Tech Kettle

This 80's book of espionage story still brings attention to modern cybersecurity professionals, and remains surprisingly relevant to today’s world. The book is made up of many easy-to-read short to medium-sized chapters, and things start to get really thrilling around chapter 29. I could be biased here! Through my reading of this thriller, I have distilled a couple of interesting lessons that I felt I had to share. While the protagonist (The author himself) exhibits hands-on experience on Linux and programming, he wasn't an IT specialist by profession, so you will come across some unusual naming like "one-way trap-door software" to refer to hashing algorithm used to store passwords on Unix system. Being a non-fiction book, this is royally a true reference for the history of technology. I learned that treating cancer tumors at the cellular level using atomic particles was already operational during the 80's, and the intercontinental fiber optic cable was also laid...

  Threat and vulnerability are two tightly coupled aspects . There is no point to focus on a vulnerability if the threat doesn’t exist, similarly you can’t stress on a threat, if your asset is not concerned with the vulnerability (or weakness).   The question one should ask is “What are the risks to my asset ?” , and to answer this we need to run a whole Business Impact Analysis (BIA), which involves qualitative and quantitative risk assessment. As a general equation:  Risk = Vulnerability x Threat On the basis of the above equation, we can conclude that if an asset has a Vulnerability and that Vulnerability is exposed to a known Threat, then the asset is at Risk.  Now that the two elements exist you need to tackle just one of the two not both, to eliminate the risk. originally posted here

There is a general misconception that biometrics are inherently more secure than password when used for remote authentication, this is because of the way, the industries are marketing fingerprinting and face recognition for authentication. Biometrics that target general public, like what is integrated on smartphones and other devices, are meant to provide user with convenience not improving security. After all, security is a one thing and convenience is another thing. That being said, with all the advances they get, biometric sensors are still not infallible, as you can check on the video that shows how it is possible to fool Face ID on IPHONE X with 3d printed mask.  While faking or cloning the biometric characteristics is not an easy task, a strong password remains the most reliable medium for remote authentication, this is because some of attack vectors that target biometric authentication systems, are conducted through visually obtainable information, whereas a...