Lost+Found: AES, Key prints, Virus scanners, Subversion and Health Check
Too short for news, too good to lose; Lost+Found is a round up of useful security information. Today, AES explained, Copying keys with photos, "I had no PC", Subversion in web root directories and Windows diagnostic tools from F-Secure
A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a vivid explanation, in four acts, on the origin and operation of AES.
In the past, burglars and secret agents would use putty or dough to make imprints of keys. Today, a photo taken with a phone and a Matlab script is sufficient to get all the measurements needed to make a copy.
Did you have anti-virus software installed ten years ago? Avira surveyed today's users and got some interesting answers; for example, back then one third of users didn't actually own a PC.
As a group of Russian hackers recently discovered, Subversion directories in the root directory of a web server are not a good idea. The directories can reveal information useful for further attacks.
F-Secure has released a beta of Health Check 2.0 for Windows. The tool can be used to check the state of security on a system, and is available for testing now.
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