1610, 2018

Translated RadioFM4 Article: Hype about “Chinese Espionage Chips” stems from the Pentagon

Sanna/ October 16, 2018/ Discussion, High Entropy, Press, Security

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published on the web site of the FM4 radio channel of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. We have translated the text in order to make the content accessible for our English-speaking audience, because the author raises some important questions.] In the FM4 fact check the sensational report by the business portal Bloomberg about manipulated hardware for cloud computing turns out to be almost completely fact-free. On Friday a long-awaited report from the Pentagon was released warning about electronics manufacturing in China. by Erich Moechel for fm4.orf.at In the US, the “Cyber Security Month” October has begun, related news come thick and fast. The documentary presented on Thursday about a Russian espionage attack that failed miserably was spectacular, but had already taken place in April. England, Holland and Canada have waited

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0910, 2018

Translated Press Release: Systemic Errors as Vulnerabilities – Backdoors and Trojan Horses

René Pfeiffer/ October 9, 2018/ Conference, Discussion, Press, Security

DeepSec and Privacy Week highlight consequences of backdoors in IT Vienna (pts009/09.10.2018/09:15) – Ever since the first messages were sent, people try to intercept them. Today, our modern communication society writes more small, digital notes than one can read along. Everything is protected with methods of mathematics – encryption is omnipresent on the Internet. The state of security technology is the so-called end-to-end encryption, where only the communication partners have access to the conversation content or messages. Third parties can not read along, regardless of the situation. The introduction of this technology has led to a battle between security researchers, privacy advocates and investigators. Kick down doors with Horses In end-to-end encryption the keys to the messages, as well as the content itself, remain on the terminal devices involved in the conversation. This is

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1209, 2018

Translated Press Release: Bug Bounty Programs – Vulnerabilities as a worthwhile Investment

René Pfeiffer/ September 12, 2018/ Conference, Press

DeepSec Conference offers trainings for security researchers Vienna (pts010 / 04.09.2018 / 08:30) – This year, in addition to lectures about the failing of security measures, the DeepSec In-Depth Security Conference will offer a workshop for finding vulnerabilities. Unfortunately the testing of software in the context of quality assurance is no longer sufficient in the modern, networked world. The prefix “Smart” does not change anything about existing weaknesses. The training is therefore aimed at professionals, already working in development, and at security experts, to specifically strengthen the development of safer products in industry and companies. Complex Technologies and their Susceptibility to Errors Not only since the birth of the Internet of Things modern products can’t manage without software. If you add networking and the high level of complexity of individual parts, this is a

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1109, 2018

Translated Press Release: Intelligence Agencies want to abolish Information Security

René Pfeiffer/ September 11, 2018/ Conference, Press

https://www.pressetext.com/news/deepsec-konferenz-veroeffentlicht-programm-fuer-2018.html DeepSec Conference criticizes the open Attack on secure End-to-End Encryption Vienna (pts014/21.08.2018/09:25) – Ever since security measures have been in existence, there have been discussions about their benefits and their strength. In digital communication, the topic of back doors keeps coming up. In the analog world high quality locks are desired to protect against theft. In the digital world this may now change. The Five Eyes (i.e. the intelligence services of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) want to force all countries around the world to implement duplicate keys, thus to implement back doors, in their encrypted communication. For this purpose, at the end of August, a meeting of the Five Eyes Ministers of the Interior took place in Australia. This proposal has serious disadvantages for the economy

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0609, 2018

Translated Press Release: DeepSec Conference releases Schedule for 2018

René Pfeiffer/ September 6, 2018/ Conference, Press

Focusing on the Insecurity of Things and infrastructure Vienna (pts014 / 21.08.2018 / 09:25) – This year’s DeepSec In-Depth Security Conference will focus on the topic of Insecurity of Things (IoT) and components of everyday infrastructure. The ever-advancing networking opens up completely new ways for attackers – faster than developers and manufacturers can fix bugs. Instead of using secure design for products and code, machine learning and artificial intelligence are integrated – unfortunately, implemented using convenient statistics and the algorithm of the week from the daily menu of the development kit. The presentations at the DeepSec conference will therefore put the alleged technologies of the future to the test. Mobile networks, the Internet of Things, collaboration platforms in the cloud, customer relationship management systems and the human factor are in the cross-hairs. Smart is

