Ever put your CV on a job site?

McAfee Reports Recent phishing attempts have been targeting some popular social networking sites and jobs websites, such as facebook.com and monster.com. Due to the amount of personal and sensitive information which is saved there, they are very valuable to phishers. This data could be used to further target or spear phish individual victims by name and even work interests.

We have seen phishing attacks which targeted careerbuilder.com in the past. The latest target is another big recruitment site - monster.com. Just like typical financial phishing emails, the Monster phishing emails have subjects including imperatives like “Monster customer service: important notice” or “Monster customer service: please confirm your data!”

But please do not be fooled! These are not from Monster at all!!

The phishing domain would appear to be hosted on a new UK domain with dns leading to a bot in Turkey. We can see from this phishing site, the phisher is mainly targeting recruiters for their logins and passwords. This would enable them to access hundreds or even thousands of job seekers’ CVs which often contain a gold mine of sensitive data. Other elements of the recruiters account could be useful as well.

The level of personal data on a CV is pretty high, and in the wrong hands outright dangerous. Be vigilant against unsolicited emails!

Windows Defrag Shows It All !!

I am sure you must have seen this 'ACCESS DENIED' screen if you try and enter the protected 'System Volume Information' folder on your Hard Drive.












Any idea what is there inside the 'System Volume Information' folder there? Well, windows indeed stores a lot of information that is required to be protected there and all the windows restore points are also present in this folder.

Now, security doesn't seem to have covered at all the places in windows. What happens is the path inside System Volume Information is protected by a folder structure which is not easy to guess.

The flaw lies in Windows Defragmentation.



















Windows Defragmentation does not hide the fragmented files present in System Volume Information folder. If the folder structure is revealed here, you get access to lot more sensitive information. This includes windows registry, SAM files, etc.

































So, if I save this report and view the actual path inside the System Volume Information,





I use this path to get inside System Volume Information folder using explorer and I now have the access to "protected" files like SAM file and lots of other information.

Most Popular Posts

This comes as 101st Post for this blog and I thought to compile list of most popular posts I have had here on the blog.

Credits to Google Analytics for the stats. :)

Here goes the list:

Virtualization : Is it Secure?

Big B Watching or Is this Intrusion of Privacy?

How to Build Secure Software

Free Web Proxy List

Hacking Web Applications – Truly Simple

Using IT to Combat Money Laundering

Westside in Mumbai stores your credit card numbers..

Get into pay sites for free as a Googlebot

Thick Client Application Security

Guarding Against Credit Card Frauds

Can Security be incorporated in the Computer Science & IT courses?

Security Concerns in Web 2.0

Leading Change

Google Hacking

Managing Account Lockout

Clear Text Secrets

Mitigating XSS Attacks in ASP.NET Apps

SQL Injection in Stored Procedure

You can be arrested for using free Wi-Fi

Using Google to View MySpace or Any Restricted Site

Online Banking Security

Web Services Design Security Considerations

Perspective of Performance and Security in IT

Design Considerations for Security

Download everything from Microsoft without WGA Check

What is STRIDE

The weakest link in the security chain? You

Information Systems Security Assessment Framework (ISSAF)

ASP.NET __VIEWSTATE issues

Developing Software Security Requirements

Software Security Requirements Engineering

Users may not be totally aware of the security risks, risks to the mission, and vulnerabilities associated with their system.

Commonly Used Techniques for Capturing Security Requirements can be broadly categorized as a top-down or a bottom-up analysis of possible security failures that could cause risk to the organization.

1. Fault Tree: Analysis for security is a top-down approach to identifying vulnerabilities. In a fault tree, the attacker’s goal is placed at the top of the tree. Then, the analyst documents possible alternatives for achieving that attacker goal. For each alternative, the analyst may recursively add precursor alternatives for achieving the subgoals that compose the main attacker goal. This process is repeated for each attacker goal. By examining the lowest level nodes of the resulting attack tree, the analyst can then identify all possible techniques for violating the system’s security; preventions for these techniques could then be specified as security requirements for the system.



2. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a bottom-up approach for analyzing possible security failures. The consequences of a simultaneous failure of all existing or planned security protection mechanisms are documented, and the impact of each failure on the system’s mission and stakeholders is traced.

Other techniques for developing system security requirements include threat modeling and misuse and abuse cases.

Can Security be incorporated in the Computer Science & IT courses?

Attacks on the web systems have become a common place and most of the issues have been attributed to software vulnerabilities. The IT software industry has recognized the importance of building secure software systems by incorporating security in their SDLC.

What amuses me is that the situation can be much better improved by integrating the basic security mantras in the graduate programs of Computer Science and Information Technology courses. The engineering courses for Computer Science and Information Technology at least can be sought to have the security touch points to enable the fresh candidates understand security implications while building software.

Currently, most security efforts at the university courses are in the form of specialized security classes which address particular topics in form of network security or cryptography. In contrast to the integrated approach currently being used in industry, education continues to handle security as an afterthought.

Something that everyone in the engineering courses would have learnt would be Database Management Systems (DBMS) and Web Technologies. Let’s take an example, we were taught that writing stored procedures are better compared to writing dynamic SQL because they are pre-compiled and hence better in terms of software performance. But we were not taught that stored procedures also helps protect you from a security threat called SQL Injection which is one of the most common attack.

My proposal is to plot security in the engineering curriculum with core courses. It just requires infusion as a subset in the main subjects. The concept of robust programming is native to secure coding. It is imperative to teach students that safe and reliable programs are inherently more secure.

The classic Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) includes analysis, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance. Incorporating security into the SDLC yields the Secure Development Lifecycle. The touch points in the course should be Security Requirements and Analysis, Security Design, Security Implementation and Security Testing. Something that is fundamental to software programming and security assurance becomes the security coding mantras. A few are mentioned below.
• Principle of Defense in Depth
• Principle of Least Privilege
• Do not trust any user input
• By default Deny
• Assume the Impossible
• Graceful degradation on error



The idea is to make students aware of these small mantras while learning software programming. These small changes make a huge impact on the student who enters the industry and is already aware of security best practices if not all the attacks. It makes a great value add for the organizations too to hire a candidate with basic security knowledge. The ability to write secure code should be a fundamental to a university computer science as basic literacy. I am sure that the industry will also appreciate if the universities accept these changing demands.


Dharmesh Mehta
Technical Analyst, Mastek

Polymorphic Exploitation

The emerging attacks by attackers which is dynamically changing each time a potential victim visits the malicious page is defying the traditional regular-expression and heuristic-based protection that identifies Web exploits at the network or host.

The attacker are very effective in creating a unique exploit with each request and making it impossible for signature-based protection engines to uniquely detect each attack instance.

The major driving factor for the attacker still remains Financial gain. Stealing personal data, hijacking Web transactions, executing phishing scams and perpetrating corporate espionage
are all motivators.

Traditional security techniques focus on stopping file execution and viruses at the client’s operating system (OS) layer. Unfortunately, it is far more difficult to protect users at the browser level. While some signature-based protection is able to detect one layer of Web exploit obfuscation, polymorphic exploitation will pose a new problem.

Proposed countermeasures for Web 2.0 and client side attacks include:
• Educating Web developers on the need for secure coding throughout the development lifecycle, with emphasis on input validation.
• Transitioning from finger-print or pattern matching protection to heuristics or behavior-based protection.
• Enabling protection engines to understand JavaScript just as the browser does.
• Utilizing feedback networks to analyze malicious Web sites, encourage remediation and improve content filtering at the browser level.

Beyond Burp & Paros

Most of you in the world of Web Application Security would have heard about Burp, Paros, WebScarab and other proxy tools to intercept the web (HTTP/HTTPS) requests and able to fiddle around with the parameters.

