In late November/early December of 2009, Facebook — the popular social networking site — rolled out a set of privacy changes billed as improvements. Being a regular Facebook user, my initial reaction to the announcement itself was positive. Facebook touted several new features, such as per-post privacy controls and a more simplified interface to control [...]
The smart grid has received significant attention from policy makers as a way to address global warming, efficient energy utilization, and kickstart the economy. Yet there are numerous information security challenges that remain to be addressed. One significant challenge is privacy. The “smart meters” that are deemed an inherent part of the new power grid [...]
While visiting the American University of Armenia today, I stumbled upon a talk by Dr. Sos Agaian on digital signal processing and steganalysis. I have been interested in this area for years and Dr. Agaian’s talk gave me insight on some new and interesting research into this area while providing me with motivation to share [...]
A recent set of critical flaws in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader products leaves users vulnerable to remote exploitation. With this news we are presented with yet another lesson in software security that we in the industry refuse to learn. At one spot in the life of code we reach a point of diminishing returns [...]
According to researchers the complexity of the SHA-1 one-way hash function has been significantly reduced. Exploiting this weakness for practical purposes is now possible for a “well-funded organization.” While the research remains unpublished this revelation underscores the need for us to move away from SHA-1 and related algorithms. One-way cryptographic hash functions have many uses [...]
Hello and welcome to the new LinkGard Security Blog. More than a decade ago, when I was studying in college, security seemed like something only a hobbyist “hacker” would practice for the purpose of self-indulgence. On the other end of the spectrum you’d have to be employed in some well-funded organization with a 3-letter acronym [...]