Tag Archives: Security

RSA Explained

Posted on 2012-06-20 by jcs

Barry Steyn over at I’m Still Learning has a nice post on RSA and how it works. Steyn explains the needed mathematical background in small pieces that should be accessible to everyone. At each step he works through a small … Continue reading →

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Flame Malware Uses New MD5 Collision Attack

Posted on 2012-06-18 by jcs

Much has been written lately about the provenance of the Flame malware. Recent reports suggest that it was a joint project of the United States and Israel. Now comes the startling revelation that Flame used a hitherto unknown MD5 collision … Continue reading →

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Hashing Passwords

Posted on 2012-06-15 by jcs

Patrick Nielsen over at Throwing Fire has an excellent post on Storing Passwords Securely that serves as a nice coda to my previous post on Password Advice. One of the problems that I pointed out in that post was the … Continue reading →

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Living Without Flash

Posted on 2012-06-11 by jcs

Let’s face it: Flash is a mess. Hardly a week goes by without a new exploit and its performance problems are legion. Steve Jobs famously hated Flash and refused to allow its use in iOS. My Linux distribution strongly recommends … Continue reading →

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Password Advice

Posted on 2012-06-07 by jcs

There’s been a lot of snark going around the last few days over this password help screen from the Texas Attorney General’s Child Support Services Web Page. Child Support Services are, of course, doing the best they can to preserve … Continue reading →

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The TSA (Again)

Posted on 2012-03-26 by jcs

Yesterday I wrote that I don’t often post about the TSA but the latest news is just too good to pass up. Congress is holding hearings on the TSA so naturally they invited Bruce Schneier to testify. That only makes … Continue reading →

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You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Posted on 2012-03-25 by jcs

One of our interests here at Irreal is security so we are occasionally obligated to report on the doings of the TSA. The reason for this is that the TSA so often serves as an example of how not to … Continue reading →

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About Those Insecure RSA Keys

Posted on 2012-03-22 by jcs

Last month I wrote a short post on some research that showed some RSA public keys are insecure. A couple days ago I noticed that the excellent Programming Praxis has a challenge based on that research and subsequent reporting in … Continue reading →

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TSA: Worse Than You Thought

Posted on 2012-03-08 by jcs

Jon Corbett over at TSA Out of Our Pants is making his displeasure with the TSA felt and in the process has become a real thorn in their side. After being denied access to his flight when he refused to … Continue reading →

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Script Kiddies At Work

Posted on 2012-03-07 by jcs

Kura over at SYSLOG has a really great animation showing the origins of SSH attacks on a single server during a 24 hour period. It’s another reminder, if you needed one, to lock down your machines. It’s pretty obvious these … Continue reading →

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