2110, 2021

Hardwear.io Interview: Teardown and feasibility study of IronKey – the most secure USB Flash drive

René Pfeiffer/ October 21, 2021/ Security/ 0 comments

Portable storage devices are small and can be easily lost. Using security measures to protect the data on them is therefore a good idea. Vendors offer USB storage devices with built-in encryption capabilities. What happens if you analyse how they work? What are the attack modes on these devices? There will be a presentation at Hardwear.io regarding a specific brand of storage devices. We have asked the author Sergei Skorobogatov about the security properties of IronKey devices. HDD and SSD vendors have provided their devices with secure deletion and encryption features. How do IronKey devices compare to normal storage media? Some HDD and SSD devices do offer encryption and secure deletion, as well as vendors of other USB Flash drives. The fundamental difference is that IronKey devices are certified with FIPS140-2 Level 3. This

1309, 2021

DeepSec 2021 Presentation: Don’t get Hacked, get AMiner! Smart Log Data Analytics for Incident Detection – Florian Skopik, Markus Wurzenberger, Max Landauer

Sanna/ September 13, 2021/ Conference, Security/ 0 comments

“Prevention is ideal, but detection is a must”. Active monitoring and intrusion detection systems (IDS) are the backbone of every effective cyber security framework. Whenever carefully planned, implemented and executed preventive security measures fail, IDS are a vital part of the last line of defence. IDS are an essential measure to detect the first steps of an attempted intrusion in a timely manner. This is a prerequisite to avoid further harm. It is commonly agreed that active monitoring of networks and systems and the application of IDS are a vital part of the state of the art. Usually, findings of IDS, as well as major events from monitoring, are forwarded to, managed and analyzed with SIEM solutions. These security information and event management solutions provide a detailed view on the status of an infrastructure

1207, 2021

Translated Article: Germany becomes the Federal Trojan Republic

Sanna/ July 12, 2021/ Security, Stories/ 0 comments

Deutschland wird zur Bundestrojanerrepublik by Erich Moechel for fm4.ORF.at All 19 secret services now have a license to use malware. IT security vulnerabilities can therefore be kept open, preventive cyber attacks are the best defense – security expert Manuel Atug on the new German “cybersecurity strategy.” Since Friday, the “Law to Adapt the Constitutional Protection Law” has been in force in Germany. All 19 federal and state secret services are now allowed to use Trojan malware. Another law is already in the Federal Council, which authorizes the police authorities to use Trojans even before a criminal offense has occurred. German police and customs authorities have had a legal license to distribute such malware since 2017. At the same time, a new cybersecurity strategy is being worked out which, among other things, stipulates that newly discovered security

1705, 2021

Murder Board Blog Series: Chapter 4 – Trojan Horses or: State Hacking

Sanna/ May 17, 2021/ Internet, Security, Stories/ 1 comments

Feeding Pigeons in the Park—Espionage Knowledge is power. Knowing nothing makes one envious when looking at the model of modern information societies. The natural application of networks that transport information is espionage. So the Internet early made acquaintance with it. The aspect of smuggling messages in and out of an area is obvious. It also involves breaking through security measures to gain access to protected information. Whereby large parts of our own information are much less protected than we would like or even be aware of. The e-mails mentioned above are always in plain text and therefore are visible to everyone. An unknown number of third parties read them on the way from sender to recipient and assess this information. And all the information we have in accounts on US platforms (photos, more or

0705, 2021

Murder Board Blog Series: Chapter 3 – Serial Hackers: Organized Crime or Grand Theft Data

Sanna/ May 7, 2021/ Internet, Security, Stories/ 1 comments

Motivations and Motifs of the “Cosa Data” Elevate data to a valuable commodity and it gets automatically traded, hoarded, stolen and counterfeited. We can use digital processes both legally and illegally, just like the economy in the physical world. However, cyber crime is about much more than data. Accounts with certain privileges also represent value because they act as a multiplier. For example, a simple e-mail account with stored contacts (address book or even the contact data in existing e-mails). This has several properties at once: Identity, trust and an archive of messages. The archive can be searched directly for valuable data. The identity can be used for fraud with the help of the trust of the contacts to get further access to more accounts and data. Motivation is—on balance—always something like a benefit

