Recently, my web host stopped supporting the FrontPage Server Extensions used by Microsoft Expression Web 4 for website publishing (FPSE is now out-of-support). FPSE allowed me to publish to my site over a HTTPS connection, helping keep my password safe and my uploaded files unmodified. Unfortunately, the alternative FTP transport is completely insecure–passwords and dataContinue reading “Certificates Matter”
Category Archives: security
Security Response Basics
Security response isn’t just about the “sexy” analysis of vulnerabilities, reverse-engineering of malware, and so on… it’s probably mostly about getting the basics right. Every morning, I forward all of the PayPal phishing scams I receive to PhishTank, Netcraft, and Spoof@Paypal. Today, I took a closer look at the response I got to the lastContinue reading “Security Response Basics”
DLL Hijacking Just Won’t Die
The folks that build the NSIS Installer have released updates to mitigate a serious security bug related to DLL loading. (v2.5 and v3.0b3 include the fixes). To make a long and complicated story short, a bad guy who exploits this vulnerability places a malicious DLL into your browser’s Downloads folder, then waits. When you run an installerContinue reading “DLL Hijacking Just Won’t Die”
Hashes and Code-Signing
I’ve written a few articles about using Authenticode to sign your code to help prevent attacks, increase user confidence, and reduce interference from security software like Windows SmartScreen. You can read the overview, discussion of code-signing tokens, and “tricks” you can use to shoot yourself in the foot by adding data to a file withoutContinue reading “Hashes and Code-Signing”
Understanding CONNECT Tunnels
When a browser needs to send a HTTPS request through a proxy (like Fiddler), there’s a bit of a problem. The proxy needs to know where to send the client’s request, but the whole point of protecting traffic with HTTPS is that the content is encrypted and cannot be read by anyone else on theContinue reading “Understanding CONNECT Tunnels”
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