Very handy tip for Browsing from Windows

There's a link to a Interesting article over at Michael Howards Blog
He makes some very valid points about why running Windows machines as an administrator is a very bad idea(tm) unless absolutely required.
Also there's information on a useful technique to reduce your privileges when running specific applications, aimed at providing a safer web browsing experience.

couple of Interesting phishing Stories

First one's the story that Phishing scam forces NatWest services offline - vnunet.com. What I find somewhat odd about this is that they took the step of disabling some functionality on their site...
They must have had quite a few of these scams by now and I find it hard to believe that they're disabling parts of their websites every time they get hit, as that would seem a bit like a self-imposed Denial-Of-Service...
Another story about how some customers are dealing with phishing here . Basically the guy in this story is blanket deleting mails looking for personal info. seems like a sound idea to me!.
Personally I think that standard SMTP e-mail is just about dead as a Business to Consumer communication method. Between SPAM, phishing and malware there's no way consumers and home users are going to keep using this. Really companies should not have been using what has always been a really insecure mechanism to communicate with their customers.
The thing is though, it's REALLY cheap compared with most other forms of communications (notably this is what the spammers depend on as well to make money) so they've been very reluctant to stop.
My expectation is that they will have to find some way to clearly and securely provide communications with their customers to bridge the gap left by E-Mail. Not that that's an easy problem to solve...

Review of Vulnerability Assessments Tools

There's a review of Network vulnerability assessment tools over at nwfusion.com
I thought it was interesting to see that there are several products in the review based on the nessus engine...
Also one point that intruiged me when I read it was the companies that declined to take part. Maybe it's just me, but when I read that it tends to make me think "I wonder what was wrong with their product" ie If you think that your product is the best on the market, I would expect that you'd be very keen to see it reviewed and recognised as such....

Another of the NSA's security guides

NSA Posts Mac OS X 10.3.x security guide
There's a blog entry pointing to a new NSA security guide, this one for Mac OS X.
I'm definately in favour of these guides, as it's nice to get a source of non-vendor security advice (I always feel that their more likely to point out any potential product issues than the vendor themselves)

Interesting Article about loss of customer data

MercuryNews.com | 11/02/2004 | Stolen computers have Wells Fargo customer data
There's what I think is an interesting point in this article about the loss of customer data from Wells Fargo. The loss didn't occur from Wells Fargo systems, it occured from those of a partner company.
What I find interesting, is that I wonder how many companies can honestly say that they ensure the security of data which they "own" (for want of a better term) no matter where it may reside.
Especially in these days of outsourcing.... It's all very well for companies to spend a lot of money securing their data centres and other obvious places where data lies, but it's really quite pointless if that data (or the credential used to access it ) is not as secure when it's processed or stored outside of those data centres.....

Article looking at some of the defences against phishing

There's an article over at InfoWorld looking at the various measures that companies have been using to try and mitigate the current rising trend in phishing attacks.
My money's on server-based mitigations as opposed to client-based ones (like the anti-phishing toolbars mentioned in the article). There are several good reasons for this.
1. Companies don't and won't control the client environment, so they're not in a good position to dictate the client environment. Also given the current trend in spyware and virii, there's no way companies can place trust in a client based solution.
2. There are literally millions of clients out there which would need to be "fixed" to make a solution work, but for each company there is only one location that needs fixed...
Personally my monies on the deployment of 2-factor authentication like secureID. Most banks already use it internally, the main reason it hasn't been deployed for customers is cost... well if phishing starts placing a significant cost on the banks, then suddenly it starts being much more viable to deploy....
Of course there are some more complications involved as SecureID can still be vulnerable to a MITM attack, but it would still be a great step forward.....