Articles by Mark Stockley

About Mark Stockley

Mark Stockley is an independent web consultant who's interested in literally anything that makes websites better. Follow him on Twitter at @MarkStockley

Basic error puts anonymous bloggers at risk

by Mark Stockley on November 28, 2011 | 9 Comments

In a recent experiment writer Andy Baio was able to uncover the identities of seven anonymous bloggers from a random sample of 50 in under 30 minutes; all thanks to a simple mistake they'd made in setting up their websites.

Will Do Not Track make a difference to web privacy?

by Mark Stockley on November 17, 2011 | 2 Comments

Earlier this week the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the first drafts of two new privacy standards aimed at simplifying and standardising how websites read and comply with web users’ privacy settings. So is it going to make a difference?

Mystery flaw crashing DNS servers across the internet

by Mark Stockley on November 16, 2011 | 4 Comments

A zero-day vulnerability is being exploited in-the-wild to crash BIND 9 DNS servers all over the internet. The flaw, a Denial of Service vulnerability described as an "as-yet unidentified network event" affects all of the currently supported versions of BIND.

Anonymous and LulzSec trawl Google Code search for security holes

by Mark Stockley on November 11, 2011 | 3 Comments

A new report suggests that Google's Code Search is being used by groups such as LulzSec and Anonymous to find passwords and other private data, gain access to secure networks and decide who their next victim should be.

Apple lets malware into App Store

by Mark Stockley on November 8, 2011 | 4 Comments

A security hole in iOS, the operating system that powers iPhones and iPads, has allowed hacker Charlie Miller to defeat Apple’s famously discerning App Store review process.

Secure web browsing cracked by BEAST

by Mark Stockley on September 24, 2011 | 6 Comments

A pair of researchers have unveiled a serious new attack on web browser security.

The ability to crack encrypted web traffic removes the safety net that protects you when you're doing sensitive online tasks like banking or using credit cards.

Missing dots from email addresses opens 20GB data leak

by Mark Stockley on September 12, 2011 | 9 Comments

Security researchers have captured 120,000 emails intended for Fortune 500 companies by exploiting a basic typo.

The emails included trade secrets, business invoices, personal information about employees, network diagrams and passwords.

Researchers extend Firesheep to exploit Google Search data leak

by Mark Stockley on September 8, 2011 | 3 Comments

A pair of security researchers have created their own version of the notorious Firesheep plugin to expose a data leak in the world's favourite search engine.

The proof-of-concept plugin exploits the use of unencrypted cookies by Google's Web History feature.