2404, 2023

#DeepSec Press Release: IT Security Has A Deficit In Defence

Sanna/ April 24, 2023/ Press, Security

[DeepSec traditionally leans more on the defence side of things. So we published this article.] Many people are now aware of the importance of information security, but how to operate secure systems is often not obvious. The reason lies in the deficit of real defence measures. This may sound paradoxical, but many products on the market deal with the activities after a successful attack. The prevention of attacks is mostly ignored. This year’s DeepSec conference therefore wants to provide some tuition in digital defence measures. Fire extinguishers instead of fire protection A simple scenario will serve as an illustration. Imagine that a company accumulates flammable material in its offices for historical reasons. Grown procedures lead to the fact that more and more hazardous materials are distributed throughout the premises. There is plenty of space.

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0303, 2023

Translated Article: EU-wide Surveillance Network Already in Set-up Phase

Sanna/ March 3, 2023/ Stories

EU-weites Überwachungsnetz schon in der Aufbauphase by Erich Moechel for fm4.ORF.at A Commission fund for this is ready and the first two pilot projects will be allocated to two interior ministries before the summer. The software tools for data mining were developed in funded Commission AI research projects. Series part three. The forthcoming regulation against child abuse on the net has a far greater scope than has been assumed so far. Foreseen is a new EU authority in The Hague with about 100 employees called “EU Centre”. It is to set up and operate a new data network with nodes in all member states. This process has already begun, because the Commission has set up a fund for network construction in the member states, although there is currently no legal basis for it. In

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0203, 2023

Press Release: A 40-year Step Backwards for Secure Communication

Sanna/ March 2, 2023/ Press

The UK government’s Online Safety Bill wants to set back the state-of-the art for secure communication 40 years backwards. The proposal includes compulsory backdoors for communication platforms and will lead modern encryption technologies into complete futility. If implemented, the secure messenger Signal will withdraw from the British market. The law is a serious threat to businesses and represents an unprotected gateway for espionage. “Crypto Wars” – the fight against security Secure communication has been under constant legal attack since it became widespread. The secure exchange of messages is perceived as a threat because, technically, no monitoring of correspondence can be implemented. The encryption software Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) was created in 1991 by Phil Zimmermann. After the code was published on the internet and spread internationally in the following years, Zimmermann became the target

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1602, 2023

Press Release: IT World in AI Mania

Sanna/ February 16, 2023/ Development, Legal, Press, Security

Artificial intelligence (AI) is on everyone’s lips, but its results fall short of all expectations. Wouldn’t it be nice if computers could effortlessly give meaningful results to all kinds of questions from all kinds of unstructured data collections? Periodically, algorithms that do incredible things are celebrated in information technology. At the moment, it is the turn of artificial intelligence algorithms. Search engines are retrofitting AI. But the supposed product is far from real cognitive performance. Many open questions remain. History of Algorithms The first experts to work with algorithms to emulate human thought processes came from the fields of mathematics and philosophy. They wanted to formalise analytical thinking from the subfield of logic and describe it in models. In the 1950s, the algorithms were implemented on the computers that were emerging at the time.

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2112, 2022

Translated Article: Russia’s Satellite Spy Station in Vienna with Technology from NATO Suppliers.

Sanna/ December 21, 2022/ Communication, Stories

Russlands Sat-Spionagestation in Wien mit Technik von NATO-Lieferanten by Erich Moechel for fm4.ORF.at [Nobody can hide from geopolitics, neither hacker, nor governments, or even satellite antennas. Erich is a passionate ham radio operator and investigative journalist. He inspected OSINT sources and wrote a summary about an installation in Vienna run by the Russian Federation. If you are interested in wireless technology, then this article is for you.] All components of the four large dishes come either from the Canadian company Norsat or from Swedish Microwave (SMW). Norsat is a contracting company of NATO and the Pentagon, SMW likewise primarily supplies military. An analysis of high-resolution photos of the antennas on the roof of Russia’s UN embassy in Vienna’s 22nd district has revealed something astonishing. Most of the receiver modules of the most powerful antennas come

