As municipal Wi-Fi networks begin to roll out, I've begun to notice a trend that isn't surprising, but is still a bit worrisome. Business users are beginning to use the muni Wi-Fi in the office. While the signal doesn't often penetrate too deeply into buildings, conference rooms and window offices seem to get a sufficient signal in many cases. The problem is that I see people using the muni Wi-Fi signal instead of the office IT-supported network. Sometimes they just use it because it's more convenient. The office IT network is "secure" and requires extra work, such as entering keys or using a VPN. Sometimes they do it because they explicitly want to avoid the local IT policy controls (access to restricted sites, use of restricted applications, etc.)
So, why is this a problem? First, it exposes the user’s computer to the Internet without the normal protection of the office IT security safeguards (like a firewall). While it's quite possible to...
Hola again! Well, that’s my Spanish out the way. Oh, wait – dos cervezas por favor ;-). Anyway, I was invited down to Spain by the kind folk of NoConName (thanks to Nico and crew – Majorca is lovely!) to deliver a presentation on some research I had done at the start of the year when I first joined the Advanced Threat Research team (research that I had alluded to in an earlier blog entry on an attack surface analysis of Windows CE 5 and Windows Mobile 5.
This is a rundown of the NoConName version of my presentation:
• Introduction & Context • Overview of Windows CE • Windows CE Security Model • Analysis Findings • Windows CE and Security Patches
The first three sections are pretty self explanatory and way too long to cover...
Back in 2004, I presented some research at CanSecWest entitled “Bluetooth Security: Toothless?” One of the items I covered in this presentation was the ability to recover link keys over the air. My research was missing a key feature, which was how to force a re-pair between two devices in order to be able to observe the new pairing to be able to get the required data. Fast-forward to June, 2005, and Yaniv Shaked and Avishai Wool improved the attack in many aspects and released the paper “Cracking the Bluetooth PIN,” including many novel aspects. Well, it’s now 2006 and Thierry Zoller has just given an interesting presentation at the hack.lu conference (with input from ...
Be warned: this may sound a little odd. Imagine if I told you that some television and radio content is broadcast using IP, over the air. (You'd probably think I’d been working with too much paint thinner over the weekend.) Well, this broadcast method is how a live service in the UK works. It’s called digital audio broadcasting – IP (DAB-IP) and in short, your mobile device just got another network connection.
The UK has just had the “Lobster” (a mobile handset) launched on the Virgin mobile network, which uses DAB-IP for its TV and radio content. DAB is a standard owned by ETSI (the same people who own GSM). With DAB-IP, content is basically being tunneled over IP, over DAB, to your handset. One of the first interesting things I read in relation to this topic was a...
