Tag Archives: Security

A Malware Debugging Tool From Google

Posted on 2012-08-21 by jcs

After Irreal’s recent malware incident I’ve been keeping an eye out for ways to avoid any further exploits and for taking remedial action in case Irreal is reinfected. The particular piece of malware that attacked Irreal was only interested in … Continue reading →

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Two Factor Authentication for Gmail

Posted on 2012-08-16 by jcs

Mat Honan’s terrifying tale of being hacked should make all of us examine our digital security closely. If, like me and many others, a significant part of your life is lived or stored on-line, Honan’s story makes clear how vulnerable … Continue reading →

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When SSL Is Not SSL

Posted on 2012-08-13 by jcs

Troy Hunt has a nice post on SSL and how many sites misuse it. As Hunt says, SSL is not about encryption. The problem that Hunt is writing about is sites that deliver a login page, say, in http and … Continue reading →

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The Dropbox Breakin

Posted on 2012-08-06 by jcs

Much is being made of the supposed Dropbox break in. Several users reported that they started receiving spam at email addresses that were only used with their Dropbox accounts. Dropbox, to their credit, immediately launched an investigation and brought in … Continue reading →

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Malware Prophylaxis

Posted on 2012-07-30 by jcs

After last week’s malware outbreak at Irreal I’ve been thinking about ways to prevent another episode. For those who haven’t been following along, someone managed to add a line of obfuscated PHP to the index.php file that gets things going … Continue reading →

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Password Reuse

Posted on 2012-07-24 by jcs

I’ve mentioned Troy Hunt’s writings here before. Hunt writes regularly on security and always has something interesting to say. Last year I wrote about Hunt’s analysis of passwords from the Sony compromise and—sorry but it’s true—the stupid choices people make … Continue reading →

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Malware Free

Posted on 2012-07-20 by jcs

I spent most of the day yesterday going over the entire site looking for malware. I made a local copy of irreal.org and grepped for the signatures that I discussed in my Anatomy of an Exploit post. I didn’t find … Continue reading →

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Anatomy of an Exploit

Posted on 2012-07-19 by jcs

As I wrote yesterday, someone hacked the Irreal WordPress installation causing it to inject JavaScript into pages served by the blog. Here’s a copy of the hacked index.php file: <?php eval(base64_decode(‘JGlwPSRfU0VSVkVS /* elided */ );?> <?php /** * Front to … Continue reading →

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Malware Warnings

Posted on 2012-07-18 by jcs

Yesterday, Google started warning that the Irreal blog was unsafe. After some investigation, I determined that the site had, in fact, been compromised and some JavaScript that targeted Windows users (with the MSIE or Firefox browsers) was being served. I … Continue reading →

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Oh Oh: RSA SecurID 800 Token broken

Posted on 2012-07-03 by jcs

The RSA SecurID 800 token is a small USB device that authenticates users when they sign on to secure computers. It offers two factor authentication and contains encrypted keys and credentials that are, in theory, inaccessible to users or attackers. … Continue reading →

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