Late breaking articles from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal this evening caught my eye, wherein one seriously pissed off Google Inc opens up a surprisingly hard line against Beijing: More »
TrueCrypt 6.3a Released
A minor maintenance update to disk encryption tool TrueCrypt was released yesterday. The release notes cite bugfixes only, so this update may be viewed as optional for users already running at least TrueCrypt 6.1a, the last “highly recommended” maintenance update, absent those experiencing any specific issues. More »
TrueCrypt 6.3 Released
The latest maintenance release of disk encryption tool TrueCrypt made general availability today, adding most notably updated operating system support, including support for Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6. The release notes don’t indicate anything terrifically critical, so this release may be viewed as optional for users already running at least TrueCrypt 6.1a, the last “highly recommended” maintenance update. That being said, I’ll be immediately updating all installations. More »
Network Attackers: Where In The World 2
Time to tally up the new results since my last report on network intruder geolocation using Whois. Will the trend showing two-thirds of attackers as hailing from China, Russia and the former Soviet bloc hold for this new integration period? Place your bets. More »
Network Attackers: Where In The World
Let’s have a look at who’s been trying to break into SSH service on my development server recently, and where in the world they’re attacking from. Since I implemented fail2ban to trap out these attempted dictionary attacks, it’s logged the network addresses of all the culprits. Here’s who got caught in recent activity: More »
Applications of TrueCrypt, Part 1: Encrypted CDs
I previously discussed the merits of disk encryption as a countermeasure against the physical theft of portable computers and the leakage of private and confidential records that could ensue. But Full Disk Encryption is just scratching the surface of what can be done; the concept can and should be extended to all types of storage media, including portable media. I am currently using TrueCrypt’s encrypted file-container volume capabilities to create encrypted CD-R’s and USB memory sticks both as part of my own regular secure backup and data vaulting operations and in the implementation of secure backup and data portability solutions for my customers. More »
Recommended Practices for Browser Security and Privacy
Historically, advertisements were limited to operating in one direction: from your newspaper, radio, or television screen to you. Enter the full duplex, bidirectional intertubes, and now advertisers have a slew of lucrative new methods to target the awful nuisance of advertisements to you. The history of sites you visit and your search history (behavioral targeting), the content of the page you’re browsing at the time (contextual advertising), and potentially all sorts of demographic and personally characterizing information may be in scope depending on the application (think e.g. Facebook). More »
Full Disk Encryption Service Now Available
Having completed developing and testing a deployment procedure, I am pleased to make available to my customers a brand new service offering: Full Disk Encryption for laptops. More »
Network Intrusion Encounters and Countermeasures
Network intrusion threats ran rampant and unchecked on the internet, invisible to most users. You may see no apparent signs of the automatic probes directed at your computer network, arriving around the clock, scanning for potential entry points. But they are occurring, maybe right now. Any exposed service may be expected to be quickly discovered and subjected to attack. More »
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