Course Overview

A long time ago, more than 2 years ago actually, I blogged about the dangers of QR codes:

"virus gangs could use this technology to have the end-user follow malicious links or send messages to premium numbers"  

and, this is exactly what happened a few days ago, when Denis Maslennikov found a QR code leading to a mobile malware, named Jifake, that sends SMS messages to a premium number.

QR codes are very handy, but they're an incredible vector for attacks. Mainly, the issues are with the fact they are opaque (human eye can't read what they contain) which leads to plenty of possibilities around phishing and social engineering.

But there are few other dark points we should be keep an eye on, such as QR code reader exploits and input validation. Could a specially crafted QR code crash the reader, lead to privilege escalation, or unsecure input in another application of the phone (browser, SMS...)? Keep in mind that QR codes are not limited to URLs, they can also contain up to 2953 bytes of binary data. It is even possible to encrypt part of the contents of a QR code.

If you feel like reading a research paper on this topic, have a look at this one: QR Code Security.

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Organizations often spend a ton of time making backups. If the backup volumes being created cannot be reliably restored, the process has failed. The basic rule of disaster recovery systems is that backups are unproven until they have been fully tested and shown to be effective on a frequent and ongoing basis.

The typical organization checks that: backup schedules are correct, backup jobs ran, and verifies that backups completed successfully in the error logs.  With those confirmations in hand, we assume that data recovery will be possible when necessary.  However, media degrades over time, operating environments change making it harder to successfully restore older backups, and the error rates associated with the used media make it uncertain that the restoration will actually work.

A solid disaster recovery plan must include redundant backups intended to compensate for normal error rates, and they must incorporate time factors that reflect real world data from actual test restorations.

Why do most organizations not fully test their backups?  The answer is simple: too little time to test them.

A surprising number of organizations still use tape as their backup medium.  The use of tape requires an enormous amount of time to build, test, and validate a backup.  Why?  Because simply restoring the data from tape isn't enough. The IT staff will have to start with a new server and then locate registry, operating system, and environmental component CDs. Next, they'll have to re-install all applications before restoring user data from tape.  Only if each of these steps works correctly can the organization be confident that data can be successfully restored in a true disaster.  

Read more... 

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