user information
Security Breach at Unique Vintage
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2013-09-27
- Management, breach, credit card, customer information, exposure, news, rules, security diligence, user information, web
There is news that women’s clothing website Unique Vintage has sent notifications to the customers that the site has been breached and the customer information was exposed. What is interesting is that the website is fully PCI compliant, i.e. it follows all rules for security set forth by the credit card industry. And still, it ...
Read More
Password recovery mechanisms – Part 3
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2013-05-22
- Technology, advice, captcha, Development, general, guidance, guide, password management, password recovery, passwords, rules, software, software design, user information
Passwords remain the main means of authentication on the internet. People often forget their passwords and then they have to recover their access to the website services through some kind of mechanism. We try to make that so-called “password recovery” simple and automated, of course. There are several ways to do it, all of them ...
Read MorePassword recovery mechanisms – Part 2
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2013-05-21
- Technology, authentication, Development, general, guidance, guide, password database, password management, passwords, rules, secondary channel, software design, user information
Passwords remain the main means of authentication on the internet. People often forget their passwords and then they have to recover their access to the website services through some kind of mechanism. We try to make that so-called “password recovery” simple and automated, of course. There are several ways to do it, all of them ...
Read MorePassword recovery mechanisms – Part 1
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2013-05-21
- Technology, authentication, Development, dumpster diving, general, guidance, password management, passwords, protection, rules, secret questions, security design, software design, user information
Passwords remain the main means of authentication on the internet. People often forget their passwords and then they have to recover their access to the website services through some kind of mechanism. We try to make that so-called “password recovery” simple and automated, of course. There are several ways to do it, all of them ...
Read MoreIEEE should be embarrassed
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2012-09-27
- Management, IEEE, incident, news, passwords, plaintext, security practices, user information
“The world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology” has been thoroughly embarrassed in an accident where they left their log files containing user names and passwords open for FTP access to all on the Net for more than a month, according to a DarkReading report. Or, at least, I think they should be ...
Read MoreDigital life wipeout
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2012-08-09
- Society, hacked, havoc, Identity theft, Mat Honan, user information, wipeout, Wired
There is a very interesting article in Wired by one of its authors, Mat Honan, about how his digital life was taken over and wiped out completely in the space of one evening. Read How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking.
Read More
More e-mail addresses stolen
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2012-08-04
- Management, Dropbox, e-mail, Email address, leak, user information
According to an article in Digital Trends, Dropbox leaked an unknown number of passwords. The interesting part here is that they claim an attacker had access to an employee’s account where a list of e-mail addresses was found. Dropbox is not making the news for the first time and this time they promise tougher security ...
Read More
Speaking of passwords…
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2012-07-22
- Technology, database, encryption, hash, hashing, howto, Password, password database, password hashing, passwords, rainbow tables, random salt, salt, user information
Wouldn’t it be quite logical to talk about passwords after user names? Most certainly. Trouble is, the subject is very, very large. Creating, storing, transmitting, verifying, updating, recovering, wiping… Did I get all of it? It is going to take a while to get through all of that, do you reckon? Let’s split the subject ...
Read MoreKeep it simple – user names
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2012-07-18
- Technology, Login, random, rules, user id, user information, user name
All right, now after the lengthy discussion on user names and ids let’s have some simple rules: Do not use sequential numbers for user ids. Do use random numbers for user ids. Do not use any scheme for user names that ties (semi-)public user information to the user name. Use user nicknames (aliases) if “natural” ...
Read More
What’s in a name?
- Albert Zenkoff
- 2012-07-17
- Technology, good name, rule, selection, unpredictable, user id, user information, user name, user names
Here is something quite interesting. Nobody ever considers the user names. They are just sort of “given”. Well, are they? Most of the time, they are not. They are assumed and designed into the system one way or another. And they can have an impact on security. An old saying goes that a secure Windows ...
Read MoreAbout the author
Albert Zenkoff
Managing corporate security in both technical and business sense in the context of long-term business strategy and sustainability.
For security consulting, training, certification and audit mail albert@aruberusan.com.
Share and stay updated