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2012, 2022

Translated Article: US ‘Chat Control’ Now with Exception for E2E Encryption

Sanna/ December 20, 2022/ Stories

US-„Chatkontrolle“ nun mit Ausnahme für E2E-Verschlüsselung by Erich Moechel for fm4.ORF.at [This is the second summary article describing the concerted attack on IT security around the globe. Erich has researched the current state of affairs. It is of interest that the US lawmakers have understood the importance of ent-to-end-encryption, while their UK and EU counterparts have not.] The US regulation on child protection provides for a right of refusal in search warrants for E2E providers, as they do not have access to the requested data. The regulations planned in the EU and UK, on the other hand, require WhatsApp and others to install backdoors. In the British House of Commons, the surveillance bill “Online Safety Bill” is getting out of hand. After incorporating the amendments from the beginning of the week, the British “chat control” with

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1912, 2022

Translated Article: Regulation on “Chat Control” Launched in EU Parliament

Sanna/ December 19, 2022/ Security, Stories

Verordnung zur „Chat-Kontrolle“ im EU-Parlament gestartet by Erich Moechel for fm4.ORF.at [We have translated the article from Erich’s column, because end-to-end encryption is a fundamental part of IT security. Erich has researched a lot regarding the concerted attack on secure communication. He provides important background information to understand why the attack on encryption is presented in different countries at the same time.] At the same time as the EU regulation, the British “Online Safety Bill” and a US law on the safety of children online are on their way through the parliaments. A comparison shows astonishing parallels in terms of content and method. On Wednesday, work on the regulation on warrantless searches of social network users’ smartphones and PCs started in the EU Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE). In this first meeting, the timetable for this

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1111, 2022

DeepSec 2022 Talk: Industrial-Security vs. IT-Security – What Can We Learn From Each Other? – Michael Walser

Sanna/ November 11, 2022/ Conference

In the age of digitalisation, classic IT and industry are moving ever closer together. Devices are being networked and more and more smart devices are flooding the production hall. However, IT security is often disregarded in the process. Every device in the network can be compromised and requires an adapted strategy. Experience from 30 years of IT security gives the industry an orientation – but does not solve its problems. The challenges are often completely different, and the situation often requires completely different approaches. We try an approach and show experiences from the work with our customers and partners and give food for thought on what an IT security strategy for industry can look like and what both worlds can learn from each other. We asked Michael Walser a few more questions about his

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1011, 2022

DeepSec 2022 Talk: Cyber Maturity Doesn’t Just Happen. True Tales Of A Cyber Maturity Concept – Uğur Can Atasoy

Sanna/ November 10, 2022/ Conference

Having a proper(!) security posture is more challenging than ever. Implementing the bare necessities for usability and security is scalable (literally), but the reality is always full of surprises. Dozens of assets, services, tools, requirements, workforce, risks and threats. How to keep the balance between usability, security and reputation while being honest with yourself? Many enterprises suffer from “keywords” and “trends” and have to pretend to be “proactive” by implementing the “latest” trends and approaches instead of solving the problems on “bits” that need “change”. When you look at enterprise-level security incidents, you can quickly notice that they have the latest tools, technologies and services, implemented the “Zero Trust Security” model, achieved base standards and compliance requirements, and hired the experts. Literally, they are prepared for almost all possible risks and threats, but they

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1011, 2022

DeepSec 2022 Talk: Communicative Incident Response – Hauke Gierow, Paul Gärtner

Sanna/ November 10, 2022/ Conference

Crisis communication is probably the hardest part of communication to get right – and the most important. Combine this with a successful attack attempt on a company’s network that completely shatters operation and you have all the ingredients for disaster. But especially in situations like this, it is imperative to stay calm and remain in contact with the outside world. In this talk, we will relay best practices for crisis communication and how they specifically apply to IR situations. We will show the best and the worst attempts to manage a crisis – and show that situations like this can reposition a company and build trust rather than loosing it. We asked Hauke Gierow and Paul Gärtner a few more questions about their talk. Please tell us the top 5 facts about your talk.

