Category: Internet

TrueCrypt Is Back, But Should It Be?

June 3, 2014 / Paul / 0 Comments

Last week I wrote about the suspicious and abrupt announcement that TrueCrypt, a popular free open source encryption solution, was being abandoned and is considered “harmful and no longer secure”. In the article I covered the potential motives for this including the technical challenges with producing full disk encryption on modern hardware and operating systems. Whilst at this time there is little to add in terms of the potential motives for this sudden announcement a variety of interesting things have happened to the project since – including announcements that mean TrueCrypt may not be as dead as we thought. When the page at truecrypt.sourceforge.net was changed to a warning (and a set of migration instructions for Microsoft Bitlocker) the source code and old versions …

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TrueCrypt Is Back, But Should It Be?

Bypassing Windows ASLR in Microsoft Word using Component Object Model (COM) objects

June 1, 2014 / Paul / 0 Comments

A couple of months ago a RTF 0-day was used in attacks and to bypass ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) it was using a non-ASLR module MSCOMCTL.OCX. This got me interested to research into how it was actually loading up and discover if there were any more modules that could be used in the future following the recent Microsoft bulletin MS14-024 that finally implemented ASLR on the module. I started with an exploit taken from MetaSploit which exploits the Microsoft Word RTF Object Confusion vulnerability (CVE-2014-1761) and patched in April updates MS14-017 . This exploit uses module MSCOMCTL.OCX to bypass ASLR and what I needed was that part of the code so removed all other code leaving it just to load the OCX file. …

Original Article Can be Found Here:

Bypassing Windows ASLR in Microsoft Word using Component Object Model (COM) objects

Google Cuts off Chrome Extensions That Don’t Come From the Web Store

May 31, 2014 / Paul / 0 Comments

A while back Google said that it would stop letting Windows users install Chrome extensions that didn’t come directly from the Web Store. The company ended up delaying the plan, but there is no more fighting it. Today users of the stable channel of Chrome on Windows will no longer be able to install extensions from outside the Web Store. That won’t impact too many users thankfully, but it could make it difficult for those that like to run experimental add-ons. If you’ve already sideloaded extensions from outside of the Chrome Web Store, those will be disabled starting today; if you want to re-enable them, you’ll have to make the switch to the dev channel of the browser. The idea is to protect users from…

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Google cuts off Chrome extensions that don’t come from the Web Store

Top 10 Incredibly Useful Windows Programs to Have On Hand

May 31, 2014 / Paul / 0 Comments

Some apps are essential, and you use them every day. Everyone knows their names: Firefox, VLC, 7-Zip, and so on. However, there’s another class of app that gets less attention: the apps that are insanely useful to have in your back pocket on the rare occasions you need them. Here are 10 of our favorites. 10. Speccy Maybe you’ve forgotten what kind of RAM you bought, or want a quick glance at your CPU’s temperature. Speccy scans your machine and gives you a complete rundown of everything, from model numbers to temperatures, fan speeds, S.M.A.R.T. status, and…well, pretty much anything else you can think of. It’s also available in portable form, so you don’t have to install anything – just stick it in a folder…

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Top 10 Incredibly Useful Windows Programs to Have On Hand

Google’s Checklist on How to Build the Best Keyword List for Your Business!

May 31, 2014 / Paul / 0 Comments

Google AdWords has released a checklist for digital marketers to help them draw the maximum out of their keywords. This checklist is a part of the larger document – Keywords to the Wise – which aims at increasing demand with some smart keyword strategies. AdWords posted a link to the same document via Twitter yesterday. Here’s the checklist for keyword and targeting: Your keywords should reflect the different types of queries that users type when they are searching for something you offer. Make sure that your keywords and their management are in alignment with the objectives of your business. Delete those keywords which no longer drive traffic to your website. Use broad match to capture long tail queries, reserve exact match for your primary volume and value …

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Googleâ€™s Checklist on How to Build the Best Keyword List for Your Business!