About René Pfeiffer

System administrator, lecturer, hacker, security consultant, technical writer and DeepSec organisation team member. Has done some particle physics, too. Prefers encrypted messages for the sake of admiring the mathematical algorithms at work.

0911, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: CSRFT – A Cross Site Request Forgeries Toolkit

René Pfeiffer/ November 9, 2013/ Conference, Security

Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is a real threat to web users and their sessions. To quote from the OWASP web site: „CSRF is an attack which forces an end user to execute unwanted actions on a web application in which he/she is currently authenticated.“ Combined with social engineering this is a very effective attack tool. Believe it or not, web sites prone to CSRF are very common. If your web developers do not know what „unique web form“ means, you will have to deal with CSRFs eventually. Paul Amar is a student of computer science, and at DeepSec 2013 he will present a framework to study and prototype CSRF interaction with web servers. The tool presented is the Cross Site Request Forgeries Toolkit (CSRFT). It has been developed in Python and Node.JS. The

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0811, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Mobile Fail: Cracking Open “Secure” Android Containers

René Pfeiffer/ November 8, 2013/ Conference, Security

Over the last few years the desire to have information at our fingertips whenever and wherever we want has driven us more and more towards mobile devices. The convenience of having our email, files and access codes available to us on our smartphones or tablets has given rise to a new problem… that of securing our sensitive data on an inherently insecure device. The same form factor that makes smart phones the easy choice for remote access to email and services also makes them easy to lose. In response, we’ve begun to move security closer to the data, relying on “secure” container applications to keep our private and company data secure. Mobile apps such as LastPass, Dropbox, Evernote, GOOD for Enterprise, and may others all offer differing degrees of security. In this presentation Chris

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0711, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Future Banking And Financial Attacks

René Pfeiffer/ November 7, 2013/ Conference, Security

Hey, you! Want to know a secret? Your adversaries are after money. Taken the „cyber shoot-outs“ of governments aside, no sophisticated attack happens without economical benefits. Attackers don’t care where the money comes from. However they care for efficiency. They do not compromise web server after web server to hope for some loot which can be turned into profit. Instead they go after the places where people store and move their money. Financial institutions have been battling attacks against their customers and their infrastructure since their services entered the Internet. It’s an arms race, and if you are involved you need to keep up. We are proud to have Konstantinos Karagiannis at DeepSec 2013 talking about the future of banking and financial attacks. Advanced User Enumeration and DDoS Every attack needs a proper target.

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0611, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Risk Assessment For External Vendors

René Pfeiffer/ November 6, 2013/ Conference, Security, Stories

No man is an island. If this is true for every single one of us, then it is also true for companies. Modern enterprises have business to business (B2B) relations. They are at the centre of a network of suppliers and other vendors. Information flows between the players since they need to exchange data. What do you do if you deal with confidential or regulated data which mustn’t flow freely? How do you assess the risks? How do you determine what security measures work best? How do you deal with the situation of not enforcing security because every player runs its own policies? Luciano Ferrari has prepared a presentation for you and talks about his experience. The first issue is physical proximity. Once you are linked with business entities several thousands of miles away

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0511, 2013

No more Early Birds! No Regular! Get your DeepSec 2013 tickets now!

René Pfeiffer/ November 5, 2013/ Administrivia, Conference

If you like to attend DeepSec 2013, here’s your last chance. Space is getting crowded and the ticket sale enters the last minute tariff! For everyone interested in booking tickets for the workshops, now is the time! Don’t wait for others to fill your seat. You have been warned. In case you are still deciding, as always DeepSec will feature 0talks with tricks, code, vulnerabilities not seen before in public. Give yourself a premature Christmas treat, enjoy the conference, and leave for home with a dozen of 1337 presents information-wise. Totally beats the stuff Santa and the elves will bring you weeks later. We are looking forward to see you all at DeepSec 2013!