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0211, 2022

DeepSec Press Release: Analysis IT Security – DeepSec conference offers rich education for digital defence

Sanna/ November 2, 2022/ Conference, Press

Defending one’s digital infrastructure has never been more important. The fundamental problem of many defensive structures is the lack of an overview. Penetration tests help little if you don’t know exactly how your systems are connected to the rest of the world. This year’s DeepSec security conference offers rich support and content to sustainably increase one’s own security. On board is our supporter, the company NVISO, focusing specially on companies and organisations in critical areas. Security landscape requires collaboration Modern information technology is based on complex and extensive architectures. How do you determine the state of your own security? Many companies are not familiar with the different approaches of testing methods. The term “penetration test” has already entered the minds of many, but what findings and facts are obtained during such tests is often

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2810, 2022

DeepSec 2022 Talk: Fighting Fire with Fire – Detecting DNS-Tunneling with DNS – Artsiom Holub

Sanna/ October 28, 2022/ Conference

DNS tunneling used as a covert-channel method to bypass security policies has ballooned in the landscape of Ransomware attacks in recent years. This can be attributed to CobaltStrike post exploitation tools becoming modus operandi of cybercrime syndicates operating with ransomware. Most of the detections rely on packet inspection, which suffers from scalability performance when an extensive set of sockets should be monitored in real time. Aggregation-based monitoring avoids packet inspection, but has two drawbacks: silent intruders (generating small statistical variations of legitimate traffic) and quick statistical fingerprints generation (to obtain a detection tool really applicable in the field). Our approach uses statistical analysis coupled with behavioral characteristics applied directly in the DNS resolver. This presentation will cover examples of the malicious tools used by threat actors and detections designed to protect from such tools.

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2610, 2022

DeepSec 2022 Talk: Attacking Developer Environment Through Drive-by Localhost Attacks – Joseph Beeton

Sanna/ October 26, 2022/ Conference

There is a widespread belief that services that are only bound to localhost are not accessible from the outside world. Developers for convenience sake will run services they are developing configured in a less secure way compared to how they would (hopefully!) do in higher environments. By compromising websites developers use, just injecting JS into adverts served on those sites or just a phishing attack that gets the developer to open a web browser on a compromised page, it is possible to reach out via non pre-flighted http requests to those services bound to localhost, by exploiting common misconfigurations in Spring, or known vulnerabilities found by myself and others. I’ll demonstrate during the talk, it is possible to generate a RCE on the developer’s machine or other services on their private network. As developers

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2510, 2022

Reminder for your Training @DeepSec 2022: Bypassing Content Security Policy via ajax.googleapis.com – Dawid Czagan

Sanna/ October 25, 2022/ Training

Content Security Policy (CSP) is the number one defensive technology in modern web applications. Many developers add ajax.googleapis.com to CSP definitions, because they use libraries from this very popular CDN in their web applications. The problem is that it completely bypasses the CSP and obviously you don’t want that to happen. In a free video Dawid Czagan (DeepSec instructor) will show you step by step how your CSP can be bypassed by hackers. Watch this free video and feel the taste of Dawid Czagan’s training ”Black Belt Pentesting / Bug Hunting Millionaire: Mastering Web Attacks with Full-Stack Exploitation” (DeepSec 2022; 15-16 November; https://deepsec.net/speaker.html#WSLOT564)   Dawid Czagan (@dawidczagan) is an internationally recognized security researcher and trainer. He is listed among the top hackers at HackerOne. Dawid Czagan has found security vulnerabilities in Google, Yahoo, Mozilla, Microsoft, Twitter and other companies.

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2410, 2022

DeepSec 2022 Online-Onsite Training: Hacking JavaScript Desktop Apps: Master the Future of Attack Vector – Abraham Aranguren

Sanna/ October 24, 2022/ Conference

This course is the culmination of years of experience gained via practical penetration testing of JavaScript Desktop applications as well as countless hours spent doing research. We have structured this course around the OWASP Security Testing Guide, it covers the OWASP Top Ten and specific attack vectors against JavaScript Desktop apps. This course provides participants with actionable skills that can be applied immediately from day 1. Please note our courses are 100% hands-on, we do not lecture students with boring bullet points and theories, instead we give you practical challenges and help you solve them, teaching you how to troubleshoot common issues and get the most out of this training. Training then continues after the course through our frequently updated course material, for which you keep lifetime access, as well as unlimited email support.

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