3108, 2017

DeepINTEL Conference approaches the next generation of IT Security

Sanna/ August 31, 2017/ Conference, Discussion, Security Intelligence

Strategic Information Security: Predicting the Present DeepINTEL Conference presents Approaches to the Next Generation of Security Many products and approaches of information security are trying hard to predict the future. There is always a lot of talk about threats of the future, detection of attacks before they arise or the magic word “pro-active”. But the prediction of the future does not benefit your business if the present is still unknown. When it comes to information security this means: Do you now know enough about your current situation to make the right decisions within the next few hours? The DeepINTEL seminar conference, which takes place on 21st/22nd of September in Vienna, focuses on this strategic question. Analogies distort Perception and Facts Analogies are often used to illustrate connections. Especially in the areas of IT security,

2608, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Malware Analysis: A Machine Learning Approach – Chiheb Chebbi

Sanna/ August 26, 2017/ Conference, Security

Software has a character. It can be beneficial. It can also be malicious. A networked business world and the Internet of connected individuals make life for malicious software, also known as malware, easier. Just like international travel facilitates the spread of diseases and parasites, the networked globe is a big advantage for malware. Researcher can hardly keep up with the numbers of detected viruses, worms, and trojan horses. So why not let machines look for malware on their own? Certainly automation already benefits the hunt for malicious code. Chiheb Chebbi has some ideas that can help. Threats are a growing problem for people and organizations across the globe. With millions of malicious programs in the wild it has become hard to detect zero-day attacks and polymorphic viruses.This is why the need for machine learning-based

2408, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Keynote: Social Science First! – Dr. Jessica Barker

Sanna/ August 24, 2017/ Conference, High Entropy, Security

While the schedule is still preliminary, we have already some confirmations from our speakers. We are happy to announce Dr Jessica Barker as the keynote speaker for DeepSec 2017. Information security has a lot to do with interactions. Despite AI (a.k.a. Assisted Intelligence), „smart“ assistants (a.k.a. paper clips on steroids), and a metric ton of gadgets we still have a lot of contact with human beings. Marketing departments and tech people lost in code often forget this. Jessica will give you something to think about which you can’t discuss with Siri, Alexa, the Google AI, or even HAL 9000. Bruce Schneier popularised the concept in 1999: cyber security is about people, process and technology. Yet almost two decades later, the industry still focuses so much more on technology than the other two dimensions of

1808, 2017

Mythbusting: Anti-Virus Research considered dangerous

Sanna/ August 18, 2017/ High Entropy, Internet, Security Intelligence, Stories

Everyone doing research in information security or doing any work in this field takes some risks. Since most of the „cyber stuff“ is black magic to others not working in this context, there are a lot of problems and severe misunderstandings. The Crypto Wars still haven’t been decided in favour of mathematics. Real people prefer end-to-end encryption over insecure communication all of the time. Proposals of severely damaging information security for all of us by using sanctioned malicious software are still being debated in parliaments. Backdoors, covert or otherwise, are no line of any defence, as many military strategists will readily tell you. Marcus Hutchins was in the news recently, because of claims that he developed a strand of malware tied to attacks on financial institutions. While you can debate all you want about

0308, 2017

Decline of the Scientific Method: New (Austrian) “Trojan” Law without Technical Expertise

Sanna/ August 3, 2017/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

The Crypto Wars are still raging despite everyone relying on secure communication. Everyone means everyone. The good thing is that mathematics still works, even though some people wouldn’t want it to. The latest cryptographic review comes from Amber Rudd, the current UK Home Secretary. She said recently: “Real people often prefer ease of use and a multitude of features to perfect, unbreakable security.” The corollary in turn states that DeepSec conferences aren’t attended by real people. Since we are not yet a purely robot-based event, there is something wrong with this approach to secure communication. The common denominator is simply the lack of technical expertise. There is no surprise there. Ever since the Internet was discovered by the rest of the world (which was in the 1990s, don’t get fooled by web sites who

