(ISC)² Blog

Cartoon AES

A cute cartoon introduction to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, aka Rijndael) algorithm. Four sections, growing increasingly technical. Read more →

Another "Cat and Mouse fight" or... Tracking down a botnet

A while ago the company I work for was hired for a Telecom company to secure their data centers. During the initial gap analysis phase, the backbone was hit by a DDos attack and of course we were assigned to try to help. The interesting about this case is that we act on a "happening now" scenario instead of the regular "post mortem" case. The Evidence: This is a botnet!!! Just to baseline everyone Whats is a botnet? From Wikipedia: Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or bots, that run autonomously and automatically. The term... Read more →

It Takes an (ISC)² Member

- Change the passwords I’ve told my friends - Change my Facebook privacy settings - Put a password on my computer - Put the Websites on my favorite list so I don’t mistype them - Download newest software on our computer These are some of the online safety tasks kids at Swanson Middle School in Arlington, Virginia said they plan to undertake as a result of attending the first (ISC)2 Safe and Secure Online presentation delivered in the Washington D.C. area yesterday. A local CISSP volunteer and father of three, Dan VanBellenghem of NCI Information Systems, Inc. spoke to 15... Read more →

Improving the Quality of the (ISC)² Blog

Dear (ISC)² Members, Here are my suggestions to improve the quality of the (ISC)² blog: Authors should post original content that is written by an (ISC)² member. Authors should not post “referral content” and “links” unless the links and referred content are a minor element of a larger, original, thoughtful story related to the security topic at hand. Authors should never post an article that is mostly a “cut-and-paste” from other web sources. When we first started writing for this blog the overall quality was higher because our blog posts were mostly original, thoughtful articles by our members. Since that... Read more →

Weekly Summary of the "DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report

While this was the week where Windows 7 was released with much coverage in the trade press, only one item appeared in DHS reports regarding the “default user account”. Mobile cryptographic keys appear to be at risk as reported in addition to more aggressive activity in the marketing and delivery of fake anti-virus software. The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report (DHS) covers the publicly reported material for the preceding day(s) not previously covered. This weekly summary provides a selection of those items of greatest significance to the InfoSec professional. Should you not be aware of even one of the... Read more →

Weekly Summary of the "DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report"

This week we learned of a critical Adobe Reader patch which should be promptly applied, collapse of the Internet in Sweden, Google’s efforts to identify compromised web sites and that workplace computer security is not all that it should be. The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report (DHS) covers the publicly reported material for the preceding day(s) not previously covered. This weekly summary provides a selection of those items of greatest significance to the InfoSec professional. Should you not be aware of even one of the items discussed below it would be wise to familiarize yourself with it. The headline... Read more →

Weekly Summary of the "DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report

The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report (DHS) covers the publicly reported material for the preceding day(s) not previously covered. This weekly summary provides a selection of those items of greatest significance to the InfoSec professional. Should you not be aware of even one of the items discussed below it would be wise to familiarize yourself with it. The headline above each entry will take you directly to the DHS report which presented the item for ten business days from the date of inclusion. The Source link will take you to the original source cited by DHS. A very quiet... Read more →

Weekly Summary of the "DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report"

The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report (DHS) covers the publicly reported material for the preceding day(s) not previously covered. This weekly summary provides a selection of those items of greatest significance to the InfoSec professional. Should you not be aware of even one of the items discussed below it would be wise to familiarize yourself with it. The headline above each entry will take you directly to the DHS report which presented the item for ten business days from the date of inclusion. The Source link will take you to the original source cited by DHS. This is a... Read more →

Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft, having done a really bad job of it in the past, has decided to get back into the AV game. I've looked at their new, free product. It's provisionally all right, and probably good for most users. Read more →