
How to find security holes - iamwil
http://canonical.org/~kragen/security-holes.html
======
rythie
From the article:

"Note: I haven't found any security holes, so take this with a pillar of
salt."

~~~
kragen
For what it's worth, I have found a few since I wrote the article, and I still
think the article is okay (although kind of outdated in some ways). I've fixed
a few, too. Hopefully I've fixed more than I've created.

~~~
rythie
That's good to know, I would suggest for credibility, stating these instead of
the sentence you have.

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pj
Wow, when I click this link I get

opera:fraud-warning:

 _The page you are trying to open has been reported as fraudulent. It will
likely attempt to trick you into sharing personal or financial information.
Opera Software strongly discourages visiting this page._

I don't know why, so I'm not continuing... I've only seen this message once
before.

~~~
kragen
Wow, holy shit. Is there someone we can talk to at Opera about that? Would you
be willing to get me a screenshot of the message and tell me what version of
Opera you're running? I'd like to find out who reported that, and why. The
page in question doesn't contain any scripts or interactive features of any
kind. (I just looked at it on the server with _less_ to make sure nobody had,
say, injected some script tags since the last time I looked. Nope.)

~~~
pj
it's the same as what happened as reported here, same image as well
[http://www.joycebabu.com/blog/google-being-reported-as-
fraud...](http://www.joycebabu.com/blog/google-being-reported-as-fraud-site-
by-opera.html)

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khandekars
:-) Somewhat related: Bruce Schneier's "Self-Study Course in Block Cipher
Cryptanalysis," <http://www.schneier.com/paper-self-study.html>

~~~
tptacek
This paper is pretty cryptic and (I think) unhelpful, for a couple reasons,
not least the fact that protocol breaks kill far more systems than block
cipher analysis. But it is still an interesting challenge.

Worth mentioning here is that there may be 5000 full-time vulnerability
researchers worldwide, and fewer than .1% of them will ever even do protocol
crypto. Not that that those 5 people aren't awesome.

~~~
khandekars
Correct. At the same time, even trying to break a protocol is an interesting
activity and improves the fertility of mind. That would help in the areas like
identifying security holes in a system.

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tptacek
This is a fine way to get started looking for vulnerabilities, but a very bad
yardstick for testing software by.

