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Amazing!
Zack is amazing! I have gone to him with computer issues for the past few years now and he always finds a way to fix… Read more “Amazing!”
Professional, smart & sensitive
Cannot say enough good things about Zack Rahhal and his team. Professional, smart, sensitive to small biz budgets and a helluva good guy. Could not… Read more “Professional, smart & sensitive”
AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL STAFF
stars indeed. So reliable and helpful and kind and smart. We call Al and he is “on it” immediately and such a FABULOUS teacher, patient… Read more “AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL STAFF”
Whatever my need, unfailingly helpful
I’ve been a customer of the staff at Advantage for many years now. They have never let me down! Whatever my need, however big or… Read more “Whatever my need, unfailingly helpful”
Best Kept Secret
I’ve known the Advantage Team for years. They are the absolute best techs in the field, bar none. I couldn’t tell you how many tens… Read more “Best Kept Secret”
Excellent Experience
I had an excellent experience with Advantage. Aside from being extremely professional and pleasant generally, Zack was incredibly responsive and helpful, even before and after… Read more “Excellent Experience”
Simply The Best!
Simply The Best! Our company has been working with Advantage Computer Solutions for a few years, Zack and his Team are AWESOME! They are super… Read more “Simply The Best!”
Awesome
The engineering team at Advantage Computers is the best in the business. They are nothing short of technical… Read more “Awesome”
It’s like having a cousin in the business.
Al, Nasser and Zack have been keeping our operations going for over a decade, taking care of our regular upgrades and our emergency system problems.… Read more “It’s like having a cousin in the business.”
Exceptional People
In many cases, exceptional people do not receive recognition for their hard work and superior customer service. We do not want this to be one of those… Read more “Exceptional People”
Highly Recommended
I became a customer about 6-7 months and I can say nothing but great things about this business. Zack takes care of me. I am… Read more “Highly Recommended”
Life Savers
THANK GOD for this local computer repair business who saved me hundreds, my hard drive was messed up, i called the company with warranty they… Read more “Life Savers”
I don’t have enough words to express my appreciation
I don’t have enough words to express my appreciation for Nassar and Paul, and the other members of Advantage Computer Solutions. I live in Bergen… Read more “I don’t have enough words to express my appreciation”
Minuteman Press Newark
Advantage Computer Solutions is absolutely great. They show up, do what they say they are going to, complete the job without issues (my other computer… Read more “Minuteman Press Newark”
Knowledgeable, Reliable, Reasonable
Knowledgeable, Reliable, Reasonable Working with Advantage Computers since 1997 for both personal and business tech support has been a rewarding and enjoyable experience. Rewarding, in… Read more “Knowledgeable, Reliable, Reasonable”
Excellent service!
Excellent service! I am the administrator for a busy medical office which relies heavily on our computer system. We have used Advantage Computer Solutions for… Read more “Excellent service!”
Great Advice and Service
Advantage offers great advice and service I bought parts for my gaming pc online and they put it together in a day for a great… Read more “Great Advice and Service”
Great Service, Support and Sales
Our company has been using the services of Advantage Computers since 2006. It was important to find a reliable company to provide us with the technical… Read more “Great Service, Support and Sales”
Extremely Professional and Passionate
Our company has been working with Advantage since the 1990’s and have been a loyal client ever since. Advantage does not make it very difficult… Read more “Extremely Professional and Passionate”
Handles all our Office IT
Advantage Computer Solutions has handled all of our computer and IT needs for the past 2 years. The staff is always professional and the service… Read more “Handles all our Office IT”
Passaic Housing Authority
Since 1996 the Housing Authority of the City of Passaic has been a client of Advantage Computer Solutions. Our Agency has utilized their outstanding services… Read more “Passaic Housing Authority”
They made sure EVERYTHING was working
“When the computer I use to run my photography business started acting erratically and kept shutting down, I was in a panic. I depend on… Read more “They made sure EVERYTHING was working”
Instagram’s new age verification tool – Week in security with Tony Anscombe
As Instagram tests a new age verification tool, what are some of the concerns when it comes to confirming someone’s age on the internet?
