For the first golf round of the season I think I did quite well. I am, however, a little sore after using muscles that haven’t been used all winter.

Here’s the list for today:
SPAM and Anti-Spam – Article from the SANS Information Security Reading Room

Unintended consequences – It doesn’t really hit you until you see the graph.

You know what would be really scary? To have the same “success” with the SPY-ACT as we did we CAN-SPAM. In that event, the only people being helped would be security vendors. In other words, good for me, bad for you.

Here come the “rolling” scanner reviews! – I wish they did these reviews more often (with as little marketing spin as possible).

It’s been too long since the web application security industry had a good in-depth review of the various vulnerability assessment solutions available. And never have any in the past included software-as-service-models like ours from WhiteHat. Network Computing’s Strategic Security: Web Applications Scanners review plans to test products from Acunetix, Cenzic, N-Stalker, SPI Dynamics, Syhunt Technology, Watchfire and WhiteHat Security. Thankfully they have Jordan Weins conducting the reviews rather than someone with extremely limited domain knowledge. For those who recall, Jordan is not there average journalist. I personally got to see him win Security Innovations’s Interactive Testing Challenge web hacking competition. This should be really interesting to watch unfold!

Implementing SOA Patterns: The Service Firewall – Brought to you by the letters ‘S’, ‘O’, and ‘A’ (I hate that acronym!). Good article though 🙂

The Service Firewall becomes, then, more difficult to implement because there are several ways in which it can implemented, using several different technologies. You could use BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM) as a centralized WAF to implement the pattern, placing ASM at the edge of the network as a transparent or inline proxy-service that bi-directionally scans messages for potential threats. This has the advantage of providing protection for all services and reduces complexity through centralization. You could also use iRules to implement any number of centralized, reusable threat-based protections, particularly those launched via content and connections, such as an xDoS attack. This has the benefit of customization to the environment, but may not offer advanced features included in WAF products such as signature scanning and policy-based security. Neither address logic-based exploits, which are typically cited as the primary driver for custom-code based security solutions in a SOA environment.

Weird IE7 Event Log – Good article as well as a link to a new forensic oriented blog here: http://breach-inv.blogspot.com/

Too me this looks like a failed attempt to install a new event log. I tried to “repair” the log on my test system by adding the usual configuration like file name, file size, retention time and a primary module. So far the log file is still empty. So I ask: Has anybody encountered a properly configured and non-empty IE7 event log?

I’m quite happy that the golf courses are starting to open up. In fact I think I’ll go tonight for 9 holes 🙂

Here’s the list for today:

Social Engineering & the Need for Awareness & Training: Fraudsters Are Calling Businesses Pretending to Be SEC Staff Members – Good angle of attack.

On May 10th the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a press release warning that imposters were calling companies, claiming to be SEC examiners, and demanding “immediate access to confidential records.”

New Release of Libewf – Will have to give it a whirl…

The program library libewf supports the SMART and EnCase data formats which are widely used in disk imaging. The library compiles under Linux, *BSD, OS-X and Microsoft Windows. The latest version was released on May 12, 2007 by its authors Robert-Jan Mora and Joachim Metz.

Filipino Cybersleuth Named World’s Best For 2007 – That’s quite the honor. I wonder if he’ll be talked into leaving for a position in North America?

A Filipino cybersleuth was awarded the world’s best computer investigator for 2007 by an international organization of computer forensics experts.

Alexander Ramos, a computer forensics analyst with the Philippine National Police, was awarded the 2007 Timothy Fidel Memorial Award by organizers of the Computer Enterprise Investigations Conference for his work in cracking down a hacking group that preyed on telecommunications networks worldwide.

VoIP Security Testing Tools List from VoIPSA – I find it funny how big VoIP testing is these days. I wonder if consultants are starting to see an influx of requests for VoIP related security engagements.

This list was developed to address the current void of VoIP security testing resources and sites, for vendors and VoIP users alike. It is separated into the following seven broad categories:

* VoIP Sniffing Tools
* VoIP Scanning and Enumeration Tools
* VoIP Packet Creation and Flooding Tools
* VoIP Fuzzing Tools
* VoIP Signaling Manipulation Tools
* VoIP Media Manipulation Tools
* Miscellaneous Tools
The key objectives of the list are as follows:
1. Provide links to tools that help test the efficacy of implemented best practices outlined by VOIPSA’s Best Practices Project.
2. Facilitate the open discussion of VoIP security tool information to help users better audit and defend their VoIP devices and deployments.
3. Provide vendors the information needed to proactively test their VoIP devices’ ability to function and withstand real-world attacks.

Forensic Laws – Quite a few comments materialized from this post.

I mentioned a concept or idea in my book, but I wanted to follow up on it a bit…I believe to be a theorem. Okay, maybe not a theorem (there’s no math involved), so how about a law. Let’s call it the First Law of Computer Forensics. Yeah, yeah…that’s the ticket! Kind of like “Murphy’s Law”.

Using Rootkits to Defeat Digital Rights Management – Well written article.

The Sony rootkit debacle highlighted the use of rootkits to prevent pirates and authors of CD burning, ripping, and emulation utilities from circumventing Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions on access to copyrighted content. It’s therefore ironic, though not surprising, that several CD burning and disc emulation utilities are also using rootkits, though the technology is being used in the opposite way: to prevent DRM software from enforcing copy restrictions.

Because PC game CDs and DVDs do not need to be compatible with set-top players software vendors can store data on media in unorthodox ways that require software support to read it. Attempts to make a copy of such media without the aid of the software results in a scrambled version and the software has DRM measures to detect and foil unauthorized copying.

Introduction to Identity Management – Part III – The third, and final part, in the Identity Management series.

Mergers and acquisitions tend to grow IT organizations horizontally. Companies such as Johnson and Johnson or Proctor and Gamble may have dozens of divisions that developed as the result of such activity. The challenge of integrating processes and personnel is big enough without trying to force a common directory environment. In these cases, the Meta Directory shines. As we mentioned early, today’s LDAP products are incredibly flexible in their ability to synchronize with AD, Novell, and other LDAP directories. By leveraging this capability, an organization can maintain a common Meta Directory that contains information from every business unit, without ever changing the way that business unit operates. Something as simple as a company Whitepages can scale very easily to include new divisions using this method.