From The Blog
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ConnectWise Slash and Grab Flaw Once Again Shows the Value of Input Validation We talk to Huntress About its Impact
Written by Sean KalinichAlthough the news of the infamous ConnectWise flaw which allowed for the creation of admin accounts is a bit cold, it still is one that…Written on Tuesday, 19 March 2024 12:44 in Security Talk Read 347 times Read more...
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Social Manipulation as a Service – When the Bots on Twitter get their Check marks
Written by Sean KalinichWhen I started DecryptedTech it was to counter all the crap marketing I saw from component makers. I wanted to prove people with a clean…Written on Monday, 04 March 2024 16:17 in Editorials Read 1267 times Read more...
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To Release or not to Release a PoC or OST That is the Question
Written by Sean KalinichThere is (and always has been) a debate about the ethics and impact of the release of Proof-of-Concept Exploit for an identified vulnerability and Open-Source…Written on Monday, 26 February 2024 13:05 in Security Talk Read 710 times Read more...
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There was an Important Lesson Learned in the LockBit Takedown and it was Not About Threat Groups
Written by Sean KalinichIn what could be called a fantastic move, global law enforcement agencies attacked and took down LockBit’s infrastructure. The day of the event was filled…Written on Thursday, 22 February 2024 12:20 in Security Talk Read 684 times Read more...
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NetSPI’s Offensive Security Offering Leverages Subject Matter Experts to Enhance Pen Testing
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 Las Vegas. The term offensive security has always been an interesting one for me. On the surface is brings to mind reaching…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 17:05 in Security Talk Read 1905 times Read more...
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Black Kite Looks to Offer a Better View of Risk in a Rapidly Changing Threat Landscape
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas. Risk is an interesting subject and has many different meanings to many different people. For the most part Risk…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 14:56 in Security Talk Read 1388 times Read more...
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Microsoft Finally Reveals how they Believe a Consumer Signing Key was Stollen
Written by Sean KalinichIn May of 2023 a few sensitive accounts reported to Microsoft that their environments appeared to be compromised. Due to the nature of these accounts,…Written on Thursday, 07 September 2023 14:40 in Security Talk Read 1835 times Read more...
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Mandiant Releases a Detailed Look at the Campaign Targeting Barracuda Email Security Gateways, I Take a Look at What this all Might Mean
Written by Sean KalinichThe recent attack that leveraged a 0-Day vulnerability to compromise a number of Barracuda Email Security Gateway appliances (physical and virtual, but not cloud) was…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 16:09 in Security Talk Read 1597 times Read more...
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Threat Groups Return to Targeting Developers in Recent Software Supply Chain Attacks
Written by Sean KalinichThere is a topic of conversation that really needs to be talked about in the open. It is the danger of developer systems (personal and…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 13:29 in Security Talk Read 1605 times Read more...
Recent Comments
- Sean, this is a fantastic review of a beautiful game. I do agree with you… Written by Jacob 2023-05-19 14:17:50 Jedi Survivor – The Quick, Dirty, and Limited Spoilers Review
- Great post. Very interesting read but is the reality we are currently facing. Written by JP 2023-05-03 02:33:53 The Dangers of AI; I Think I Have Seen this Movie Before
- I was wondering if you have tested the microphone audio frequency for the Asus HS-1000W? Written by Maciej 2020-12-18 14:09:33 Asus HS-1000W wireless headset impresses us in the lab
- Thanks for review. I appreciate hearing from a real pro as opposed to the blogger… Written by Keith 2019-06-18 04:22:36 The Red Hydrogen One, Possibly One of the Most “misunderstood” Phones Out
- Have yet to see the real impact but in the consumer segment, ryzen series are… Written by sushant 2018-12-23 10:12:12 AMD’s 11-year journey to relevance gets an epic finish.
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Prior Art is just that... Prior Art. Even if it is Sci-Fi
Written by Sean KalinichIn the recent patent wars between Apple and, well just about everyone else you hear a lot about Prior Art. This is when someone can point to something that was created or in use before the item in question was patented. For example, if I tried to patent a circular disk intended to hold data, video or music I would not get it because of the CD-ROM, the DVD-RROM etc. So what about Apple’s recent legal action against Samsung? They claimed that the Tab 10.1 was a copy of the iPad and violated their patent. However, there is plenty or prior art to invalidate the concept design patent for the iPad.
