Koreas first step to globalization through ODT
ZDNet Korea reports that the South Korean government is making a first-step to shift from the proprietary Hangul Word Processor (HWP) file format (.hwp) to the Open Document Format (ODF). To understand why this is such a big deal, you first need to understand that HWP is part of the national identity. It is/was a government sponsored monopoly. Even schoolchildren were reminded that it’s their duty to buy HWP. They must have a valid license(s) (because no other word processor is acceptable). The format is proprietary, and no other word processor can read it. Microsoft released a HWP2DOC converter. Government organizations were forced to use HWP, and businesses where “encouraged” strongly.
Changing Domain to DFIR.Science
CybercrimeTech started as a dfir notes blog during my Masters at University College Dublin. I wasn’t sure what it would turn into, and thought the name was general. Almost 11 years later, that is no longer the case.
Password Cracking Test Data
Here are some files to test your password cracking skills. All of them can be done in less than a few hours with CPU-based cracking. You can download the file and practice hash extraction + cracking, or just download the hashes directly.
DFRWS IoT Forensic Challenge
[How To] Fuzzy Hashing with SSDEEP (similarity matching)
SSDEEP is a fuzzy hashing tool written by Jesse Kornblum. There is quite a bit of work about similarity hashing and comparisons with other methods. The mainstream tools for digital forensics, however, appear to be ssdeep and sdhash. For example, NIST created hash sets using both tools. I wrote a post about sdhash in 2012 if you want to know a little more about how it works.
Horrible messaging is bad for national security
For over a year, anyone with a mobile phone in Korea has had to put up with spam text messages from Korea’s Ministry of Public Safety and Security (국민안전처). I thought it was wise to have such an emergency system considering that I live about 30km from the DMZ (boarder with the North), unfortunately this ministry found a way to make such an emergency system less effective.