Learning Security with Mayur

Paul is flying on an airplane from Bangkok to Hawaii. While the air hostess serves him a glass of champagne, Paul enjoys the calmness of the clouds around him. His flight is about to land in another 20 minutes. The pilot is communicating with the air traffic controller at the Hawaii airport. However, he is not able to connect to him. The traffic controllers are not responding back to him. Meanwhile, frantic calls are underway with the President and other top ministers. The decision is YES. Yes to pay to the hacker whose ransomware has crippled the entire system and thousands of lives are at stake. If you feel that is fiction, it can be, but what is the guarantee that this cannot be a real scenario. In today’s age, everything is possible. We saw hospitals hacked in the UK through ransomware, metro rails displaying ransomware riddled messages, what’s stopping the airports or other critical infrastructure being hacked? The Threat Quantum Airports have always been highly targeted

A credit card sized computer remains hidden in a laboratory connected to its network for a period of 10 months. During these 10 months, the attacker was able to enter into the systems and applications that were not approved for access. The system administrators did not check as to what devices were connected on the network. The attacker then took advantage of the weaknesses in the laboratory’s network to remain undetected for 10 months, stealing 23 files in the process. Two of these files contained information on International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which controls the transfer of military and space-related technology, related to the Mars Science Laboratory Mission. If you are wondering if this is from a fiction novel or a TV series, you are wrong. This is the attack which has happened at NASA. Yes, you read it right. The world’s most advanced space lab was hacked due to an unauthorized Raspberry Pi computer connected to the JPL servers. Welcome to the brave new world wher

Time passes so quickly that it's hard to believe for me that another year has gone by and this blog is now celebrating its 2nd birthday. This journey started two years ago after the completion of my CISSP certification. The year has been full of love and support from all the readers across the globe. This year saw around 90+ posts written on various topics involving security. The focus was however in explaining various topics of CISSP and SSCP in the simplest manner possible. Cybersecurity awareness series, blockchain, DevSecOps, etc. were also focussed upon. There were some months where I slowed down, but what pushed me forward was the love and support from multiple readers across the world. The best thing for a blogger is when he receives a mail from one of the readers who says "Thank you for writing. Your blog has helped me a lot". There are many readers who helped me correct some of the anomalies in the free practice question section while some gave their valua

Heartiest congratulations to you, if you have provisionally passed the CISSP, SSCP or any other (ISC)2 certification. After spending weeks or even months preparing for one of the most difficult exams, you have that very sheet of paper in your hand which says: Dear XXX,  Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have provisionally passed the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®) examination. By passing this examination, you have completed the first of two steps toward earning your CISSP credential! Notice that it is mentioned that you have provisionally passed the exam. Although the most challenging task is over, there is one more hurdle before you get the CISSP certificate in your hand. What is it? Well, this post is all about that. The next step as is mentioned in the emailer/letter is that you need to get yourself endorsed and submit the requisite details. I have tried to create a step by step guide here to help you out. I

  If you are even remotely associated with the security or the software development world, you would have heard the term - DevSecOps or just DevOps. If not, you are surely living under a rock!! DevOps is one of the hottest trends in the software development world now. In this article, we will, however, focus on DevSecOps. Is it an extension of DevOps? We will learn and explore the details in this blog post. Grab yourself some popcorn and get ready to understand what DevSecOps is all about. Understanding and appreciating DevSecOps is like reaching a summit. You cannot reach the top until you start from the bottom and learn all about slowly and steadily. This post involves certain terms which are commonly used in software development. In case you feel unsure about the meaning of a particular term, just Google it. The software has become an integral part of our lives. From power grids to smartphones, all aspects of our lives revolve around software. But how do you develop software

Having learned about the various kinds of the firewall, we must understand the various do's and don’ts of a firewall. This is not an exhaustive checklist. However, this is more from a guideline perspective as different environments demand a different set of strategies. The default action of any firewall should be to implicitly deny any packets not explicitly allowed. This means that if no rule states that the packet can be accepted, that packet should be denied, no questions asked - Default DENY. If you are not on the guest list, you can’t meet the president. Any packet entering the network that has a source address of an internal host should be denied. If you receive a letter from an outsider, how can the FROM address be your own address? There is no reason a packet coming from the Internet should have an internal source network address, so the firewall should deny it. No traffic should be allowed to leave a network that does not have an internal source address. If t