February 2007 - Posts
Ok, this issue started with an article by Symantec titled “An Example of Why UAC Prompts in Vista Can’t Always Be Trusted.” After that, Thor (Hammer of God) posted his opinion on Bugtraq, which prompted a few other responses. So I decided...
Recently a friend was complaining to me about the “screen flickering” that occurs whenever a User Account Control (UAC) prompt comes up in Vista and he wanted to know how to turn it off—not UAC, just the dimming and flickering effects. He...
When I was a teenager in California there was private oil pier near Rincon that we liked to jump off. It was great—you’d throw your surf board off first so there was no backing out, because it was scary looking down at the dark green ocean so far below...
I thought I would add a bit more to my original post to clarify the problem. Half of the problem is the way Windows searches paths, and the other half is software developers who don’t quote their paths in the Registry or when calling CreateProcess...
A couple years ago I mentioned in a SecurityFocus column that Windows has a problem when you put a file named “program.exe” in the system root directory. The problem is basically in how it deals with spaces in paths that don’t have quotes...
One thing that bothers me about many web sites out there is how I get to (or don’t get to) choose my account name. Sure, many web sites let you have any account name you want, but some web sites just want to use your e-mail address. While this is...
If you do any kind of .NET web development, it would be well worth your time to dig through Microsoft’s Patterns & Practices Security Wiki The Wiki is a good index of old articles and a launching point for new articles on secure web development...
http://www.nurs.co.uk/news/specials/cms/1171535504212694732419_1.htm Read More...
There are many ways you can use digital certificates in Windows. The only problem is that it often involves either having your own CA, paying for certificates from a trusted CA or, the worst option, using self-signed certificates. Fortunately, there is...
I have always been annoyed with the huge number of files under the Windows directory, but I was very surprised when I looked at my Windows directory under Vista: 39,609 files and 7,411 folders! Read More...
I was playing around with the cool new Yahoo! Pipes site and built myself a feed on password topics. I’m sure I will be tweaking it some as I learn how to use pipes, but I thought I’d pass my pipe around to others who are interested in passwords...
The release of Windows Vista seems to have brought on a tremendous amount of criticism. Of course, CNET has yet another article with an apparent anti-microsoft agenda. The article criticizes the fact that Vista’s firewall does not block outgoing...
I got an e-mail earlier this week from a financial web site. The e-mail displayed the last 4 digits of my U.S. social security number. Presumably, they didn’t show the entire number for security reasons, but I wondered how secure that really is...
This absurd article at cnet claims that security experts don’t recommend buying Windows Vista for the security features. The article tries to cast doubt on the effectiveness of new security features in Vista. But I disagree. I think security experts...
If you have ever locked down a Windows 2003 or Vista machine you have probably run across the Application Experience Lookup Service, also known as Application Experience or AeLookupSvc. The documentation on this service is pretty vague and sometimes contradictory...
Today I ran across a Firefox add-on that automatically fills out the CAPTCHA form when you log in: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4381/ Although some might think this is convenient, it obviously shows that eBay’s CAPTCHA, like so many others...
I recently got a chance to play around with file screens feature in Windows Server 2003 R2 and found it to be very interesting. Although it appears to be designed to provide general content control on a file server, it has some features that allow you...