Our research initiatives shape into papers and articles published at various security-related and IT audit-related sites.

MS Office Security
SecurityFocus Infocus article, August 2006
This article discusses Microsoft Office's OLE Structured Storage and the nature of recent dropper programs and other exploit agents, in an effort to scrutinize the workings of some of the recent MS Office exploits. The second part of this article then collates some forensic investigation avenues through different MS Office features. Parts of the article sample different MS Office vulnerabilities to discuss their nature and the method of exploitation.

Dissecting NTFS Hidden Streams
Forensic Focus article, July 2006
This article discusses Alternate Data Streams feature of the NTFS filesystem. It underlines the importance of this feature from a hacker's perspective and a forensic investigator's perspective.

Five Common Web Application Vulnerabilites
SecurityFocus Infocus article, May 2006
This article looks at five common Web application attacks, primarily for PHP applications, and then presents a short case study of a vulnerable Website that was found using Google and was easily exploited.

Key Strategies for Implementing ISO 27001
The IIA's ITAudit article, February 2006
This article brings to light various strategies involved in implementing ISO 27001 - from identifying business objectives to preparing for the final audit.

Evading NIDS, revisited
SecurityFocus Infocus article, December 2005
This article discusses IDS evasion techniques in addition to the frag3 preprocessor and fragment reassembly in a multihost environment.

SQL Server Security
The IIA's ITAudit article, March 2005
This is the first part of a two-part article that discusses securing the SQL Server. It covers secured SQL Server installation from an IT Auditor's perspective.

Penetration Testing of IPSec VPNs
SecurityFocus Infocus article, Feb 2005
This article discusses a methodology to assess the security posture of an organization's IPsec based VPN architecture. It discusses blackbox penetration testing of a VPN server, and then a full configuration and architecture review.

Common Criteria - an overview
Information Systems Control Journal by ISACA, Volume 1, 2005
One evaluation methodology that provides an excellent framework for Application Security Assessment is the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation, also known as the Common Criteria or CC. This article provides an overview of the Common Criteria covering the Functional and Assurance Requirements.

Metasploit Framework - 3 parts
SecurityFocus Infocus article, 12th July 2004
This is a three part article that talks in-depth about the Metasploit Framework - installation, configuration, and development of custom exploits using the framework.

Common security vulnerabilities in e-commerce systems
SecurityFocus Infocus article, 27th April 2004
This article discusses common attacks and vulnerabilities in e-commerce shopping cart systems, with reference to SecurityFocus vulnerability reports where relevant.

Auditing Oracle Security
The IT Audit, Vol. 7, April 15, 2004
This article discusses various aspects of Oracle security that must be considered, including secured installation, initialization parameters, users and profiles, roles, object and system privileges, logging, listener security, etc.

Detection of SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting Attacks
SecurityFocus Infocus article, 18th March 2004
This article discusses techniques to detect SQL Injection and Cross Site Scripting (CSS) attacks against your web applications using regular expressions with the open-source IDS, Snort

Open Source Tools for Security and Control Assessment
Information Systems Control Journal by ISACA, Volume 1, 2004

Apache Security Controls and Auditing
Information Systems Control Journal by ISACA, Volume 5, 2003

On our website

SAP R/3 Approach Paper: SAP R/3 Security Assessment Framework
This approach paper describes a security assessment framework for SAP R/3 implementations. It covers various aspects of the SAP system and the database along with the underlying operating system.

The Unix Auditor's Practical Handbook
This handbook is meant to be a practical step-by-step guide to auditing Unix. It covers the various aspects of UNIX security and gives the reader the commands and techniques to carry out the audit.

Guide to Sybase Security
This document provides details on security and auditing of the Sybase database server.