When we last left our intrepid hero, he was embarking on an quest to become an information security thought leader. A year has passed; let’s see how he’s doing! Enjoy.

I created this video for an internal Veracode video contest. It’s intended to poke fun at the abundance of “thought leaders” we have in our industry. I shared it on Twitter yesterday but thought I would post here on the blog as well. A handful of people have asked if it’s meant to satirize any particular person — sorry to disappoint, it’s just a composite. Enjoy!

I had a great time at the SOURCE Boston conference last week. Veracode was a sponsor and a few Veracoders participated as advisory members or volunteers. I had the pleasure, along with Chris Eng, of presiding over the application security track. I think all the talks were of high quality but still a few stood out for me:

Dino Dai Zovi on Mac OS Xploitation. Dino showed how to exploit a quicktime heap overflow. He got the built in iSight camera to take a picture of his victim and send it to him just …

Welcome, come on in, have a seat. There is a cold beer in the fridge, help yourself!

I may be new to the team, but I’m (reasonably) old to the game. My name is Tyler Shields and I’m the latest addition to the Veracode research team. I started at Veracode in September 2008 as a Senior Security Researcher and have been immediately thrown into the fire. Working for a fast paced, highly energetic company like Veracode, keeps you busy and challenges you every day. I plan to blog on the most interesting pieces of my work with Veracode and hope that …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Another BlackHat has come and gone. As usual, it was a very busy week juggling customer meetings, recruiting, conference planning, vendor parties, and, oh yes, the actual BlackHat presentations. I had a fantastic time catching up with old friends and finally getting the opportunity to meet more of the Security Twits and others in the security community. I didn’t submit a talk this year, but nevertheless, fake Dan Kaminsky was still excited to see me.

My favorite talk, as expected, was the Sotirov/Dowd talk on …

Three French journalists have been booted for life from Black Hat and Defcon for compromising the Black Hat press room wired network and grabbing the credentials for at least one reporter. Their goal was to publicize the risks to reporters especially current given the massive reporter presence in Bejing for the Olympics. This risk is certainly real and it is a shame that these journalists had to compromise and embarass one of their own and potentially run afoul of US Federal wiretap laws.

Sniffing, or monitoring all …