The folks at Acunetix have a neat new product/service called WebsiteDefender. I've yet to try it myself but it looks promising - fills a nice niche.WebsiteDefender is an agent-based tool for websites and WordPress-based blogs that:Scans your site for security flawsDetects malware running on your siteAlerts you to suspicious web site activity including file changesThe obvious benefit is to have a more secure online presence but as Acunetix is marketing ...
Continue Reading...Thinking about all the security incident headlines over the past 30 days alone, this says it all:"We can evade reality but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality." -Ayn Rand...
Continue Reading...I recently met up with some technology lawyer colleagues after work and we shared our thoughts on the Anthony Weiner "incident". We were talking about how early on in the saga no one but Weiner and the lucky recipients of his tweets really knew what the truth was. Predictably, as we're seeing and hearing more and more these days, Weiner came out and said "I was hacked. It happens to ...
Continue Reading...Here's a free tool by @ViewFinity (the privilege management vendor I wrote about back in March) that helps you discover user accounts that have local admin rights:Viewfinity Local Admin Discovery...looks pretty neat if you have a need for running a quick test during an assessment or audit or just want to have something to use periodically to ensure user accounts are kept in check....
Continue Reading...What started with an email from a colleague's compromised Gmail account Friday evening has ended up making international news - the InfraGard Atlanta website has been hacked. With user names, email addresses and passwords - including those associated with the FBI - available via a quick web search I knew that this was a pretty serious issue. Although I've been disconnected from InfraGard Atlanta for the past ~6 years, I ...
Continue Reading...I was just pondering the negative side-effects and unintended consequences of many of the fast food restaurants who are "going green" (I use that term loosely because it's so overused in the name of marketing). The thing is so many restaurants like Panera and Moe's as well as countless others I've visited in my travels this year have these flimsy plastic Solo (and other brand) cups that aren't worth a ...
Continue Reading...We always hear about "disgruntled workers" wreaking havoc on computer systems and sensitive information. Interestingly we never hear about "gruntled" workers and how they can help improve security...Thanks to a Merriam Webster's "Word of the Day" I came across I now know that there's another side to the overused word "disgruntled". Interestingly, according to M-W, the prefix "dis-" usually means "to do the opposite of," hence the assumption that if ...
Continue Reading...Here are some recent pieces I wrote on Web application security common sense for my colleagues at Acunetix that you may be interested in:But Compliance is Someone Else’s Job!Low-hanging fruit becomes big news with the 2011 Verizon Data Breach reportGoing Beyond Confirmed Web Security FlawsEnjoy!As always, be sure to check out www.principlelogic.com/resources.html for links to my 500+ articles, whitepapers, podcasts, webcasts, books and more....
Continue Reading...Here's a Dallas Morning News story I was interviewed for - interesting IT woes in the Texas comptroller's office:Texas comptroller’s tech office had high turnover, employee complaints before breach Thanks go out to Kelly Shannon and my colleagues over at Focus.com for getting me involved....
Continue Reading...It's been a long time coming but the latest incarnation of one of my favorite network/security tools - NetScanTools Pro v11 - is out. Kirk Thomas at Northwest Performance Software has done a bang-up job on the user interface in the new version...something that's gotten better - albeit slowly - over the years. Not that I could do any better - I can't imagine having to know network protocols at ...
Continue Reading...