Tag Archives: firewall

CES 2014 in Las Vegas Highlights: myIDkey Shield portable firewall/proxy and VPN device from Arkami

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The much awaited Consumer Electronics Show (CES), also known as International CES is just only a few days away from now. We have been eagerly waiting for this event since last and can’t wait anymore...
    






DARPA-backed Power Pwn is power strip by day, superhero hack machine by night

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DARPAbacked Power Pwn is power strip by day, superhero hack machine by night

Call the Power Pwn the champion of white hat hacking. Underneath that Clark Kent power strip exterior, there's a Superman of full-scale breach testing that can push the limits of just about any company network, whether it takes 3G, Ethernet or WiFi to get there. Pwnie Express' stealthy sequel to the Pwn Plug ships with a Debian 6 instance of Linux whose handy hacking tools are as easy to launch as they are tough to detect. There's just one step needed to create a snoop-friendly Evil AP WiFi hotspot, and the box dodges around low-level NAC/802.1x/RADIUS network authentication without any help; in the same breath, it can easily leap into stealth mode and keeps an ongoing encrypted link to give do-gooders a real challenge. The hacker doesn't even need to be in the same ZIP code to crack a firewall or VPN -- the 3G link lets the Power Pwn take bash command-line instructions through SMS messages and doles out some of its feedback the same way. While the $1,295 device can theoretically be used for nefarious purposes, DARPA's blessing (and funding) should help keep the Power Pwn safely in the hands of security pros and thwart more than a few dastardly villains looking for weak networks.

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DARPA-backed Power Pwn is power strip by day, superhero hack machine by night originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 07:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Wired  |  sourcePwnie Express  | Email this | Comments

Exploit uses firewalls to hijack smartphones, turns friends into foes

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Normally, firewalls at cellular carriers are your best friends, screening out malware before it ever touches your phone. University of Michigan computer science researchers have found that those first lines of defense could be your enemy through a new exploit. As long as a small piece of malware sits on a device, that handset can infer TCP data packet sequence numbers coming from the firewall and hijack a phone's internet traffic with phishing sites, fake messages or other rogue code. The trick works on at least 48 carriers that use firewalls from Check Point, Cisco, Juniper and other networking heavy hitters -- AT&T being one of those providers. Carriers can turn the sequences off, although there are consequences to that as well. The only surefire solution is to either run antivirus apps if you're on a mobile OS like Android or else to run a platform that doesn't allow running unsigned apps at all, like iOS or Windows Phone. Whether or not the exploit is a serious threat is still far from certain, but we'll get a better sense of the risk on May 22nd, when Z. Morley Mao and Zhiyun Qian step up to the podium at an IEEE security symposium and deliver their findings.

Exploit uses firewalls to hijack smartphones, turns friends into foes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 May 2012 03:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Ars Technica  |  sourceUniversity of Michigan (PDF)  | Email this | Comments