IT Security Stack Exchange
IT Security Stack Exchange

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1500 questions
106
votes
11 answers

How dangerous is it to reveal your date of birth, and why?

At some point I told a friend that it's dangerous to reveal your birth date (kind of like your social security number or your mother's maiden name), because it's a crucial piece of information for identity theft. However, I'm not sure what exactly…
user541686
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106
votes
10 answers

Prevention measures against laptop seizure at US borders

Since laptop and other electronic device seizures at US borders became legal without a warrant (including making copies of data), 7% of ACTE's business travelers reported being subject to a seizure as far back as February 2008. What measures have IT…
Dan Dascalescu
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106
votes
11 answers

Technology that can survive a "Rubber-Hose attack"

In the documentary film Citizenfour, Edward Snowden says about documents: I'm comfortable in my technical ability to protect [documents]. I mean you could literally shoot me or torture me and I could not disclose the password, even if I wanted…
QBR8ZIKvyJ
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106
votes
7 answers

School performs periodic password audits. Is my password compromised?

My university sent me an email informing me that, during a "periodic check", my password was found to be "easily discoverable and at risk of compromise". As I understand it, there shouldn't be a way for them to periodically check my password unless…
GB1553
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106
votes
1 answer

In 2018, what is the recommended hash to store passwords: bcrypt, scrypt, Argon2?

There are many questions about picking a hash function, including How to securely hash passwords? or Are there more modern password hashing methods than bcrypt and scrypt?, with very detailed answers, but most of them date quite a bit. The consensus…
jcaron
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105
votes
11 answers

Best practices for Apache Server hardening?

What are some best practices, recommendations, required reading for securing an Apache Server?
Eric Warriner
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105
votes
12 answers

Why is client-side hashing of a password so uncommon?

There are very few websites that hash the users password before submitting it to the server. Javascript doesn't even have support for SHA or other algorithms. But I can think of quite a few advantages, like protection against cross-site leaks or…
Maestro
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105
votes
10 answers

Why is blog spam always written so badly?

Some spam messages fresh from my Wordpress filter: Asking questions are in fact pleasant thing if you are not understanding something totally, except this article gives good understanding yet. and Thanks for any other informative blog. Where…
Lucas
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105
votes
7 answers

Is MD5 considered insecure?

After all these articles circulating online about md5 exploits, I am considering switching to another hash algorithm. As far as I know it's always been the algorithm of choice among numerous DBAs. Is it that much of a benefit to use MD5 instead of…
Tawfik Khalifeh
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105
votes
5 answers

Is sending password to user email secure?

How secure is sending passwords through email to a user, since email isn't secured by HTTPS. What is the best way to secure it? Should i use encryption?
user310291
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105
votes
3 answers

How are anti viruses so fast?

The common anti-virus (to my knowledge) uses a kind of brute force type method where they get the hash of the file and compare it to thousands of known virus' hash. Is it just they have servers with super fast SSD and they upload the hashes to that…
Harry
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105
votes
14 answers

Could keystroke timing improve security on a password?

When I was young, and had just started out in my software-development career 20 years ago, I wrote a little bit of code on my Amiga that took a password, but also recorded (within some threshold), the speed at which each letter of a password was…
Moo-Juice
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104
votes
8 answers

How can I reliably erase all information on a hard drive?

As storage technologies change over time, using different encodings and remappings to deal with sector errors, the best way to permanently erase/wipe/shred data changes also. Methods for flash drives and other solid-state drives are covered nicely…
nealmcb
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104
votes
3 answers

Why do we trust US Certificate Authorities?

Why do people trust companies in countries with big surveillance programs like the US? Many US Certificate Authorities secure the web for live SSL/TLS connections. Still, a NSL would be enough for the government to gain the right to intercept the…
Richard R. Matthews
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104
votes
2 answers

Can a rogue .wmv file "hijack" Windows Media Player?

I've downloaded a .wmv file using P2P. Attempting to play it with Media Player Classic (K-Lite Codec Pack) only gave me a green square in the playback window: I noticed that the video came with a readme file, however; I found the following…
user4520
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