IT Security

Archive: 02-2011

• Brave new world: Asking hard questions about security, user rights, and trust

  Answers to technical questions should be cut and dried. Right? Michael Kassner throws out some challenging questions to gauge the opinions of TechRepublic members about security in an increasingly...

  Posted by Michael Kassner | February 28, 2011, 7:08 AM PST

• Cybercrime: Why it's the new growth industry

  Deb Shinder takes a closer look at cybercrime trends to explain why it is seeing double-digit growth and what is being done to counteract this expanding industry.

  Posted by Deb Shinder | February 28, 2011, 5:00 AM PST

• Protect yourself from closed source SSH

  Encryption is important, but you should know the dangers of using encryption software that cannot be closely examined — and how to mitigate those dangers when you have no choice but to use it.

  Posted by Chad Perrin | February 24, 2011, 9:14 AM PST

• Students of IT security: Career advice from the masters

  Michael Kassner asks two security experts what it takes to become an IT security pro. Here are their opinions on education, certs, hands-on work, and all the preparation needed to become an expert...

  Posted by Michael Kassner | February 22, 2011, 6:13 AM PST

• Captured images of your physical keys can be used to make copies

  It seems like every time we turn around, there is another threat to our privacy and security that needs to be addressed. This time, it’s your physical — not cryptographic — keys.

  Posted by Chad Perrin | February 21, 2011, 9:00 AM PST

• Why not use OpenPGP for Web authentication?

  TLS is the default solution for strong encryption on the Web, but perhaps it should not be. Why has no alternative arisen to challenge it, despite all of the problems of TLS encryption?

  Posted by Chad Perrin | February 15, 2011, 6:00 AM PST

• Getting paid to break into things: How vulnerability assessors work at Argonne National Lab

  Let’s face it. Deterrents such as “keep out” or “do not open” are powerful magnets to us techies. Now, imagine getting paid to ignore those warnings.

  Posted by Michael Kassner | February 14, 2011, 11:30 AM PST

• Recovering from a drive-by Java attack via fake security messages

  Mark Underwood describes how he recovered a user’s system from a drive-by Java attack. How do you protect users from fake security messages and deliver the security updates that they do need?

  Posted by Mark Underwood | February 14, 2011, 10:30 AM PST

• Filtering PF firewall logs

  The PF firewall’s pflog facility provides a powerful, flexible set of capabilities for generating network traffic logs. Because it stores logs in tcpdump’s native pcap format, a wide...

  Posted by Chad Perrin | February 8, 2011, 5:00 AM PST

• What the experts think about the viability of an Internet kill switch

  Media coverage abounds over the so-called “Internet kill switch” and its potential for harm. Little of it mentions the opinion of experts. Michael Kassner went straight to the bill...

  Posted by Michael Kassner | February 7, 2011, 7:18 AM PST