Tag Archives: PKI

Fortifying Sun Ray Desktops with Biometric Authentication

Lately I’ve been franctically busy with couple of my ISVs and an SI helping them out on a Citizen-scale National Healthcare Identity Infrastructure solution pilot for one of the populous countries in the Atlantic region – Sorry I cannot disclose the country’s name to abide their privacy laws and to protect my job :-). The solution aims to deliver an Unified Desktop/Voice Infrastructure via Sun Ray… Read more »

Cloud Security Guidelines from Cloud Security Alliance !

Cloud Computing Security is getting hot this summer ! Without a doubt, the Cloud security issues has emerged as a top concern and gained got a lot of interests in the RSA conference ’09 (held last week). To the surprise, the newly formed “Cloud Computing Security Alliance” presented a report covering the critical areas of focus and provided a comprehensive… Read more »

Demystifying MySQL Security for Web 2.0: Part 2

Access control exploits, user credential exposures and related security compromises are becoming increasingly common in Web 2.0 world ! Most of these issues pertain to broken or insufficient authentication controls and flawed credential management that allows attackers to compromise vulnerable applications by stealing or manipulating credentials such as passwords, keys, session cookies and/or impersonating another user through forged or guessed credentials.  Any such access control… Read more »

Demystifying MySQL Security for Web 2.0: Part 1

Web 2.0 applications are proliferating and it has become widely popular for delivering dynamic user-generated content, information collaboration, data mashups, social networking and Web services. Building security for Web 2.0 applications pose several daunting challenges to Web 2.0 developers as these applications are publicly accessible and it blindly opens door to several intentional/unintentional abuses and malicious practices including data interception and manipulation by… Read more »

Dissecting the 'Obfuscated Transfer Object'

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One thing I noticed lately…is lot of interest about understanding the usage of ‘Obfuscated Transfer Object (OTO) ‘ from Core Security Patterns.  I got multiple emails about its code and implementation .. understandably there is a growing security concern about using Transfer Object (aka Value Object) that passes security-sensitive data elements between Java EE tiers (especially between Presentation/Business/Persistence), when the… Read more »

Smartcard/PKI authentication based SSO (Using OpenSSO)

It’s been so long, I had been involved with multiple Smartcard/PKI projects particularly supporting integration of Sun technologies for use with National eID, US Federal (HSPD-12 / PIV cards) and DoD CAC projects. There is no secret sauce,  but unfortunately I did’nt find time to put together a trustworthy documentation addressing the technical aspects of using Smartcard based PKI credentials… Read more »

Here you go..OWASP Hartford !

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Last night, I had the opportunity to present at an OWASP event @Hartford, CT.  James McGovern, a long-time buddy of mine organized this event at one of the Hartford skyscrappers – What a great view !  I had contributed code artifacts to OWASP projects before, but it was the first time I had a chance to attend an OWASP event…. Read more »

Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00 imposes "Protection of Personal Identity Information".

A month ago, I had a chance to meet with John Beveridge (Deputy State Auditor at Office of the State Auditor of Massachusetts) at an ISACA event in Boston. During a casual chat, he briefly mentioned about the upcoming regulation highlighting “Mass 201 CMR 17.00 – Massachusetts Standards for Data Protection of Personal Information”  and it’s compelling security requirements ! … Read more »

Stronger Authentication with Biometric SSO (Using OpenSSO and BiObex).

I had been involved with multiple Biometric ISV providers and its integration with Sun technologies particularly OpenSSO, IdM, Sun Rays and Solaris. I also had the opportunity to deploy Biometric solutions to few govt organizations that starts with “D” and “N”. Believe it or not…we have few of them in production. Now, getting down to the specifics – Putting it… Read more »

Exploiting MD5 collisions and Creating Fake CA certificates.

It’s been a while, MD5 has been known for its several weaknesses and multiple proven attack scenarios showing how it can be compromised – For those known reasons, a lot of us try our best to stay away from using MD5. Last week at the Chaos Communication Congress Conference – Berlin a bunch of researchers disclosed this eye-raising MD5 collision… Read more »