INFOSEC.my Knowledge Sharing Session

Wow... once again a FREE seminar knowledge sharing session.

This session is mainly focused on Information Security.

I can't say much. However, you may find more information from here:
http://niser.org.my/infosec-my/index.html

At the same time I would like to introduce a VERY interesting website where you can find the up-to-date info on national ICT security. The National ICT Security and Emergency Response Center (NISER). There are LOTS of published research papers and statistics here.
http://www.niser.org.my

Most probably, I might not be attending this event. :(
If you are going, PLEASE share with me what they've said.

Recovering from disaster, Zone Alarm

All the while I was happy that Zone Alarm freeware was doing great jobs.

It will notify me whenever there are some unauthorized access comming to my computer.

It even blocks the LAN ports such as file and printer sharing. I can't even 'ping' to my own computer. It was great.

Until one day the program starts to show some abnormal characteristics. I booted my computer as usual and noticed that it REALLY slow!. I had no idea as this was my first encounter with program.

So, I waited for some time and take a look on the Windows Task Manager and it shows that the program vsmon.exe was the culprit. Consuming exessive memory until too much of virtual memory being consumed.

The image below shows the system's status after ending the VSMON.EXE process.


This problem really gave me a bad time... :( I can connect to internet and browse for nearly 15 minutes only. After that, the HTTP port will get blocked and I cannot browse anymore. But, I can still chat on YM and MSN....

Then it took me sometime to know that what is this and why is this happening. Finally, I learned that Zone Alarm is the main cause of this problem. The program VSMON.EXE is actually the service so-called TrueVector Internet Monitor.

Therefore, I hope that Zone Alarm will fix this bug in the comming versions.
Well, I can't say much because afterall this is a freeware.

Further info:
http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/vsmon.exe.html

Cyber Terrorism (CT) and Cyber Crime (CC)

This short article that I wrote will be focusing on how serious CT and CC can be. It is slightly target for large companies because I know that one day you one of the top guns in a company.

I'm not introducing something new to the world right now. It is the same thing of what those old-time techies keep on mentioning about, cyber terrorism and cyber crime will be raising due to the importance that we give to the information technology in this modern era. As usual, people like to sabotage your most important asset. For instance in a war, the first thing that military will do is attack the most important place such as the military camp in order to cause greater suffocation to the victim.

My definition of cyber terrorism is, exactly same as terrorism but it is done in the cyber world also can be said a cyber war. The same goes to cyber crime as well, it all comes under crime using the modern day communication tools specifically computers. By the way, cyber terrorism is more dangerous compared to cyber crime where cyber terrorism includes larger amount of people.

Therefore, it is not impossible for someone to cause a serious damage in the IT world. Once cyber terrorism happens, it can cause serious communication failure that might lead to the malfunction of the whole organization. Cyber terrorism and cyber crime can happen anywhere. For example, in business environment, people could steal all your financial information thus create a network failure by attacking your company servers. Obviously, your network administrators might have done backups, but it will still take some time for your network to recover because your network administrator and computer emergency response team (CERT) need to do some analysis to know how it happened. In this gap, your company's e-mail will be down causing a communication barrier between you and your customers (applied for large operations).

What about SOHO and SME/SMI users? Well, you are still vulnerable for CT/CC attacks. Hackers can use your bandwidth and information to go anonymous in the Internet. Once they go anonymous, then, they can do anything because no one knows their identification.

Other worst-case scenarios (WCS): These are only few funny examples.

1. Setting up malicious codes in the computers at Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara causing it to automatically edit individuals’ information such as religion and gender silently. After some time, the religion and gender of the entire Malaysians will be different E.g. All Malaysians are Christian and the gender is female. This will cause serious havoc. (CT)

2. Steal health information for business purposes. For instance, the companies hire hackers to steal people’s health information from hospitals and clinics to make a decision whether the candidate can be employed or not. (Business CC)

3. Attack the TM Net Streamyx connection centers (those high-end switches) to disable internet connections for all the streamyx subscribers. This also can cause a massive lost for businesses and organizations. (CT)

Note: I’m not giving you ideas conduct CT or CC okay?

Obviously, the network administrators can detect these kinds of things but hackers still can find ways. I personally feel that these things are possible.

The problem is, as days pass by, we are giving more importance to information technology. Nowadays, everywhere we go there must be a computer for instance schools, clinics and logistics. All these are the goldmines for the hackers out there. Companies are investing large amount of money in it. However, I’m not denying the fact that computers are efficient and essential for corporations but at the same time it is vital to play safe. So, it is good to invest on security as well. For example, the usage of VoIP can be easily captured almost by anyone. Yet, most of the companies are using VoIP because it’s getting more reliable.

No matter who you are, you still have to find a solution for this problem because you are exposed as well. I repeat, a kid who knows how to use Google might cause million dollars loss to your company one day.

Remember:
“There is nothing impossible in the cyberworld anymore!”
(Mohamed Ihsan, 2006)

Is your password hack-able?

Yeah, once again I managed to crack another password. Now, it's a password belongs to one of the Technical Assistant (TA) in my college. I able to crack it not because I'm smart or whatever but it's due to the TA's weak password.

Therefore, this posting focuses on how to have a strong password.

The following are the characteristics of a strong password that will take years to crack unless the cracker use a supercomputer to crack it. Your password:

• Has to be more than eight charcters
• Shall not be a word
• Must be the combination of UpperCaSe, $ymbol$ and numb3r5.

The typical password cracking will be something like this:

• Searching the dictionary to get the same code that belongs to the password (Hash)
• Brute-force cracking: Running combinations with numbers.
• If the hacker still can't get it, the last choice will be using brute-force method with the character set including alphabets, numbers and symbols (The longer it is, the more time it takes, probably year(s) except using supercomputer.)

How ever social-engineering also is another manual method. Therefore, no matter what it is, NEVER accidentally give your password's charcteristics to anyone. E.g. the hacker might ask some questions to know more about your password.

Therefore, please follow the guidelines provided. You're identification is very valuable even if you are not in higher positions.

I'm not a hacker. Even a kid who knows how to use Google can be a hacker.