The post Instagram’s new age verification tool – Week in security with Tony Anscombe appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Virtual private networks: 5 common questions about VPNs answered
(Almost) everything you always wanted to know about virtual private networks, but were afraid to ask
The post Virtual private networks: 5 common questions about VPNs answered appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Game on! The 2022 Google CTF is here.
Posted by Jan Keller, Technical Entertainment Manager, Bug Hunters
Are you ready to put your hacking skills to the test? It’s Google CTF time!
The competition kicks off on July 1 2022 6:00 PM UTC and runs through July 3 2022 6:00 PM UTC. Registration is now open at http://goo.gle/ctf.
In true old Google CTF fashion, the top 8 teams will qualify for our Hackceler8 speedrunning meets CTFs competition. The prize pool stands similar to previous years at more than $40,000.
If you are just starting out in this space, last year’s Beginner’s Quest is a great resource to get started. For later in the year, we have something mysterious planned – stay tuned to find out more!
Whether you’re a seasoned CTF player or just curious about cyber security and ethical hacking, we want you to join us. Sign up to expand your skill set, meet new friends in the security community, and even watch the pros in action. For the latest announcements, see g.co/ctf, subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on @GoogleVRP. Interested in bug hunting for Google? Check out bughunters.google.com. See you there!
Phishing awareness training: Help your employees avoid the hook
Educating employees about how to spot phishing attacks can strike a much-needed blow for network defenders
The post Phishing awareness training: Help your employees avoid the hook appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Crypto mixers: What are they and how are they used?
How crypto mixers, also known as crypto tumblers, are used to obscure the trail of digital money
The post Crypto mixers: What are they and how are they used? appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
How to spot malicious spam – Week in security with Tony Anscombe
As the risk of receiving a malware-laden email increases, take a moment to consider how to spot attacks involving malicious spam
The post How to spot malicious spam – Week in security with Tony Anscombe appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
How Emotet is changing tactics in response to Microsoft’s tightening of Office macro security
Emotet malware is back with ferocious vigor, according to ESET telemetry in the first four months of 2022. Will it survive the ever-tightening controls on macro-enabled documents?
The post How Emotet is changing tactics in response to Microsoft’s tightening of Office macro security appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
SBOM in Action: finding vulnerabilities with a Software Bill of Materials
Posted by Brandon Lum and Oliver Chang, Google Open Source Security Team
The past year has seen an industry-wide effort to embrace Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs)—a list of all the components, libraries, and modules that are required to build a piece of software. In the wake of the 2021 Executive Order on Cybersecurity, these ingredient labels for software became popular as a way to understand what’s in the software we all consume. The guiding idea is that it’s impossible to judge the risks of particular software without knowing all of its components—including those produced by others. This increased interest in SBOMs saw another boost after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its Secure Software Development Framework, which requires SBOM information to be available for software. But now that the industry is making progress on methods to generate and share SBOMs, what do we do with them?
Generating an SBOM is only one half of the story. Once an SBOM is available for a given piece of software, it needs to be mapped onto a list of known vulnerabilities to know which components could pose a threat. By connecting these two sources of information, consumers will know not just what’s in their software, but also its risks and whether they need to remediate any issues.
In this blog post, we demonstrate the process of taking an SBOM from a large and critical project—Kubernetes—and using an open source tool to identify the vulnerabilities it contains. Our example’s success shows that we don’t need to wait for SBOM generation to reach full maturity before we begin mapping SBOMs to common vulnerability databases. With just a few updates from SBOM creators to address current limitations in connecting the two sources of data, this process is poised to become easily within reach of the average software consumer.
OSV: Connecting SBOMs to vulnerabilities
The following example uses Kubernetes, a major project that makes its SBOM available using the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) format—an international open standard (ISO) for communicating SBOM information. The same idea should apply to any project that makes its SBOM available, and for projects that don’t, you can generate your own SBOM using the same bom tool Kubernetes created.
