A Study of Smart Cards

Cards are quite an interesting species of object that have invaded our lives in every way: we either use them for public transit, laundry, gift cards, phone cards, credit cards etc… One could gather quite a lot of power buy not only understanding their functioning, but also by being able to tamper their data. I […]

Firefox Javascript Vulnerability

Once again, Javascript is the source of a new exploit that has been recently discovered on Firefox1. The vulnerability can be exploited by crafting malicious Javascript code on a Firefox 3.5 browser and leads to the execution of arbitrary code on the user’s machine. This is due to a vulnerability in the JIT engine of […]

A small and quick introduction to ARP poisoning

This article won’t be about something new nor something extraordinary for any experienced computer security or even the average hacker, but since I’ve been ask this question quite often by some of my friends, I decided to explain how to sniff passwords from a network.  Moreover, I’m well aware I haven’t been writing anything for […]

The Palestine-Israeli Conflict on the Web

As any conflict that happened in the 21st century, there is usually a parallel conflict raging online as well. Either commanded by individuals or groups, which can be helped or not by either government agencies or other interest groups, acts of cyberwarfare are getting more and more common. The conflict in the Gaza strip offers […]

Submarine Command System

A press release from BAE Systems announced the installation of the Submarine Command System Next Generation (SMCS NG) on twelve nuclear submarines of the Royal Navy, effectively ending the conversion of the seven Trafalgar-class submarines, four Vanguard-class submarines and one Swiftsure class[1]. The new command system is based on COTS hardware and software products. It […]

A Quick Amex XSS

Here is a quick description of a cross-site script exploit that was fixed today on the American Express website. The vulnerability was in the search engine of the site, which didn’t sanitized the input keywords. Therefore anyone could insert JavaScript into the search and use this to trick people into sending their cookies to the […]

Microsoft’s Security Hole Framework

Since a few days, news about the Internet Explorer exploit has been sweeping the Internet (see previous post Internet Explorer 7 Attack in the Wild). It has not been confirmed that Internet Explorer 5, 6 and 7 are affected and the problem reside in the data binding of objects. Basically, the array containing objects in […]

Fun at the Library – Part 1

Since this is a slow news day, and I have an essay to handout tonight, I’ll just related one of my experiment I started yesterday. As I have more time, I will push further into the system. While waiting for a friend, I decided to stop by the library to pass time. As I was […]

Internet Explorer 7 Attack in the Wild

Bits of information about the new 0-day exploit are surfacing on the web. This exploit provokes a heap overflow in the XML parser of Internet Explorer 7. The exploit works with the fully patched version of Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1[1]. The Infection The exploit is initiated by a JavaScript file […]

NSA’s new data center in San Antonio

San Antonio will be hosting the new data center of the National Security Agency reports the San Antonio Current[1]. An old Sony factory on the West Military Drive, near San Antonio’s Loop 410 freeway, will be transformed to accommodate enormous size of data, which will mainly be electronic communications such as phone conversations and emails […]