2006, 2017

BSidesLondon 2017 – Sharing is indeed Caring

René Pfeiffer/ June 20, 2017/ Discussion, High Entropy

When airport security meets information security it’s usually BSidesLondon time. It was a great experience. And since DeepSec sponsors the Rookie Track we had a very tough decision to make. It’s really hard to pick a winner. A lot of presentations were excellent, and the presenters made the most out of the 15 minutes. The winner is Thaís for her introduction to malware analysis by using satisfiability modulo theories (SMT). If you get the chance of seeing her presenting somewhere, take a seat and listen to her. We also like to recommend Colette‘s presentation titled ‘How the f**k do I get in? One woman’s struggle to break into cyber security!’. Despite the title it was not a rant, it was a clear and concise summary of the state of affairs for women in technology.

1605, 2017

Disinformation Warfare – Attribution makes you Wannacry

René Pfeiffer/ May 16, 2017/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security Intelligence

After the Wannacry malware wreaked havoc in networks, ticket vending machines, companies, and hospitals the clean-up has begun. This also means that the blame game has started. The first round of blame was distributed between Microsoft and the alleged inspiration for the code. The stance on vulnerabilities of security researchers is quite clear. Weaknesses in software, hardware, protocols, or design needs to be documented and published. This is the only way to address the problem and to give the defenders a chance to react. The discussion about how to deal with the process is ongoing and will most likely never come to a conclusion. What about the source of the attack? Attribution is hard. Knowing who attacked has become increasingly difficult in the analogue world. Take any of the conflicts around the world and

2701, 2017

Putting the Science into Security – Infosec with Style

René Pfeiffer/ January 27, 2017/ Discussion, Security

The world of information security is full of publications. It’s like being in a maze of twisted little documents, all of them alike. Sometimes these works of art lack structure, deep analysis, or simply reproducibility. Others are perfectly researched, contain (a defence of) arguments, proofs of concept, and solid code or documentation to make a point. Information security is a mixture of different disciplines such as mathematics, physics, computer science, psychology, sociology, linguistics, or history. It’s not about computers and networks alone. There is interaction between components. Protocols are involved. Even the simple act of logging in and staying in an active session requires in some parts to talk to each other. And then there are rituals. Scepticism is widespread in information security. Questioning your environment is the way to go, but you need to

2601, 2017

The Sound of „Cyber“ of Zero Days in the Wild – don’t forget the Facts

René Pfeiffer/ January 26, 2017/ Discussion, High Entropy

The information security world is full of buzzwords. This fact is partly due to the relationship with information technology. No trend goes without the right amount of acronyms and leetspeaktechnobabble. For many decades this was not a problem. A while ago the Internet entered mainstream. Everyone is online. The digital world is highly connected. Terms such as cyber, exploit, (D)DoS, or encryption are used freely in news items. Unfortunately they get mixed up with words from earlier decades leading to cyber war(fare), crypto ransom(ware), dual use, or digital assets. Some phrases are here to stay. So let’s talk about the infamous cyber again. In case you have not seen Zero Days by Alex Gibney, then go and watch it. It is a comprehensive documentary about the Stuxnet malware and elements of modern warfare (i.e.

2101, 2017

Putting the Context into the Crypto of Secure Messengers

René Pfeiffer/ January 21, 2017/ Communication, Discussion, Internet

Every once in a while the world of encrypted/secure/authenticated messaging hits the wall of usability. In the case for email Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an ancient piece of software. These days we have modern tools such as GnuPG, but the concept of creating keys, verifying identities (i.e. determining who is to trust), synchronising trust/keys with communication partners, and handling the software in case something goes wrong is quite a challenge. Plus things might change. People revoke their keys, devices get lost, data gets deleted, people create new keys or even (digital) identities, or do lots of things that is either anticipated by the software developers or not. Communication is not static. There are moving parts involved, especially the communication partners might move a lot. So crypto is hard, we know this. Discussing secure

3011, 2016

Scanning for TR-069 is neither Cyber nor War

René Pfeiffer/ November 30, 2016/ Discussion, High Entropy, Internet

The Deutsche Telekom was in the news. The reason was a major malfunction of routers at the end of the last mile. Or something like that. As always theories and wild assumptions are the first wave. Apparently a modified Mirai botnet tried to gain access to routers in order to install malicious software. The attacks lasted from Sunday to Monday and affected over 900,000 customers. These routers often are the first point of contact when it comes to a leased line. Firewalls and other security equipment usually comes after the first contact with the router. There are even management ports available, provided the ISP has no filters in place. The TR-069 (Technical Report 069) specification is one management interface, and it has its security risks. Now that the dust has settled the Deutsche Telekom

1711, 2016

Disclosures, Jenkins, Conferences, and the Joys of 0Days

René Pfeiffer/ November 17, 2016/ Conference, Discussion, High Entropy

DeepSec 2016 was great. We have slightly recovered and deal with the aftermath in terms of administrivia. As announced on Twitter, we would like to publish a few thoughts on the remote code execution issue found by Matthias Kaiser. He mentioned the possibility in this presentation titled Java Deserialization Vulnerabilities – The Forgotten Bug Class. First let’s explain some things about how DeepSec runs the Call for Papers, the submissions, and the conference. During the Call for Papers process our speakers send us title, abstract, and mostly an in-depth description of the presentation’s content. This means that we usually know what’s going to happen, except for the things that are actually said and shown during the presentation slot. Since we do not offer any live video streams and publish all presentation slides after we