2104, 2021

Project Covert Operations and Zero Days – Controlled Compromise of Infrastructure and Code

René Pfeiffer/ April 21, 2021/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

Once you collect information, you will eventually have to decide on when to use which part for what reason. This is the dilemma of intercepting intelligence from an adversary and using it for defence (or offence). Once you act on your the knowledge no one else is supposed to have, then you will also disclose your capabilities. The digital world is full of these scenarios. The most recent case is a disclosure of Google’s Project Zero. The publication covered vulnerabilities dating back to the first half of 2020. As it turned out the discovery comprised 11 powerful weaknesses used to compromise iOS, Android and Microsoft® Windows devices. By publishing these vulnerabilities Project Zero essentially shut down a nine-month digital hacking operation by a Western government. Bugs in software have no labels. They may be

1604, 2021

Murder Board Blog Series: Prequel

Sanna/ April 16, 2021/ Security, Stories

[This is the first part of a five-part article series describing analogies between the world of IT security and research in other fields. Analogies are often used to deflect and conceal missing arguments. Didactics uses analogies as a powerful tool to explore your own understanding and to help you use your knowledge from other fields. Please use the articles of the Murderboard series (our name for the five-part article) for educating IT-affine people about information security. It’s never bad to have allies who understand what to look for in time of trouble.] It was a warm summer day when I got a call from an acquaintance who wanted to hire me for data protection coaching with one of his clients. Besides crime writing, I also work in data protection, helping self-employed people and small

1503, 2021

Bug Disclosure Policies and the Eternal Discussion about Security ♨

René Pfeiffer/ March 15, 2021/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

In theory, there is the evolution from bug over to weakness, vulnerability and finally the exploit. Errors in code and application behaviour are interesting for any serious developer. Security researchers also look for bugs and ways to make code do something it wasn’t designed for. In the absence of critical failures in applications, the process of reporting bugs and getting them fixed everything is smooth and less prone to heated discussions (YMMV, some software projects feature persons with very strong opinions). All of this changes when the code can be remotely exploited. Enter the recent CVEs regarding the Microsoft® Exchange server. CVE-2021-26855 is as bad as it sounds. It is a remote code execution with low complexity requiring no user interaction and no privileges. Disclosure of bugs impacting security has a long history. Knowing

2802, 2021

Management Console Access – Obscurity by Security and vice versa

René Pfeiffer/ February 28, 2021/ Discussion, Security

Every discussion about security sooner or later connects to the wonderful word obscurity. Mentioning security by obscurity is a guaranteed way of losing sight of the facts. It is vital to actually fix weaknesses and introduce strong separation of systems when implementing security. Furthermore, the leakage of useful information to potential adversaries should be eliminated. That’s the theory. Enter the discussions we have witnessed in real life and in the Internet. A common tactic is to strip information from communication protocols that is not needed for transporting the message. Version numbers, host names, addresses, and other pieces of data are often removed when a server answers requests. Especially web applications send a ton of useful information to clients. You can see the structure of the web space, components used for rendering, server systems involved,

0402, 2021

The Art of testing Code

René Pfeiffer/ February 4, 2021/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

The Twitterverse, various blogs, and some news portals published discussions about a bug in libgcrypt. The code contained a loop which could read past the end of a buffer. The error condition was found by using a test suite. Given the C code base of libgcrypt cases like this can often be found by using the static code analysing features of modern compilers. If you read the ticket concerning the particular overrun bug, then you will notice that it contains more than just the error description. The reason for emotional discussion around bugs are the many ways to find them. Modern compilers contain a lot of helpful tools to audit your code. Even if the compiler lacks auditing/testing features, you can resort to other tools such as Valgrind (which turned 20 years of age

2912, 2020

Translated Article: EU Directive for “High-Class Cybersecurity” with Duplicate Keys

