Security – Page 3 – Lukas Vileikis

BreachDirectory has passed the 5 Billion record mark – here’s what it means

May 7, 2018 Colors Comments 0 Comment

When I first began creating BreachDirectory, I thought I’d see at most a hundred million records. Okay, maybe half a billion. But this, this is something else altogether.. Today, BreachDirectory has passed the 5 billion record mark. I’m not sure whether this is a celebratory occasion though, because five billion – billion – people having their data compromised in one way or another is never a good thing. But hey, that is the reality of the web today. Data breaches are…

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Your passwords are terrible, and it’s time to do something about it

April 30, 2018 Colors Comments 0 Comment

You know what surprises me the most in regards to data breaches? It’s the fact that people still continue to use passwords like “password” or “123456” to protect their accounts. Think I’m kidding? I’m really not, take a look. Using passwords like these is a big issue because it leads to really, really bad things. Identity theft One day you log into your banking account to do some shopping and next thing you see is that you’ve got no money. You’ve…

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A journey back in time: The analysis of the first version of my WAF

April 25, 2018 Colors Comments 0 Comment

As you might already know, back in 2014, I’ve developed a custom Web Application Firewall. You’ll see one adorning BreachDirectory and indeed, you can see one on this blog too. The primary reason I’ve started making it is that I wanted to have one file that I could incorporate into a website to improve its security. Back then, the firewall was pretty simple – it only blocked basic attack vectors, but hey, it did work as it was supposed to, so…

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10 ways to increase the security of your WordPress application

April 18, 2018 Colors Comments 0 Comment

When someone mentions WordPress, you will often hear people saying “don’t use it, it’s insecure”. In a sense, those people are right – there is no such thing as a “silver bullet” in security. There are a few ways developers can fend off attacks concerning WordPress though – let’s dive into them. 1. Fundamentals The very first thing you should do is use HTTPS instead of HTTP. Now I get that a blog isn’t a bank and your readers could…

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How I could have pwned my highschool (SQLi, CSRF, Hardcoded Passwords & XSS) Part 2: Investigating the Breach

April 11, 2018 Colors Comments 44 comments

Honestly, this is a blog title I’ve never expected to write, but hey, data breaches happen – no website is exempt from that. I will begin with a little bit of a backstory: I’ve found flaws in a website that did belong to a high school in late 2015, but I’ve only been able to get it to their attention 2 years later. After I have been reliably informed that the flaws I found have been patched, I wrote about…

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Your website needs a CSP. Here’s why

April 5, 2018 Colors Comments 41 comments

Here’s a scenario: You create a website and make it available online. Your website ends up getting hacked (it happens frequently, by the way..) The nefarious party is able to inject some malicious javascript into one of your pages. A legitimate user visits your website and is redirected to a phishing page as a result of the work done by an attacker. The user attempts to log into the page thinking it’s your website and ends up getting all of…

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Your website has assets – You need SRI

March 31, 2018 Colors Comments 1 comment

All websites have something worth protecting. Those valuable things are frequently loaded from a CDN (Content Delivery Network) which is a distributed network of data centers that deliver assets based on geographic locations of the user. Using a Content Delivery Network to deliver content on your website has its perks. The main advantage of using a CDN is improved performance – speed matters because if your website is slow, it could frustrate your users sending them elsewhere. Content Delivery Networks – The…

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The path to a custom Firewall and a Content Security Policy on a Blog

March 27, 2018 Colors Comments 2 comments

Few years ago I found myself looking for a firewall. I’ve looked at various options from various security companies, but couldn’t find what I was looking for – the firewalls at the time were either too expensive or lacked some of the features I required. As I kept thinking about this, I decided I’m not buying one and so, in 2014, I ended up building a custom WAF.. What is a WAF? A WAF is short for Web Application Firewall. The primary…

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Creating a Secure Login Page

March 22, 2018 Colors Comments 0 Comment

Login pages – they’re everywhere. Almost every website has a login page – from big companies to discussion forums. In this blog post I’ll try to explain how login pages work and also show how to create one, but instead of spoonfeeding information, I will only explain the core concept. I will also clarify how to mitigate two types of attacks that can occur if your website has a login functionality. Let’s begin, shall we? A login form – the basics…

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To padlock or not to padlock? SSL Explained

March 16, 2018 Colors Comments 3 comments

You visited a website, you saw a green padlock saying “Secure”. Cool. But what does that actually mean? Does that mean a website can’t be hacked? Let me start with the actual difference.. HTTP? HTTPS? What’s the difference? HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is a protocol that allows communication between different systems. HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) is HTTP with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). The difference? Data sent over HTTP is not encrypted and could be intercepted by a third party….

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