Thursday, March 27, 2008
MacBook Air Hacked Again...
Among an Ubuntu Linux, a Windows Vista, and an OS X laptop, the Apple MacBook Air was the first to be hacked in the CamSecWest hacking contest.Kind of disappointing considering that OS X is supposed to be more secure.
Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Hack, Security
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posted by Edward at 11:28 PM
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Monday, November 26, 2007
Security Issue with Leopard Mail
via Daring Fireball, A security issue with opening malicious attachments in Leopard Mail has been reported by Heise Security.The usual precautions remain, be careful opening attachments from unknown sources...
Labels: Apple Mac OSX Leopard, Mail, Security
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posted by Edward at 6:43 PM
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Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Tech: Leopard Trojan / Phishing fix
Last week the net was swamped with reports of a new Mac malware, the OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse. Macworld has a detailed report on what it does and how to remove it.From MacWorld:
- In the Finder, navigate to /Library -> Internet Plug-Ins, and delete the file named plugins.settings. Empty the trash. This deletes the tool that sets the rogue DNS Server information.
- In Terminal, type sudo crontab -r and provide your admin password when asked. This deletes the root cron job that checks the DNS Server settings. You can prove it worked by typing sudo crontab -l; you should see the message “crontab: no crontab for root.”
- Open your Network System Preferences panel, go to the DNS Server box, and copy the entries you can see to a Stickies note, TextEdit document, or memorize them. Now retype those same values in the box, then click Apply.
- Reboot your Mac.
Bottom line is to follow typical 'safe computing' guidelines...
As always, the best way to avoid these things is to not install software from untrusted sources—especially if it comes as an installer package and requests your administrator’s password! But if you do get infected, at least you’ll know how to confirm you have an issue, and remove the troublesome software.
Labels: Apple Mac OS X, Malware, Security, Trojan Horse
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posted by Edward at 11:01 AM
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Thursday, November 01, 2007
Tech: Leopard Security Features
Matasano.com has a nice write up about the various security features in Leopard. Along with the various improvements are also some flaws in the implementation. I suspect some of the flaws are due to 'time constraints' of meeting the release schedule and will be addresses in future patches.When talking about the new "Address Space Randomization" feature in Leopard Ptacek mentions:
This feature removes a talking point argument about Microsoft Windows Vista’s superior security, but it doesn’t address the underlying point of that argument. Cocoa programs running in Darwin are less secure than Win32 programs running under NTOSKRNL, and aren’t even in the same ballpark as Managed C++ or C# programs.
I wonder if that's true, Vista having superior security. Perhaps there's a side-by-side comparison somewhere.
Labels: Apple Mac OSX Leopard, Security, Windows Vista
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posted by Edward at 9:45 AM
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Tech: Adobe PDF vulnerability
There's a big scare about Adobe's PDF vulnerability lately. Adobe released patches to it's 8.x series Acrobat software and will release a patch for the 7.x series later. If for some reason you can't get the latest patched Acrobat software you can follow these steps to manually black the exploit ( from Adobe ):
Disclaimer: This procedure involves editing the registry. Adobe doesn't provide support for editing the registry, which contains critical system and application information. Make sure to back up the registry before modifying it. For more information about the registry, refer to Windows Help.
Exit Adobe Reader or Acrobat.
Open RegEdit. On Windows, go to Start > Run, type in regedit and click OK.
Choose File > Export.
Select Local Disk C for the Save in: location.
Type backup for File Name.
Choose All for the Export Range.
Click Save.
Navigate to the appropriate registry key:
NOTE: When editing the key values for Adobe Reader and Acrobat 7.0.9, Regedit will launch a Edit Binary Value window. Be sure to edit the values below using the right panel of the window.
Acrobat:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\7.0\FeatureLockDown\cDefaultLaunchURLPerms
Reader:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\7.0\FeatureLockDown\cDefaultLaunchURLPerms
If tSchemePerms is set as follows:
version:1|shell:3|hcp:3|ms-help:3|ms-its:3|ms-
itss:3|its:3|mk:3|mhtml:3|help:3|disk:3|afp:3|disks:3|telnet:3|ssh:3|acrobat:2|mailto:2|file:2
To Disable mailto (recommended)
Modify tSchemePerms by setting the mailto: value to 3:
version:1|shell:3|hcp:3|ms-help:3|ms-its:3|ms-
itss:3|its:3|mk:3|mhtml:3|help:3|disk:3|afp:3|disks:3|telnet:3|ssh:3|acrobat:2|mailto:3|file:2
To set mailto to prompt
Modify tSchemePerms by removing the mailto: value:
version:1|shell:3|hcp:3|ms-help:3|ms-its:3|ms-
itss:3|its:3|mk:3|mhtml:3|help:3|disk:3|afp:3|disks:3|telnet:3|ssh:3|acrobat:2|file:2
Close RegEdit.
Restart the application.
Alternatively, it may be sufficient to use a third party PDF reader. I'd suggest Foxit Pro; it's fast, light-weight, and free :)
Labels: Adobe Acrobat, PDF, Security
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posted by Edward at 5:05 PM
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