On Friday I went to the 4th International Conference on Cyber Security and Education, held at the Scottish Police College in Tullillan Castle. There were loads of really interesting talks and I think the only let down was the lack of abstracts/summaries of each talk; so often I was blindly going into a talk in one … Continue reading 4th International Conference on Cyber Security & Education
Microsoft Edge Forensics
With Windows 10 comes Microsoft Edge ā the replacement for the much scorned Internet Explorer. Many articles are saying that Edge is better, faster and safer and compares to the likes of Google Chrome. But how does it store the user's web history? In the good old days IE stored everything in index.dat files. Chrome & Firefox moved away from … Continue reading Microsoft Edge Forensics
What makes malware “sophisticated”?
Most new articles on high profile cyberattacks call these attacks sophisticated, but are they really? At the RSA 2015 conference a few days ago, researchers Ira Winkler and Araceli Treu Gomes, wrote āthe Irari rules for declaring a cyberattack sophisticatedā. The summary article can be found here, and the conference slide pack here. The main message is … Continue reading What makes malware “sophisticated”?
Malware Steganography
6 years ago (yikes!) I wrote aboutĀ image steganographyĀ as a concept. At the moment there are a couple of pieces of malware that use steganography, such as Vawtrak (aka Neverquest) and ZeuS, to hide the command and control servers (C&C) or configuration files in images. This means that the malware does not need to contain a … Continue reading Malware Steganography
Sewing for total beginners
In the New Year I began a beginnerās dress making course because I want to make good use of my amazing sewing machine and make some nice clothes. The main thing Iāve learnt so far is that sewing isnāt as daunting as I thought it was, and following a pattern is much easier than it … Continue reading Sewing for total beginners
Board Game Foamcore Inserts
I love board games but sometimes the amount of bits you need to play is ridiculous. Take Terra Mystica, a strategic resource management game set in a fantasy world. It has 593 individual pieces comprising of coins, terrain tiles, various tokens, buildings, meeple, scoring titles and cards. This means the game weighs a hefty 2.1 kg! Luckily the creators … Continue reading Board Game Foamcore Inserts
Kill chain models
It has been 4 years now since Lockheed Martin released their "Cyber Kill Chain" paper, which describes the stages that the perpetrator of an advanced persistent threat (APT) takes. This kind of attack sequencing is not new, the American military and other government forces have used similar models to show the stages of a terrorist … Continue reading Kill chain models
Storing passwords in your browser
Passwords, passwords, passwords. Weāve come to a point where itās impossible to have a life online without a gazillion passwords, which should all be complicated, long and unique. The easiest way to solve this is by letting the browser store the passwords for you. You make up something random, and let the browser remember it … Continue reading Storing passwords in your browser
CompTIA Security+ Exam
A few weeks ago I took the CompTIA Security+ (version SY0-301) exam after 2 weeks of intense self-study and managed to successfully pass after a nerve-racking 90 minutes of questions. The exam covers all aspects of information security, including networking, access control, security threats & mitigation technique and cryptography. It doesnāt go into a huge amount of … Continue reading CompTIA Security+ Exam
Foreman case management framework
The graphic above shows the data flow for a forensics case*. I amalgamated and simplified the processes of the two forensics teams I've worked in, to come up with what I believe is the basic flow of a case for any forensics team. Foreman is a framework to support this process flow. It does not … Continue reading Foreman case management framework
Lowmanio 