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Opera’s Latest Hitman

Posted on December 6th, 2008 by jbrown
Filed under: Web, Commentary, Privacy, Full Disclosure, Phishing, Corporate Security, Networking, InSecurity, Memory Leak, Sec Tools | No Comments »

Opera the web browser is apparently now great at one thing: following the standards.

Yesterday, Opera 10 Alpha was released and flaunted its 100/100 score on the Acid3 test, passing with all the colors of the rainbow this time. But honestly, Opera, like several other ‘alternative’ browsers (and if your a hardcore fan/follower, excuse me), is just trying to catch up with the old dogs.

Firefox in particular has had many of Opera’s ‘new’ features and ‘improvements’ for quite a while. S ecurity issues in Opera, often simple and totally trivial bugs, have been found and released. Not saying more than other browsers; both Firefox and Internet Explorer have them doubled to say the least, but I just never could bring myself to trust this unique web browser.

Auto-update has just been put in place, and I feel, as a security researcher, that it is an extremely valuable mitigation tool when new exploits spring up. Thank God the development team FINALLY put this sub-standard feature in place. Presto 2.2 has taken things to the next level with most of these improvements, more details of which you can find for windows, mac, and ‘linux/unix‘.

Has security been incorporated into Opera recently more than ever? Maybe. Has Opera been built with security from the ground up? Certainly not. Pay attention to your favorite XYZ exploit/advisory feed for inevitable updates.

SCADA Security

Posted on December 5th, 2008 by jbrown
Filed under: Commentary, Full Disclosure, Culture, Corporate Security, Insider Threat, Networking, InSecurity | No Comments »

SCADA Operator

I’ve been registered with the SCADA Security Mailing List for a while now, and I must say it is very informative and has some solid discussion about SCADA systems and security. If you are not familiar with what SCADA is, it stands for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition. SCADA systems are generally used for controlling and maintaining public services and private sector systems such as but not limited to nuclear plants, environmental systems, industrial stations, etc. You can google for more information or check our SCADA’s Wikipedia Page.

Security has and also been a big issue with running SCADA systems, especially those connected and maintained over the internet, or really any kind of network. Firewalls and IDS’s can only do so much; the integrity of the applications must be a part of the solution, AND NOT COLLAPSE! There are also many books at amazon that deal with SCADA systems. Could the internal workings of outdated coding practices and weak security in the systems, that control our precious resources and way of life, prove to be insecure? You better believe it.