One of the funniest that Samsung has brought to bear in the case is a screen shot taken from the Stanley Kubrick Movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” where two of the astronauts are sitting watching a video feed on a tablet device. Now Apple fans will say that Apple is allowed to patent this because Mr Kubrick did not! So since they (Apple) spent their hard earned money to take this concept and make it real they deserve the patent. Well there are two problems with that argument. First of all there were real tablets in existence before the iPad was even put to paper. But the second and one that I find the most ironic is that every movie is by its nature copyrighted. So images, concepts and ideas are considered the property of the copyright holder. This means that Apple violated Copyright when they designed the iPad.
Something to think about while we all wait for more interesting news.
Source CNET
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A Google SSL Cert issued to... Someone that was not Google
Written by Sean KalinichNot that long ago Microsoft was the victim of an incorrectly assigned certificate. This was issued to more than just Microsoft and caused some havoc with a few firewalls (like Microsoft’s ISA) that check for security certificate validity. Because of the malformed Cert people were not able to get to Hotmail and other secure Microsoft sites or they received an error saying the certificate could not be trusted. Microsoft quickly remedied the issue, but it had an impact.
Now we see something similar has happened to Google. A Dutch certificate service by the name of DigiNotar issued a certificate for Google.com to a company that is certainly not Google. The response has been immediate with companies stating that they are going to release patches that will revoke the DigiNotar trust (which is not found in many US systems but is big in Europe apparently.
Some are attributing this attack to the Iranian Government or others inside Iran. This is mostly due to the Comodo issue that happened a few months ago that was claimed by an Iranian Patriot. However, there is no evidence that this was the case this time this could be the work of others, but it does illustrate a fundamental flaw with Security Certificates. You see as it stands right now a third party is responsible for verification and issuance of the certificate that proves that a website is how it claims it is. It is not all that hard to intercept the confirmation notices in reality. It is also possible that some companies (there are well over 600 Certificate Authorities now) are unscrupulous enough that they might sell off the master keys to a site so that someone could produce their own certificates.
In short there needs to be a serious overhaul of this system to protect against the increasingly sophisticated attacks that are happening on the web.
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EDIMAX BR-6258n Nano Wireless Router Impresses us in the Lab Featured
Written by Sean KalinichWireless networking is one of those things that we all have come to rely on. We tend to expect to be able to connect just about anywhere now. I mean, even McDonalds has wireless now so why shouldn’t we? But what do you do when you come across one of those places that either does not have it, has poor quality (like many hotels) or you are just concerned about your security when on those open networks? Well there are a few companies that have a solution to this and we are going to take a look at one from EDIMAX today. It is one of the world’s smallest 802.11n wireless routers the EDIMAX BR-6258n.
Security is the bane of every network in the world. It is the reason why so many IT technicians end up burnt out or (in the case of men) bald. We all know that the only secure system is one that does not allow anything (and I mean ANYTHING) to connect, or input to the system. As soon as you connect a system to any type of input device or medium (say a network/the Internet) you open up vulnerabilities.
Even the most sophisticated firewall can be gotten around with time, effort and some creativity. This is all just the wired networks; we have not even begun to talk about wireless networks. These handy security holes create a whole new level stress for the IT technician. After all with not much more than a laptop and the right Lunix ISO you can grab packets out of the air and find out the WEP, WPA and if you are patient enough even WPA2 keys. True you can add RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) and certificates into the mix if you have the budget, but what about the home user? Or even better… what about our cellular networks?
For a long time it was thought that wireless could be secured with simple encryption and trusted networks. Then we found that these data packets can be intercepted in route and either spoofed or blocked creating a security breach. This, in extremely simplistic terms, is a Man-in-the-Middle attack and it is a very dangerous one.
Fortunately some researchers at MIT have developed a protocol that can potentially prevent these be encoding a specific transmission sequence in the originating packet. The sequence is a series of ones and zeros (data and silence) that when put together indicate to the receiving party that this is the correct sender. It does this in multiple ways to prevent, blocking, Collision, and spoofing of packets which are used by the most common Man-in-the-Middle attacks. The nice thing about this new protocol is that it can be applied to almost any network including both 4G network types.
