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Testimonials
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”
Week in security with Tony Anscombe
Fake e-shops & Android malware – A journey into the dark recesses of the world wide web – Keeping your cloud resources safe
The post Week in security with Tony Anscombe appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
How secure is your cloud storage? Mitigating data security risks in the cloud
As cloud systems are increasingly the bedrock on which digital transformation is built, keeping a close eye on how they are secured is an essential cybersecurity best practice
The post How secure is your cloud storage? Mitigating data security risks in the cloud appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Improving software supply chain security with tamper-proof builds
Posted by Asra Ali and Laurent Simon, Google Open Source Security Team (GOSST)
Many of the recent high-profile software attacks that have alarmed open-source users globally were consequences of supply chain integrity vulnerabilities: attackers gained control of a build server to use malicious source files, inject malicious artifacts into a compromised build platform, and bypass trusted builders to upload malicious artifacts.
Each of these attacks could have been prevented if there were a way to detect that the delivered artifacts diverged from the expected origin of the software. But until now, generating verifiable information that described where, when, and how software artifacts were produced (information known as provenance) was difficult. This information allows users to trace artifacts verifiably back to the source and develop risk-based policies around what they consume. Currently, provenance generation is not widely supported, and solutions that do exist may require migrating build processes to services like Tekton Chains.
This blog post describes a new method of generating non-forgeable provenance using GitHub Actions workflows for isolation and Sigstore’s signing tools for authenticity. Using this approach, projects building on GitHub runners can achieve SLSA 3 (the third of four progressive SLSA “levels”), which affirms to consumers that your artifacts are authentic and trustworthy.
Provenance
SLSA (“Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts”) is a framework to help improve the integrity of your project throughout its development cycle, allowing consumers to trace the final piece of software you release all the way back to the source. Achieving a high SLSA level helps to improve the trust that your artifacts are what you say they are.
This blog post focuses on build provenance, which gives users important information about the build: who performed the release process? Was the build artifact protected against malicious tampering? Source provenance describes how the source code was protected, which we’ll cover in future blog posts, so stay tuned.
Go prototype to generate non-forgeable build provenance
To create tamperless evidence of the build and allow consumer verification, you need to:
The full isolation described in the first two points allows consumers to trust that the provenance was faithfully recorded; entities that provide this guarantee are called trusted builders.
Our Go prototype solves all three challenges. It also includes running the build inside the trusted builder, which provides a strong guarantee that the build achieves SLSA 3’s ephemeral and isolated requirement.
How does it work?
Leveraging GitHub’s reusable workflows provides the isolation mechanism from both maintainers’ caller workflows and from the build process. Within the workflow, Github Actions creates fresh instances of virtual machines (VMs), called runners, for each job. These separate VMs give the necessary isolation for a trusted builder, so that different VMs compile the project and generate and sign the SLSA provenance (see diagram below).
Running the workflow on GitHub-hosted runners gives the guarantee that the code run is in fact the intended workflow, which self-hosted runners do not. This prototype relies on GitHub to run the exact code defined in the workflow.
The reusable workflow also protects against possible interference from maintainers, who could otherwise try to define the workflow in a way that interferes with the builder. The only way to interact with a reusable workflow is through the input parameters it exposes to the calling workflow, which stops maintainers from altering information via environment variables, steps, services and defaults.
To protect against the possibility of one job (e.g. the build step) tampering with the other artifacts used by another job (the provenance step), this approach uses a trusted channel to protect the integrity of the data. We use job outputs to send hashes (due to size limitations) and then use the hashes to verify the binary received via the untrusted artifact registry.
OpenID Connect (OIDC) is a standard used across the web for identity providers (e.g., Google) to attest to the identity of a user for a third party. GitHub now supports OIDC in their workflows. Each time a workflow is run, a runner can mint a unique JWT token from GitHub’s OIDC provider. The token contains verifiable information of the workflow identity, including the caller repository, commit hash, trigger, and the current (reuseable) workflow path and reference.
Using OIDC, the workflow proves its identity to Sigstore’s Fulcio root Certificate Authority, which acts as an external verification service. Fulcio signs a short-lived certificate attesting to an ephemeral signing key generated in the runner and tying it to the workload identity. A record of signing the provenance is kept in Sigstore’s transparency log Rekor. Users can use the signing certificate as a trust anchor to verify that the provenance was authenticated and non-forgeable; it must have been created inside the trusted builder.
Verification
See an example in action in the official repository.
Performing these steps guarantees to the consumer that the binary was produced in the trusted builder at a given commit hash attested to in the provenance. They can trust that the information in the provenance was non-forgeable, allowing them to trust the build “recipe” and trace their artifact verifiably back to the source.
