DeepSec2016 Talk: Smart Sheriff, Dumb Idea: The Wild West of Government Assisted Parenting – Abraham Aranguren & Fabian Fäßler

Sanna/ November 4, 2016/ Conference, Legal, Security, Stories

Would you want to let your kids discover the darker corners of the Internet without protection? Wouldn’t it be handy to know what they do online, to be alerted when they search for dangerous keywords and to be able to control what websites they can visit and even when they play games? Worry no longer, the South Korean government got you covered. Simply install the “Smart Sheriff” app on your and your kids’ phones. Smart Sheriff is the first parental-control mobile app that has been made a legally required, obligatory install in an entire country! Yay, monitoring! Well, something shady yet mandatory like this cannot come about without an external pentest. And even better, one that wasn’t solicited by the maintainer but initiated by the OTF and CitizenLab and executed by the Cure53 team!

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DeepSec 2016: Social Engineering remains the most dangerous Threat to Companies – DeepSec offers a Workshop on the Defence of social Manipulation as part of IT

Sanna/ November 3, 2016/ Conference, Press, Schedule, Training

If you follow the news on information security, you see superlative after superlative. Millions of passwords were stolen. Hundreds of thousands of cameras suddenly became tools for blackmail. Countless data got copied unauthorized. Often, after a few paragraphs, your read about technical solutions that should put a stop to these burglaries. Therefore one forgets that nowadays hermetically locked doors can be easily opened just by a telephone call or an e-mail message. According to a publication of the British Federation of Small Businesses, almost 50% of attacks are social engineering attacks, which means attacks through social manipulation.Thus, investments in technical defense measures remain completely ineffective. Mere security awareness does not help anymore In the past approaches to defend against attacks on the weak spot human being have focused on awareness trainings. But in our

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DeepSec2016 Talk: Of Mice and Keyboards: On the Security of Modern Wireless Desktop Sets – Gerhard Klostermeier

Sanna/ November 3, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security

Wireless desktop sets have become more popular and more widespread in the last couple of years. From an attacker’s perspective, these radio-based devices represent an attractive target both allowing to take control of a computer system and to gain knowledge of sensitive data like passwords. Wireless transmissions offer attackers a big advantage: you don’t have to be around to attack something or someone. Plus the victims often don’t know what it happening. At DeepSec 2016 Gerhard Klostermeier will present the results of research on the matter of wireless mouse/keyboard attacks. Furthermore you he will demonstrate ways in which modern wireless desktop sets of several manufacturers can be attacked by practically exploiting different security vulnerabilities. We recommend this talk to anyone still using old-fashioned input devices for creating content. Gerhard is interested in all things

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DeepSec 2016 Talk: Assessing the Hacking Capabilities of Institutional and Non-institutional Players – Stefan Schumacher

Sanna/ November 3, 2016/ Conference, Security, Security Intelligence

Cyberwar, Cyberterror and Cybercrime have been buzzwords for several years now. Given the correct context, using cyber has merits. However Cyber-Headlines are full with Cyber-Reports about Cyber-Incidents, Cyber-Hacking and Cyber-Cyber in general. However, that whole discussion does not only suffer from sensationalism of journalists and bloggers, there are also some fundamental problems, says Stefan Schumacher. We are still lacking useful definitions for modern IT security threats and we still have to think about the assessment of capabilities in the IT field.Besides institutional actors like states and their military and intelligence community we also have to assess the capabilities of non-institutional actors like terrorist groups or organised crime. Unlike the assessment of classic military strength (eg. fighting power or Kriegsstärkenachweise), assessing the capabilities and powers of actors in the IT field is much more complicated

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DeepSec 2016 Talk: Why Companies Must Control Their Data in the Era of IoT – and How To – Kurt Kammerer

Sanna/ November 3, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Interview, Security

In his talk Kurt Kammerer addresses any company’s dilemma: The need for data sharing in the era of IoT while at the same time controlling access and ownership. In order to succeed in business, it is imperative to make data available to customers, suppliers and business partners. However, the explosion and the proclaimed free flow of data can turn against an organisation and threaten its very existence, if not professionally controlled. We asked Mr. Kammerer a few questions beforehand. Please tell us the top 5 facts about your talk. The relevance of “data” increases by the day and “data” is imperative to compete. Therefore, it is an asset companies must control. Data ownership is increasingly being challenged in the era of cloud/IoT (who created the data and who actually owns it?) Not exercising enough control