Going beyond the normal web request proxy tools to intercept the request and fiddle around, what tools do we use to intercept Thick Client Applications?

I have come across the tools like

• Echo Mirage
• Holodeck
  
• ITR
• Wpepro

I think they have been useful, but it is really tedious to get in the relevant data for tampering and be successful. These tools are in fact information tanks where in one will need to mine out relevant things for attacks or testing. :)

OWASP Summer of Code 2008

OWASP is now launching the Summer of Code 2008 (SoC 2008)

• The SoC 2008 is an open sponsorship program were participants/developers are paid to work on OWASP (and web security) related projects.
• The SoC 2008 is also an opportunity for external individual or company sponsors to challenge the participants/developers to work in areas in which they are willing to invest additional funding.
• The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a worldwide free and open community focused on improving the security of application software. The mission is to make application security "visible," so that people and organizations can make informed decisions about application security risks.
• The only requirement is that the candidate shows the potential to accomplish the project's objectives/deliveries and the commitment to dedicate the time required to complete it in the appropriate period.

More Details

Hacking Web Applications – Truly Simple

Application Hacking is the trend of the industry. It started with viruses and worms – The age of anti-virus. It evolved with the internet as more corporations developed internal and external networks – The age of Network Security. Now as industry has been powered with World Wide Web, information security has reached its third age – The age of Application Security. Application attack is one of the hardest attacks to recognize and defend against, as it uses your programs and systems against you.

If we recall the attacks few years back, we see that most of the organizations including NASA, CIA and Yahoo were attacked. These attacks were mostly at network layer of the corporate systems. The network layer is now very secure and hackers find it difficult if not impossible to attack at the network layer. Today, applications are the target. Attackers steal credit card numbers from bank site and an intruder breaks into a corporate application stealing sensitive employee information. Hackers use the application sitting behind the strong firewall and use a loop hole in the application to access corporate and customer data. As the industry embraces the benefits of e-business, the use of Web based technologies will continue to grow. However, as these technologies evolve, the vulnerabilities are being discovered at a similar rate. Secure implementation of these technologies cannot be achieved without a consistent approach to Web Application Security. Also the convergence of regulatory demands for application security with an increasingly security-savvy software buyer is driving a serious impetus for change.

Whether a security breach is made public or confined internally, the fact that a hacker has broken into your online assets should be a huge concern to organizations. Quite a large number of organizations are reactive to security incidents, pretending that the problem will go away. They respond with short-term fixes and the problems re-emerge rapidly. They fail to recognize the value of information and company reputation as opposed to cost of addressing security vulnerabilities.

Unlike certain worms and viruses that exploit the network security weaknesses, web application attacks go after flaws in the application itself. For example, an attacker could tamper with a part of HTTP request and use buffer overflows to corrupt an application by having it execute arbitrary code. In this way, an attacker could take control of the web or application server.

Ahh! We have a very strong password policy. But are passwords sufficient? Passwords are only as trustworthy as the people using them. If you rely on passwords to protect your online assets, then you are relying entirely on the people logging in and out. Let’s just draw a real world example. With popularity of social networking sites like www.orkut.com, we find thousands of people listing down their organization name and their work profile in public. What’s more concerning is they also list their family members with information of names and ages of their children. There is very high probability that a hacker may be able to find out a person’s password from the above information and get inside the organization’s defenses very quickly. Passwords are not sufficient to provide security to your online applications.

Does your firewall protect online assets? The traditional function of a firewall is to regulate the ports and services running on the server. Web applications by and large use port 80; and the firewall keeps this port open. This is the gold spot for the attackers. The beauty of application attack lies in sneaking through your firewall and use the application itself to break it. Firewalls cannot protect you from this happening.

