Security researchers Alexander Sotirov, Marc Stevens, Jacob Appelbaum, Arjen Lenstra, David Molnar, Dag Arne Osvik, and Benne de Weger have identified a vulnerability in the Internet Public Key Infrastructure that allows them to create rouge CA's (basicly makes all PKI based SSL useless).

"Our attack takes advantage of a weakness in the MD5 cryptographic hash function that allows the construction of different messages with the same MD5 hash. This is known as an MD5 "collision". Previous work on MD5 collisions between 2004 and 2007 showed that the use of this hash function in digital signatures can lead to theoretical attack scenarios. Our current work proves that at least one attack scenario can be exploited in practice, thus exposing the security infrastructure of the web to realistic threats."

To read the full article see: www.win.tue.nl/

I'll be hosting a public wireless security discussion and demo OCT 18th at 3PM at 61 East Main St in bristol,ct (old clock factory). Any one interested is welcome to attend:

The wireless security forum will attempt to foster discussion surrounding wireless security attack vectors, security methodology, and tools. The goal of the forum is to facilitate the open exchange of knowledge related to wireless security between attendees. During the forum the following methods, vectors, and tools may be discussed.

I love this: Jon Espenschied for computerworld writes this little "10 claims" article, but it's amazingly true, in that I keep seeing this over and over and over.... like this:

3. "That doesn't apply to the boss."

Most of these bad apples can be managed by appealing to their Machiavellian sense of influencing others' behavior: that they at least ought to appear to be leading by example, while continuing to do whatever it is they do with the door closed. Few would admit it, but I've run across many IT organizations that simply budget a DSL line for "guest" access in the executive's office, turn a blind eye to whatever gets plugged in and chalk up support time to the test lab. It's not a desirable solution, but if the executive's still willing to sign a Sarbanes-Oxley attestation, the rest comes down to plausible deniability.

read original article

The NSA has published a number of security guidelines for Apple OS X, Windows 2K, XP, 2003 and Sun Solaris 8 & 9. The Guides are about as detailed as you could expect from a government agency of the size and class of the NSA (extremely detailed).

See: http://www.nsa.gov/snac/downloads_os.cfm?MenuID=scg10.3.1.1

Today various news sources reported that Antivirus and computer security company Sophos is telling its users to dump pc's and get macs.

From: http://www.tgdaily.com/

"Computer users tired of spyware and viruses should consider switching to Macintosh computers, says Sophos in its new "Security Threat Management Report." The report ranks the top ten malware threats of the past six months along with outline current and future security threats. Hacker primarily target Windows machines and the report claims the Macintosh will continue to be a "safer place," at least for a while."?

This is bad advise any way you look at it. Consumers shouldn't be spending more money on anouther product they know very little about, home users should be spending more time learning about these threats and how to combat them.

Combating these threats on the PC may eventully be very similar to doing so on the mac platform. There is no built in 100% safe guard in the mac platform that prevents it from being attacked by viruses and malware.

The bottom line, whether you use a mac or a pc, you should be using a firewall, you should be checking for updates at least weekly, and you should know the security basics of your operating system, the same can be said for linux. Using an alternate operating system doesn't increase security, it actully decreases it because new users are less likely to know how to secure it.

Related information for securing windows XP:
Microsoft 6 steps to help secure your brand-new PC
Security Essentials for Windows XP without Service Pack 2

Before following this guide a complete ad-ware and virus scan should be completed to verify the system you plan on using is free from viruses and other malicious software. AVG virus scan is free for personal use and is available directly from AVG here: http://free.grisoft.com/

Ad Aware & Spy-bot search and destroy are both free for personal use and will identify any malicious software that may be running on your windows based computer.
Ad aware can be downloaded here: http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
Spy-bot Search and Destroy can be downloaded here: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

Durring Defcon authors from Sencepost demonstrated an all in one application that combines the features of nessus, nmap, and metasploit. They've created one of the first tools that I've seen where you scan your entire network, and use real exploits to verify nessus isn't reporting false positives. Bidiblah unfortunatly currently only runs on windows.

Check it out at: http://www.sensepost.com/research/bidiblah/

Tomsnetworking has released an excelent series of guides that explain how to detect, crack, and defend wireless networks.

Part 1:Recon & Setup
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article118.php

Part 2:Performing the Crack
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article120.php

Part 3: Securing your WLAN
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article124.php

From EWeek.com: "The OpenOffice.org community on Tuesday confirmed the existence of a potentially serious heap-overflow vulnerability in its freely distributed office productivity suite.

The flaw affects OpenOffice Version 1.1.4 and prior and OpenOffice Version 2.0-dev and prior and could put users at risk of code execution attacks."

Read more about this from Eweek.com

Here is the BugTraq email with details about this exploit.

Security patch from OpenOffice.org

Iron geek has released a series of videos that demonstrate how to operate basic programs such as, cain&abel, nmap, basic war driving, and more.

Here are their Hacking tutorials

Here is their nmap video.