Computer Tips -Tech Info

Category: Security

  • Google Hack honeypot

    I’ve found The Google Hack honeypot thanks to an entry at sans.org in the handlers diary. I’ve looked at it and it’s an interesting idea. The honeypot installs on your website and is invisibly linked to from another page. This way it gets spidered as if it was a real site. Then, it logs hack attempts against itself by monitoring and logging search referrers and ip addresses of those trying to use it.
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  • Bad week for Cisco, security headaches

    For starters, there was this advisory last week in response to a planned talk at a hacker convention on the possibility of a cisco router ipv6 exploit. The advisory detailed a LOCAL exploit and not the remote exploit that the talk was centered around. There was legal action against the speaker and materials detailing it were destroyed (literally ripped out of notebooks) at the convention by Cisco. Apparently this is the kind of vulnerability that could “shut down the internet”. Of course, much of the internet’s backbone runs on Cisco equipment. Next….

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  • Emails to abuse admins

    If you’ve read some of the earlier posts regarding phishing or junk emails. You’ve seen that I usually forward details to what’s called an abuse admin to deal with the issue. I thought abuse@ was an address required to be active at any given domain (I’ve received some delivery failures at that address though.) I did find a good list
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  • Google cache revealing critical personal infromation

    A while back I did an article on using Google search in some slightly more advanced ways, as well as a link to a site of specific Google searches. I’ve come across something in the Handlers diary at Incidents.org that is worth knowing about. The entry in question details that apparently someone made a BIG order for internet services that prompted the business to do a bit of research on the buyer. They found in Google’s cache a LOT of information – name, address, phone number, date of birth, credit card type, cc number, CCV2 #, credit card expiration, Social Security Number, bank pin number, account number, routing number, phone number, paypal email and password, drivers license number and state issued.
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  • Another Phishing update

    Well, last week I detailed attempts to get one phishing site shut down, then another two sites shut down. All three of those are out of operation now. I’ve gone after a fourth and it’s still up and going several days on. It’s spoofing ebay’s site and I’ve contacted both ebay through their fraud notification email system and I’ve contacted the abuse admin at the domain in question. I seem to be having a hard time pinning down anyone else to contact. So, if anyone views this and wants to help, the phishing site is at http://61.185.208.66/ebay/ there was no obvious directory listing of phished information, so I don’t feel like I’m giving you anything you wouldn’t have if you got the same phishing email.

    The contact information for this ip address is as follows:
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  • Ap coverage of hacker convention

    Apnews has an article on the recent “hacker convention” in Las Vegas. In typical media fashion they paint with a broad brush to display it as “a no-mans land where customary adversaries, feds vs. digital mavericks are supposed to share ideas about making the internet safe.”
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  • Secure your bluetooth devices?

    If the last article is having you feel a bit nervous about your bluetooth devices…. I’ve come across this resource on bluetooth security basics. Essentially the big ones are disable what you don’t need running (disable the discoverable setting) and the other one is to use encryption where available and set a passcode.
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  • You wanted bluetooth in your car, right?

    This falls under comptuers and security. A new tool has been released that makes it possible to eavesdrop on and send audio messages to, the interior of some vehicles with bluetooth enabled with an insecure default password. Car Whisperer basically takes advantage of the fact that most bluetooth enabled cars set the default passkey for the bluetooth to 0000 or 1234. All it takes to eavesdrop, or send audio messages is a directional antenna and laptop running linux with this program. Of course, bluetooths range is rather limited, but it gives something to think about.

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  • 10th planet announcement

    Over the weekend or just before, there was an announcement out about the discovery of a 10th planet beyond Pluto. For starters, there’s lots of debate over whether even Pluto should still be considered a planet, but this new planet is estimated at 1.5 times the size of Pluto and, well, if we’re going to call Pluto a planet, you ought to call this one a planet too, it’s only fair. Anyway, I saw a report over the weekend that alluded to the fact that a computer cracker was responsible for the early announcement.
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  • Assess security using a linux livecd

    Another in the line of great linux articles from IBM. This article details using a linux livecd to assess computer system (and network) security. It’s a good overview with some relevant links.