With hacking tools being readily available and the complexity of attacking decreasing, it is relatively easy to find flaws in an application. A hacker could easily change the hidden fields of an online shopping site indicating price and smartly walk away without paying money. This is largely because while building applications, some of the most basic security measures, to keep information secure, were ignored. The cost of poor application security can be far greater than most organizations can imagine.

Organizations must take a proactive approach in protecting their critical web applications. The need lies in understanding how important application security is in the software development cycle. Application security must align as early as during requirement gathering, making way in secure design, development and deployment.

We are witnessing the emergence of more security-savvy buyer of software asking questions about the security practices and those are having a big impact on purchase decision. In long run, these companies will surely enjoy a higher return on investment.

Virtualization : Is it Secure?

Virtual machines are often used by security researchers to sandbox malware samples for analysis, or to protect a machine from a potentially hazardous activity. The theory is that any security threat or malicious behaviour will be restricted to the virtual environment which can be discarded and then restored to pristine condition after use.

Virtual machines are sometimes thought of as impenetrable barriers between the guest and host, but in reality they're (usually) just another layer of software between you and the attacker. As with any complex application, it would be naive to think such a large codebase could be written without some serious bugs creeping in. If any of those bugs are exploitable, attackers restricted to the guest could potentially break out onto the host machine.

Tavis Ormandy working with Google Inc., investigated this topic and presented a paper at CanSecWest on a number of ways that an attacker could break out of a virtual machine.

Most of the attacks identified were flaws, such as buffer overflows, in emulated hardware devices. One example of this is missing bounds checking in bitblt routines, which are used for moving rectangular blocks of data around the display. If exploited, by specifying pathological parameters for the operation, this could lead to an attacker compromising the virtual machine process.

While you would typically require root (or equivalent) privileges in the guest to interact with a device at the low level required, device drivers will often offload the parameter checking required onto the hardware, so in theory an unprivileged attacker could be able to access flaws like this by simply interacting with the regular API or system call interface provided by the guest operating system.

Things you can do to help end Phishing

• Learn to recognize and avoid phishing. The Anti-Phishing Working Group has a good list of recommendations.
  


• Update your software regularly and run an anti-virus program. If a cyber-criminal gains control of your computer through a virus or a software security flaw, he doesn't need to resort to phishing to steal your information.
  


• Use different passwords on different sites and change them periodically. Phishers routinely try to log in to high-value targets, like online banking sites, with the passwords they steal for lower-value sites, like webmail and social networking services.

Using IT to Combat Money Laundering

Money Laundering in simple words is about making money that comes from a ‘source a’ look like it has come from ‘source b’. This in world of software is also called repudiating one’s identity. Money Laundering has been practiced generally by criminals trying to disguise the origins of money obtained from illegal activities to craft them in a way that they seem to originate from legitimate sources. This is mainly to prevent them connect them to criminal activity. The most common offenders in this process are drug traffickers, corrupt politicians, terrorists and con artists.

Financial Institutions and Banking Institutions are amongst the most vulnerable to Money Laundering as illegal money enters the economy via banks in the form of large cash deposits or illicit financial transactions.

Money Laundering typically has 3 main phases – Placement, Layering and Integration. The common methods used in each of these phases are mentioned below:

1. Placement Stage: This prefers to the physical disposal of bulk cash proceeds derived from illegal activity.
a. Cash paid into bank (mostly with staff involvement or mixed with proceeds of legitimate business.
b. Cash used to purchase high value goods, property or business assets.
c. Cash being exported.

2. Layering Stage: This refers to the separation of illegal entrance of money from their source by creating complex layers of financial transactions. Layering conceals the audit trail and provides anonymity.
a. Several bank to bank transfers
b. e-transactions between different accounts in different names in different countries
c. Changing money’s currency
d. Resale of goods or assets

3. Integration Stage: This refers to the reinjection of the laundered proceeds back into the economy in such a way that they re-enter the financial system as normal business funds.
a. False loan payments
b. Forged invoices used as cover
c. Presenting income from property or legitimate business assets to appear clean

Using Information Technology to combat Money Laundering

While money laundering techniques are becoming sophisticated, so is the technology used to fight it. IT systems cannot be viewed as perfect solutions for Anti-Money Laundering techniques, but current packages have following to offer. Use of these packages enables banks to know and understand their customers and their financial dealings to help them manage risks prudently.