0511, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Trusted Friend Attack – Guardian Angels Strike

René Pfeiffer/ November 5, 2013/ Conference, Security, Stories

Have you ever forgotten a password? It’s a safe bet to assume a yes. Sometimes we forget things. When it comes to logins there is usually a procedure to restore access and change the forgotten password to a known new one. This Forgot Your Password functionality is built into many applications. The mechanism is to rely on other ways to restore trust. There is a risk that unauthorised persons gain access to an account by exploiting the process. Ashar Javed has explored the password recovery function of 50 popular social networking sites. In his talk at DeepSec 2013 he will present the findings of his survey. The attack vector is called Trusted Friend Attack, because once you forgot your credentials you have to rely on trusted friends to recover them. Apart from automatic systems

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0411, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Auditing Virtual Appliances – An Untapped Source Of 0-days

René Pfeiffer/ November 4, 2013/ Conference, Security

System administrators and information security researcher often have to deal with appliances. Almost every organisation and company has a couple of magical black boxes sitting around. Usually they are connected to the network, and they do important stuff (such as filtering things, checking content, and the like). In the old days testing these appliances for their security record was hard. You had to open it, do a lot of tedious reverse engineering in order to understand how it works, and then conduct your tests to do your analysis. Fortunately the future is here, and so is a new form factor: virtual appliances! At DeepSec 2013 Stefan Viehböck of SEC Consult will talk about the advantages of having a virtual appliance to deconstruct. Virtual appliances aren’t very different from their embedded cousins, judged from the

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0311, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Cracking And Analyzing Apple iCloud Protocols: iCloud Backups, Find My iPhone, Document Storage

René Pfeiffer/ November 3, 2013/ Conference

The „Cloud“ technology is a wonderful construct to hide anything, because the „Cloud“ itself is no technology. Instead it is constructed out of a variety of different protocols, storage systems, applications, virtualisation and more. So „Clouds“ provide a good cover. Ask any fighter pilot. They will also confirm that the „Cloud“ is a great hunting ground. A lot of companies and individuals store their data there. A security flaw, stolen access credentials, compromised servers/clients, or bugs in the implementation can do harm. Information security researchers have long since explored the „Cloud“ infrastructure. The task is difficult for few providers have a fully open infrastructure; some do, some don’t. Plus you don’t know what’s going on between data centres. At DeepSec 2013 Vladimir Katalov will shed some light on the internals of the iCloud. He

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0211, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Hack The Gibson – Exploiting Supercomputers

René Pfeiffer/ November 2, 2013/ Conference

Compromising and controlling a large number of computers is a big advantage for attackers. The best example are the botnets consisting of hundreds, thousands or millions of systems infected by malicious software. These herds of compromised nodes receive commands from Command & Control (C&C) servers. In a sense this is massive parallel computing, but unfortunately it isn’t used for scientific purposes. Instead these nodes send unsolicited e-mails (a.k.a. spam), perform Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, or do other tasks for their masters. The infection process is highly automated. Scripts looks for promising targets, attack them, install the botnet software, and add them to the herd’s network. Great. But what about infecting whole networks of nodes instead of nodes one by one? Modern supercomputers are based on a multi-node architecture. Individual nodes are part

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0111, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Prism Break – The Value Of Online Identities

René Pfeiffer/ November 1, 2013/ Conference, Internet

We all have identities. We use them on a daily basis in our off-line world. Colleagues greet us at work, because they know who we are. Of course our family members know who we are. When it comes to the digital life-style our identity becomes a lot more complex and diverse. Web shops know what we like and suggest products we do not yet have. Social media sites suggest contacts that might match our interest (as do dating web sites). Frequently used search terms are processed to refine the results our favourite search engine presents us. Customisation and targeting is the key. Everything you do and communicate is processed like ore and the Big Data server farms refine your daily trails through the Internet and produce your online identity – which is a good

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3110, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Easy Ways To Bypass Anti-Virus Systems