1011, 2016

DeepSec 2016 – expect 48 Hours of Failures and Fixes in Information Security

René Pfeiffer/ November 10, 2016/ Conference, Discussion

The conference part of DeepSec 2016 has officially started. During the workshops we already discussed a lot of challenges (to phrase it lightly) for infrastructure and all kinds of software alike. The Internet of Things (IoT) has only delivered major flaws and gigantic Distributed Denial of Service attacks so far. There is even a worm for LEDs these days. And we haven started the conference preparations yet. So we have plenty of reasons to talk about what went wrong, what will go wrong, and what we can do about it. The world of information security is not always about good news. Something has to break, before it can be repaired – usually. Systems administrators know this, for some it’s their daily routine. Nevertheless we hope everyone at DeepSec gets some new insights, fresh ideas,

0911, 2016

Screening of “A Good American” in Vienna with Bill Binney

René Pfeiffer/ November 9, 2016/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security Intelligence

There will be a screening of the documentary A Good American in Vienna tomorrow. We highly recommend watching this film, even if you are not directly connected to information security. Threat intelligence has far-reaching consequences, and in the case of the world’s biggest intelligence agency it also affects you. A Good American will be shown at 1000, Village Cinema Wien Mitte, and at 1600, Audimax of the Technische Universität Wien (you need to send an email with a RSVP to attend). All of this takes place in the course of a lecture about the topic. Markus Huber and Martin Schmiedecker have kindly organised everything. Bill Binney will be present, too. So you can directly talk to him and ask him questions. We highly recommend not to miss this opportunity.

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

0311, 2016

IT-SeCX 2016: Talk about Relationship between Software Development and IT Security

René Pfeiffer/ November 3, 2016/ Discussion, Veranstaltung

The IT-SeCX 2016 event takes place on 4 November at the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences LLC. It’s a night of security talks, held by various speakers from the industry, academic world, and other institutions. We will give a presentation exploring the relationship between the fine art of software development and the dark art of information security. We all know about bugs, glitches, error conditions, and flat failures of software design. There are links between the development cycle and the work of information security experts (or sysadmins who always have to deal with things that break). If you deal with any of these professions mentioned, you should drop by and attend the talk. IT-Security Community Exchange 2016, 4 November 2016, at 1915 – Wechselwirkungen zwischen Softwareentwicklung und IT Security FH St. Pölten Matthias

1410, 2016

DeepSec 2016 Talk: The Perfect Door and The Ideal Padlock – Deviant Ollam

Sanna/ October 14, 2016/ Conference, Discussion, Security

You have spent lots of money on a high-grade pick-resistant lock for your door. Your vendor has assured you how it will resist attack and how difficult it would be for someone to copy your key. Maybe they’re right. But… the bulk of attacks that both penetration testers and also criminals attempt against doors have little or nothing to do with the lock itself! Deviant Ollams talk will be a hard-hitting exploration (full of photo and video examples) of the ways in which your doors and padlocks – the most fundamental part of your physical security – can possibly be thwarted by someone attempting illicit entry. The scary problems will be immediately followed by simple solutions that are instantly implementable and usually very within-budget. You, too, can have a near-perfect door and acquire ideal

1009, 2016

Firmware Threats – House of Keys

René Pfeiffer/ September 10, 2016/ Discussion, Security

SEC Consult, our long-term supporter, has updated a report on the use of encryption keys in firmware. These hardcoded cryptographic secrets pose a serious threat to information security. The report features 50 different vendors and has some interesting statistics. The results were coordinated with CERT/CC in order to inform the vendors about the problem. The highlights of the research includes: 40% increase in devices on the web using known private keys for HTTPS server certificates 331 certificates and 553 individual private keys (accessible via Github) some crypto material is used by 500,000 and 280,000 devices on the web as of now The recommendations are crystal clear: Make sure that each device uses random and unique cryptographic material. If operating systems can change account passphrases after initialisation, so can your device. Take care of management

3108, 2016

Information Warfare: “Breaking News” considered harmful

René Pfeiffer/ August 31, 2016/ Discussion, High Entropy

Eight years ago the stocks of UAL took a dive. Apparently a six year old news article resurfaced via Google. Googlebot, which is used to index news sites, confused one of the most popular web articles of The Sun-Sentinel with breaking news. The story contained the words United Airlines Files for Bankruptcy. Unfortunately a software error turned the date of the original story from 10 December 2002 to 6 September 2008. And so this little piece of misinformation due to the time travel caused a lot of havoc with UAL’s stock price. A little misunderstanding. Fortunately it was not a cyber attack, because the word was used rarely back then. Breaking news can break things, hence the name. It happens with data leaks, password leaks/breaches (depending on which side you are), incomplete reports, social

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