Journal of Information Warfare

After the 12th annual European Conference of Cyber Warfare and Security (ECCWS), used to be known as European Conference on Information Warfare and Security (ECIW) [1] held in July 2013 at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, the Journal of Information Warfare (JIW) [2] decided to select a few papers that stand out during the conference and invited the authors to submit an updated version of the submitted paper for the JIW (Volume 12, Issue 3). The title of the updated paper was Antivirus False-Positive Alerts, Evading Malware Detection, and Cyber-security Issues [3]. 

RSA Conference Europe 2012

I was delighted to be invited to attend the RSA Conference Europe in 2012 (9-11/Oct) in London [1]. A number of interesting talks which included Jimmy Wales talking about the freedom of speech on the Internet and the distribution of knowledge through Wikipedia.

I was looking forward to Ira Winkler's talk "What the Security Profession Can Learn From the Intelligence Profession". Very interesting views as always and one of the few people in security that has something new to say, without repeating outdated ideas. 

Guerilla activists hack Bank of America ATMs all over San Francisco

They turned them into “Automated Truth Machines.” (Now they’re exponentially more useful than the totally useless Wells Fargo ATMs in the Mission.) Hacking! Rainforest Action Network explains how it was done.

[1] http://www.missionmission.org/2012/01/13/guerilla-activists-hack-bank-of-america-atms-all-over-san-francisco/

Arachni: Web Application Security Scanner Framework

Arachni Web Application Security Scanner [1], is a Free/Open Source project, the code is released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 and you are free to use it as you see fit. On the January the 12th of 2012 the software Arachni is moving away from GPLv2 and towards Apache License v2.0. This is due to several license reasons [2].


[1] http://arachni-scanner.com/overview
[2] http://trainofthought.segfault.gr/2012/01/12/arachni-is-moving-away-from-gplv2-and-towards-apache-license-v2-0/

Wireless HotSpot using your laptop (Windows 7 and Windows 8)

I get to travel around and I have stayed in a number of hotels. One of the most important things for me is Internet access during my stay. I have been to hotels (major hotel chains) where the WiFi signal is so weak in the room that sometimes you need stand by the open door in order to send an email. That is not very convenient, so I needed a quick solution in such cases. By creating a hotspot using your laptop's Wireless adapter, you can have a very strong signal anywhere in the room to access the Internet from any other devices you may have with you (e.g. mobile phone).

I am assuming that your laptop has both an Ethernet port and a Wireless adapter. Before you start check Windows Updates to make sure you have all the latest security updates and the latest drivers for your Ethernet card and the Wireless adapter (consider rebooting if needed).

ALL YOUR PICTURES "ARE" BELONGS TO US

Back in 2003, on a rainy night, an idea came to mind regarding the extraction of all the pictures from a host; ..and the title was inspired by the famous .."all your base are belong to us". [1]

I was looking at the thumbnail view of one of my folders and started wondering how does MS Windows® OS store information about thumbnails within each folder. Obviously that was the "thumbs.db" file which it was introduced with the release of W2K. (Note: Actually Win98 had the functionality of displaying thumbnails but you had to know the trick to enable this feature. In Windows Millennium the functionality was included but there was no thumb.db file).