Computer security researchers are much like scientific researchers in several ways. We build on the research of those who come before us, we sometimes rediscover the same things independently, and other times we forget where we learned things and sometimes claim them as our own. We also occasionally take an engineer’s approach and implement research discovered by others and not credit them as it’s the implementation into a tool that matters to us.

The latest Microsoft patch MS08-68 is a great example. It is a problem with NTLM authentication where the attacker can force a client to authenticate …

Now that the presidential race is over Newsweek is reporting that the US Government, through the FBI and Secret Service, notified the Obama and McCain campaigns that their computers had been compromised and sensitive documents copied.

…the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: “You have a problem way bigger than what you understand,” an agent told Obama’s team. “You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system.” The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to …

It’s been a long road since the early 90s when people first started public sharing of vulnerability information. Back then there were flat LANs, no network filters, and world writeable NFS mounts hanging out on the Internet. But with the spread of vulnerability information it all started to change. The first major shift in exploit targets was the move from network vulnerabilities to system vulnerabilities. As organizations got better at firewalling, using switch technology and encryption, attackers started exploiting misconfigured hosts. The major second shift to operating system code level vulnerabilities came when OS vendors started locking down …

Most consumers are aware that when you close a credit card account, it’s not really closed. For “convenience” reasons, recurring subscription charges such as your cable bill will continue to be approved. You can kind of see where the credit card companies are coming from, but it’s a pretty weak argument. The cable company just needs to notify me that the credit card on file is no longer valid, and I’ll update my information. Problem solved.

But that credit card weirdness is nothing compared to the one I’m about to describe.

Before we do that, …

First we had the Gov. Palin Yahoo email break in to teach us the vulnerabilities of weak password reset schemes. Now we have a Joe the Plumber government records snooper teaching us about proper computer account management.

The Columbia Dispatch is reporting that a state employee with access to a “test account” has been accessing Joe the Plumber’s government records:

“We’re trying to pinpoint where it came from,” she said. The investigation could become “criminal in nature,” she said. Brindisi would not identify the account that pulled the information on Oct. 16.

Records show it was a “test account” assigned …

Last week, during the OWASP AppSec 2008 Conference, the people behind the ubiquitous CISSP certification announced their latest creation — the Certified Software Security Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP). In front of a captive audience waiting for a 42″ plasma TV to be raffled, the Executive Director of (ISC)2 outlined this new certification designed to appeal to application security professionals. To his credit, Mr. Tipton stated very clearly that the CSSLP is not intended to measure one’s technical skillset. Unfortunately, it’s inevitable that employers will treat it as such.

You can read all the details on their …

The password reset functionality of any online service is a major source of risk. They are especially problematic when they use only a “secret question” concerning personal information only and don’t tie back to another email account or a text message. Another account or cell phone number is something “out of band” from a direct transaction with the online service. It becomes 2-factor authentication.

When an alternate email account or cell phone number is not tied to an account, online services often use personal information, supposedly only known by the account holder, to verify identity and reset a …

Assuming the mailbox hack is not an elaborate ruse, how did they do it?

Almost as bad as the Sprint PCS password reset fiasco that made the news in April, here is the Yahoo Mail password reset screen:

As you can see, you need to know the user’s birthday, country of residence, and postal code. Not difficult information to dig up in Palin’s case, as shown here. After you enter this information correctly, you are asked to type in the alternate e-mail address that’s associated with …

A group of individuals has compromised VP candidate Sarah Palin’s personal email and sent the information to Wikileaks which has posted the information publicly.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_email_hack_2008

Alternate link (wikilieaks is down): http://cryptome.org/palin-email.zip

Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th of September (EST) Wikileaks’ sources loosely affiliated with the activist group ‘anonymous’ gained access to U.S. Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account gov.palin@yahoo.com. Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to avoid government transparency mechanisms. The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin’s inbox, example emails, address book and two family photos. The list …

Why bother setting up dedicated websites to host malicious content when you can just infect trusted sites like BusinessWeek? This is becoming something of a trend, as evidenced by the mass SQL Injection attacks from a few months ago.

The idea is simple — find SQL Injection vulnerabilities in high-traffic, trusted websites where the site’s content is dynamically fetched from a database (i.e. just about any content-rich site). Then use an automated tool to prepend or append malicious content to that content in the database. When the unsuspecting user visits the page to read an article, …

John McCain’s pick for VP, Sarah Palin, knows a thing or two about retrieving evidence from a computer. The mainstream reporting calls her a “hacker” because she is able to retrieve files from the Windows recycle bin.

The Anchorage Daily News reports back in September 2004:

Sarah Palin never thought of herself as an investigator. Yet there she was, hacking uncomfortably into Randy Ruedrich’s computer, looking for evidence that the state Republican Party boss had broken the state ethics law while a member of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission.

The next week, when Palin went back …

One of my old L0pht collegues, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, is featured in Mass High Tech today in an article titled Bay State hackers find security holes in defibrillators, RFID.

Hackers getting a free T pass may be the least of our worries — local hackers-turned-security experts suggest RFID keycards, wireless networks and medical devices implanted in the body are also vulnerable to hacks.

At last week’s Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas, a team of researchers showed it was possible to get information such as Social Security numbers and medical diagnoses, and change the settings on an implantable defibrillator by impersonating …

Earlier today, the US District Court dealt a victory to the MBTA hackers and the EFF, lifting the injunction issued on August 9th to prevent the three MIT students from presenting their findings at DEFCON 16. In summary:

The lawsuit claimed that the students’ planned presentation would violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by enabling others to defraud the MBTA of transit fares. A different federal judge, meeting in a special Saturday session, ordered the trio not to disclose for ten days any information that could be used by others to get free subway rides.

“The judge …

A lot of the focus of the MBTA vs MIT case has been discussion of the CharlieCards. These are MiFare classic cards which have been known to be broken earlier this year. There is also a paper disposable card called the CharlieTicket that uses a magnetic stripe. The MIT students presentation states that these are cloneable and forgeable using a $150 magnetic stripe reader/writer.

From the Confidential Memo Prepared for the MBTA which was publicly disclosed by the MBTA is court filing:

This seems …

A hearing will be held in Boston tomorrow to decide whether or not the restraining order gagging the MIT students from talking about the vulnerabilities they have found should be lifted. Even though the Defcon presentation is widely available and the MBTA disclosed the “Confidential” memo from the MIT students in their court filings, they are seeking a permanent speech injunction. An august group of computer scientists has signed a letter which will be entered into the record for the case. This list includes: Dave Farber of Carnegie Mellon University, Steve Bellovin from Columbia University, David Wagner …