Sanna/ December 29, 2020/ Conference, Security, Stories

EU-Richtlinie für „hochklassige Cybersicherheit“ mit Nachschlüsseln by Erich Moechel for fm4.ORF.at. The key message of the Council of Ministers’ resolution against secure encryption has already arrived in a first draft directive. For this reason here’s a historical outline of the new Crypto Wars since 2014. The resolution of the EU Council of Ministers against secure encryption, which resulted in so much criticism, has already appeared in a first draft directive. A corresponding passage can be found in the new draft directive on “Measures for high-quality cybersecurity in the Union”. The date of December 16 of the document shows that it was already drawn up before the Council resolution was passed (on December 19). Here, too, it is claimed that secure end-to-end encryption remains intact if duplicate keys are generated for third parties. Meanwhile the EU

2207, 2020

Press Release: Digital Infrastructure should integrate Malware

Sanna/ July 22, 2020/ Conference, Press, Security

The German government wants to force Internet providers to install malicious software and intercept network traffic. Since the 1990s, there has been a constant struggle between authorities and security experts. One side wants to make digital infrastructure, especially data transport and communication, as secure as possible for business and society. The other side constantly strives for back doors to intercept data and correspondence. The fight for access to secure data transmissions, originally titled “Crypto Wars” is entering the next round. The German federal government has created a draft law that is intended to legally force Internet providers and companies with related activities to distribute malware and manipulate network traffic. In future, the installation of apps on smartphones or automatic software updates can compromise computer systems. This destroys the basis of digitalisation – with far-reaching

2107, 2020

Translated Article: EU Council of Ministers discusses Back Doors in Encryption again

Sanna/ July 21, 2020/ Security, Stories

EU-Ministerrat diskutiert wieder Hintertüren in Verschlüsselung by Erich Moechel for fm4.ORF.at Gilles de Kerchove, EU’s anti-terror coordinator, is once again working against secure encryption per se. Since these new demands by law enforcement officials on the EU Council of Ministers are nowhere openly accessible, this confidential Council document is published in full by FM4. The corona virus pandemic has led to a surge in teleworking worldwide. Instead of behind firewalls in secure corporate networks, millions of employees worldwide work from insecure home offices. The only real protection is the end-to-end encryption (E2E) of the data traffic. In the middle of this scenario, the “Five Eyes” secret service alliance is starting the next phase of its global campaign against secure encryption. Again, police law enforcement is used as a vehicle. After the United States, the European protagonist

1707, 2020

Translated Article: US bill against Secure Encryption of Chats

Sanna/ July 17, 2020/ Internet, Security, Stories

US-Gesetzesentwurf gegen sichere Verschlüsselung von Chats by Erich Moechel for fm4.ORF.at A new US law on “Access by law enforcement officers to encrypted data” is intended to force chat providers such as Signal or WhatsApp to incorporate back doors into their security architectures. In the United States, a bill is on its way to the Senate that has stunned the IT industry. The planned law on “Access by law enforcement officers to encrypted data” turns upside down all the rules that have been in force on the WWW for 25 years. Encrypted chats and data backup for a wide audience should therefore only be offered if the provider has duplicate keys. That would be the end of end-to-end encryption (E2E) from Signal, WhatsApp and others. The same applies to hardware manufacturers who have to provide access

1205, 2020

Translated Article: Ten EU Countries already rely on decentralized Corona Virus Apps

Sanna/ May 12, 2020/ Security, Stories

Schon zehn EU-Staaten setzen auf dezentrale Coronavirus-Apps by Erich Moechel for fm4.orf.at Apple and Google also support the privacy-friendly, decentralized protocol DP-3T. Without technical support in the operating systems of these two groups, no app with Bluetooth tracing can deliver useful results. The decision by Austria and Switzerland to use a corona virus app with decentralized data storage (DP-3T) triggered a chain reaction. By Friday, ten EU countries had already left the large-scale “Pan-European Project for Data Protection-Compliant Person Tracing” (PEPP-PT). The centralized data collection of PEPP-PT leaves all possibilities for data mining open, a deanonymisation of the data is also included. Apple and Google, which support the DP-3T standard, are constantly publishing new specifications for the necessary app interfaces in Android and IOS. Without the support of these two companies, whose operating systems

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