7MS #157: Infosec News and Links Roundup

Training Ops

General News

  • Apple is fighting the FBI's request for backdooring a phone associated with the mass shooting in San Bernardino. Troy Hunt's article gives you a thorough breakdown, and you should also check out a technical explanation of how Apple can comply with the order, and Apple's letter to customers.

  • Apple fixes the pesky error 53 that disabled some iPhones recently. The peasants rejoice!

  • You definitely should not set your iDevice to January 1, 1970 unless you want to have a very expensive rock for a phone.

  • The Glibc flaw affects thousands of devices and this article walks through some of the "what ifs" and practicality of real world exploitation.

  • Steve Gibson's GRC.com site has been down for days after being subject to a massive distributed DNS reflection attack.

  • You probably shouldn't use Comodo Internet Security. A few weeks ago we talked about how it disables same-origin policy, and apparently it also installs VNC by default.

Tools/Scripts

Misc/Humor

  • Pee Wee Herman is returning to TV (specifically Netflix) in March. I hope he brings a huge foil or rubber band ball!