DeepSec2018 Talk: Manipulating Human Memory for Fun and Profit – Stefan Schumacher

Sanna/ October 31, 2018/ Conference, Discussion

Manipulating the Human Memory for Fun and Profit, or: Why you’ve never met Bugs Bunny in DisneyLand Hacking is not limited to technical things — like using a coffee machine to cook a soup — but also makes use of social engineering. Social engineering is the (mis)use of human behaviour like fixed action patterns, reciprocity or commitment and consistency. Simple social engineering attacks like phishing mails do not require much preparation, but more complex ones do so. Especially when one wants to set up some kind of advanced persistent threat in the psychological domain. So, besides the psychological fundamentals of social engineering we also did research on human memory, how it works, how it pretty much fails to store what really happened, and how it can be misused for a sinister purpose. The fundamental

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DeepSec 2018 Talk: Mapping and Tracking WiFi Networks / Devices without Being Connected – Caleb Madrigal

Sanna/ October 30, 2018/ Conference

Sure, WiFi hacking has been around for a while, and everyone knows about tools like airmon-ng, Kismet, et al. But what if you just want to view a list of all networks in your area along with all the devices connected to them? Or maybe you want to know who’s hogging all the bandwidth? Or what if you want to know when a certain someone’s cell phone is nearby? Or perhaps you’d like to know if your Airbnb host’s IP Camera is uploading video to the cloud? For all these use-cases, I’ve developed a new tool called “trackerjacker”. In this talk we’ll use this tool to explore some of the surprisingly informative data floating around in radio space, and you’ll come away with a new skill or two adding to your radio hacking skill

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DeepSec 2018 Talk: Drones, the New Threat from the Sky – Dom (D#FU5E) Brack

Sanna/ October 29, 2018/ Conference, Security

I will talk about drones (not military ones). Drone risks and countermeasures. Drones have become an inherent risk not just for critical infrastructure, but also public events (sports, concerts) and privacy. I will speak about the exclusive risk catalogue I have developed for a small highly specialised start-up called DroneGuard. The catalogue contains over 140 detailed drone related risks. From payload of drones (explosives, chemical etc.) to cyber risks like Signal Hacking & Disruption (WiFi, GSM, Bluetooth, RFID, etc.). Since Deepsec is a more technically oriented event I will highlight the risk management frame work, my experience with our personal payload drone and the cyberrisks. This talk will help you if you have to protect critical infrastructure from a physical perspective, or if you have to protect yourself or your company from privacy implications.

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ROOTS Schedule almost ready, mind your DeepSec Training Tickets, DeepINTEL Schedule is coming up

René Pfeiffer/ October 19, 2018/ Administrivia, Conference

The review process for ROOTS has been completed a few days ago. Proper reviews are hard, this is why it took a bit longer. The accepted papers will be in the schedule at the beginning of next week for we need the redacted abstracts of all presentations. The research topics are worth it, so make sure to check the schedule next week. For all of you looking for in-depth knowledge and hands-on training – please book tickets for our trainings as soon as possible! This is not meant to rush you. We just want to make sure that you get the training you want. Booking last minute is a sure way of making it hard to plan ahead. Furthermore the first courses are filling up. You might not get a seat if you wait

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DeepSec 2018 Talk: Security Response Survival Skills – Benjamin Ridgway

Sanna/ October 17, 2018/ Conference, Security

Jarred awake by your ringing phone, bloodshot eyes groggily focus on a clock reading 3:00 AM. A weak “Hello?” barely escapes your lips before a colleague frantically relays the happenings of the evening. As the story unfolds, you start to piece together details leading you to one undeniable fact: Something has gone horribly wrong… Despite the many talks addressing the technical mechanisms of security incident response (from the deep forensic know-how to developing world-class tools) the one aspect of IR that has been consistently overlooked is the human element. Not every incident requires forensic tooling or state of the art intrusion detection systems, yet every incident involves coordinated activity of people with differing personalities, outlooks, and emotional backgrounds. Often these people are scared, angry, or otherwise emotionally impaired. Drawing from years of real-word experience,

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Translated RadioFM4 Article: Hype about “Chinese Espionage Chips” stems from the Pentagon

Sanna/ October 16, 2018/ Discussion, High Entropy, Press, Security

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published on the web site of the FM4 radio channel of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. We have translated the text in order to make the content accessible for our English-speaking audience, because the author raises some important questions.] In the FM4 fact check the sensational report by the business portal Bloomberg about manipulated hardware for cloud computing turns out to be almost completely fact-free. On Friday a long-awaited report from the Pentagon was released warning about electronics manufacturing in China. by Erich Moechel for fm4.orf.at In the US, the “Cyber Security Month” October has begun, related news come thick and fast. The documentary presented on Thursday about a Russian espionage attack that failed miserably was spectacular, but had already taken place in April. England, Holland and Canada have waited

