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.

Software Architecture, Code, and Information Security

René Pfeiffer/ April 8, 2021/ Conference

Information security is tightly linked with the code running on platforms and decisions made during the software architecture planning phase. One can trace a lot of results in penetration tests to workarounds caused by inadequate tools, bad design choices, trends in software development, legacy applications, and too optimistic testing strategies. Let’s visit some of the accident sites by example. Implementing the basic principles of information security can be hard. The dreaded undefined behaviour or the lack of graceful failures in error conditions happens frequently. A recent presentation about autonomous systems illustrates what we expected from your code – it must be completely self-reliant. Doing n restarts and halting is not the best way of dealing with unexpected situations. Rejecting dangerous states and input is always an option, but sysadmins frequently need to bash applications

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All your Content are belong to Us – how the Crypto Wars continue

René Pfeiffer/ March 31, 2021/ Discussion, High Entropy, Internet, Legal

Encryption is one of our favourite topics. This blog and our events feature discussions, tools, and content regarding cryptography. The first DeepSec conference in 2007 even had a presentation about a practical attack on GSM’s A5/1 algorithm. Subsequent conferences followed up on this, for example, the state of affairs of mobile network security in 2010. We use encryption and high levels of privacy in our own communication. Certain published documents emphasize the importance of using uncompromised and modern encryption algorithms. In the meantime, users have moved to messengers using TCP/IP on top of the mobile network transmissions. This enables full end-to-end encryption and privacy. The problems are still the same as in the 1990s. Enter the continuation of the Crypto Wars. On 23 March the Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court) Rostock in Germany argued that

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Call for IoT Trainings: Secure Development for embedded Devices

René Pfeiffer/ March 24, 2021/ Discussion, Training

The world is much easier to handle without limits. If you have all your frameworks freely available and have the luxury of running your code with a multi-MB (or -GB) runtime environment, then you are in paradise. The world of embedded devices and the Internet of Things looks different. Saving energy is the prime directive. The power supply might be a battery or the connector pin of another device. Multiple cores are rare, memory is even rarer. If you are acquainted with the container and cloud lifestyle, then embedded systems will be a culture shock. Think kilo instead of mega or giga. Small devices run code, too. So this is where security comes into play. What can you do to design your embedded code to be small and secure? Secure design and coding have

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Secure Operation of IT Systems requires Skills, no Shortcuts

René Pfeiffer/ March 19, 2021/ Discussion, High Entropy

The recent vulnerability in the Microsoft® Exchange server application has sparked many discussions. One of the topics is connected to the skills of IT departments responsible for patching systems in time. How can n weeks or months pass until upgrades are rolled out and in place? Well, the answer is easy. Some upgrades do not work flawlessly. In anticipation of problems during the change, IT departments need a copy of the live system and time to test the updates. This takes time, even if you have the budget to run additional copies of your systems. Furthermore, sometimes upgrades go wrong. Theoretically, these changes should just eliminate security problems and enable the application to work as before. IT departments bitten by the “this should not have happened but it did anyway” situation will hesitate to

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Bug Disclosure Policies and the Eternal Discussion about Security ♨

René Pfeiffer/ March 15, 2021/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

In theory, there is the evolution from bug over to weakness, vulnerability and finally the exploit. Errors in code and application behaviour are interesting for any serious developer. Security researchers also look for bugs and ways to make code do something it wasn’t designed for. In the absence of critical failures in applications, the process of reporting bugs and getting them fixed everything is smooth and less prone to heated discussions (YMMV, some software projects feature persons with very strong opinions). All of this changes when the code can be remotely exploited. Enter the recent CVEs regarding the Microsoft® Exchange server. CVE-2021-26855 is as bad as it sounds. It is a remote code execution with low complexity requiring no user interaction and no privileges. Disclosure of bugs impacting security has a long history. Knowing

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DeepSec 2021 – Call for Papers is open

René Pfeiffer/ March 1, 2021/ Call for Papers, Conference

DeepSec 2021 is looking for your ideas, solutions, incident reports, insights, and expertise. The call for papers is open. You can submit your contribution via our call for papers manager online. If you have questions or want to submit additional material, please use the online form and send an email to us. DeepSec has always presented a mix of attack and defence presentations. The motto for 2021 connects both approaches. Studying how adversaries work, what tools they employ, how they plan their attack, and what they do once they get access is vital to your defence. IT infrastructure has grown over the years. Defence has a lot to take care of. If you have any ideas how to help the defenders, please let us know. Topics covering attacks should always contain some advice on

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Management Console Access – Obscurity by Security and vice versa

René Pfeiffer/ February 28, 2021/ Discussion, Security

Every discussion about security sooner or later connects to the wonderful word obscurity. Mentioning security by obscurity is a guaranteed way of losing sight of the facts. It is vital to actually fix weaknesses and introduce strong separation of systems when implementing security. Furthermore, the leakage of useful information to potential adversaries should be eliminated. That’s the theory. Enter the discussions we have witnessed in real life and in the Internet. A common tactic is to strip information from communication protocols that is not needed for transporting the message. Version numbers, host names, addresses, and other pieces of data are often removed when a server answers requests. Especially web applications send a ton of useful information to clients. You can see the structure of the web space, components used for rendering, server systems involved,

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The Art of testing Code

René Pfeiffer/ February 4, 2021/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

The Twitterverse, various blogs, and some news portals published discussions about a bug in libgcrypt. The code contained a loop which could read past the end of a buffer. The error condition was found by using a test suite. Given the C code base of libgcrypt cases like this can often be found by using the static code analysing features of modern compilers. If you read the ticket concerning the particular overrun bug, then you will notice that it contains more than just the error description. The reason for emotional discussion around bugs are the many ways to find them. Modern compilers contain a lot of helpful tools to audit your code. Even if the compiler lacks auditing/testing features, you can resort to other tools such as Valgrind (which turned 20 years of age

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DeepSec / DeepINTEL 2021 Preparations – Save the Dates! Document your Projects!