1. Competent for Name Analysis
2. Offer case based account documentation acceptance and rectification
3. Assess Money Laundering Risks at both Account and Customer levels
4. Rules-based systems
5. Include Statistical and Profiling engines for monitoring customers
6. Use Neural Networks and Link Analysis to detect frauds
7. Time sequence matching to prevent Hawala cases
8. Can monitoring transactions for suspicious activity
9. Helps ensure compliance to Banking or Financial standards for Anti Money Laundering
10. Investigation Tools

Effect On Our Economy

Money laundering is one of the ongoing problems facing the international economy. The economic effects are on a broader scale. Developing countries often bear the brunt of modern money laundering because the governments are still in the process of establishing regulations for their newly privatized financial sectors. There is also a growing realization about the extent that money laundering and its relationship with organized crime are interlinked.

The huge profits that accrue to these criminals from areas such as drug trafficking, international fraud, arms dealing, trafficking in human organs, will be used not only to facilitate ongoing operations, but to consolidate the wealth, prestige and respectability of those in control of the criminal business.

Hawala transactions have a huge impact on the economy. Various commercial activities get influenced. In fact, the price of land has been spiraling due to the activities of this mafia. The root of the problem can be traced to the policies of Government both at the Centre and the State. Inflation, rise in the land prices and circulation of black money are among the effect of money laundering methods circulating in the system. If left uncontrolled, it would lead to creation of a parallel economy which will destabilize our country. These artificially created inflated financial sectors create errors in economic policies. Massive influxes of dirty cash into particular areas of the economy that are desirable to money launderers create false demand, and officials act on this new demand by adjusting economic policy.

Issues on a local scale relate to taxation and small-business competition. Money from illegal activity is often untaxed which means the rest of us ultimately have to make up the loss in tax revenue. Also, legitimate small businesses can't compete with money-laundering front businesses that can afford to sell a product for cheaper because their primary purpose is to clean money, not turn a profit.

Money Laundering is a major concern because of its scale, its capacity to exploit and influence the legitimate business world and its capacity for internationalization. These concerns have led to concerted international action for a solution to combat this growing menace called Money Laundering.

Guarding Against Credit Card Frauds

The percentage of people using plastic money (cards) for transactions is growing day by day and so are the card scams rising along. We often hear or read about credit card frauds in our daily and how people end up in nightmares seeing huge bills for things they actually have never purchased. Likewise even the credit card companies are paying off handsome amount from their profit share to cover these fraudulent transactions.

Let me bring up few ways in which these frauds happen. By and large for physical credit card transactions, the deception story starts when the person who takes your card for swipe copies your card information to some other device. Later these details are copied to fake cards which are genuine card look alike with complete hologram markings and logos. The poor card holder remains completely unaware that his card has been cloned until he notices bill amounts of things he has never purchased. One of the other common methods is making a hoax call (often representing as card issuer authority) to the card holder and trying to retrieve card details. Credit card bills lying in trash cans or public places are other avenues where fraud originates.

Regarding users using cards for online transactions, one can see a large number of ways in which card data can be compromised. Falling in prey of a nice email asking for card details in return of discounts, or emailing card details to a friend or being a victim of card details being copied by an illegal software installed in cyber cafes are most common lines of attack sources.

