Keep Your Secure Shell Functional and Secure
Mar 17,
2016
I updated my laptop to the latest OpenBSD release, which included OpenSSH version 7.0, and found myself suddenly unable to update web sites hosted at GoDaddy. What’s wrong? Not Everyone Keeps Up To Date The original symptom was something like this, where username@example.com represents my user name and domain hosted at GoDaddy. Here goes an […]
“Security is not a magic cream…”
Sep 20,
2012
So begins a quote we use in our Introduction to System and Network Security course. Too often we view security as an afterthought – something to add to our network or organization. We talk about hardening systems to mean making them more secure. This is totally a backwards approach. We need to consider security and […]
We Need Randomness!
Sep 17,
2012
What is entropy? if you ask a chemist or physicist, entropy is disorder or heat. If you ask an electrical engineer, entropy is both of those but it is also a measure of potential information content. James Glieck’s wonderful book The Information addresses this in detail, but the short version is that an unpredictable data […]
Cyber Attacks Have Been Monetized
Aug 28,
2012
Very impressive attacks are first discussed as theoretical possibilities. “If an attacker had these enormous resources …” and so on. Then researchers give presentations at conferences showing how the theoretical might be less impractical than we expected. That is followed by a proof of concept demonstration, and then we have attacks occurring in the wild. […]
Gumbo and Security
Aug 22,
2012
I love gumbo and my wife and friends love the gumbo I make. I have computers in my home office. I am an Eagle Scout. These three things, combined with an experience from college, make me have and test backups of my data and of my power. First, the power. My office is at home. […]