Published Papers

The Economics of Developing Security Embedded Software

Market models for software vulnerabilities have been disparaged in the past citing how these do little to lower the risk of insecure software. In this paper we argue that the market models...

Published on: 2010-11-30

Topic: Developer

Linux Programming Tools

Digital forensics practitioners, incident responders and *nix system administrators should be aware of programming tools that can aid attackers. It is simple for an attacker to load code when...

Published on: 2010-07-13

Topic: Developer

NDIFF for Incident Detection

Ndiff is a tool that utilizes nmap output to identify the differences, or changes that have occurred in your environment. Ndiff can be downloaded from http://www.vinecorp.com/ndiff/. The...

Published on: 2010-06-24

Topic: Digital Forensics

Packer Analysis Report-Debugging and Unpacking the NsPack 3.4 and 3.7 Packer

The following report is an analysis of the NsPack 3.4 and 3.7 packer program (by North Star/Liu Xing Ping). Unfortunately, many commercial antivirus vendors have not adequately analyzed the NsPack...

Published on: 2010-06-17

Topic: Digital Forensics

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Criminal Specialization as a Corollary of Rational Choice

Organized criminal groups can be modeled using rational choice theory. Criminal groups act as profit seeking enterprises, and the ability to shift the economic returns away from this activity...

Published on: 2010-05-28

Topic: Cybercrime

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Understanding *NIX File Linking (ln)

The "ln" command is an important tool in any Unix admin's arsenal and attackers use it too, so it is essential that forensics analysts understand it.

Published on: 2010-04-09

Topic: Digital Forensics

Unix System Accounting and Process Accounting

Accounting reports created by the system accounting service present the *NIX administrator with the information to assess current resource assignments, set resource limits and quotas, and predict...

Published on: 2010-03-24

Topic: Information Security

Finer Points of Find

The *NIX "find" command is probably one of the system security tester's best friends on any *NIX system. This command allows the system security tester or digital forensic analyst to process a set...

Published on: 2010-03-22

Topic: Digital Forensics

Finding Out About Oher Users on a Linux System

These commands are used to find out about other users on a *NIX host. When testing the security of a system covertly (such as when engaged in a penetration test) it is best to stop running...

Published on: 2010-03-15

Topic: Digital Forensics

Unix Network and System Profiling

It is essential to identify network services running on a UNIX host as a part of any review. To do this, the reviewer needs to understand the relationship between active network services, local...

Published on: 2010-03-12

Topic: Digital Forensics