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DeepSec 2016 Talk: Insider Threat: Profiling, Intent and Motivations of White Collar Offenders – Ulrike Hugl

Sanna/ October 31, 2016/ Conference, Security

Malicious insider threat is not only a security- or technical-oriented issue, mainly it’s a behavioural one, says Prof. Ulrike Hugl. Insiders are so-called ‘trusted’ or privileged employees, very often with legitimate access to the organization’s systems, and they are hard to catch. Furthermore, it is difficult to find appropriate predictive factors and prevention and detection measures. In fact, based on new technical developments and opportunities, data theft has become much easier these days: Mobile trends like BYOD, the increased ability to work from home, access to the organization’s systems when on the road, cloud services with related security vulnerabilities for example, as well as more and more malware opportunities have increased the potential of related attacks. Other main security obstacles and trigger factors inside and outside an organization may be, to name a few, a

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DeepSec2016 Workshop: IoT Hacking: Linux Embedded, Bluetooth Smart, KNX Home Automation – Slawomir Jasek

Sanna/ October 31, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security

“The ongoing rise of the machines leaves no doubt – we have to face them”, says Slawomir Jasek, and adds: “It is hard not to agree with one of the greatest military strategists Sun Tzu: “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles”. Right now it is about time to fill that gap in your skills by confronting the devices, learning their flaws, catalog ways to defeat them, and – above all – develop means to reduce the risk and regain control.” Slawomir’s training consists of several modules: 1. Linux embedded Linux embedded is probably the most popular OS, especially in SOHO equipment like routers, cameras, smart plugs, alarms, bulbs, home automation, and even wireless rifles. Based on several examples, you will learn

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DeepSec2016 Talk: Abusing LUKS to Hack the System – Interview with Ismael Ripoll & Hector Marco

Sanna/ October 21, 2016/ Conference, Interview

Please tell us the top facts about your talk. It discloses a vulnerability that affects Linux systems encrypted with Luks, and how it can be abused to escalate privileges: CVE-2016-4484 Includes a sketch of the boot sequence with a deeper insight into the initrd Linux process A brief discussion about why complexity is the enemy of security: The whole system needs to be observed. A practical real working demo attack will be presented. How did you come up with it? Was there something like an initial spark that set your mind on creating this talk? Well, this is a difficult question. Basically, it is an attitude in front of the computer. When we start a research line, we don’t stop digging until the ultimate doubt and question is addressed. After the GRUB 28 bug, we keep reviewing the rest of

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DeepSec 2016 Talk: I Thought I Saw a |-|4><0.- Thomas Fischer

Sanna/ October 21, 2016/ Conference, Development, Security

Threat Hunting refers to proactively and iteratively searching through networks or datasets to detect and respond to advanced threats that evade traditional rule- or signature-based security solutions. “But what does this really mean?”, asks Thomas Fischer. “And what real impact does it have on the security team? Can we use threat hunting to provide a process to better detect and understand when you’ve been breached?” More and more security data is being produced and usually aggregated into a central location or body to hopefully take quick and informed decisions on attacks or compromises amongst a mountain of data. When you start to include data gathered from your endpoints the amount of data starts to explode exponentially. This level of data provides us with a large amount of visibility. But is having visibility enough? What

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DeepSec2016: 0patch – Self-healing Security Updates. DeepSec and ACROS Security Introduce a Platform for Micropatches

Sanna/ October 20, 2016/ Conference, Development, Schedule, Security, Training

As soon as a security gap in an computer application is made public the anxious wait begins. Whether it is software for your own network, online applications or apps for your mobile devices, as a user you will quickly become aware of your own vulnerability. The nervousness increases. When will the vendor publish the security update? In the meanwhile is there anything you can do to reduce the risks? Alternatively, how long can you manage without this certain software? To provide answers to these questions is the central point of security management. Some vendors have fixed dates for security updates. However, occasionally unscheduled updates take place, while some vendors wait quite a few years before they release another update. And this is only true for applications that are still in production or come with a support

