Just when you were running around looking for something…ANYTHING…to do, three major IT vendors release a crapton of patches. Read more

Just came across the new zero-day in Windows which affects all versions.  The patch should be available today under MS14-060, but I haven’t seen it yet to link it.  It’s also not showing in WSUS. Read more

Boredom and too many “junk” computers scattered around my home finally congealed into a small-scale IDS system.  I’ve been toying with the idea of setting up Suricata to see how it compares to Snort, but I wanted to prototype a scalable multi-node system.  I’ve done this in the past, but it’s been several years and ran Snort/Barnyard/ACID.  So this isn’t a new idea, but I’m thinking about scaling out more with SSH-tunnels between multiple “scanners” and the “mothership.”  Long-term the nodes would be all-in-one, low footprint plug-and-play units. Read more

Nessus just released a plugin to scan for the lastest Cisco ASA vulnerabilities.  I haven’t yet heard of any IDS rules for this.  I also have yet to try the plugin.

Looks like cybercrooks planted malware on Dairy Queen and Kmart’s point of sale systems.  Kmart customers are at risk of having their cards clone, but the company assured customers no personal information was at risk.  Dairy Queen did not specify what data was impacted specifically, but did publish a list of affected stores.

Would chip & pin card tech mitigate these attacks?

Microsoft release the advanced notification today for October 2014, which includes three critical vulnerabilities for Windows, Internet Explorer and .NET.  Other patches for Microsoft Office and MSDN will be released as well.  Brace for impact.

Two methods, which I’m posting here for my own sanity next time I need them:

Recovery Mode
Changing the Grub Linux INIT String

I’ve used the init string method a few times without bothering to check the recovery console.  Hopefully some time in the future, I will document the whole process myself and post it here for posterity’s sake.

Updates to my post from yesterday on the ASA vulnerabilities: Read more

Dropbox, KeePass and Chrome all have updates out.
The guys who released BadUSB code also released a “patch” which only fixes one aspect of one vendor’s USB device.  They actually recommended bondo to a thumb drive to prevent physical tampering.  I’ve heard of devices that physically lock out a usb port but don’t ruin them or the case, but considering the condition of work computers I’ve seen us decommission I would just bondo it over myself. I’m sure my users would just love that.
The analytics black hole for detecting internal security threats – a breif summary of a Tech Republic article driving home the same old concepts – we do a piss poor job of user security awareness and education.
Gartner lays out its top 10 tech trends for 2015
The US Government Is Going To Store Top Secret Documents In The Cloud
Insider threat to critical infrastructure ‘underestimated’, says DHS
US Says It Can Hack Foreign Servers Without Warrants – no analysis here – just scary but apparently legal.
Obama Had Security Fears on JPMorgan Data Breach (Courtesy InfoSecNews Mailing List)
An inside look at Russian cybercriminals (Courtesy InfoSecNews Mailing List)
F-Secure’s whitepaper “BLACKENERGY & QUEDAGH: The convergence of crimeware and APT attacks”
George Kao’s “A System For Email Productivity” contains a lot of idea I’ve used in the past, but the presentation here is well worth the read.

If you haven’t setup your two-factor authentication for third party apps in iCloud yet, now is the time.  Unless you are like me, and gave Google all of those tasks already. 🙂  Kudos to Apple for finally coming down of the high horse and admitting they can be hacked…kinda sorta.  🙂

As a side note, I have to say I’m coming more and more into the dark side of fanboydom since I switch to the iPhone.  I didn’t switch by choice mind you, but I did switch.  Almost all of the annoyance from my Android days were gone, but I really miss the bigger screens and greater flexibility.  For now, I’m ok with trading the flexibility up for stability in a device more important than my laptop.