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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

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1410, 2016

Smart Homes are the battlefield of the future – DeepSec Conference examines the Internet of Things

Sanna/ October 14, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Press, Security, Veranstaltung

The Internet of Things is knocking at your door. Many businesses and private individuals have already admitted IoT to their offices and homes, unfortunately often without knowing what they’ve let themselves in for. A naive belief in progress opens all gates, doors and windows to attackers. This is a serious matter. Therefore, DeepSec Conference will focus on this topic on the occasion of its 10th anniversary. The program includes lectures and workshops about the components of smart devices, smart houses and smart networks. Not all products come with a solid security concept. How to test if your devices function properly? What consequences has the total conversion to “smart”? How to proceed correctly to select appropriate systems? Hacked by your fridge Spectacular burglaries have always been the best material for screenplays. We know the scene

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0810, 2016

DeepSec2016 Talk: The (In)Security or Sad State of Online Newspapers – Ashar Javed

Sanna/ October 8, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Press

Web sites are simply, one might think. The client requests a page, the server sends it, the layout is applied, and your article appears. This is a heavy simplification. It worked like this back in 1994. Modern web sites are much more complex. And complexity attracts curious minds. Usually that’s what gets you into trouble. Now content management systems serve the web page of the 1990s with a lot of queries, executable code, and from different servers. The ever changing Top 10 list of mistakes from the Open Web Application Security Project can show you the tip of the iceberg. Ashar Javed took a closer look at online newspapers, and he found some scary stuff. The goal of his talk is to raise awareness about the (in)securities of online newspapers. Ashar Javed hopes that their

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1404, 2016

Thoughts on Lawful Malicious Software and its Impact on IT Infrastructure

Sanna/ April 14, 2016/ Interview, Press, Security

During the premiere of „A Good American“ we had a chat with journalists. Markus Sulzbacher of Der Standard wanted to know what the implication of the so-called Bundestrojaner (litterally federal trojan, the colloquial German term for the concept of inserting government malware in order to extract information from a suspect’s computer and telephone devices). The idea is to infect a computer system with malicious software that sits in the background and to siphon off the hard-to-get data connected to communication (i.e. messengers, Skype, emails, etc.). We have translated the interview from German to English for you. You can find the original on Der Standard web site. Der Standard 12.04.2016 “The federal Trojan is governmental malware” Police praise the software as a “wonder weapon against terror”. But for IT expert René Pfeiffer the planned introduction

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2012, 2012

DeepSec 2012 Articles and Slides

René Pfeiffer/ December 20, 2012/ Conference, Press

We have collected links to articles covering DeepSec 2012. If we missed one, please let us know. Arron Finnon’s Report on the DeepSEC Conference “Breaking SAP Portal” by Alexander Polyakov DeepSec 2012: Insecurity? It’s just a matter of time (in German) DeepSec 2012: IT-Sicherheitskonferenz in Wien (in German) DeepSec 2012: Services of cyber crime and cyber weapons in the Cloud (in German) DeepSec 2012: Wargames in the Fifth Domain (in German) DeepSec 2012: When I Grow up I want to be a Cyberterrorist (in German) “Malware Analysis on a shoestring budget” commented by Michael Boman The Evolution of e-Money (by Jon Matonis) SAP Slapping (by Dave Hartley) Sicherheitschecks von iPhone-Apps für fast jeden möglich (in German) Übernahme des Hypervisors über ein Gastsystem (in German) The slides of DeepSec 2012 can be found for download

