Big Data Analytica – What Attackers might be after

René Pfeiffer/ June 8, 2018/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security Intelligence

A while ago the Cambridge Analytica issue rocked the news and the online discussions about how personal data and profiles should be used. Frankly the surprise of data being abused comes as a surprise. The terms and conditions of most online portals, services, and platforms contains lots of rights – which you give to the owner of the platform. Once something is concentrated, cached, and accessible to digital evaluation, it will be harvested for its content and context. It’s as simple as that. This has always been the case. Penetration testers (best case) select their targets based on this criterion (among others). What has all of this to do with information security? Well, information security, just as the social media platforms, just can’t do without analysing data. The difference is how to protect and

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DeepSec 2017 thanks you and DeepSec 2018 is almost ready

René Pfeiffer/ November 22, 2017/ Administrivia, Conference, Mission Statement

We caught up on sleep and are right in the middle of post-processing DeepSec 2017. Thanks to you all for attending, presenting, sending feedback, and being part of a great event. The slides will be online soon. The videos are being converted. We will upload them as bandwidth permits. All speakers and attendees will get a code to access them early. Thanks for your feedback as well! We listen, and we have some plans to address the issues you reported. 2018 will see a lot of improvements. We will announce the dates for DeepSec and DeepINTEL 2018 soon. The events will stay in November and September. We just need to coordinate with the venue and will let you know as soon as possible. The Calls for Papers open early in 2018, as does the

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Last Call for Early Bird Tickets – DeepSec 2016

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2016/ Administrivia, Conference

We are back from 44CON and thoroughly enjoyed our time in London. The keynotes were great. The presenters showed a lot of interesting thoughts and facts you can use for attack and defence. Furthermore the conversations with attendees and speakers were very fruitful. You really cannot plan what you will be talking about. This is why you should attend conferences. And this is why you should book your DeepSec tickets now! Early bird registration is still possible. Make the most out of it. Don’t wait until the last minute! If you are interested in attending workshops, book as soon as possible! Trainings have a minimum number of participants. You have been warned. Either way, we are looking forward to see you at DeepSec 2016!

Special Screening of the Documentary “A Good American” during DeepSec 2015

René Pfeiffer/ October 28, 2015/ Conference, Discussion, High Entropy, Security Intelligence

Attendees of DeepSec 2015 will receive a special treat. We have been talking to Friedrich Moser, and he has agreed to show his documentary „A Good American“ on 20 November 2015 exclusively. The private screening will take place in Vienna. It starts at 2100 at the Burg Kino, known for showing „The Third Man“. „A Good American“ explains how to do threat intelligence in a more efficient way, according to the creator of ThinThread: „A codebreaker genius, a revolutionary surveillance program and corruption across the board of NSA. Against this backdrop unfolds the feature documentary A GOOD AMERICAN. The film tells the story of Bill Binney and his program ThinThread and how this perfect alternative to mass surveillance got ditched by NSA for money.“ After the film Friedrich Moser, Duncan Campbell, James Bamford, and

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Back from 44CON – Conference Impressions

René Pfeiffer/ September 21, 2014/ High Entropy, Security, Stories

If you haven’t been at 44CON last week, you missed a lot of good presentations. Plus you haven’t been around great speakers, an excellent crew, “gin o’clock” each day, wonderful audience, and great coffee from ANTIPØDE (where you should go when in London and in desperate need of good coffee). Everyone occasionally using wireless connections (regardless if Wi-Fi or mobile phone networks) should watch the talks on GreedyBTS and the improvements of doing Wi-Fi penetration testing by using fake alternative access points. GreedyBTS is a base transceiver station (BTS) enabling 2G/2.5G attacks by impersonating a BTS. Hacker Fantastic explained the theoretical background and demonstrated what a BTS-in-the-middle can do to Internet traffic of mobile phones. Intercepting and re-routing text messages and voice calls can be done, too. Implementing the detection of fake base stations

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Data Loss Prevention

René Pfeiffer/ May 14, 2012/ Discussion, Security

None of us likes to lose data. Usually data loss is tied to defects of storage media. You can counter physical data loss by having sufficient and recent copies of your data. This is where the logical data loss kicks in – unauthorised copies. Espionage thrives on these copies, and since information can be sold so does crime. Establishing a proper data loss prevention strategy and implementing it, requires a combination throughout all branches of information security. First you need to define some classifications for all your data. Public, private and confidential is common. Then you must find all places where your data is stored. You noticed the small word „all“. Yes, that’s right, all places and every single bit of your data. If you start getting sloppy at this stage, your defence against

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Unlearn to Hack?

René Pfeiffer/ May 6, 2012/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

Security is heavily influenced by the inner workings of the (human) mind. We all know about social engineering and tricks used by con men. The game of smoke and mirrors now hits the „uncontrolled spread of hacking tools“. We have already pointed out that the European Union is preparing a proposal for „banning“ „hacking tools“. There is now a case on-line where a print magazine was allegedly removed from the shelves of Barnes & Noble. Apparently the cover story was too dangerous, because it announced how to „teach you to break into networks, exploit services running remotely, beat encryption techniques, crack passwords, and more.“ The real dark side of this story is that these skills are discussed at most self-respecting security conferences. These skills are even part of a very basic job description in

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DeepSec 365 Conference Track and Disinformation

René Pfeiffer/ April 2, 2012/ Misc, Stories

We admit. We could not resist. Bazinga! Writing articles to be published on 1 April is fun, and you probably should not read any news on this day (or blog articles or anything, don’t even talk to people until 2 April). If you consider the disinformation practised on All Fools’ Day and connect it to security the fun stops. You rely on information and its accuracy to counter threats. So in turn disinformation can be regarded as a hacker tool. Social engineering people probably know this already. Since our CfPs for DeepINTEL and DeepSec 2012 are open: If you explore disinformation as a hacker tool and can show its impact on the security routine of potential targets/defenders, why not turn your findings into a presentation and send it to us? We want to know

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Disinfect your Information Environment

René Pfeiffer/ March 7, 2012/ High Entropy, Security, Stories

Since information technology relies heavily on analogies (as does lot of other „cyber“ things), we have a question for you. What do an intercepted phone call, infectious diseases and nuclear waste spilling into the environment have in common? Faulty containment. The Naked Security blog explains in an article how Anonymous was able to record the FBI phone call whose audio file was published in January 2012. Apparently „an Irish Garda police officer who was invited to attend the conference call about ongoing hacking investigations forwarded the message to a personal email account“. This personal e-mail account was compromised, and the information about the conference call was used to participate and to record the audio stream. This teaches a couple of lessons. Conference calls can be attended by having the correct string of characters (i.e.

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Is your car on the Internet?

René Pfeiffer/ June 14, 2011/ Security, Stories

We published some press releases in the past that dealt with networked subsystems in cars. Security researchers connected to the Controller-Area Network (CAN) and tried to inject commands (which worked scarily well). We claimed that automobile manufacturer were way behind in security compared to everyone who has to secure systems in the Internet. The claim was half-part fact and half-part conjecture. Now it’s time to correct our claim. Cars can now leak information and push it to the Internet: Electric cars manufactured by Nissan surreptitiously leak detailed information about a driver’s location, speed and destination to websites accessed through the vehicle’s built in RSS reader, a security blogger has found. … “All of these lovely values are being provided to any third party RSS provider you configure: CNN, Fox News, Weather Channel, it doesn’t

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