I used to think that it wouldn’t matter if my bank details got leaked, because that would only enable people to put money in to my account, and not take it out. A friend of mine who worked in a bank told me it is not quite so straightforward, and advised me not to broadcast [...]
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007 I’ve mentioned Monster.com a few times since details of the big security breach first came out – when 1.6 million CV’s were swiped by hackers, leading to lots of spam and highly targeted scams. Most people didn’t pick up on the fact that this is nothing new for Monster. Because of the way their website [...]
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Thursday, November 1, 2007 I’ve been subscribed to the security expert Bruce Schneier‘s blog for a long time now. He has always urged people to refuse to be terrorised, as he collected stories about a paranoid society that sends the SWAT team after Indian poetry professors for recycling paper, and can’t tell a bomb from a tape dispenser. Today, [...]
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After all the coverage that Eircom got over their security problems, Irish Broadband have attempted to capitalise on the situation with this press release: “Irish Broadband routers are totally secure”. I don’t know whether they are trying to lure any confused/misguided Eircom customers to switch providers, or whether this is an attempt to console their [...]
In the two days since I posted about the security flaw in Eircom broadband routers’ default configuration, coverage has spiraled to the front page of the Irish Times and elsewhere. In the words of a former roadie for Metallica: “new shit has come to light, man”. Bart got a reply from Eircom. I am surprised [...]
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Sunday, September 30, 2007 A post on Irish Linux Users’ Group awhile ago linked to this boards.ie thread about a major weakness in the way the default WEP key for your Netopia is generated. The WEP key is formed from the serial number of the router and some Jimi Hendrix lyrics. That’s fair enough you might think, because nobody [...]
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Monday, September 17, 2007 One of the most effective ways to achieve anonymity online is by using TOR – the Onion Router. A minority of volunteers run servers which make the service possible. It is risky, because, if you run a server, it could be your IP that is logged when somebody does something illegal. The TOR website has [...]
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Saturday, August 25, 2007 It’s time to raise the bar in internet security, and this needs to start with the likes of Paypal. Since I began using the internet in 1996, it has been the same old story – plenty of advice about strong passwords and good security policies, but attitudes have still not changed. Good advice will get [...]
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Infoworld are crowing that a “myth” has been crushed, as a hacker managed to break in to OS X to win a security contest in Vancouver. No myth has been crushed – at worst, perhaps a misconception has been dented. OS X is not hack-proof – there is no operating system on earth that is [...]
The Daily Tech have an article about a hacker who is curretly holding Valve Software (the makers of Half-life) to ransom, having hacked into the system that manages internet cafe licences, and retrieved details and credit card information. Most gamers will remember the bit of trouble that Valve had a couple of years ago, when [...]