1303, 2017

DeepINTEL 2017 – Modern Strategies for Information Security

Sanna/ March 13, 2017/ Conference, Security Intelligence, Veranstaltung

Seminar on Digital Defence with Experts. The news is full of reports covering attacks against networked systems and digital components. Every day there is new media coverage about stolen data, compromised accounts, the impact of malicious software, digital second strikes, cyber attacks between countries and new vulnerabilities in computer systems. All that leads to the impression that in the modern digital world we are almost helplessly vulnerable to attacks. Clever entrepreneurs benefit from the general uncertainty and sell countermeasures in the form of security software or other components, which, according to their praise, once installed will kill off every threat automatically. But the media don’t show the whole picture – hardly any report on “hacker attacks” could be called a realistic depiction of real life events. The consequence? It is not possible to build

0911, 2016

DeepSec 2016 Talk: Obfuscated Financial Fraud Android Malware: Detection And Behavior Tracking – Inseung Yang

Sanna/ November 9, 2016/ Conference, Development, Internet, Report, Security

In Korea in particular, hackers have distributed sophisticated and complex financial fraud android malware through various means of distribution, such as SMS phishing, Google play, compromised web servers and home routers (IoT). In some cases, both smartphone and PC users are targeted simultaneously. Inseung Yang and his team collect mobile android malware via an automated analysis system, detect obfuscations and malicious packer apps. In his presentation Inseung Yang will describe trends of malicious android apps and obfuscated mobile malware in Korea. He’ll explain the policy methods for Korean mobile banking and the attack methods used by hackers, f.ex. the stealing of certifications, fake banking apps that require the security numbers issued to users when they open their accounts, Automatic Response Service(ARS) phishing attacks in conjunction with Call Forwarding, and the requesting of the One Time Password(OTP) number. But

0811, 2016

DeepSec 2016 Keynote: Security in my Rear-View Mirror – Marcus J. Ranum

Sanna/ November 8, 2016/ Conference, Discussion, Security, Stories

Everything that’s old is new again, and if you work in security long enough, you’ll see the same ideas re-invented and marketed as the new new thing. Or, you see solutions in search of a problem, dusted off and re-marketed in a new niche. At this year’s DeepSec conference the keynote will be given by Marcus Ranum, who set up the first email server for whitehouse.gov. He will reflect upon over 30 years of IT security and make a few wild guesses for where this all may wind up. Spoiler alert: Security will not be a “solved” problem. Marcus answered a few questions beforehand: Please tell us the Top 5 facts about your talk. I’ll be talking about how the security market evolves from here. I’ll be talking about the relationship between security and management It’s going to be depressing. I have

0811, 2016

DeepSec 2016 Talk: Systematic Fuzzing and Testing of TLS Libraries – Juraj Somorovsky

Sanna/ November 8, 2016/ Conference, Development, Security

In his talk Juraj Somorovsky presents TLS-Attacker, a novel framework for evaluating the security of TLS libraries. Using a simple interface, TLS-Attacker allows security engineers to create custom TLS message flows and arbitrarily modify TLS message contents in order to test the behavior of their TLS libraries. Based on TLS-Attacker, he and his team first developed a two-stage TLS fuzzing approach. This approach automatically searches for cryptographic failures and boundary violation vulnerabilities. It allowed him to find unusual padding oracle vulnerabilities and overflows/overreads in widely used TLS libraries, including OpenSSL, Botan, and MatrixSSL. Juraj’s findings encouraged the use of comprehensive test suites for the evaluation of TLS libraries, including positive as well as negative tests. He and his team used TLS-Attacker to create such a test suite framework, which finds further problems in TLS libraries. TLS-Attacker is an open source tool, and is currently being deployed for internal

0411, 2016

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!

0311, 2016

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

0311, 2016

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

0311, 2016

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

0311, 2016

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

3110, 2016

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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