Category Archive: security

Aug 26 2009

wordpress woes

As is common with many blogs, my public ramblings on this site are made possible through the ease of use and flexibility of the mysql/php based software known as wordpress.. And again, as is common to much php/mysql based software, that package has vulnerabilities – sometimes serious, remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. When vulnerabilities are made public, …

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Aug 02 2009

zf05

I really missed the old phrack magazine. Some of the “loopback” entries in particular are superb examples of technical nous, complete irreverance and deadpan humour. One of my favourites (from phrack 55) appears in my blogroll under “network (in)security”. I am particularly fond of the observation that details of how to exploit old vulnerabilities are …

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Jul 05 2009

tor on a vps

how tor works

I value my privacy – and I dislike the increasing tendency of every commercial website under the sun to attempt to track and/or profile me. Yes, I know all the arguments in favour of advertising, and well targeted advertising at that, but I get tired of the Amazon style approach which assumes that just because …

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Mar 29 2009

bad science and worse

acer aspire one

I’m a big fan of Ben Goldacre’s “bad science” column in the Guardian. He is particularly scathing about quackery and spurious medical science. His views of “Dr” Gillian McKeith in particular are well worth reading. Whilst I was reading one of his columns recently, I was reminded of another “Dr” who seems to get away …

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Dec 24 2008

and yet more DNS lunacy

A company called Unified Root is offering to register new top level domains in advance of the proposed ICANN changes. The company describes itself in the following terms: “UnifiedRoot (Unified Root) is an independent, privately owned company, based in Amsterdam, which makes corporate and public top-level domains (TLDs) available worldwide. Through our own efforts and …

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Dec 24 2008

more DNS silliness

I came across an interesting post on Avert labs site recently. That post pointed to an earlier SANS posting, which in turn, referenced a Symantec discussion of a new Trojan called Trojan.Flush.M. This trojan is an interesting variant of a class of trojans which hijack local DNS settings to force the compromised machine to use …

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Sep 25 2008

gun, foot, shoot

As a chartered member of the British Computer Society (BCS) I recently received through the post my voting forms for the 2008 AGM. The process gives me the option of voting electronically using a website run by Electoral Reform Services. My security codes (two separate numeric IDs, one of six characters, the other of four) …

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Sep 12 2008

webanalytics – just say no

I have just built myself a new intel core 2 duo based machine to replace one of my older machines which was beginning to struggle under the load of video transcoding I was placing upon it. The new machine is based on an E8400 and is nice and shiny and fast. Because it is a …

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Aug 10 2008

trusting DNS

Dan Kaminsky has (quite rightly) been hitting the press a lot in the weeks since 8 July when he announced the work done to fix a flaw he had discovered in DNS. The vulnerability itself was new, but its impact (cache poisoning) was not. Indeed, we’ve known about the dangers of poisoned DNS caches for …

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Jul 22 2008

implementing mailman and postfix with lighttpd on debian

I recently needed to set up a mailing list for a group of friends (my bike club). I had become tired of mail bounces and failures because we were all relying on an out of date list of addresses originally cobbled together by one member. That list of addresses was routinely used in “reply all” …

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