Source NetworkWorld
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There is RAID and then there is RAID!. Well IBM has the latter that is a conglomerate of 200,000 disk drives combined together to make up a 120 Petabyte (not to be confused with Pedabite which has to do with chewing on feet) drive array. IBM built this to accumulate data for weather simulations. We imagine that these would be more than answering what the temp will be on Monday but will likely be for long-term forecast models and of course everyone favorite; global warming.
The array is going to an as yet unnamed client of IBM’s but IBM did say that one day (in the far far future maybe) cloud systems would all have similar storage arrays. For those interested this is not a giant JBOD or even RAID 50 array. This is something new called GPFS that allows the system to almost self-heal. If a single disk begins to fail the system can move the data slowly to a ready spare without the normal rebuild times you expect from other arrays. It can also spread files across multiple disks allow extremely fast read/write/index times.
I wonder if I can put something like this together in the garage…
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Apple gets temporary ban in the EU on the Galaxy S, S II and Ace but not Tab 10.1
Written by Sean KalinichApple’s legacy of patent lawsuits might be coming unraveled in the EU. Although the California based company did get an injunction on Samsung selling the Galaxy S, Galaxy S II and Ace it only barely managed that one. The issue that got Samsung caught was the “way” you scroll through the Photo Application on the listed phones. Oddly enough the application in question is not a Samsung app but the default photo app that is released with Android 2.3 (which is the default OS on the phones in question).
Not affected by the ruling were the Galaxy Tab and Tab 10.1 which come with a different flavor of Android. The Judge also appear to have rejected the claim that Samsung copied Apple in the design of the Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy S. More than likely this decision was influenced by the fact that the evidence used to support this fantasy of Apple’s was falsified intentionally or not.
Apple also took a blow in that the Judge ruled that Patent No. 1,964,022 is now null and void in the EU. This means that Apple can no longer use it in any legal actions. Patent 1,964,022 cover the “slide to unlock” feature that Apple uses on the iPhone. Samsung has said that they will replace the software that is in violation of Apple’s patent and then begin selling the phones in the EU again. Apparently investors feel that Samsung will do just fine as Samsung’s stock went up after the verdict while Apple’s fell on the announcement of Steve Jobs’ resignation.
The fact that Samsung is conceding and changing the one application (that is not even theirs) could be an indication that they may have some counter suits of their own planned for Apple and want to remove any bargaining chips from the table before they fire back. Things could get messy for Apple in the next few months especially if the courts in the EU decide to do anything about all that falsified evidence, maybe at Samsung’s request…
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Wow, file this one under both stupid and scary. It would seem that EA is seriously pushing the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Someone read the full EULA for this new service and has found a clause that is incredibly frightening. We went ahead and downloaded the installer and read and printed the EULA
Under a section marked “2. Consent to Collection and Use of Data” we found the following;
“You agree that EA may collect, use, store and transmit technical and related information that identifies your computer (including the Internet Protocol Address), operating system, Application usage (including but not limited to successful installation and/or removal), software, software usage and peripheral hardware, that may be gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, dynamically served content, product support and other services to you, including online services. EA may also use this information combined with personal information for marketing purposes and to improve our products and services. We may also share that data with our third party service providers in a form that does not personally identify you. IF YOU DO NOT WANT EA TO COLLECT, USE, STORE, TRANSMIT OR DISPLAY THE DATA DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION, PLEASE DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THE APPLICATION.
