1109, 2018

Whatever happened to CipherSaber?

René Pfeiffer/ September 11, 2018/ High Entropy

Some of you still know how a modem sounds. Back in the days of 14400 baud strong encryption was rare. Compression was king. Every bit counted. And you had to protect yourself. This is where CipherSaber comes into play. Given the exclusive use of strong cryptographic algorithms by government authorities, the CipherSaber algorithm was meant to be easy enough to be memorised, and yet strong enough to protect messages from being intercepted in clear. It is based on the RC4 algorithm. According to the designer CipherSaber can be implemented in a few lines of code. Basically you have crypto to go which cannot be erased from the minds of the public, because it is readily available. That’s where the name came from. It is modelled after the light sabers found in the Star Wars

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1009, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Training: Attacking Internet of Things with Software Defined Radio – Johannes Pohl

Sanna/ September 10, 2018/ Conference, Security, Training

In Johannes Pohls training participants will learn how to reverse engineer the wireless communication between Internet of Things (IoT) devices with Software Defined Radios (SDR) using the Universal Radio Hacker (URH). The workshop covers required HF (high frequency) basics such as digital modulations and encodings and shows how to reveal the protocol logic step by step and, finally, how to develop attacks against devices. For demonstration they will investigate and attack a wireless socket and a smart home door lock. During the course of the workshop the communication of the two devices will be analyzed and reverse engineered. In conclusion, attacks on both devices will be developed. By the end of the workshop participants will be able to switch the socket and open the door lock with SDRs. This of course requires knowledge in the

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0709, 2018

DeepSec Training: Bug Bounty Hunting – How Hackers Find SQL Injections in Minutes with Sqlmap

René Pfeiffer/ September 7, 2018/ Security, Training

In a previous article we talked about the Bug Bounty Hunting training by Dawid Czagan at DeepSec 2018. In case you do now know what to expect, there is a little teaser consisting of a full blown tutorial for you. Dawid has published as video tutorial that shows you how to use Sqlmap in order to find SQL injections. It serves as a perfect example of what to expect from his two-day training and what you absolutely need to play with for preparation. DeepSec trainings are in-depth, not superficial. Dawid’s training will go into much deeper detail. Software developers are well advised to use attack tools against their own creations. It helps to understand what error conditions your code might be in and what you have to do when sanitising data. SQL injection attacks

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0609, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Talk: Cracking HiTag2 Crypto – Weaponising Academic Attacks for Breaking and Entering – Kevin Sheldrake

Sanna/ September 6, 2018/ Conference, Security

HiTag2 is an Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology operating at 125KHz.  It is distinguished from many others in the same field by its use of 2-way communications for authentication and its use of encryption to protect the data transmissions – the majority of RFID technologies at 125KHz feature no authentication or encryption at all.  As a result it has been widely used to provide secure building access and has also been used as the technology that implements car immobilisers. In 2012, academic researchers Roel Verdult, Flavio D. Garcia and Josep Balasch published the seminal paper, ‘Gone in 360 Seconds: Hijacking with Hitag2’ that presented three attacks on the encryption system used in HiTag2; in 2016 Garcia et al presented a further attack in ‘Lock It and Still Lose It’.  They implemented their attacks on the Proxmark 3 device

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0609, 2018

Translated Press Release: DeepSec Conference releases Schedule for 2018

René Pfeiffer/ September 6, 2018/ Conference, Press

Focusing on the Insecurity of Things and infrastructure Vienna (pts014 / 21.08.2018 / 09:25) – This year’s DeepSec In-Depth Security Conference will focus on the topic of Insecurity of Things (IoT) and components of everyday infrastructure. The ever-advancing networking opens up completely new ways for attackers – faster than developers and manufacturers can fix bugs. Instead of using secure design for products and code, machine learning and artificial intelligence are integrated – unfortunately, implemented using convenient statistics and the algorithm of the week from the daily menu of the development kit. The presentations at the DeepSec conference will therefore put the alleged technologies of the future to the test. Mobile networks, the Internet of Things, collaboration platforms in the cloud, customer relationship management systems and the human factor are in the cross-hairs. Smart is

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0509, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Talk: Defense Informs Offense Improves Defense – How to Compromise an ICS Network and How to Defend It – Joe Slowik

Sanna/ September 5, 2018/ Conference, Security

Industrial control system (ICS) attacks have an aura of sophistication, high barriers to entry, and significant investment in time and resources. Yet when looking at the situation – especially recent attacks – from a defender’s perspective, nothing could be further from the truth. Initial attack, lateral movement, and entrenchment within an ICS network requires – and probably operates best – via variations of ‘pen tester 101’ actions combined with some knowledge of the environment and living off the land. Only after initial access is achieved and final targets are identified do adversaries need to enhance their knowledge of ICS-specific environments to deliver disruptive (or destructive) impacts resulting in a potentially large pool of adversaries capable of conducting operations. Examining concrete ICS attack examples allows us to explore just what is needed to breach and

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0409, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Talk: Can not See the Wood for the Trees – Too Many Security Standards for Automation Industry – Frank Ackermann

Sanna/ September 4, 2018/ Conference, Discussion, Security

“Plant operators and manufacturers are currently faced with many challenges in the field of automation.”, says Frank Ackermann. “Issues such as digitization, Industry 4.0, legal requirements or complex business processes that connect IT and OT are paramount. Related security problems and risks need to be addressed promptly and lastingly. Existing and newly created industry security standards (such as 62443, 61508 and 61511, 27001, …) are designed to help to improve security. But do the different approaches of these standards fit together? Are managers of the companies and manufacturers supported or rather confused by them? The presentation provides an overview of the key security industry standards, discusses the dependency and coverage of the standards, and aims to encourage discussion about if the standards optimize general security in industrial control systems.” We asked Frank a few

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0309, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Talk: Who Watches the Watcher? Detecting Hypervisor Introspection from Unprivileged Guests – Tomasz Tuzel

Sanna/ September 3, 2018/ Conference, Development, Security

Over the last decade we have seen a rapid rise in virtualization-based tools in which a hypervisor is used to gain insight into the runtime execution of a system. With these advances in introspection techniques, it is no longer a question of whether a hypervisor can be used to peek inside or even manipulate the VMs it executes. Thus, how can we trust that a hypervisor deployed by a cloud provider will respect the privacy of their customers? While there are hardware-based protection mechanisms with the goal of guaranteeing data privacy even in the presence of such an “introspecting” hypervisor, there are currently no tools that can check whether the hypervisor is introspecting when it shouldn’t. We have developed a software package that analyzes instructions and memory accesses on an unprivileged guest system which

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