Month: October 2009

Munir Kotadia, an IT Journalist in Australia, has finally managed to figure out how to blame Microsoft for the fake anti-malware epidemic. Apparently, the reason is that “Microsoft could save the world from fake security applications by introducing a whitelist for apps from legitimate security firms” and, presumably, has neglected to do so out of sheer malice. I’m clearly not a thinker at the same level as Munir; maybe that is why I don’t fully get this white list he proposes. Does he want one only of security software? How would you identify security software? I can see only two ways. … Continue reading Fake Anti-Malware is Apparently Microsoft’s Fault

One of the last areas where more tool support is needed is in monitoring the various attributes in Active Directory (AD). Recently I got curious about the delegation flags, and, more to the point, how to tell which accounts have been trusted for delegation. This could be of great import if, for instance, you have to produce reports of privileged accounts. KB 305144 gives a certain amount of detail about how delegation rights are presented in Active Directory. However, it is unclear from that article how to discover accounts trusted for full delegation, as opposed to those trusted only for constrained … Continue reading How Delegation Privileges Are Represented In Active Directory

It's official. I just received an e-mail from Thawte notifying me that, as of November 16, 2009, the most innovative and useful idea in PKI since its inception, the Web of Trust, will die. Thawte was founded 14 years ago by Mark Shuttleworth. The primary purpose was to get around the then-current U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Shuttleworth also had an idea that drew from PGP: rather than force everyone who wanted an e-mail certificate to get verified by some central entity – and pay for the privilege – why not have them verified by a distributed verification system, similar … Continue reading Web Of Trust: RIP

At least for the short to medium term. That is the, quite obvious, conclusion drawn in a Newsweek article entitled "Building a Better Password."  The article goes inside the CyLab at Carnegie-Mellon University to understand how passwords may one day be replaced. It is interesting reading all around. The article is not without some "really?" moments though, such as this quote: The idea of passphrases isn't new. But no one has ever told you about it, because over the years, complexity—mandating a mix of letters, numbers, and punctuation that AT&T researcher William Cheswick derides as "eye-of-newt, witches'-brew password fascism"—somehow became … Continue reading Passwords are here to stay