Questions tagged [research]

An activity meant to understand the way a mechanism or system works. The study or examination of a security problem or class of security problems.

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Amount of simple operations that is safely out of reach for all humanity?

Cryptographic primitives usually assert some security level given as number of operations to mount an attack. Hash functions, for example, give different security levels for collision attacks, ...
Nakedible's user avatar
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28 votes
21 answers
9k views

What are the biggest unsolved problems in IT Security? [closed]

Just recently I thought about all the solved problems in IT security, like XSS (which one can mitigate with input validation), SQL Injection (mitigated with prepared statements), etc. Now I'm ...
Andreas Arnold's user avatar
22 votes
4 answers
7k views

Malwares source repositories. Where? [closed]

As the best way to learn is to read the code, do you know where I can find malware/virus/whatever source code to read?
gbr's user avatar
  • 2,020
19 votes
7 answers
1k views

which site do you use to view details of vulnerabilities? [closed]

Which site/sites do you guys use to view details of security vulnerabilities?
Nathan B.'s user avatar
  • 443
19 votes
2 answers
842 views

How secure is Stack Exchange's reputation?

I recently read an article about researchers being able to penetrate the Facebook network and making lots of friends with about 100 "Social" bots. What would prevent somebody to do the same on Stack ...
user1202136's user avatar
18 votes
3 answers
6k views

Recommendations for honeypot software

A couple of us wanted to setup a honeypot/honeynet with the goal of learning; not planned to be in a production environment. What's a good recommendation for a high interaction or low interaction ...
Lizbeth's user avatar
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14 votes
2 answers
3k views

Is a crash always exploitable for RCE?

Reading papers written by teams looking for vulnerabilities using fuzzing, I notice that many people label a crash as a DoS vulnerability. While in other papers and researches, they go deeper after ...
J. Doe's user avatar
  • 65
14 votes
2 answers
4k views

How many passwords does the average user know?

Looking for research on the count and complexity of passwords that an average user is actively using. Note: Also, just to be clear, by research, this is not a request for you to respond with an ...
blunders's user avatar
  • 5,072
14 votes
5 answers
846 views

Resources for physical security questions

What are good resources for the physical security questions that IT organizations face? Like best practices for locks and seals on servers and kiosks, personnel access mechanisms and policies, ...
nealmcb's user avatar
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14 votes
5 answers
2k views

How to get into RFID auditing?

I would like to get more knowledge around RFID-systems auditing. Does anyone have a basic guide step-by-step which I can use to set up a lab with proper RFID "sniffing" equipment? I would like to ...
Chris Dale's user avatar
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14 votes
5 answers
2k views

Where can I find statistics on security breaches?

I am putting together a security presentation, and I would like statistics on the occurrence of and damages from security breaches. Does anyone know of a reliable, recently-updated source?
Sean W.'s user avatar
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13 votes
5 answers
6k views

Why are there more research papers on Android malware than iOS malware?

Based on this question. Why are there more research papers on Android malware than iOS malware?
Marcus's user avatar
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13 votes
9 answers
799 views

What do you see as the emerging threats for 2011

As we move in to the new year, what do you see as the emerging threats for organisational security? I see more chat around; Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) from foreign states. More fines from the ...
12 votes
6 answers
7k views

Applications of probability/statistics in IT security?

What are some areas of computer security that utilizes statistical modeling? I ask b/c I'm a studying statistics at school and have become interested after reading a few papers.. some of the areas I'...
cespinoza's user avatar
  • 223
12 votes
4 answers
794 views

Where are some Security Policies that are actually in use?

I know there are a lot of security policy samples and templates out in the web. I'm curious to know if there are security policies that are actually in use and still published publicly. I know they ...
James Santiago's user avatar
12 votes
4 answers
6k views

What Twitter #hashtags apply to IT Security

I'm trying to search twitter for evidence of near-realtime alerts or updates regarding security issues. What hashtags are common or popular in the IT Security world?
makerofthings7's user avatar
12 votes
5 answers
786 views

Resources for data on security incidents [closed]

What resources exist to research data on actual security incidents? I would prefer an online resource but offline resources are acceptable. The cost of access should be less than $100 (US) for ...
this.josh's user avatar
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12 votes
1 answer
277 views

Where is the best place to get descriptions of malware?

