The Article 29 Working Group advising the EU Commission on Data Protection has published their opinion on the security and privacy concerns of the Internet of Things. A couple of interesting quotes come from this document and it points to possible future laws and regulations. "Many questions arise around the vulnerability of these devices, often deployed outside a traditional IT structure and lacking sufficient security built into them." "...users must remain in complete control of their personal data throughout the product lifecycle, and when organisations rely on consent as a basis for processing, the consent should be fully informed, freely given and specific." One thing is for sure, privacy is likely to get eroded further with the widespread adoption of IoT devices and wearables. It is critical that these devices, and the services provided with them, have security built in from the start.

I have just been sent an email giving me a tracking number for a City Link parcel due to be delivered. On checking this on their website , I found that I only need the tracking number to track the parcel and no other information. Is this a problem? Well, I think it is. Via my tracking number I am able to find the company name of the sender and my postcode. Now, postcodes normally only relate to around a dozen properties at most. However, that's not the end of the story. By entering different numbers (based on the one that I received) I was able to get the details of other parcels being sent around. Incidentally, their format is AAAddddd - representing three uppercase letters followed by sequential numbering. Does this matter? Well, by going backwards through the sequential numbering system I was able to find a parcel that had just been delivered (at 13.50 to be precise) to a postcode in West Yorkshire - BD22 (I have omitted the last part of the postcode here). Helpfully, th...

I have blogged about 3M's privacy filters before and their gold filter still remains, in my opinion, the best privacy filter on the market. If you want to find out more about that one and why you need a privacy filter, see my previous blog post " Why do I need a privacy filter? (3M's new Vikuiti Gold Privacy Filter) ". I also blogged about their mobile phone privacy filter . The problem with their mobile phone privacy filter last year was that it was only available in their standard grey louvered filter, so didn't work well with accelerometer phones that can be used in portrait or landscape modes - you had to pre-select which orientation you wanted to use your smartphone in. Also, the light transmission wasn't as good as the gold filter nor was the touch quite as good after applying it. Well, they've addressed this and lanuched a new filter for mobile phones and slates at InfoSecurity Europe. The filter is now significantly thinner with excellent tou...

I am currently producing a series of videos demonstrating the anti-spyware capabilities of Trusteer's Rapport . So far I have looked at keylogging software and screen capture. Specifically, I have demonstrated it with Zemana ScreenLogger, Zemana KeyLogger and SpyShelter. I will be adding more videos over the next few days. The first two videos are embedded below. (Edit: 17/05/10 - I have now added three more videos covering Zemana SSL Logger, AKLT and Snadboy's Revelation V2.) Links to the YouTube videos are below: Trusteer's Rapport Demo 1 - Zemana ScreenLogger Trusteer's Rapport Demo 2 - Zemana KeyLogger Trusteer's Rapport Demo 3 - SpyShelter Trusteer's Rapport Demo 4 - AKLT Trusteer's Rapport Demo 5 - Zemana SSL Logger Trusteer's Rapport Demo 6 - Snadboy's Revelation V2 Trusteer's Rapport Demo 7 - Pharming Attack Trusteer's Rapport Demo 8 - Amecisco Invisible Keylogger Stealth Trusteer's Rapport Demo 9 - Anti-Phishing P...

At this year's InfoSecurity Europe I visited the 3M stand again to see what developments they had for their privacy filters. They had their excellent Gold filter there of course, which is now properly on sale in the UK and the best on the market in my opinion. I previously blogged about this filter in my post " Why do I need a privacy filter? (3M's new Vikuiti Gold Privacy Filter) ". So what's this blog post about? Well, they have now produced privacy filters for mobile phones. Let's add a bit of context to this decision. How many businesses provide mobile devices to their employees that are connected to the corporate network with access to email, contacts, calendars and corporate documents? If you were reading an email from a client or reviewing a sensitive document would you be happy for someone to peer over your shoulder? Maybe you're paranoid like me and try to avoid reading emails in public places and stand with your back to the wall, shielding th...

I was recently talking to a fellow security professional who develops secure plug-ins for browsers and we started talking about the security of various different browsers. Most of the talk around browsers centres around how fast they are and what sort of features they have, but rarely do people talk about the security of their browser. Unfortunately, the browser is one of your weak points on the network as users have the ability to navigate to sites containing malware or phishing attacks as well as install plug-ins or run scripts that are malicious. So, which browser is the most secure? Any guesses? All browsers (and all security products for that matter) have security weaknesses and vulnerabilities. However, the architecture of the browser and certain features can make browsing safer. The feature I'm going to put forward first is web browser protection against socially-engineered malware (phishing sites). According to many of the big AV and security vendors, phishing is on the ...

I received my free sample filter from 3M a week ago now - it is one of the first of their new Vikuiti Gold Privacy Filters . Before I tell you about my experiences with it though, I think I ought to cover the question: 'Why do I need a privacy filter?' So, what is a privacy filter? It is a thin sheet of plastic that fits over your screen to reduce the viewing angle. LCD manufacturers spend all their time increasing the viewing angle of their screens so that many people can view the TV from all over the room or crowd round a computer screen to share information. The problem with this is the advantage itself - what if I have sensitive information on my screen that I don't want everyone to be able to read? The privacy filter reverses the wide angle viewing trend to reduce it as close to straight on as is practical. The point of a privacy filter is to stop prying eyes and shoulder surfing. Do you need a privacy filter? I was speaking to one professional a little while ago a...

We all know about tracking cookies and privacy. However, according to EFF it isn't necessary to use cookies to do a fair job of tracking your browser activities. According to their research browsers give 10.5 bits of identifying information in the userAgent string, which is supplied to the web server with every request. This is around a third of the information required to uniquely identify you. They have set up a website to gather more data and give you a 'uniqueness' indicator for your browser, which you can find here . This data set is growing quite rapidly and will tell you how many of the userAgent strings they have received that are the same as yours. I managed to find a machine to test that was unique amongst the 195,000 machines they have tested. This means that someone could potentially track that machine even if cookies are disabled. Even if you come out with the same userAgent string as others, you can be narrowed down by using geolocation of your IP, browser ...