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2008, 2012

Wireless (Wi-Fi) Security Interview

René Pfeiffer/ August 20, 2012/ Discussion, Press, Security, Stories

Today we had a visit from an Austrian television crew to answer some short questions about wireless security. It’s too bad that journalists always look for „hackers“ who „hack something“. While we had no idea what they were talking about, we delivered a short summary of wireless security. For most of you this is old news, but for a broad audience in front of TV sets it’s still a mystery. Usually no one really know what the difference between WPA and WPA2 is. In addition you have WEP and WPS, in-depth you have TKIP and AES, too. All of this sounds pretty intimidating. If you add some cinematic scenes, you can imagine the hero (or evil villain) discovering a wireless network, pressing some keys and gaining access mere seconds later. Defences have been breached,

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2411, 2011

DeepSec 2011 – Video Interviews

René Pfeiffer/ November 24, 2011/ Press

A video team from Golem, one of Germany’s largest IT news web sites, did some interviews at DeepSec 2011. We already mentioned the interview with Sharon Conheady and Stefan Schumacher. There’s a new video available. It’s an interview with Constantinos Patsakis about the security and the automotive industry. Modern cars rely heavily on computer systems and data buses, but they lack mechanisms to control access to different components by different users. Constantinos and Kleanthis Dellios discussed this problem in their talk at DeepSec 2011 and suggested solutions to this problem. Watch the video and listen to the interview. Video: Interview C. Patsakis Sicherheit in Autos (3:08) Harald Welte, who conducted the „Attacking GSM“ training with Dieter Spaar at DeepSec 2011, gave an interview about the state of security in the GSM network. Video: Interview Harald

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2211, 2011

Articles about DeepSec 2011

René Pfeiffer/ November 22, 2011/ Conference, Press

We have some more articles for you. Apparently the talks of our speakers raised a few eyebrows. Most of the articles are in German. Dradio: Das sichere Auto ist ein Mythos Interview with Mariann Unterluggauer about impressions from DeepSec 2011 and the myth of automobile security. Dradio: Nur scheinbare Datensicherheit This is a second article published on the Deutschlandfunk web site features Duncan’s talk and bugs in security software. Ö1: Können Hacker Autos fernsteuern? „Can hackers remotely control cars?“ Well, given the current design and lack of security they probably will do so in time for DeepSec 2012. Ö1: Make Cyberpeace, not Cyberwar. Ein Bericht von der DeepSec The topic of cyber warfare is still hot. Wie Terroristen verschlüsseln – Digitale Spuren kaum verwischt The Neuer Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) has a comment about Duncan’s

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1811, 2011

First Press Coverage of DeepSec 2011

René Pfeiffer/ November 18, 2011/ Conference, Press

The first articles about DeepSec 2011 are online. Most of them are in German, so you might want to use Google Translate for it. In addition Golem will publish video interviews with selected speakers soon (we will tell you as soon as they are available). Wie Terroristen verschlüsseln Duncan Campbell talks about encryption and compares it to the real world. There have been a lot of rumours about terrorist groups using modern encryption. The reality looks a bit different. Tools like PGP are around, but some groups still rely on substitution and transposition ciphers. Managing keys of modern cryptography and handling the tools isn’t as easy as changing clothes. Procedures, procedures, procedures, ask the auditors. Das Streben nach dem Cyber-Weltfrieden Stefan Schumacher illustrates the concept of cyber-peace described in his talk yesterday. Everyone invests

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0311, 2011

DeepSec 2011: Techniques de cryptage des cellules terroristes, espionnage GSM, piratage informatique

René Pfeiffer/ November 3, 2011/ Press

Du 15 au 18 novembre 2011, la cinquième édition de la conférence DeepSec réunira les plus grands spécialistes internationaux  de la sécurité des réseaux et du piratage autour du thème de la sécurité informatique. Les principaux sujets abordés: techniques de cryptage des cellules terroristes, sécurité des systèmes de communication mobiles et de leurs utilisateurs et enfin, infrastructures de sécurité de la prochaine génération numérique. “Nous avons voulu, cette année encore, aborder des thématiques passionnantes et sujettes à controverse. Les sept workshops et les trente-quatre interventions de la conférence concernent directement ou indirectement une grande partie de la population” explique René Pfeiffer, organisateur du DeepSec. “C’est le cas notamment des tentatives de piratage constatées sur les réseaux GSM. C’est également le cas des problèmes de sécurité rencontrés sur IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), un protocole

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