I'm looking for a source of descriptions of 1990s to early 2000s malware; I have searched for a very long time yet found very little. I require information such as payload activation dates, files ...
Starmute's user avatar
  • 121
10 votes
2 answers
289 views

Encouraging security researchers to disclose vulnerabilities

What are approaches to forming solid relationships with security researchers? For example, is publishing a public PGP key on the "contact us" page of a company's website for high levels of risk ...
blunders's user avatar
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10 votes
3 answers
4k views

Ring -3 exploits and existence of other rings

Concept of Rings Rings were introduced in the forerunner of UNIX, Multics, and had 8 rings for reading, writing, executing and calling (I don't quite understand why it needed 8 rings to do this, if ...
LTPCGO's user avatar
  • 1,035
9 votes
3 answers
4k views

Vuln research: reverse engineering, debugging or fuzzing?

I wonder how hackers find vulnerabilities. If they use fuzzing, security engineers do it, and it's probably that security engineers (that work in a firm) have more resources than a group of hackers. ...
jaja's user avatar
  • 91
9 votes
3 answers
634 views

How do researchers "gain control of an attacking PC" and not themselves be considered attackers / criminals?

In reference to this Network Computing Report article titled "'Operation Shady Rat' Perpetrated Five Years Of Long-Term Attacks On Government, Enterprises" The Cliff's Notes to the article is thus: ...
Wesley's user avatar
  • 305
9 votes
4 answers
799 views

Are there state-of-the-art techniques or theory specifically for attacking passphrases over passwords?

With passphrases becoming more and more common based on length being more important than complexity, I'm assuming there must be some work going on involving techniques aimed specifically at cracking / ...
hippietrail's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
2k views

Suggestion setting up a SQL injection honeypot

I just stumbled on a website vulnerable to an SQL injection attack by mistake ( https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6181248/is-this-site-vulnerable-to-an-sql-injection-attack ). That made me curious ...
PeeHaa's user avatar
  • 599
9 votes
2 answers
276 views

War dial research

Anyone know of any specific UK Law that would prevent the use of war dialling as part of a security research project?
David Stubley's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
1k views

E-voting: receipt-free, verifiable, and anonymous

Background In response to a system design concept, a question was posed: How do you achieve electronic voting, anonymity, and verifiability at the same time? I was informed that most experts in ...
Dave Jarvis's user avatar
8 votes
7 answers
4k views

Definition of Software Security

I'm looking for a theoretical definition of Software Security. And I need to quote some book in an article. Most of the books starts already assuming that the user knows what that is, and they're ...
bluefoot's user avatar
  • 259
8 votes
1 answer
2k views

Open Problems in Security?

I know it might seem a bit too much theoretical, but I was wondering if there was some list of known open problems in security? In a similar way that there are open problems in Theoretical Computer ...
Charles's user avatar
  • 446
8 votes
2 answers
273 views

Video Conference Systems - Security Testing

Any one have any experience in testing ISDN based VC systems? What approach did you take, tools used? How did you approach fuzzing the protocol? What resources did you read up on prior to testing?
David Stubley's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
1k views

SSH Brute Force Dictionaries

Request for logs please. So, I had an interesting question posed to me around geographical trends in SSH brute force attempts. The question being "has anybody ever looked into the prevalent SSH ...
David Stubley's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
753 views

NSA crypto Suite B - historical

I'm looking for information on what NSA suggested for use in commercial systems in past times. 90's and early 2000's. I'm mainly interested in PKI and symmetric cyphers for SSL and file/disk ...
Hubert Kario's user avatar
  • 3,808
7 votes
2 answers
510 views

Are there any independent organizations doing (publicly available) IT security research?

When looking up security risks on the net I find that all research being cited (if any is cited) always seems to come from the Anti-Malware companies. (just e.g., this article cites F-secure, AVG and ...
Martin's user avatar
  • 1,237
7 votes
4 answers
410 views

Security papers or material focusing on the industrial control systems (SCADA)

Anyone know a good site or a list of resource to start to know issue related to the security of SCADA system ?
boos's user avatar
  • 1,066
7 votes
5 answers
2k views

Master thesis topic - mod_security

I've been playing with mod_security for some time and I'd like somehow to use it in my master thesis. I don't know exactly how this work could be more interesting than describing what mod_security ...
cradox23's user avatar
  • 173
7 votes
2 answers
553 views

Profiling attackers via adaptive games: "Strange game, the only winning move is not to play"

Use of Game Design to Profile Attackers: Interested in any research that links concepts in game design to security systems in an effort to profile the attacker's identity, motives, skills, etc.; if ...
blunders's user avatar
  • 5,072
7 votes
1 answer
223 views

Restricting access to "hacking" sites and tools

I tried following a link from a post on this site and discovered that insecure.org is blocked by our internet proxy. What are the potential benefits and risks of allowing access to such sites to ...
JimmyJames's user avatar
  • 3,049
6 votes
4 answers
4k views

applications of linear algebra to "security"?