This and all other data provided to EA and/or collected by EA in connection with your installation and use of this Application is collected, used, stored and transmitted in accordance with EA’s Privacy Policy located at www.ea.com. To the extent that anything in this section conflicts with the terms of EA’s Privacy Policy, the terms of the Privacy Policy shall control. “
Now, many companies collect hardware and peripheral data along with the installed version of the OS for a customer, but to actually say that a user’s personal information can be used for marketing is a little bit much. We could not find anything that limited this use to EA alone. In fact in EA’s Privacy Policy (section 5. On Third Party Ad Serving Technology) it says;
“We or third parties operating the advertisement serving technology may use demographic information such as age and gender as well as information logged from your hardware or device to ensure that appropriate advertising is presented within the site, online or mobile product or service and to calculate or control the number of unique and repeat views of a given ad, and/or deliver ads that relate to your interests and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. We or third parties may log data for this purpose including IP address (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), unique device I.D., information about your software, applications and hardware, browser information (and/or information passed via your browser), hardware, machine or device make and model, advertisement(s) served, in game location, length of time an advertisement was visible, other Internet and website usage information, web pages and mobile internet sites which have been viewed by you (as well as date and time), domain type, size of the advertisement, advertisement response (if any), and angle of view. The foregoing data may be used and disclosed per this policy and the privacy policy of the company providing the ad serving technology and to other third parties in a form that does not personally identify you.”
EA then goes on to say “EA will never share your personal information with third parties without your consent. We may, however, share anonymous, non-personal, aggregated and/or public information with third parties. There may be circumstances where you may share information on your own. Please see section XI for more details about your rights to information you share publicly on EA and other third party sites and forums. You may also opt in to allow EA to share your personal information with companies and organizations that provide products or services that we believe may be of interest to you. To opt out of further communications from a marketing partner or sponsor with whom your information has been shared, please contact that partner or sponsor directly.”
The hitch here is that by clicking on the “I agree” check box you are giving your consent. We wonder how many people will be ok with this once they take a look at all of the facts. We will also be looking at EULA’s from other software distribution companies to see if theirs are any better in the next few days and will let you know what we find. For now we would advise people to take caution with Origin, it is not only the online content distribution application, but the replacement for the EA Downloader for patches and updates… This makes me consider removing some of the EA games that I have.
The Whole EULA can be seen on our forum in PDF format
AMD finally has a new CEO, after multiple ups and downs and more than a few replacements we find former Lenovo President and Chief Operating Officer Rory Read as the number one guy. According to IBM Rory has an impressive resume that includes 23-year at IBM holding a number of management positions.
AMD’s CEO history has been somewhat murky since Hector Ruiz (the man most people loved to hate) transferred (for lack of a better word) from AMD proper to Global Foundries under the Asset Lite program and AMD put together to lower overhead costs. After Ruiz left Dirk Meyer (one of the men responsible for the Athlon CPU) took over. It was felt that AMD needed to return to its winning roots and that perhaps Myer would be the one to do it. However, legal bills and the after effects of the ATi acquisition hurt AMD who did not return to having a profitable quarter until after Meyer worked out a $1.25 Billion settlement with Intel over their extended Anti-Trust litigation. Meyer left the company in January of this year. Since that time Thomas Seifert has been the acting CEO. Thomas will return to the post of Chief Financial Officer.
We wish Mr. Read well and luck in brining AMD around and hope that he does have the skills to make headway. Still when we see him we will always remember Lenovo’s LePhone…
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Microsoft shows off improvements to file management in WIndows 8
Written by Sean KalinichMicrosoft is looking to pull off a reverse of the way Vista was killed. For those of you that remember Vista (and that should be most of you) you will know that Vista was pretty much dead before it hit the market due to several very negative statements that ended up running around the internet like crazy. It created a phenomenon that we call the repeated truth. What happened was that these statements were linked and sourced by so many blogs that even though some of the original writers had never even seen the OS it became “fact” that it was flawed. I am not saying that Vista did not have more than its fair share of problems but it was not all bad.
To combat this Microsoft has put a much more visible blog online called “Building Windows 8”. This blog has articles about some of the key features and improvements coming in Windows 8. We have already told you about the improved USB 3.0 stack and the accompanying power management layer. Now we are going to talk about improvements to file management system.
According to Microsoft moving, copying, renaming and deleting data accounts for 50% of the commands used by consumers. This data is really not a shock as it only makes sense when you think about the number of songs downloaded, digital images moved and e-mailed, pictures grabbed from sites like Grumpy Rabbit and others. Because they finally noticed this (and because the smaller and move portable tablets and ultra-thins will have limited space) the Windows 8 Engineers decided to revamp the way that files are manipulated. What they did was make your file management look more like the download manager in IE or FireFox with a few nice extras thrown in.
