SC: Video Interview: Bankers v hackers

Security professionals can't afford to work in isolated bubbles when the attackers are openly sharing information about system vulnerabilities...

Watch my video interview for SCMagazine here.

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Coventry Building Society Grid Card

Coventry Building Society have recently introduced the Grid Card as a simple form of 2-factor authentication. It replaces memorable words in the login process. Now the idea is that you require something you know (i.e. your password) and something you have (i.e. the Grid Card) to log in - 2 things = 2 factors. For more about authentication see this post . How does it work? Very simply is the answer. During the log in process, you will be asked to enter the digits at 3 co-ordinates. For example: c3, d2 and j5 would mean that you enter 5, 6 and 3 (this is the example Coventry give). Is this better than a secret word? Yes, is the short answer. How many people will choose a memorable word that someone close to them could guess? Remember, that this isn't a password as such, it is expected to be a word and a word that means something to the user. The problem is that users cannot remember lots of passwords, so remembering two would be difficult. Also, having two passwords isn't real...

Trusteer or no trust 'ere...

...that is the question. Well, I've had more of a look into Trusteer's Rapport, and it seems that my fears were justified. There are many security professionals out there who are claiming that this is 'snake oil' - marketing hype for something that isn't possible. Trusteer's Rapport gives security 'guaranteed' even if your machine is infected with malware according to their marketing department. Now any security professional worth his salt will tell you that this is rubbish and you should run a mile from claims like this. Anyway, I will try to address a few questions I raised in my last post about this. Firstly, I was correct in my assumption that Rapport requires a list of the servers that you wish to communicate with; it contacts a secure DNS server, which has a list already in it. This is how it switches from a phishing site to the legitimate site silently in the background. I have yet to fully investigate the security of this DNS, however, as most...

Secret Sharing Algorithm for Protecting Files in the Cloud

Data stored in the cloud can be compromised or lost (see my previous post ). So, we have to come up with a way to secure those files. We can encrypt them before storing them in the cloud, which sorts out the disclosure aspects. However, what if the data is lost due to some catastrophe befalling the cloud service provider? We could store it on more than one cloud service and encrypt it before we send it off. Each of them will have the same file. What if we use an insecure, easily guessable password to protect the file, or the same one to protect all files? I have often thought that secret sharing algorithms could be employed to good effect in these circumstances instead. What are secret sharing algorithms? They are algorithms that will share a secret between several parties, such that none of them can know the secret without the help of others. Either all or a subset of them will need to get together and put their parts together to obtain the original secret. A simplistic solution can...

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