I am taking a course in linear algebra which was to be credited towards a program in applied math. My interests have moved towards matters of "security" (information, network, cryptographic, etc.). ...
T. Webster's user avatar
  • 2,379
6 votes
2 answers
848 views

What security measures to have before openly allowing security researchers to hack your site

As some kind of a follow-up from my previous question - which was asked from the security researcher/penetration tester point of view: (Thanks to Rory McCune for pointing this out) There seem to be a ...
Yoav Aner's user avatar
  • 5,359
6 votes
2 answers
436 views

Design proposals for enhanced security for parts of Internet, e.g. for banking?

There is some recent discussion of some sort of "multilevel" internet, with e.g. a level defined for banking in which access is only granted after special authentication with "true ...
nealmcb's user avatar
  • 20.8k
6 votes
3 answers
1k views

How can I crawl the internet for malware?

For anyone who wants to study malware, there are a few websites that publish malware samples and/or URL feeds for anyone to retrieve and study. As opposed to performing such file-based analysis, I ...
user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
610 views

What is the current state of RFID / NFC security?

I'm attempting to do some RFID and NFC cloning and replaying research, as I'm hoping to be able to demo physical security as an attack vector to a few of out clients and prospects. The downside (...
WorseDoughnut's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
332 views

Attacks Against Password Managers

What threat models and currently known attacks against online and/or offline Password Managers exist, that do not base on CSRF, XSS or autofill behaviour? I have found two publications from usenix....
John's user avatar
  • 1,017
5 votes
2 answers
1k views

CEH resources for exam prep [closed]

For an upcoming contract I'm required to have the CEH certification (even though there won't be much PenTesting) so I'm working through that now. I've gone through all of the reccomended EC Council ...
iivel's user avatar
  • 1,603
5 votes
3 answers
201 views

Ethics & releasing research with no viable solution [duplicate]

I've been doing some pretty interesting research that involves abusing a particular technology to carry out malicious behavior. Normally, upon completion of my research, I'd hand over all of my work ...
haze's user avatar
  • 468
5 votes
2 answers
900 views

How should I document my Public Key Infrastructure?

I'm preparing to document a 3 tier PKI (with multiple second level policy CAs) and want to create a document that is useful, technical, and not too overwhelming to the non-PKI expert. I suppose the ...
makerofthings7's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
434 views

Some good resources on viruses/worms?

I am searching good info on sophisticated viruses/worms. One example would be STUXNET and the very good analysis made by folks from Symantec. Any ideas?
ts01's user avatar
  • 373
5 votes
1 answer
2k views

Lighteater - BIOS/UEFI vulnerable

I am currently a bit confused, I have read today an article about the BIOS-rootkit Lighteater made by John Loucaides and Andrew Furtaki. In their presentation 'How many million BIOSes would you like ...
Greeneco's user avatar
  • 173
5 votes
1 answer
913 views

How does sound signature recognition work and how to override it?

Today a lot of websites that allow the upload of media content are implementing automatic sound signature checks to prevent the illegal distribution of videos containing copyrighted content. How does ...
Ucodia's user avatar
  • 153
5 votes
1 answer
202 views

Quantitative Security Analysis of Open Source Repos like CRAN and NPM

Is anyone aware of any quantitative analysis or research on the security of CRAN or NPM? e.g. How much malware is hosted, rate of compromise, speed to close, number of attack vectors, CERT reports ...
Colin's user avatar
  • 181
5 votes
1 answer
2k views

Do home video surveillance cameras work as deterrents?

After an alarming uptick in automotive and household burglaries, Our neighborhood is chatting about installing video cameras on their houses. I'm looking for research that shows whether or not they ...
JTW's user avatar
  • 61