The basic view still looks like the typical copy or move window with the exception of the fact that as you add more files to the queue you do not get another window. Instead the new file shows up in the same window making it easier to monitor. The “More details” option has also gotten a face lift. Now when you click on this you get a real-time throughput graph of each pending job which is pretty cool.The last thing the Windows 8 team did was to revamp the copy and replace window. Instead of the boring single thumbnail you now get a complete listing of conflicts and the option to choose what you want to do with each.
This may seem like a little thing on the surface, but in terms of usability and user experience it is huge. I hope that the improvements keep coming and all are like this one.
Source Building Windows 8
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In a shocking story Steve Jobs announced that he is resigning and will be replaced by Tim Cook (former COO (Chief Operating Officer). However, while Jobs is leaving the top job at Apple he will remain as Chairman for the company.
Although this is surprising the writing has been on the wall for some time. Jobs has had more than his share of health concerns this last year and he even alluded to it in his resignation letter.
The announcement resulted in a 5% drop in stock when trading picked up after the announcement.The Apple board and staff praised Jobs saying that he has been the guiding force behind their rise to prominence in the tech market. During Jobs’ second reign as CEO he has helped create such iconic devices as the iPad, iPhone and even the whole iDevice Eco System. Critics have called him arrogant and short sighted in his hatred of Adobe’s Flash and in the way he sometimes pushes for products (and patents) that are often questionable.
Although he is staying on as chairman it is important to note that since Tim Cook has been running the company while Jobs is out on Medical Leave Apple has entered more lawsuits and found itself under the legal microscope for potential falsification of evidence.
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Will Buldozer have the memory performance it needs?
Written by Sean KalinichSome specs on AMD’s next generation CPU Called Bulldozer have found their way on to the Internet. In what appears to be a conglomeration of leaked slides and other info from around the web. We took a look at some of this and compared it to what we know about AMD’s existing CPU architecture as well as what Intel has to offer with their Core line up.
First let’s talk about the existing AMD CPUs and why they tend to be so far behind Intel in some performance tests. The biggest issue that we have found is in the memory controller. Where the average Intel CPU shows 18-21GB/s worth of bandwidth even AMD’s top of the line Phenom II X6 tops out at between 14-16GB/s. This is a serious issue when you are dealing with multiple CPU cores and applications that are getting more and more bloated. But why is this an issue? One of the reasons is AMD’s caching structure. Back in the days when AMD was on top their memory and cache performance was a key component of this success. Part of this was also due to the extremely low latency of DDR (I can remember buying CAS 1 DDR modules which just flew). Then when the AM2 CPUs came out with reduced cache sizes and their DDR2 controllers (which were little more than the original IMCs improved to support DDR2) the much higher latency had a huge impact on AMD’s performance especially with the smaller cache available to the CPU cores. So while we knew the CPU was improved, the actual performance was negligible.
Moving forward into the Phenom and Phenom II AMD had even more problems with memory performance on these CPUs this was despite them trying to add in more cache (and associations). The issue still revolved around the fact that the IMC for these processors had still not changed much in terms of core design. Nor had the caching structure; sure it had gotten larger but its overall performance had not improved much.
Now for comparison let’s talk about the technology behind each IMC. AMD’s Phenom II has a 144-bit DDR3 controller under the hood which according to AMD should be able to get you up to 21GB/s of memory bandwidth. The fact that we have never seen that is due to the cache structure each CPU core has two 64KB L1 cache blocks (Data and Instruction) 512KB (16-way associative) to work with while the total L3 shared Cache is limited to 6MB (64-way Associative).
Compared to Intel’s Core IMC (dual channel only) the CPU has two 64-bit Memory controllers, which allows their very different caching structure to operate a little more efficiently. Intel’s Core i7 has two levels of L1 cache per core (again Data and Instruction) each are 32KB while the L2 cache is at 256KB per core (only 8-way associative) and the L3 cache is bumped up to 8MB (16-way associative). Now that 8MB is also shared with the IGP that is on the Core i7 and is also stretched by the extra thread per CPU, but the core design allows it to operate in a way that AMD’s just cannot (at this time). There is also a lot to be said for the streamlined instruction in the new Core CPUs as well as the smaller process size.