One of the reasons in increasing successful frauds is inadequate knowledge of the card owner on proper use of credit cards. Here’s how credit card owners can better safeguard from these frauds.
• Over a credit card transaction, keep an eye on your card as it is being swiped. Make sure it is being swiped only once for a single successful transaction and get back your card as quickly as possible.
• Sign your credit card as soon as you receive it.
• Be protective of your credit card number so that others around you can't copy it or capture it on a cell phone or camera.
• Be prompt in keeping a check on your credit card bills to verify there are no bogus charges. For any charges that you don’t recognize, report these charges promptly to the card issuer.
• For people using cards at hotels or restaurants, remember to draw a line through blank portions of the receipt where additional charges could be fraudulently added other than hotel tips.
• In case of change of your billing address, notify your credit card issuers in advance so that bills reach safe hands.
• Save your receipts so you can compare them with your monthly bills.
• Always give your phone number to the company for verification of suspicious transactions.
• Be wary of any phone call or email seeking details of your account.
• Never give away photocopies of both sides of your credit card for any purpose.
• For online transactions, using credit card, remember to go by HTTPS and not HTTP.
• Avoid having e-transactions in a publicly share machine like Internet café or open free wireless network.

Online Banking Security

Banks today are increasingly getting introduced to a number of security threats. The ones in headlines have been Phishing, Key Logging and Man-in-the-Middle. We will find a number of online banking users who are naïve to this kind of technology and the threats associated with it. It is necessary to help them understand the precautions they must take to prevent being a victim of online theft.

Consumer education becomes a key element to prevent the manifestation of a number of risks into frauds. It is much easier for the experienced eyes of an internet-savvy user to detect potential phishing attempts when compared with a customer who has recently migrated from old school of banking to more recent modes.

On a happy note, there are solutions in the market to tackle problems of phishing, key loggers and man-in-the-middle attacks. But these are expensive solutions and not full proof.

Business Security Buy-In: Given the customer base or other reasons, it has not been easy for the banks to justify investing in secure solutions for online banking. In fact, many banks are willing to compensate for the fraud losses of the customers as they find it more cost effective than putting up a secure solution.

Security Challenges: Banks have to continuously evaluate the risks, cost of technology solutions and even upgradations. .It gets all the more challenging due to a variety of technological solutions available in the market, each addressing individual problems but none offering a one-stop solution.

Typo-Squatting - In the Spotlight

A dangerous cyber practice known as Typo-Squatting is in spotlight again. Attackers or Typo-squatters register domains using common misspellings of popular brands, products, and people in order to redirect consumers to alternative websites.

Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter. If the intended website is "example.com"

• A common misspelling, or foreign language spelling, of the intended site: exemple.com
• A misspelling based on typing errors: xample.com or exxample.com
• A differently phrased domain name: examples.com
  
• A different top-level domain: example.org

Once in the typo-squatter's site, the user may be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site; through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts or content.

How to Build Secure Software

This article on "How to build Secure Software" written by Dharmesh M Mehta appeared in The Times of India - Bangalore on 7th January 2008.

Leading Change

Hello All....

I have been taking a few lectures on 'Change Management in Enterprise' in one of the management institutes in Mumbai. We talked about McKinsey's Principles and Lewin's Principles for Change Management. Then I came across this wonderful piece on Leading Change from John Kotter.

John P. Kotter, a world-renowned expert on leadership at Harvard Business School, has been the premier voice on how the best organizations actually “do” change.

This is what he says...Hope people interested would enjoy as I did. In the world of IT, even inclining organizations to look into Security requires a 'Change'. Let us all try and achieve the BEST CHANGE. :)

Why do we need leaders?

Leadership is required for mobilising people to handle challenging times. In a world that has no challenges, things are fine and you don’t require leaders. In such a world, you don’t need to mobilise people for handling any crisis. But unfortunately, in our world, we a have huge number of challenges in the government, non-profit and business sectors; we have many challenges in the developing and the developed world. Hence, we require leadership in our world. In fact, in our world, the need for leadership is more now than ever before. In our current world of business, we cannot afford to restrict leadership to just the top management positions. Every employee, every engineer should rise to a leadership role. They should step in to solve customer problems; they should step in to solve internal company problems. The number of people that we need to provide leadership is huge now. The turbulences in life will never stabilise, and I see the demand for leaders going up steadily.