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DeepSec2016 Talk: AMSI: How Windows 10 Plans To Stop Script Based Attacks and How Good It Does That – Nikhil Mittal

Sanna/ October 20, 2016/ Conference, Development, Security

In his talk Nikhil Mittal will focus on AMSI: In Windows 10, Microsoft introduced the AntiMalware Scan Interface (AMSI), which is designed to target script based attacks and malware. Script based attacks have been lethal for enterprise security and with the advent of PowerShell, such attacks have become increasingly common. AMSI targets malicious scripts written in PowerShell, VBScript, JScript, etc. It drastically improves detection and the blocking rate of malicious scripts. When a piece of code is submitted for execution to the scripting host, AMSI steps in and scans the code for malicious content. What makes AMSI effective is that no matter how obfuscated the code is, it needs to be presented to the script host in clear text and unobfuscated. Moreover, since the code is submitted to AMSI just before execution, it doesn’t

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DeepSec 2016 Talk: TLS 1.3 – Lessons Learned from Implementing and Deploying the Latest Protocol – Nick Sullivan

Sanna/ October 19, 2016/ Conference, Development, Internet, Security

Version 1.3 is the latest Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, which allows client/server applications to communicate over the Internet in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. TLS is the S in HTTPS. TLS was last changed in 2008, and a lot of progress has been made since then. CloudFlare will be the first company to deploy this on a wide scale. In his talk Nick Sullivan will be able to discuss the insights his team gained while implementing and deploying this protocol. Nick will explore differences between TLS 1.3 and previous versions in detail, focusing on the security improvements of the new protocol as well as some of the challenges his team faces around securely implementing new features such as 0-RTT resumption. He’ll also demonstrate an attack on the way some

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DeepSec 2016 Talk: Where Should I Host My Malware? – Attila Marosi

Sanna/ October 18, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security

The growth of IoT devices continues to raise questions about their role and impact on cybersecurity. Badly or poorly configured devices are easy targets for malicious actors. At first glance launching an attack against IoT devices seems challenging due to the diversity of their ecosystem, but actually an attack is very easy to execute. In his talk Attila Marosi will explain why the IoT is a cybercriminal’s paradise: “In our SophosLabs research, we focused on a very generic attack scenario that would affect almost any device using FTP services – Your router or network-attached storage (NAS) for example. These attacks typically exploit the level of trust people place on any content hosted on internal network shares. A successful attacker would abuse or compromise a default FTP guest account, place a “Trojan horse” in a visible file share and rely on human curiosity

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DeepSec 2016 Talk: Unveiling Patchwork – Gadi Evron

Sanna/ October 17, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security Intelligence

Nation state attacks are very popular – in the news and in reality. High gain, low profile, maximum damage. From the point of information security it is always very insightful to study the anatomy of these attacks once they are known. Looking at ways components fail, methods adversaries use for their own advantage, and thinking of possible remedies strengthens your defence. At DeepSec 2016 Gadi Evron will share knowledge about an operation that went after government systems all around the world. Patchwork is a highly successful nation state targeted attack operation, which infected approximately 2,500 high-value targets such as governments, worldwide. It is the first targeted threat captured using a commercial cyber deception platform. In his talk Gadi Evron will share how deception was used to catch the threat actor, and later on secure their second stage malware

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DeepSec 2016 Talk: Exploiting First Hop Protocols to Own the Network – Paul Coggin

Sanna/ October 16, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security

At DeepSec 2016 Paul Coggin will focus on how to exploit a network by targeting the various first hop protocols. Attack vectors for crafting custom packets as well as a few of the available tools for layer 2 network protocols exploitation will be covered. Paul will provide you with defensive mitigations and recommendations for adding secure visualization and instrumentation for layer 2. He kindly answered a few questions beforehand: Please tell us the top facts about your talk. The presentation focuses on commonly overlooked layer 2 security issues. In many cases penetration testers and auditors focus on the upper layers of the OSI model and miss the low hanging fruit at layer 2. The talk will cover both offensive exploit techniques and methods for securing networks. Multicast switching and routing protocols, router redundancy protocols, IPv6 and other

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