Security focus

Infosec is taking place this week at Earls Court in London and it’s a timely reminder of the importance of security – Dave Sayers blog is a good place to start. There is some interesting stuff going on such as Gary McKinnon (indicted for hacking into computers at the US Department of Defence) speaking. Microsoft has a big presence with Mr Sayers being joined by Mike Pallot, Gopal Kutwaroo, Annemarie Duffy and a whole host of others. I plan to be there myself this afternoon if I manage to get my new Vista build downloaded in time :)

In the meantime, there is a good 12 point article on our UK business site by Matthew Stibbe with top tips including “how good is your security plan”. I also noticed a link to an interesting article called Sinister Searching which with a title like that is always going to get my attention! Here a snippet though with the caveat from that page “Google is my example in this article because of its familiarity and popularity, but most of these tricks can be done using any search engine”

Search Hacks

Here's how hackers use Google to break into websites and find private information:

•	A hacker can get a directory of every page that Google indexes for a given site. This can reveal hidden files.
•	Google can search and index Microsoft Office documents as well as web pages and it's easy to search for specific file types or even file names.
•	They can use a search for index files to bypass the normal way web pages are displayed and access the actual files that make up a website.
•	It is possible to identify the software used to host the website and find out which version is being used. This is very helpful to hackers in working out what tools are needed to break into it.
•	Sometimes hackers can even search for hidden password files that will give them immediate access to a site.

Combining these kinds of searches with automated tools makes it easy for the bad guys to examine thousands of websites quickly and find vulnerable sites