In my previous article, we explored how to use cookies in Postman to store your secrets. Depending on your security requirements, you may need to use cryptography. This is where CryptoJS can help.
Script to Generate an Encrypted Secret
We can use a local Node.js script with the CryptoJS library to encrypt the secret. The example below shows how we will encrypt an API key.
const CryptoJS = require('crypto-js');
const { API_KEY: apiKey, SECRET_KEY: secretKey } = process.env;
const encryptedText = CryptoJS.AES.encrypt(apiKey, secretKey).toString();
console.log('encryptedText:', encryptedText);We set the API key and secret key (used to encrypt the API key) as environment variables. …
The Serverless Framework support numerous plugins — and they are great! They save so much time in deploying our serverless applications. Why reinvent the wheel? This convenience comes with a downside: not all plugins are written securely. We must choose our plugins wisely, which means we should inspect the source code.
What are Serverless Framework plugins?
The Serverless Framework allow us to use plugins (or create one) that hook into the lifecycle events during the deploy process. We can hook into the “before:deploy:deploy” event to setup files and variables before the deploy begins. We can hook into the “deploy:finalize” hook to save some information about…
The days of having one email address are over. We are putting all our eggs in one basket by having one address. If someone hacks that account, we could be in big trouble.
Guessing An Email Address
Guessing an email address can be easy. We can guess an email address by trying any of the following:
FirstInitialLastName@gmail.comFirstNameLastName@gmail.comFirstName.LastName@gmail.com
What is the chance you have this email address?
Social Media Accounts
We often post too much information on social media accounts. We post our name, location, recent activity, links, and more. Someone can use this information to deduce information. They can guess an email address, figure out…
A few friends and I chat about stocks, share ideas, and encourage each other. A few months ago, I realized we needed some automation to help us find winners. I chose to use a serverless solution to build this system.
There are many good stocks and finding them takes time. We can find them by reading articles, using stock tools, getting tips from Twitter, and many other ways. With so many ways to find stock candidates, we needed to define the process.
Finding a Screener
We decided FinViz.com was a good source to start our automation. One of our team members is a…
When I started working with the Serverless Framework I was curious about the security aspect. Previously, I was an information assurance (IA) engineer working on cybersecurity for US government military systems and I had become accustomed to using well-defined processes and requirements as an IA engineer.
The systems we were securing were part of a vast network of other systems with strict IA requirements. The threats seemed limited; and implementing Cybersecurity, in many cases, was following a list of checklists and requirements. But, Cybersecurity in the world of serverless development was a new frontier.
The more I worked with serverless…
It’s so easy to quickly deploy serverless resources. Because of this, we should follow best practices to protect our resources, applications, and cloud service provider accounts. Here are some best practices for you to consider.
1. Keep Functions Small
A serverless function should perform a specific function. Similar to a function or method in any code should do one thing (e.g., increment a counter, transform data, etc.), a serverless function show perform a logical function. For example, you would create one serverless function for validating a login, another for validating a login session, another for deactivating a login session. …
For a couple of weeks, I have been pondering whether my browser extensions could be a source of vulnerabilities. It turns out they can!
A couple of days ago, I received a notification from the Microsoft Edge browser warning me about malware in one of my extensions: The Great Suspender.
Amazon Fire TV devices are pretty nice, but there is the risk they listen to you. In this super short article, I will share how you can minimize the amount of time this device (or a similar device) can listen to you.
- Buy an eco-friendly power strip that controls other outlets.
- Connect your TV to the master (or control) outlet. This outlet will control when power is delivered to the dependant (or energy saving) outlets.
- Connect your Fire TV (or similar device) to the dependant outlet.
Now the Fire TV will only power on when you are watching TV.
BONUS…
Serverless environments are growing in popularity because they reduce overhead and costs. But do they necessarily improve your application’s security? Well for a start there are a lot fewer vulnerabilities to exploit. Let’s dig in and explore this a little more.
Serverless environments allow you to build applications without needing to manage and use servers. They allow you to upload your code without worrying about how to configure a server, installing the runtime environment, applying patches, setting up the networking, and identifying all the other tasks needed to run said code. Sounds too good to be true? Wait, there’s more!
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Cybersecurity is one of those topic areas we know is essential because having adequate protections helps prevent significant losses. We will discuss measures to improve our cybersecurity posture to avoid becoming a victim of attacks. We will use the OSI Model as a basis.
The OSI Model
The OSI Model has seven layers:
- Layer 1 — Physical
- Layer 2 — Data Link
- Layer 3 — Network
- Layer 4 — Transport
- Layer 5 — Session
- Layer 6 — Presentation
- Layer 7 — Application
These layers represent how data is transmitted between applications using networks. Although this model was originally meant for communication systems, we…
Miguel A. Calles MBA
Miguel is the author of the “Serverless Security” book, and a cybersecurity engineer.
