chinese Internet users log on to chatrooms each night in which users in various states of undress talk to each other with the help of Web cams, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said Tuesday, citing China Youth Association researcher Liu Gang.

"At first, we thought if was merely a game for a few mentally abnormal people," the paper quoted Liu as saying. "But as our research continued, we found the problem was much larger than expected," Liu said.

Needle Exchange For Hackers (not!)

Ok article, but not necessarily a good analogy. An addict turns in a dirty needle and gets a clean one – no exchange of information is required. The “hackers” aren’t turning in their tools. This is closer to a slut vs. a prostitute – one gets paid the other doesn’t and either way, everyone involved gets a little dirty...

Needle exchange programs operate on the gritty premise that junkies will shoot up regardless of risk, so you might as well give them clean needles to prevent the spread of disease. That's the same kind of logic behind programs such as iDefense's Vulnerability Contributor Program (VCP) and 3Com/TippingPoint Technologies' new Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), which pay independent researchers for newly discovered software vulnerabilities. Hackers will never stop uncovering flaws, so you might as well encourage them with cash payouts to report those vulnerabilities to a trustworthy security company. The company then shares this information with customers and affected vendors, and waits until a patch is available before publicly announcing the vulnerability. "We're doing the QA that vendors should have done before they ever put the product on the shelf," says Michael Sutton, director of iDefense Labs and the VCP. "Vendors benefit because they get advanced warning, and end users benefit because they get vulnerabilities patched."

Portable Freeware Collection

A site dedicated to the collection and cataloguing of freeware that can be extracted to any directory and run independently without prior installation. These can be carried around on a memory stick / USB flash drive, or copied / migrated from PC to PC via simple copying of files. Hence the term portable freeware...

Same Church, different pew...

The Portable Virtual Privacy Machine - Carry your entire Internet communication system on a tiny USB drive. Contains a complete virtual Linux machine with privacy-enabled Open Source Internet applications. No installation needed - just plug the drive into any Windows or Linux computer, and click on the Virtual Privacy Machine icon and you're ready to go.

Police chief- Lockerbie Evidence was Faked

Think this is the first and/or last time?

"A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.

The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people."

Stealing from Geeks

Stealing from phone geeks might not be the best plan in the world.

Microsoft - Security at Home Videos

Microsoft has a nice collection of free online security videos for educational or training purposes for home users on how to protect against computer viruses, spyware, spam, etc.

Security Now! with Steve Gibson

A weekly look at hot topics in security from the creator of ShieldsUP and Spinrite (and TWiT regular). Released every week by midnight Thursday, just in time for your weekend podcasting...

The feed URL is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/securitynow

A Socio-Technical Approach to Internet Security

Interesting research grant from the NSF:

Technical security measures are often breached through social means, but little research has tackled the problem of system security in the context of the entire socio-technical system, with the interactions between the social and technical parts integrated into one model. Similar problems exist in the field of system safety, but recently a new accident model has been devised that uses a systems-theoretic approach to understand accident causation. Systems theory allows complex relationships between events and the system as a whole to be taken into account, so this new model permits an accident to be considered not simply as arising from a chain of individual component failures, but from the interactions among system components, including those that have not failed.

This exploratory research will examine how this new approach to safety can be applied to Internet security, using worms as a first example. The long-term goal is to create a general model of trustworthiness that can incorporate both safety and security, along with system modeling tools and analysis methods that can be used to create more trustworthy socio-technical systems. This research provides a unique opportunity to link two research disciplines, safety and security, that have many commonalities but, up to now, relatively little communication or interaction.

Why We Must Leave Iraq

Larry Johnson is far from being an anti-war advocate, but he is an intelligence expert and his opinions come from the many years of experience he has attained.

He breaks it down into three parts.

Blue Sky and Fresh Air

Via the WiFi at Rapid City SD Airport...

Where I was - http://www.spearfish.com/canyon/

Live from Deadwood

Regular stuff tomorrow...

Believe Nothing You Read...

...and only half of what you see.

Like it or not, fake images are everywhere and have become a part of today's culture. Thanks to the popularity of digital cameras and the availability of desktop imaging software that allows users to easily manipulate images, fake images have become commonplace, especially on the Internet.

Unmanned Planes Patrolling Borders

Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, has tested UAVs along the Mexican border, and is considering using these surveillance planes permanently. The Coast Guard, also under the umbrella of Homeland Security, has bought 45 of Bell Helicopter’s “Eagle Eye” tilt-rotor UAVs and will begin rolling them out in September.4 Each Eagle Eye costs $5.5 million.

'Home banking hacker' arrested

Self-confessed home banking hacker Pieter Miclotte has been arrested on charges of fraud. Miclotte reported to Ghent police on Friday 8/12, just hours after Belgian media quoted him saying that thieving via home banking is as easy as plundering a shop with its doors open. He told newspaper 'Het Laatste Nieuws' that he'd robbed customers of two banks, namely ING and Keytrade, via online banking. He claimed to have stolen thousands of euros in recent weeks. Miclotte said he gained access during chat sessions to the computers of other online chatters and went looking for information about their banking and bank access codes. He allegedly used those codes to transfer large sums of money to his own accounts.

Guard against Social Engineering Attacks

I am delighted to report the release of a marvelous device to guard against social engineering attacks: http://www.stopabductions.com/

Users have reported that since wearing one, they have not once succumbed to numerous invitations to update their details at PayPal and/or a variety of banks. One user was briefly tempted to collect his winnings from a lottery he had never entered and to assist the survivors of a former West African dictator tragically killed in a plane crash in 1998 to repatriate a trunk full of money, but then he discovered the rear of the anti-social-engineering device had ridden up, temporarily exposing his amygdyla to the harmful thought rays.

It has also been reported that the device also protects against mobile phone radiation. Scientists have been unable to confirm whether a slight increase in head temperature since wearing the device is due to GSM-induced cerebral currents or reduced convective cooling.