René Pfeiffer/ February 2, 2021/ Administrivia

Usually we are radio silent during December and the beginning of January. This is due to some well-deserved rest, infrastructure updates (we run a lot ourselves), content creation (in our own projects), and the general Christmas holidays. The COVID-19 lock-down made it different to tell if there are holidays or not. Every day looks mostly like yesterday. We would like to change this. So please keep the following dates in your mind and in your calendar: DeepSec 2021 Trainings – 16 / 17 November 2021 DeepSec 2021 Conference – 18 / 19 November 2021 (including ROOTS & ACOD) DeepINTEL 2021 Conference – 18 November 2021 The Call for Papers will open soon and will be published here in our blog (along with push messages to Twitter and Xing). If you are interested in getting

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DeepSec 2020 Mission Control – Behind the Scenes

René Pfeiffer/ November 20, 2020/ Administrivia, Conference

The fully virtual DeepSec conference was very different from the usual configuration and setting. While we learned a lot over the years, there is one constant: What’s the difference between hardware and software? Well, hardware can be kicked. There is always one converter, one computer, one network devices, one USB device, or something else that doesn’t quite fit into the ensemble. Then there are the many desktop oddities and multimedia formats. So we had to do some damage control during the first day of streaming (having damage control teams and replacement parts ready is not just for ships). Networking did its own magic by introducing delays between the speaker’s feed and the live stream. Fortunately the stream connections held, and we had no losses in terms of connectivity. Mission control at the office used

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Thanks for attending and contributing to DeepSec 2020!

René Pfeiffer/ November 20, 2020/ Conference

The past four days were quite busy for the DeepSec Organisation Team. We had to prepare the realspace implementation of our mission control in our office. We had to fight some gremlins in hardware and software, but we managed to create the stream feeds. We hope you enjoyed the presentations! The streams were recorded, and we will start with the post-processing. Due to the dual-track – and the ROOTS event – one always has to decide which presentation to watch. In our long-time tradition attendees and speakers will get to watch the videos first (for quality assurance), and then we will release the whole DeepSec 2020 collection. We recommend your favourite lounge, drink, and company for watching the recordings later. A very big thanks go to everyone contributing content, being part of the events,

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Administrivia: New Stream Link for DeepSec 2020 Right Pirouette!

René Pfeiffer/ November 19, 2020/ Conference

The stream link for the DeepSec 2020 Right Pirouette track has changed. Somehow the cloud ate our old link (end event). No recordings were lost, just the link to the streaming platform. We apologies for this change, but there is not much we can investigate. The password is the same. For a complete list: DeepSec 2020 Right Pirouette track – https://vimeo.com/481384818 DeepSec 2020 Left Pirouette track – https://vimeo.com/event/475468 The closing presentation will be after the last presentation in the Right Pirouette (as always when on-site at the conference hotel).

DeepSec Schedule updated, Time-Shift introduced, Theory of General Relativity still valid

René Pfeiffer/ November 18, 2020/ Conference

We have verified the DeepSec schedule and did some changes. The layout looks a bit shifted. The reason is a time-shift between the two DeepSec main tracks Left Pirouette and Right Pirouette (named after the rooms in our long-time conference hotel). Since we have set up our mission control in our office and lack the space to have two session chairs use the stage and the camera feed simultaneously the two tracks need to be time-shifted. The presentations in the Left Pirouette start 20 minutes later than the presentations in the Right Pirouette. We tried hard to avoid this, but the current configuration requires adding this feature to the schedule. The two tracks overlap any way, so if you are interested in either talk, then you have to make up your mind with or

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DeepSec Keynote: DevSecBioLawOps and the current State of Information Security

René Pfeiffer/ November 13, 2020/ Conference

Technology is evolving. This is especially true for computer science and the related information technology branch. When everything is outdated after a couple of months, the wind of change turns into a storm. It also affects the way we work, processes which enable us to get work done, and changes perspectives how we see the world, code, and its applications. Dev, DevOps, and DevSecOps is a good example how these changes look like at the top of the iceberg. Subjectively information security is always a few steps behind the bleeding edge. The word „bleeding“ is a good indication of why this is the case. However, security professionals cannot turn back time and ignore the way the world works. New technology will always get pushed into all areas of our lives until its creators realise

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A Story of Crypto Wars, the Growth on the Internet, and possible future Regulations

René Pfeiffer/ November 9, 2020/ Discussion, High Entropy

The discussion about how to tackle end-to-end encryption (E2EE) and how to reconcile it with surveillance is almost 30 years old. The very first Crypto War was sparked by the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act of 1991 (no, there is no mention of cryptography in it, because it was the first draft of a series of legislative texts dealing with a reform of the US justice system; have a look at the author of the act). In the following years things like strong cryptography, export bans on mathematics, or the creation of Phil Zimmerman’s Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) were a follow-up. Even the proposal of having the Clipper chip present in telecommunication devices and the concept of key escrow was discussed in the wake of the reform. Sometimes laws have to grow with the technology. All

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