Bulldozer, on the other hand, shows up with two 72-bit wide DDR3 memory controllers (which still add up to 144-bits) this serves four Bulldozer modules (each has two Cores) . The Caching structure is also different you get L1 at 128KB (still broken into two 64 KB blocks), 8MB of L2 Cache (2MB per Bulldozer Module) and 8MB of L3 Cache. Both the L2 and L3 are 16-way associative. The last is interesting as it moves away from the massive 64-way Association that Phenom II had.
Of course we are still only seeing 1MB of L3 per real core, but we might have hope for AMD yet. That is IF these changes to the caching and memory will amount to something. Time will tell on this one as we all know and we all are certainly waiting to see just how this new CPU (the first real new CPU in a long time) from AMD will do. I would love to see this new CPU show that AMD can still produce great products, after all it will only push Intel in making improvements of their own and at that point… the consumer wins.
Image and source ComputerBase.de
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Microsoft Send a Cupcake to Mozilla for Launching FireFox 6
Written by Sean KalinichApparently it has been something of a tradition for the Internet Explorer Team over at Microsoft to send a congratulatory pastry to FireFox with each new version they ship. However, now that Mozilla is pushing out a “new” release every six weeks the IE gang has shortened up on the size of the pastry. For their latest release MS sent over a small Cup Cake only. The running joke is that because of the smaller update the congratulatory gift is also smaller.
Mozilla’s new rapid release program is supposed to allow patches and fixes to get to market quicker without the normal delay of a major feature update. This decision by Mozilla has cause mixed feelings in the IT community and also the consumer market. Many feel that the short span is annoying and can be inconvenient. IE on the other hand is sticking with the larger full featured releases which, while some times better developed can also throw wrenches into web page performance and compatibility.
Honestly there really is no better way to do this, but I do wish that both companies would address some of the security and performance issues that are plaguing both browsers. FireFox needs to fix the Flash bug that it has while MS really needs to work on securing the way that Plug-in interact with it (especially allowing elevated privileges).
Still it is sort of funny to find out that the IE team sends over a (cup)cake every time a new version of FireFox ships.
Source CNET
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Former WebOS Developers move to Windows Phone 7
Written by Sean KalinichIt looks like the Death of the WebOS might be a big benefit to Microsoft and their Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system. After HP announced that they were killing this part of their business model off (along with their most of their Consumer Product division) many developers that were working on WebOS projects had nowhere to turn to and were probably a tad annoyed that they had invested in this technology and now were being left out in the cold.
Microsoft was right there though letting former WebOS developers know that if they were interested all they had to do was contact Microsoft and they would provide them with all of the Tools needed (Development Kits, Phones, and even training) to get things going under the Windows Phone banner. This was a smart move as, if the reports are to be believed, Microsoft is claiming that over 500 developers have contacted them.
We think that these rumors are more than likely true as many of these developers will want to offset their losses with some free help even if it is from Microsoft.
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Microsoft promises better USB 3.0 Performance in Windows 8
Written by Sean KalinichWe have heard all kinds of rumors and rumblings about Windows 8. So far we have heard all about how it is much more tablet friendly, designed to work with ARM CPUs and that it will be the best user experience that MS has done yet. We have had a look at a few of the demos (not any of the Betas yet though) and can say that it looks interesting, but I am not sure how it will work as an OS. As Windows Vista showed, just having a nice looking UI means nothing if you cannot back it up with performance.
Fortunately it seems that Microsoft is looking into that. They are talking about making their USB 3.0 stacks more efficient while changing the power profiles to help make battery life a little longer. Microsoft is citing an increase in USB 3.0 devices on the market and user demand for these peripherals as the reason they are working on this. If their claims are true then you might actually see something close to the speeds we were promised from USB 3.0. Personally, I would like them to fix the networking and disk drive stacks first before they worry about peripherals, but that is just me. Still Microsoft is trying I guess, and to make sure their customers know the hard work they have put in they have developed a USB Test Tool called MUTT (Microsoft USB Test Tool). This is designed to show you that USB 3.0 is working. So if you get different results, hey the tool works properly so it must be you right… Be sure to check out the video at the source link.
Source MSDN
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