SHA-1 Certificates Blocked By Authenticode

Twitter started to light up a bit tonight with folks who are having problems with signatures; both third-party ISVs: … and even Microsoft’s own SysInternals utilities show1 an error: Developers are surprised to see their workflow suddenly broken and wonder why. The problem is outlined here – the tl;dr is that you must use a SHA256-signedContinue reading “SHA-1 Certificates Blocked By Authenticode”

Authenticode in 2016

Last month, I noticed that my eToken USB code-signing key only supports SHA1 and not SHA256. I began hunting for a replacement that can sign using the stronger hash. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far—the Yubico YubiKey 4 is $40 and supports SHA256, RSA 4096, and ECC p384. Beyond supporting stronger algorithms, it seems toContinue reading “Authenticode in 2016”

Certificates Matter

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”

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”