Programming languages infosec professionals should learn
Code is an essential skill of the infosec professional, but there are so many languages to choose from. What language should you learn? As a heavy coder, I thought I'd answer that question, or at least give some perspective.The...
Was it a Chinese spy or confused tourist?
Politico has an article from a former spy analyzing whether the "spy" they caught at Mar-a-lago (Trump's Florida vacation spot) was actually a "spy". I thought I'd add to it from a technical perspective about her malware, USB drives,...
Assange indicted for breaking a password
In today's news, after 9 years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, Julian Assange has finally been arrested. The US DoJ accuses Assange for trying to break a password. I thought I'd write up a technical explainer what this...
Some notes on the Raspberry Pi
I keep seeing this article in my timeline today about the Raspberry Pi. I thought I'd write up some notes about it.The Raspberry Pi costs $35 for the board, but to achieve a fully functional system, you'll need to...
A quick lesson in confirmation bias
In my experience, hacking investigations are driven by ignorance and confirmation bias. We regularly see things we cannot explain. We respond by coming up with a story where our pet theory explains it. Since there is no alternative explanation,...
A basic question about TCP
So on Twitter, somebody asked this question:I have a very basic computer networking question: when sending a TCP packet, is the packet ACK'ed at every node in the route between the sender and the recipient, or just by the...
How Bezo’s dick pics might’ve been exposed
In the news, the National Enquirer has extorted Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by threatening to publish the sext-messages/dick-pics he sent to his mistress. How did the National Enquirer get them? There are rumors that maybe Trump's government agents were...
Passwords in a file
My dad is on some sort of committee for his local home owners association. He asked about saving all the passwords in a file stored on Microsoft's cloud OneDrive, along with policy/procedures for the association. I assumed he called...
Notes on Build Hardening
I thought I'd comment on a paper about "build safety" in consumer products, describing how software is built to harden it against hackers trying to exploit bugs.What is build safety?Modern languages (Java, C#, Go, Rust, JavaScript, Python, etc.) are...
Notes about hacking with drop tools
In this report, Kasperky found Eastern European banks hacked with Raspberry Pis and "Bash Bunnies" (DarkVishnya). I thought I'd write up some more detailed notes on this.Drop toolsA common hacking/pen-testing technique is to drop a box physically on the...
Some notes about HTTP/3
HTTP/3 is going to be standardized. As an old protocol guy, I thought I'd write up some comments.Google (pbuh) has both the most popular web browser (Chrome) and the two most popular websites (#1 Google.com #2 Youtube.com). Therefore, they...
Brian Kemp is bad on cybersecurity
I'd prefer a Republican governor, but as a cybersecurity expert, I have to point out how bad Brian Kemp (candidate for Georgia governor) is on cybersecurity. When notified about vulnerabilities in election systems, his response has been to shoot...
Why no cyber 9/11 for 15 years?
This The Atlantic article asks why hasn't there been a cyber-terrorist attack for the last 15 years, or as it phrases it:National-security experts have been warning of terrorist cyberattacks for 15 years. Why hasn’t one happened yet?As a pen-tester whose...
Masscan and massive address lists
I saw this go by on my Twitter feed. I thought I'd blog on how masscan solves the same problem.If you do @nmap scanning with big exclusion lists, things are about to get a lot faster. ;)— Daniel Miller ✝...
Systemd is bad parsing and should feel bad
Systemd has a remotely exploitable bug in it's DHCPv6 client. That means anybody on the local network can send you a packet and take control of your computer. The flaw is a typical buffer-overflow. Several news stories have pointed...
HawkEye Attack Wave Sends Stolen Data to Another Keylogger Provider
A recent attack wave involving HawkEye malware sends data stolen from its victims to another keylogger provider’s website. On 21 May, My Online Security came across a new sample of HawkEye. The actual delivery mechanism itself wasn’t unique compared...
Washington Issues Temporary License to Huawei
Washington Issues Temporary License to Huawei The US government has issued a temporary license to Huawei and its affiliates, allowing American companies to supply the telecoms and handset giant until August.
Despite reports emerging over the weekend of various chipmakers...
GDPR: The Best Strategy For International Businesses
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was created with the aim of homogenising data privacy laws across the EU. GDPR also applies to organisations outside the EU, if they monitor EU data subjects, or offer goods and services...
How Cyber-Secure Are Business Travelers? New Report Says Not Very
I travel frequently for business — to industry conferences such as RSA Conference and Black Hat and meeting with clients. Whenever I travel, I bring my work laptop, my personal cellphone enabled with work email and calendar, and, of...
Haas F1 team leans on service providers as security force multipliers
If today’s cars are smartphones on wheels, then race cars are supercomputers with engines attached. As the fastest racing sport in the world, Formula One cars come laden with over 100 sensors measuring every aspect of a car’s internal...
