Grumpy Security Guy

I’ve suffered the tortures of the damned

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Entries from October 2007

iPhone and iPod Touch are free

October 17th, 2007 ·

Damn you Steve Jobs, now I have to have one! Jobs announced that the iPhone and the iPod touch will be open to third parties starting in February. I had been delaying getting one cause using only web apps did not seem that exciting. I want things like SSH, a VOIP client, and other things [...]

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Tags: OS X

OS X Leopard security concerns

October 16th, 2007 ·

Apple announced that Leopard will be released October 26th. They also pumped out a feature list. The guys over at Securosis do a fine job running down the list of security features on tap for the new version so I won’t duplicate the fine effort shown over there. I wanted to take a look at [...]

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Tags: OS X · Security

Governor Terminates Data Protection Bill

October 13th, 2007 ·

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Oct. 13 vetoed one of the nation’s most stringent proposed e-tail data breach security laws, saying that the bill would have “driven up the costs of compliance, particularly for small businesses.”
The proposed California law AB 779 would have required retailers to protect data in a manner more demanding than the [...]

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Tags: Security

Mythbusting SSL

October 12th, 2007 ·

There is a pretty lively debate going on over at the Security Catalyst forums about SSL on login pages. This drove home the fact that people still don’t really understand what SSL does and doesn’t protect you against. Also there seems to be a big lack of knowledge about what you need to do in [...]

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Tags: Security

Are we more secure? Businesses spend 20% of IT budgets on security.

October 10th, 2007 ·

CompTIA released a survey (download preview) that states 20% of of corporate I.T. budgets are spent on security.
I find this a bit hard to believe personally but let’s just take it as true. Where does it all go? According to the survey a vast majority (42%) goes to product purchases. This tells me people are [...]

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Tags: Security

Hackers like the service model to

October 10th, 2007 ·

I am not often blow away by an information security article but I just got finished reading Hacker Economics 1: Malware as a Service by Scott Berinato and all I can say is wow! The topic is amazing and the writing is superb.
The article details the workings of a hacker group that is setup what [...]

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Tags: Security

Security Stereotypes - The Den Mother

October 1st, 2007 ·

The Den Mother is an interesting creature, she lacks the cutting edge of an empire builder (who wants to rule the world) but still has a nasty bite if threatened. The Den Mothers #1 job is to protect her cubs from all threats. She will fight in the bloody budget trenches, fend off attacking mongrel [...]

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Tags: Humor