Extra Bonus: Keyless signing
One extra benefit of this method is that maintainers don’t need to manage or distribute cryptographic keys for signing, avoiding the notoriously difficult problem of key management. The OIDC protocol requires no hardcoded, long-term secrets be stored in GitHub’s secrets, which sidesteps the potential problem of key mismanagement invalidating the SLSA provenance. Consumers simply use OIDC to verify that the binary artifact was built from a trusted builder that produced the expected provenance.
Next Steps
Utilizing the SLSA framework is a proven way for ensuring software supply-chain integrity at scale. This prototype shows that achieving high SLSA levels is easier than ever thanks to the newest features of popular CI/CD systems and open-source tooling. Increased adoption of tamper-safe (SLSA 3+) build services will contribute to a stronger open-source ecosystem and help close one easily exploited gap in the current supply chain.
We encourage testing and adoption and welcome any improvements to the project. Please share feedback, comments and suggestions at slsa-github-generator-go and slsa-verifier project repositories. We will officially release v1 in a few weeks!
In follow-up posts, we will demonstrate adding non-forgeable source provenance attesting to secure repository settings, and showcase the same techniques for other build toolchains and package managers, etc. Stay tuned!
Fake e‑shops on the prowl for banking credentials using Android malware
ESET researchers analyzed three malicious applications targeting customers of eight Malaysian banks
The post Fake e‑shops on the prowl for banking credentials using Android malware appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Find and $eek! Increased rewards for Google Nest & Fitbit devices
Posted by Medha Jain, Program Manager, Devices & Services Security
At Google, we constantly invest in security research to raise the bar for our devices, keeping our users safe and building their trust in our products. In 2021, we published Google Nest security commitments, in which we committed to engage with the research community to examine our products and services and report vulnerabilities.
We are now looking to deepen this relationship and accelerate the path toward building more secure devices. Starting today, we will introduce a new vulnerability rewards structure for submissions impacting smart home (Google Nest) and wearables (Fitbit) devices through our Bug Hunters platform.
Bonus!
We are paying higher rewards retroactively for eligible Google Nest and Fitbit devices reports submitted in 2021. And, starting today, for the next six months, will double the reward amount for all new eligible reports applicable to Google Nest & Fitbit devices in scope.
We will continue to take reports on our web applications, services, and mobile apps at their existing reward levels. Please keep those coming!
An enhanced rewards program
Building on our previous programs to improve devices’ embedded security posture, we’re bringing all our first-party devices under a single program, starting with Google Nest, Fitbit, and Pixel.
This program extends the Android Security Reward Program, making it easier for researchers to submit a vulnerability in first-party devices and improving consistency across our severity assignments. Refer to the Android and Google Devices Security Reward Program for more details.
What interests us?
We encourage researchers to report firmware, system software, and hardware vulnerabilities. Our wide diversity of platforms provides researchers with a smorgasbord of environments to explore.
What’s next?
We will be at the Hardwear.io conference this year! The VRP team is looking forward to meeting our security peers in person. We’ll be talking about the architecture of a couple of our devices, hoping to give security researchers a head start in finding vulnerabilities. We’ll have plenty of swag, too!
We will continue to enhance the researchers’ experience and participation. We intend to add training documentations and target areas that interest us as we grow the program.
A huge thanks to Sarah Jacobus, Adam Bacchus, Ankur Chakraborty, Eduardo’ Vela” <Nava>, Jay Cox, and Nic Watson.
We’re going on Tor
If better privacy and anonymity sound like music to your ears, you may not need to look much further than Tor Browser. Here’s what it’s like to surf the dark web using the browser.
The post We’re going on Tor appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Week in security with Tony Anscombe
Under the hood of Wslink’s VM – The energy sector & cyber-risk – SMB cybersecurity survival tips
The post Week in security with Tony Anscombe appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Cybersecurity survival tips for small businesses: 2022 edition
How can businesses that lack the resources and technological expertise of large organizations hold the line against cybercriminals?
The post Cybersecurity survival tips for small businesses: 2022 edition appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Women in tech: Unique insights from a lifelong pursuit of innovation
Leading Slovak computer scientist Mária Bieliková shares her experience working as a woman driving technological innovation and reflects on how to inspire the next generation of talent in tech
The post Women in tech: Unique insights from a lifelong pursuit of innovation appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
Europe’s quest for energy independence – and how cyber‑risks come into play
Soaring energy prices and increased geopolitical tensions amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine bring a sharp focus on European energy security
The post Europe’s quest for energy independence – and how cyber‑risks come into play appeared first on WeLiveSecurity