In the last couple of years, we have encountered quite a few security breaches. A lot of internet companies are being targeted with these kinds of attacks. One of the most common forms of online transactions is that you have an account that’s protected with a password. So whenever you want to access your account, … Continue reading Why Do We Need Two-Factor Authentication?
Tag: Passwords
Elliptic Curve Cryptography: Part 4/4 – How Do We Use Elliptic Curves?
In the previous blog post, we discussed about elliptic curves and saw what they look like. We also looked at some of their special properties that enable it to be a good trapdoor function. But this is still very mathematical, right? The curves are great to look at and we understand general concept of elliptic curves, but … Continue reading Elliptic Curve Cryptography: Part 4/4 – How Do We Use Elliptic Curves?
Elliptic Curve Cryptography: Part 3/4 – What Is An Elliptic Curve?
In the previous blog post, we discussed why RSA will not be sufficient anymore. We looked at how machines are getting stronger, and that we cannot rely on factorization as our primary mathematical foundation. We also talked a bit about what we are looking for in our new system, and then said a quick hello to … Continue reading Elliptic Curve Cryptography: Part 3/4 – What Is An Elliptic Curve?
Elliptic Curve Cryptography: Part 2/4 – Why Do We Need It?
In our previous blog post, we discussed public key cryptography and how it works in general. The RSA is so powerful because it comes with rigorous mathematical proofs of security. The authors basically proved that breaking the system is equivalent to solving a very difficult mathematical problem. When we say "difficult", what it means is … Continue reading Elliptic Curve Cryptography: Part 2/4 – Why Do We Need It?
Elliptic Curve Cryptography: Part 1/4 – Why Should We Talk About It?
Elliptic curve cryptography is one of the most powerful techniques used in the field of modern cryptography. Just to be clear, elliptic curves have nothing to do with ellipses. I agree that the name can be slightly misleading, but once we discuss what elliptic curves are, it will become much clearer. So as you may have … Continue reading Elliptic Curve Cryptography: Part 1/4 – Why Should We Talk About It?
DNS Cache Poisoning
Internet entities are regularly affected by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) of various scales. This is basically a way to hack into an entity and stop it from working. Hackers use it all the time to bring down famous sites. They tend to attack the domain name system (DNS), since it allows to infiltrate heavily. … Continue reading DNS Cache Poisoning
How To Reset The Admin Password In Mac OS X
So you have finally gotten yourself in this situation! You have a Mac in front of you and you have forgotten the admin password. You don't have the cd either. What we do we do now? Well, as it turns out, there is a simple procedure to reset the admin password: Restart the macbook. … Continue reading How To Reset The Admin Password In Mac OS X
Steganography
Let's say that we want to communicate with someone secretly. We prefer that only the intended recipient have the ability to decode the contents of the communication. We obviously want to keep the message secret. Sounds familiar? A common solution to this problem is to use encryption. An encryption scheme takes a message and transforms … Continue reading Steganography
Operation Aurora
On January 14, 2010 McAfee Labs identified a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer that was used as an entry point for Operation Aurora to exploit Google and at least 20 other companies. Microsoft issued a security bulletin and patch immediately. Operation Aurora was a coordinated attack which included a piece of computer code that … Continue reading Operation Aurora
What Is SSH?
Consider the following situation. You are at your friend's place with your laptop and you want to access your home computer to do something. May be you want to start a download or you want to run a program right away. What would you do in this situation? Will you go all the way to … Continue reading What Is SSH?