Security

A couple of days back I wrote about how 67% of ASP.NET websites have serious configuration related security vulnerabilities [https://www.troyhunt.com/2012/04/67-of-aspnet-websites-have-serious.html]. In the post, I drew on figures collected by ASafaWeb [https://asafaweb.com] and observed that small misconfigurations in config files could very easily disclose information that could be leveraged to exploit the application. Quite a bit of discussion ensued through the comments, via Twitter and on...

Actually, it’s even worse than that – it’s really 67.37% – but let’s not split hairs over that right now. The point is that it’s an alarmingly high number for what amounts to very simple configuration vulnerabilities. The numbers come courtesy of ASafaWeb [http://asafaweb.com], the Automated Security Analyser for ASP.NET Websites which is a free online scanner at asafaweb.com [http://asafaweb.com]. When I built ASafaWeb, I designed it from the ground up to anonymously log scan results. The anon...

[http://tv.ssw.com/] There’s an excellent home-grown Aussie free learning resource which I suspect is a bit new to a lot of developers: SSW TV [http://tv.ssw.com/]. SSW is a local Sydney development shop headed up by Adam Cogan [http://www.adamcogan.com/], a Microsoft Regional Director and ALM MVP. I offered to talk a little about web app security to their user group a couple of months back and we recorded Protecting your Web Apps from the Tyranny of Evil with OWASP [http://tv.ssw.com/1492/pr...

Last week I had the pleasure of catching up with fellow Aussie MVP Robert Crane [https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=55EEF824-B195-49EC-A6EF-80D864CCC840] and recording an episode for his CIAOPS [http://ciaops.podbean.com] (the Computer Information Agency) “Need to Know” podcast. The podcast caters to those working in SMBs (small to medium businesses) and Robert and I have a good chat about a whole range of security considerations these folks should try to keep in mind. You can find the...

When it comes to our personal security, we’ve all grown a bit accustomed to keeping things on the down-low [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down-low]. For example, we cover the keypad on the ATM when entering our PIN and we shred our sensitive documents rather than throwing them straight in the trash. We do this not because any one single piece of information is going to bring us undone, but rather we try not to broadcast anything which may be used to take advantage of us. That PIN could be used...

A few months back I got a call one evening which was clearly a virus call centre scam; you know, the ones that call you out of the blue, tell you your PC is infected with all sorts of nasties and offer to fix it for you? Or maybe you don’t know, which of course is why these scams have been going on for quite some time and are still very active today. Fortunately I did know about such things so rather than summarily dismissing them with a level of disdain I normally reserve only for telemarketer...

Today I had the pleasure of spending about an hour and a half talking to Peter Shaw [http://shawtyds.wordpress.com/] from LIDNUG [http://lidnug.org] about security, security and, uh, security! If the LinkedIn .NET User Group is a little bit new to you, it’s the top LinkedIn group dedicated to .NET with a staggering 47,387 members at the time of writing. This is a casual chat rather than a a full on interview and covers a bunch of the usual stuff I talk about such as the OWASP Top 10. Hope you e...

Yep, this Troy! Right at the tail end of my Christmas holidays a couple of weeks back I had the pleasure of having a great chat with these guys: In case you’ve been living under a rock (no pun intended), for the last nine and a half years, .NET Rocks is without doubt the foremost .NET themed podcast in the universe. By the time they got to me, there had already been 734 prior episodes (frequently running for an hour or more), so the series has well and truly become ingrained in the psyche of...

We’re all familiar with CAPTCHA right? That impenetrable fortress of crazy squiggly characters that only a real human can decipher. Whilst they tend to drive us a bit nuts, they do actually provide a valuable function in that they prevent the automation of requests against online services. For example, you can’t get yourself a Google account [https://accounts.google.com/SignUp?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com.au%2F&hl=en] without first wrapping your head around what on earth this one says:...

Another week, another major security incident with a significant website. So the news this time is that Zappos – those guys who sell shoes (among other things) – to folks in the US may have, uh, accidentally disclosed somewhere in the order of 24 million user accounts [http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/248244/zappos_hacked_what_you_need_to_know.html] . Bugger. Now of course at the root of this is inevitably yet more evildoers intent on breaking through website security for financial...