Displaying items by tag: Encryption

On February 23rd, 2017, Google published a paper on their security blog that showed how a SHA-1 collision was possible. It proved that the aging cryptographic and hashing standard was no longer a safe or secure method. Google showed that they could produce two different files yet have them show the same hash, thus causing a collision and getting around some of the file hashing systems in place at the time. The problem is that SHA-1 hashing is still in use today by many tools.

Published in Security Talk

Black Hat USA 2017 – Las Vegas, NV
Three years ago we talked with a company that had something of a change in thought process on how to protect your data. Instead of building bigger walls they wanted to make the items behind those walls unusable to anyone that did not actually have access to them. This year at Black Hat we have talked with multiple companies that have the same, or a similar idea. One of the companies we talked to about this is Vera. Vera is another in a growing group of companies that understand that the traditional security posture is just not enough.

Published in Shows and Events

Black Hat USA 2017 - Las Vegas, NV
When you think of Dell you might get many different images that come to mind. For some they might think about the 90s and the “you’re getting a Dell Dude” guy. Others might think about servers, or corporate desktops. In recent years, you might think about Dell’s push back into the performance market. However, for a large number of people you would not think about Security when the Dell name gets tossed out. This would be a mistake though as Dell does have a large team of people that work on security. This is not just for Dell products, but also for other products that are outside of the Dell realm. While at Black Hat 2017 I had the chance to site down with Brett Hansen, VIce President of Dell Data Security and we talked about some of the security offerings that Dell has.

Published in Shows and Events
Thursday, 29 June 2017 15:44

What was uncle Petya really doing?

For the last couple of days the world has been buzzing with news about the Petya malware. When the news of the outbreak broke on Tuesday morning, it was all about a new ransomware that was spreading around the globe. References to WannaCry were made and fingers pointed to the use of the same NSA exploit as the attack vector. However, Petya was not really like WannaCry in that there was no “kill-switch”. Wednesday morning the big players in the anti-malware and security markets had sent out their “what you should know emails” and a low-grade form of panic hit many enterprises.

Published in News

Last year at Black Hat we had an interesting conversation with Tammy Moskites from Venafi. Although Tammy is both the CIO and CISO of Venafi the conversation did not focus on that company or the product as a whole. Instead we talked at length about trust and controlling the keys to data and devices. This conversation is still a very important one as continue to see attacks and vulnerabilities in the systems that control access to and the encryption of important data.

Published in Shows and Events

In the war against (yes against) encryption there are many things to hide behind. One of the most frequently used is that criminals will use it to mask their dastardly deeds. The term criminal is, of course interchangeable with just about any other popular bad guy; pedophile, drug dealer, terrorist…. You know the list. Anytime there is even a hint that one of these media boogeymen used some sort of encryption, we hear that law enforcement and the government need to be able to break encryption.

Published in Editorials
Friday, 22 January 2016 09:01

Security and Privacy are the same argument.

In the fast paced and insanely stupid argument between privacy advocates and national security advocates we often hear how we need to give up one or the other. The security guys say that privacy will block criminal activity so we need to give up some of that. On the other side the Privacy gang feels that giving up privacy is only hurting the people that are not doing anything wrong. They also feel it has an impact on free speech and limits discourse. What neither side is getting is that they both are right. Strong privacy protections and encryption allow for better and more secure communication. The complement each other in a way that no one seems to get.

Published in Editorials

Last year at Black Hat USA 2014 we met up with a company that was looking to make some changes in the way we protect our data, Ionic Security. The concept was very simple, but the implementation was sure to be complex. I was not sure that what they wanted to accomplish could even happen. However, after a conversation with them I became more than interested. It was a simple concept, but it did not need to be overly complex. To make things even more interesting this was not a truly new idea, but it was one that had never been implemented for real data security.

Published in Shows and Events

Edward Snowden is the gift that keeps on giving. After walking out on the NSA with a ton of secret documents detailing the extent that the agency and their partners were digging into ordinary people’s lives he started to release them. Even after the first and very damaging release of documents Snowden promised that there was more and worse to come. We have seen some pretty bad things coming from the classified document stash including a report that was recently published by Der Speigel.

Published in News

Apple is truly ramping up the PR machine and has even managed to get a few people in government to make some rather outrageous statements on the new phone and iOS 8. One of the new stories going around is about how the new iPhone and iOS8 are suddenly “NSA Proof” because they have added data encryption. The fallacy of this claim is almost beyond belief and shows once again that most in the technical press have absolutely no memory.

Published in News
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