Computer Security Weblog

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So have you checked your DNS from you local ISP and you see they have not patched?  Do you want to know how to use OpenDNS?  Click here for some easy steps that are well documented on the OpenDNS.  It takes just a few minutes to set up and you are done.  Hopefully you’ve checked your DNS from Dan Kaminsky’s website.  If not, click here to check to see that your ISP has patched.  Have a great Monday and stay safe.

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Well I’ve written several postings on the DNS Cache Poisoning vulnerability that was announced on July 8th.  Well about 4 days ago, the vulnerability was publicly released and is now in the hands of the bad guys too.  I’ve personally checked my DNS with Dan Kaminsky’s “DNS Checker” and you should too.  I have Cox as my Internet Service Provider and they are patched.  Several major ISP’s it seems, have dragged their feet on this patch.  We stress patching and patching fairly soon after the patch is released.  So click here and go to Dan’s site and check your DNS.  His site also has a lot of information and gives you some things to do if your ISP has been dragging their feet.

AT&T, Time Warner, and Bell Canada are some of the big boys who have not patched as of early, Friday July 25.  Others on the list are Skybroadband, Carphone Warehouse Broadband, Opal Telecom, T-Mobile, Videotron Telecom, Roadrunner, Orange, Enventis Telecom, Earthlink, Griffin Internet and Jazztel.

If you do find your ISP has failed to patch, you do have options.  Read on Dan’s site about using OpenDNS which has been patched as of July 8th.

Stay safe and cool.  It is so frickin’ humid here!

The sky is falling!  OK, not that bad.  Hopefully most have patched.  If you are a Windows user, which most of you probably are, there was a Microsoft Patch MS08-037 that patches a problem that was discovered by Dan Kaminsky.  If you haven’t updated your PC, you really should do it now.  If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I stress patching to keep applications safe from known vulnerabilities.  There is always SO much low hanging fruit out there that makes the bad guys able to succeed and they really do make a lot of money doing their evil deeds.   As of July 25th, attacks have been seen in the wild over the past few days and HD Moore’s Metasploit framework can now perform this too.   Dan came out and revealed the vulnerability in a webcast on July 24th.

So patch today with your Windows July patch cycle.  Stay safe and I’ll be publishing more on DNS a little later this weekend.

Sometimes I work on PC’s for friends at a discounted price.  Just because I think the Geek Squad is extremely expensive to look at PC’s and then they don’t get done with them very quickly.  Well I was well aware of the coordinated patch to DNS a couple of weeks ago messed up the ZoneAlarm firewall.  This was the case of my friends PC.  They just didn’t know about the problem with DNS and the firewall didn’t allow them to connect any longer.  This was a quick fix but just wanted to put this out to everyone.  CheckPoint has a patch and you need to go get it and things will once again be happy.

Stay cool and safe.

Well I had a little weekend getaway that I returned from last night and noticed that my iTunes client had a new update.  This time, I noticed that that have the Updater application split where the upper portion has updates to existing Apple applications you have like iTunes and Quicktime.  Now there is a ‘New’ section with the Safari browser with the default check box that will download the browser if you don’t uncheck the box.  I say UNCHECK THAT BOX!!!

Apple Updater

I actually get annoyed at other free applications that push Yahoo Toolbar, Google Toolbar, etc.  I always uncheck these boxes when installing these other apps.  If you were to install all the toolbars, the part of the browser that actually shows the website keeps getting smaller and smaller.  Do what I do,  Trust me, you can live with out all this software that is defaulted to select the check box.  Always read these pop up boxes that you are presented when installing ‘free’ software.

Stay safe and cool.  Talk soon.

I’m moving my blog.  Click here to read this post.

Last Wednesday, the US Sony Playstation website suffered an SQL injection attack that then served up malicious content.  They were notified and they got it cleaned up by Thursday morning.  The reason it was compromised was the code written to create the page was really just not good.  I think the majority of developers who create web pages don’t know how to write secure code.

Anyway, click here to read more details on this attack.  Sophos (a security firm who found the problem) notified Sony and in this article, there is a screenshot showing the addon NoScript in action.  We talk about this addon a lot here in my security blog.  If you don’t use Firefox browser with NoScript, maybe today is a great day to start!

Hope everyone had a safe and fabulous 4th and it’s back to the grindstone!  Talk soon!!

Well Happy 4th of July to all the folks here in the US.  Hope everyone has a safe one today.  Just a little warning.  The Storm Worm still lives and as expected, a wave of e-mails trying to get you to download an executable called fireworks.exe.  Just remember, do not click on links or attachments in unsolicited e-mails.  Click here for the Internet Storm Center story relating to this subject.

Happy 4th everyone!!