Month: October 2007

For the third time in a week someone asked the question "If I want to use BitLocker with a Trusted Platforms Module (TPM), which computer should I get?" Wonderful question. For some reason, the hardvare vendors seem to treat the TPM chip as the ugly stepchild that they do their best to ensure nobody knows they have. Som even ship with the chip disabled in the BIOS by default. And, if you want to find out whether a particular computer has one, be prepared to read long and geeky tech specs, looking for keywords like "TPM 1.1", or, if the … Continue reading Need a laptop with a TPM?

A couple of weeks ago I got myself invited to my oldest son's fourth-grade class to talk to the kids about security. The teacher is really into technology and is doing some very cool stuff. Unfortunately, he is not very into security, yet, so that part was, shall we say, lacking. He created this really neat literature blog about books they were reading and the kids were supposed to submit comments to the blog. I sent the teacher a note asking if he accepted anonymous comments. The answer: "No. I told the kids they have to put their names on the … Continue reading From the mouth of babes, part 12398

A friend just pointed me to this fascinating article about an attack on the Greek Vodafone network. The article discusses an attack that installed a rootkit on an Ericsson cellular phone switch which was used to divert calls of high-ranking Greek officials to unknown numbers. There are a number of interesting lessons in this article, notably in the area of how not to handle forensic investigations. The phone company, as we all know (or should know) is in the business of billing, not in providing any kind of services, and certainly not in forensic investigations. Therefore, they wiped logs to … Continue reading Security is not just for PCs