Nick Breese, a senior security consultant at Auckland, Australia-based Security-assessment.com, has come up with a way to drastically increase the processing capability of cracking passwords.Now I really want one of these...
By implementing common ciphers and hash functions using vector computing, Breese has pushed the current upper limit of 10--15 million cycles per second -- in Intel-based architecture -- up to 1.4 billion cycles per second.
The possibility that there is a backdoor in one of the officially recommended random number generators (RNGs) used to create encryption keys, has caused two well-known encryption experts to declare the scheme to be useless.
If you thought using an Apple with Mac OS was safe from all the nasties out there, think again!!! Even though the risk is lower for Mac OS compared to Windows, you still need to take the proper precautions.
In the words of many Windows antimalware developers, OS X users can feel a little less smug about their security after a new piece of OS X malware was discovered circulating on various fake codec sites. As would be expected, this news is beginning to receive fairly widespread coverage across the Internet, though more coverage has been received in recent days on arguments about whether the Leopard firewall is fundamentally flawed or not (probably not).Read more
Those tempted to download software cracks to unlawfully activate software from a trial mode into a paid mode have been warned that they may be unknowingly installing hacking tools onto their system.
Security features that Apple Inc. added to Leopard look great on paper, but in practice most are half-baked or useless, experts said Wednesday. And none of those features, good or bad, will make a whit of difference in how safe Mac users are when they hit the Internet.
"If security was the deciding factor, I wouldn’t be using my MacBook. But it’s not [the deciding factor]. The MacBook, and the tools on it, that’s what is."