René Pfeiffer/ October 31, 2013/ Conference, Security, Stories

The Joys of Detecting Malicious Software Malicious software is all around us. It permeates the Internet by riding on data transmissions. Once you communicate, you risk getting in touch with malware (another name for malicious software). This is why every single one of us, be it individual, company or organisation, runs anti-virus software. The idea is to have specialised software detect malware, so all the bad things are kept out of your network and away from your end-points. So much for the theory. In practice any self-respecting attacker can evade anti-virus filters by a variety of means, depending on their skills and resources. Security researchers know about this fact. Stuxnet and Flame were a proof for sceptics (and a failure of the whole anti-virus industry). How can this be? Well, Attila Marosi (GovCERT Hungary)

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3010, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Uncovering your Trails – Privacy issues of Bluetooth Devices

René Pfeiffer/ October 30, 2013/ Conference, Security

Bluetooth has been around for a while. Hackers and security researchers (such as trifinite.org and others) immediately investigated the weaknesses of protocol and implementations – The specifications have evolved, but so has the proliferation of Bluetooth-capable devices. Smartphones, dumb phones, computers, bulletin boards, media players, tablets, game consoles, headsets, and many more support Bluetooth wireless communication. Even though bugs of the past were fixed, the widespread capabilities of devices allow for a lot of creative use by adversaries. At DeepSec 2013 Verónica Valeros and Garcia Sebastian will give you an update about Bluetooth hacking and your exposure to attackers. When we think about our own privacy, we usually think of our private data, passwords, personal stuff, web pages we have accessed or phone calls we have made. Information about our behaviour in real life (where

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2610, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Workshop: Effective IDS/IPS Auditing And Testing With Finux

René Pfeiffer/ October 26, 2013/ Conference, Security, Training

A major part of information security is to deal with intrusions. It doesn’t matter if you have to anticipate them, detect them, or desperately wish to avoid them. They are a part of your infosec life. This is why gentle software developers, security researchers, and vendors have created intrusion detection/preventi0n systems. It’s all there for your benefit. The trouble is that once you buy and deploy and IDS/IPS system, its dashboard looks a lot like the one from the space shuttle or a fighter jet. You can do a lot, you can combine a lot more, and you see all kinds of blinking lights when you turn everything on. That’s probably not what you want. But there is help. Arron ‘Finux’ Finnon of Alba13 Research Labs will conduct a training on effective IDS/IPS auditing

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2510, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Hacking Medical Devices

René Pfeiffer/ October 25, 2013/ Conference, Security

Modern information technology has already entered the field of medical technology. Few hospitals can operate without power and network connectivity. This is why information security has followed the deployment of hardware and software. Next to the infrastructure present there exists a multitude of communication protocols that increase the attack surface. Hospitals and other medical facilities have to address this issue. News of compromised systems are bad for the administration and the patients. Securing systems enters a new dimension once you consider equipment such as medical pumps, diagnostic systems and anaesthesia machines which directly interact with the patient. Tampering with the dosage of the medication can result in very serious consequences, regardless if on purpose or by accident. Dick Cheney had the wireless capabilities of his pacemaker disabled in 2007 for fears of attacks against his

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2310, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Psychology of Security – a Research Programme

René Pfeiffer/ October 23, 2013/ Conference

Have you ever considered the impact of the human mind on information security? Since our brain also deals with information,it should be an integral part of defence. Let’s take a look at psychology:  At DeepSec 2013 Stefan Schumacher will give you an introduction into the psychology of security and why we need to improve scientific research in this particular field. Most research about security is done in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematics and is about technology, algorithms and computability. However, all security issues can be traced back to human behaviour. Be it Social Engineering, the choice of weak passwords, users leaving the password on a note-it attached to the TFT, admins using MD5 as a password hash or developers ignoring testing regulations. Humans are making decisions, not computers. Therefore, security is defined by

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