We have chosen to map the SBOM to the Open Source Vulnerabilities (OSV) database, which describes vulnerabilities in a format that was specifically designed to map to open source package versions or commit hashes. The OSV database excels here as it provides a standardized format and aggregates information across multiple ecosystems (e.g., Python, Golang, Rust) and databases (e.g., Github Advisory Database (GHSA), Global Security Database (GSD)).
To connect the SBOM to the database, we’ll use the SPDX spdx-to-osv tool. This open source tool takes in an SPDX SBOM document, queries the OSV database of vulnerabilities, and returns an enumeration of vulnerabilities present in the software’s declared components.
Example: Kubernetes’ SBOM
The first step is to download Kubernetes’ SBOM, which is publicly available and contains information on the project, dependencies, versions, and licenses. Anyone can download it with a simple curl command:
# Download the Kubernetes SPDX source document
$ curl -L https://sbom.k8s.io/v1.21.3/source > k8s-1.21.3-source.spdx
The next step is to use the SPDX spdx-to-osv tool to connect the Kubernetes’ SBOM to the OSV database:
# Run the spdx-to-osv tool, taking the information from the SPDX SBOM and mapping it to OSV vulnerabilities
$ java -jar ./target/spdx-to-osv-0.0.4-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar -I k8s-1.21.3-source.spdx -O out-k8s.1.21.3.json
# Show the output OSV vulnerabilities of the spdx-to-osv tool
$ cat out-k8s.1.21.3.json
…
{
“id”: “GHSA-w73w-5m7g-f7qc”,
“published”: “2021-05-18T21:08:21Z”,
“modified”: “2021-06-28T21:32:34Z”,
“aliases”: [
“CVE-2020-26160”
],
“summary”: “Authorization bypass in github.com/dgrijalva/jwt-go”,
“details”: “jwt-go allows attackers to bypass intended access restrictions in situations with []string{} for m[\”aud\”] (which is allowed by the specification). Because the type assertion fails, \”\” is the value of aud. This is a security problem if the JWT token is presented to a service that lacks its own audience check. There is no patch available and users of jwt-go are advised to migrate to [golang-jwt](https://github.com/golang-jwt/jwt) at version 3.2.1″,
“affected”: [
{
“package”: {
“name”: “github.com/dgrijalva/jwt-go”,
“ecosystem”: “Go”,
“purl”: “pkg:golang/github.com/dgrijalva/jwt-go”
},
…
The output of the tool shows that v1.21.3 of Kubernetes contains the CVE-2020-26160 vulnerability. This information can be helpful to determine if any additional action is required to manage the risk of operating this software. For example, if an organization is using v1.21.3 of Kubernetes, measures can be taken to trigger company policy to update the deployment, which will protect the organization against attacks exploiting this vulnerability.
To get the spdx-to-osv tool to work we had to make some minor changes to disambiguate the information provided in the SBOM:
These are relatively minor hurdles, though, and we were able to successfully run the tool with only small manual adjustments. To make the process easier in the future, we have the following recommendation for improving SBOM generation tooling:
SBOM in the future
It’s clear that we’re getting very close to achieving the original goal of SBOMs: using them to help manage the risk of vulnerabilities in software. Our example queried the OSV database, but we will soon see the same success in mapping SBOM data to other vulnerability databases and even using them with new standards like VEX, which provides additional context around whether vulnerabilities in software have been mitigated.
Continuing on this path of widespread SBOM adoption and tooling refinement, we will hopefully soon be able to not only request and download SBOMs for every piece of software, but also use them to understand the vulnerabilities affecting any software we consume. This example is a peek into a possible future of what SBOMs can offer when we bridge the gap to connect them with vulnerability databases: a new normal of worrying less about the risks in the software we use.
A special thanks to Gary O’Neall of Source Auditor for creating the spdx-to-osv tool and contributing to this blog post.
Industroyer: A cyber‑weapon that brought down a power grid
Five years ago, ESET researchers released their analysis of the first ever malware that was designed specifically to attack power grids
The post Industroyer: A cyber‑weapon that brought down a power grid appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
3 takeaways from RSA Conference 2022 – Week in security with Tony Anscombe
Here are three themes that stood out at the world’s largest gathering of cybersecurity professionals
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