Security-Protocols

I have been waiting to see when someone was going to do something like this.

Nick Breese, a senior security consultant at Auckland-based Security-assessment.com, has come up with a way to drastically increase the processing capability of cracking passwords, using a PS3.

By implementing common ciphers and hash functions using vector computing, Breese has pushed the current upper limit of 10–15 million cycles per second — in Intel-based architecture — up to 1.4 billion cycles per second.

Breese, who has been working on the project, called “Crackstation”, for the past six months, used the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console for his break-through research. PS3’s Cell Broadband Engine technology was created by IBM, Toshiba and Sony. The companies collaborated to create the CBE, commonly known as Cell, processor, which consists of one scalar processor and eight vector processors.

Source: PC World

Joking.. Below is a screenshot from the television show Two and Half Men.

Check out Charlie Sheen talking on his upsideDowniPhone.

Fusil project is a fuzzing program. Today, it’s specific to Linux command line program, but the code is designed to be used with any project type (remote process, fake HTTP server, fuzz network socket, etc.). New Fusil implementation is now based on multi-agent system instead monolithic architecture. See Fusil architecture for the details. Read also documentation. Fusil allows to easily write so-called “Fuzzing projects” from a set of functions and the power of Python: create a process, compile C program, watch a process, watch syslog, etc.


fusil --project project/xterm.py

$ cd fusil
$ fusil -p project/xterm.py
[session #1] Start session
[process xterm] Timeout! (1.0 second)
(...)
[session #8] Start session
*** glibc detected *** /usr/bin/xterm: double free or corruption (!prev): 0x080ad2b8 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6[0xb7b957cd]
(...)
[watch process] Process killed by signal SIGIOT
[session #8] Session score: 100.0%
[application] Success with session #8!


Fusil Project Page
http://fusil.hachoir.org/trac

“Hushmail, a longtime provider of encrypted web-based email, markets itself by saying that “not even a Hushmail employee with access to our servers can read your encrypted e-mail, since each message is uniquely encoded before it leaves your computer.”
But it turns out that statement seems not to apply to individuals targeted by government agencies that are able to convince a Canadian court to serve a court order on the company.”

Full story here..

What is everyone’s take on this?

APPLE-SA-2007-11-15 Mac OS X v10.5.1 Update

Mac OS X v10.5.1 Update is now available and addresses the following
issues:

Application Firewall
CVE-ID: CVE-2007-4702
Available for: Mac OS X v10.5, Mac OS X Server v10.5
Impact: The “Block all incoming connections” setting for the
firewall is misleading
Description: The “Block all incoming connections” setting for the
Application Firewall allows any process running as user “root” (UID
0) to receive incoming connections, and also allows mDNSResponder to
receive connections. This could result in the unexpected exposure of
network services. This update addresses the issue by more accurately
describing the option as “Allow only essential services”, and by
limiting the processes permitted to receive incoming connections
under this setting to a small fixed set of system services: configd
(for DHCP and other network configuration protocols), mDNSResponder
(for Bonjour), and racoon (for IPSec). The “Help” content for the
Application Firewall is also updated to provide further information.
This issue does not affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.5.

Application Firewall
CVE-ID: CVE-2007-4703
Available for: Mac OS X v10.5, Mac OS X Server v10.5
Impact: Processes running as user “root” (UID 0) cannot be blocked
when the firewall is set to “Set access for specific services and
applications”
Description: The “Set access for specific services and applications”
setting for the Application Firewall allows any process running as
user “root” (UID 0) to receive incoming connections, even if its
executable is specifically added to the list of programs and its
entry in the list is marked as “Block incoming connections”. This
could result in the unexpected exposure of network services. This
update corrects the issue so that any executable so marked is
blocked. This issue does not affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.5.

Application Firewall
CVE-ID: CVE-2007-4704
Available for: Mac OS X v10.5, Mac OS X Server v10.5
Impact: Changes to Application Firewall settings do not affect
processes started by launchd until they are restarted
Description: When the Application Firewall settings are changed, a
running process started by launchd will not be affected until it is
restarted. A user might expect changes to take effect immediately and
so leave their system exposed to network access. This update corrects
the issue so that changes take effect immediately. This issue does
not affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.5.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798