How are leaders different from managers?

Leaders mobilize people. Their role is to undertake challenging goals that involve change. Leaders focus on changing behaviour, while managers focus on existing circumstances. For example, if there is a DVD player that is built well, we don’t require a leader to press the on/off button, because there is no challenge in it and no change is involved. I am not saying that managers are not important. Of course, they are important since it is not just the story of one DVD player. It is the story of 100,000 DVD players in 20 different countries where things can get complicated. Managers are important in that they should manage all these different DVD players in different countries, and ensure that they play the right movies at the right time. But the role of leaders is different. They often create the systems that the managers manage. For example, initially, there was the VHS system and the tapes that we were used to. It took leadership to change the user habits into something better. In the case of the battle between Sony and VHS, the amount of leadership that was required initially to drive the battle was much greater than after they won. Leadership is important at times of change because most of the time, the systems are not in place and leaders drive change and face challenges that are humongous. In short, in the case of stable existing systems, you need managers, while in the case of new turbulent situations that require a change, you need leaders.

Do leaders always drive change?

Almost always, leadership produces change. Go back in history and read about the people who were great leaders, and you will see that they were always focused on change. They were always helping people to change their behaviour. They were always focused on changing systems. Look at Mahatma Gandhi — he induced change in Indian society: he mobilised Indians and changed the way they looked at their state of affairs.

Do leaders drive their selfish cause or altruistic cause?

More often, people are talking about the behaviour of people when they are talking about leadership. They think about the presidents or CEOs of companies when leaders are mentioned. That is not the right way. The belief is that people in those positions mobilize people. But, the reality is that most of the times they are just politicians, managers, or sometimes they are not good at any of these. That is not a good way of defining leadership.

Good leaders are always driving changes. They derive a sense of satisfaction out of the change they drive. Great leaders always do something for people. I call it altruistic because it is good for the people. They are progressing towards goals that the society needs.

What is India’s role in shaping effective future leaders?

India is becoming very important and has got a bigger role to play in the global economy. Offering services cheaper and better is not the end; it’s the beginning. You must lead the way. You need good leaders for that, but more often than not, you don’t get better leaders. Educational institutions should focus on mentoring good leadership.

Google Hacking

Web Hacking : Select a site, find a vulnerability
Google Hacking : Select a vulnerability, find a site :)

Some trials:

1. Advanced Operator : filetype

Search for filetype:mdb with keywords as users, passwords, credit, etc. View funny results.

2. Advanced Operator : allinurl
Cross-Site Frame Vulnerability allinurl: "url=http" "frame"

3. Directory Traversal Vulnerability
filetype: pl inurl:cg-bin inurl: file inurl:html

4. Spam Engines
filetype: cgi send mail

Is Software Security Testing Complicated?

Testing software for Security is something that can be quite complicated to do. Those that do test software are also those that have taken classes and know just what it is that they are doing.

If you are all into software, and are very familiar with it, as well as interested in testing it yourself, you are going to want to check out the software testing course that is held closest to you.
Many companies hire a 3rd party to give their employees a security testing course or build an in house team for providing this as a special service to teams across the organization.

I somehow believe that Security testing is something that comes a little easier to someone that understands or has written a software program before. If you have ever written a software application and are looking to get into testing, you are going to find that learning what you need to know to test will be easier for you than someone else.

Is virtual keyboard been considered?

Phishing is an attack where the attacker sends a mail making it look as if it has come from a bank or a financial institution and lures the victim into entering his sensitive information.

Image based keyboard (or virtual keyboards) were invented to make life harder for banking or phishing Trojan horses (specifically key-stroke loggers or key loggers), some even suggested they be used specifically to avoid these Trojan horses.