If you haven't heard already, there is a buffer overflow attack in the wild that exploits the fully-patched and latest versions of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader, 8.3 and 9.0. The exploit can come in the form of opening a malicious or poisoned PDF file. You can read more about the specifics of the attack and how it works from an article at The Register. To summarize the … [Read more...]
Clean up your Context Menu
The context menu (what pops up when you right-click) is one of the most popular items to clutter; a lot of programs will add their shortcuts or filetypes to the menu when they get installed. It's also a very under-used, convenient location that you could put your frequently used functions and shortcuts. This post should show you how to tame the context menu and make it work for … [Read more...]
Sandboxie – Sandbox applications to keep your system safe
Sandboxie is another application developed with the intent to keep your computer safe. Sandboxie works by creating a, you guessed it, sandbox for applications to run in. Specifically, it addresses the problem of: "I downloaded this file and I'm not sure I trust it. I need to run it though. How do I find out if it's malicious or what changes it will make to my computer?" Besides … [Read more...]
Book Review: Exploiting Software – How to Break Code
Exploiting Software - How to Break Code by Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw is an earlier work by the same authors of the previously reviewed Rootkits. This one dives into the security risks for poorly coded software. Copyright 2004, the book provides lots of examples of exploitable code from wrongfully used functions and improper coding methods five years ago. Despite its age (5 … [Read more...]
ThreatFire – Proactive Antivirus and Spyware Protection
What they call Behavioral Virus and spyware protection, I call proactive. Instead of being reactionary and delayed behind viruses and spyware, ThreatFire is able to analyze the behavioral habits of programs to determine if it is a virus before a definition (thumbprint identifying the virus) even exists. Chances are if it sounds like a virus and quacks like a virus, it's … [Read more...]