Kenneth van Wyk

Perhaps guilty until proven innocent isn’t so bad an idea after all. It’s often been said the “lawlessness” of the Internet is similar to the American “Wild West.” I have always cringed when hearing that, because it’s just too much of a stretch for me, but there’s at least one aspect of it that is […]

The world just got a bit riskier for us “road warriors.” You see, there’s this perfect storm of risks lined up to make our lives a little more dangerous. Here’s why, and here’s what we can do to fight back. In the last couple years, a new breed of mobile user has sprung up. Thanks […]

When browsing the net, I’m safest when I’m using Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 browser—at least after I’ve tweaked it just a bit. Yup, I have absolutely no doubt about it. I’ve looked at others, and I’m sticking with Firefox. But instead of just taking my word for it, let’s take a closer look at why I […]

We really are idiots. Not you and me, of course, but we. Seriously, we are idiots. The sooner we accept that, the better off we’ll all be. I’ll explain… Just a week or two ago, I heard about a security conference where the organizers inadvertently distributed a virus-infected USB stick to the attendees. Of course, […]

Back in February 2007, I wrote that, “I’m more secure on a Mac than I was on Windows XP.” Much has changed since then—in particular, Vista and Leopard were released. Yet much hasn’t changed—I’m still more secure on a Mac. Again, I’ll explain my reasoning. Again, however, I’ll caveat my statements by saying that I […]

If you are responsible for the security of a Web site, chances are darn good it’s got at least one serious vulnerability lurking just beneath the surface. I’m talking about CSRF, or “Cross Site Request Forgery,” and it’s just beginning to be explored by attackers, phishers, and other miscreants. (Note that CSRF is not to […]

I’ve thought about this over and over, and the only rational conclusion I’ve been able to draw is that they were either inexcusably ignorant or else operating at an unparalleled level of hubris. Just who are they? The designers of Boeing’s new 787 “Dreamliner,” that’s who. A bit of background… A couple weeks ago, a […]

Happy New Year. It’s now 2008 and what do we have to show for it? Seriously, it’s not a rhetorical question—it’s one that every information security person and organization should be asking, and the beginning of a new year is as good a time as any. Really. So, rather than rattle off a list of […]

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict Google’s Android mobile phone platform is going to prove itself to be more secure than Apple’s iPhone in the long run. Let’s take a closer look. But first, I have to explain the basis for this preliminary comparison—Android handsets, after all, are not yet […]

People in glass houses shouldn’t brick phones. But that’s what Apple did to thousands of iPhone owners in September. Let’s take a closer look at this textbook example of two wrongs making for a really bad situation, from which no one emerged victoriously. First, we have iPhone owners who wanted to either install application software […]