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Translated Press Release: Systemic Errors as Vulnerabilities – Backdoors and Trojan Horses

René Pfeiffer/ October 9, 2018/ Conference, Discussion, Press, Security

DeepSec and Privacy Week highlight consequences of backdoors in IT Vienna (pts009/09.10.2018/09:15) – Ever since the first messages were sent, people try to intercept them. Today, our modern communication society writes more small, digital notes than one can read along. Everything is protected with methods of mathematics – encryption is omnipresent on the Internet. The state of security technology is the so-called end-to-end encryption, where only the communication partners have access to the conversation content or messages. Third parties can not read along, regardless of the situation. The introduction of this technology has led to a battle between security researchers, privacy advocates and investigators. Kick down doors with Horses In end-to-end encryption the keys to the messages, as well as the content itself, remain on the terminal devices involved in the conversation. This is

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DeepSec 2018 Talk: A Tour of Office 365, Azure & SharePoint, through the Eyes of a Bug Hunter – Dr.-Ing Ashar Javed

Sanna/ October 5, 2018/ Conference, Security

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) outbreak has started almost twenty years ago and since then it has been infecting web applications at a concerning pace. It is feared that the influx of programs and bug hunters arriving at bug bounty platforms will worsen the situation given more disclosed cases of bug(s) or public citing and viewing. According to #FakeNews Media, the outbreak engulfed One Microsoft Way in Redmond. This is where a contagious tour starts. The tour guide will convoy you through 50 award winning shattered windows in Office 365, Azure and SharePoint. All reported XSS findings spawned great riches and ended up in The Honor Roll or made their way to a simple acknowledgement entry or several CVE-plated thanks. The goal of this walking tour: an intimate look at Microsoft online or cloud services (Office

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DeepSec 2018 Talk: Leveraging Endpoints to Boost Incident Response Capabilities – Francisco Galian, Mauro Silva

Sanna/ October 5, 2018/ Conference, Security

The information technology world is full of terms and acronyms. You got servers, nodes, clients, workstations, mobile devices, lots of stuff talking via the network to even more stuff. And then you got security breaches. How do you detect the latter? Well, you look for things out of the ordinary. Error messages, anomalies in behaviour, activity outside the usual time slots as system is being used, and the like. What’s the best place to look? Answer: The systems directly in touch with all the interactions attackers are interested in – endpoints. Most organisations fail to properly detect or even respond to incidents. A factor that significantly contributes to this fact is the lack of visibility on endpoints. That being said, endpoint logging can be very noisy and most organizations don’t have infrastructure to cope

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DeepSec 2018 Talk: Dissecting The Boot Sector: The Hunt for Ransomware in the Boot Process – Raul Alvarez

Sanna/ October 4, 2018/ Conference, Security

Ransomware is as cyber as it gets these days. It’s all over the news, and it is a lucrative business case. Modern malicious software has been put to work for its masters. It is the platform of deployment for a whole variety of additional code. So why is ransomware not the same as any other malicious software? Raul Alvarez will explain this to you at DeepSec 2018: Ransomware slightly differs in their attack vectors, encryption algorithms, and selection of files to encrypt. A common ransomware technique is to encrypt files and hold it for ransom. Petya ransomware does the infection a bit different from the others. Instead of encrypting files, it encrypts the MFT, Master File Table, which contains the metadata and headers for each file in the system. Another trait of this malware

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DeepSec 2018 Talk: Uncovering Vulnerabilities in Secure Coding Guidelines – Fernando Arnaboldi

Sanna/ October 3, 2018/ Conference, Security

Several government-related and private organizations provide guidance on how to improve the security of existing software as well as best practices for developing new code. These organizations include the Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) Secure Coding Standards, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE), Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Software Assurance Metrics. Fernando’s talk will expose multiple underlying exploitable vulnerabilities in the secure code that follows the recommendations from each of these organizations. Even though these guidelines were created to improve software security, they may also inject side vulnerabilities due to a lack of proper analysis. Within secure code snippets, reviewed by many and considered trustworthy by all, are issues that attackers could exploit to escape secure directories, abuse insecure hashing and encryption practices, or even expose applications

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DeepSec 2018 Talk: Security as a Community Healthcare: Helping Small Non-Profit Organisations Stay Secure – Eva Blum-Dumontet

Sanna/ October 2, 2018/ Conference, Security

This talk will look at the way Privacy International has relied on its experience from working with a network of small NGOs across the Global South to shape its approach to security and develop Thornsec, an automated way to deploy, test, and audit internal and external services for an organisation. Privacy International works with a network of over twenty organisations located in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle-East. Together we research and document threats and abuses to privacy from governments and corporations and advocate for better privacy protection both from a technological and a legal standpoint. Being at the forefront of the fight against surveillance means that the partners of privacy International are sometimes exposed to oppressive political regimes. They experience a wide range of threats from office burglary, physical surveillance by intelligence

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