2911, 2018

Opening & Keynote – DeepSec 2018 has started

René Pfeiffer/ November 29, 2018/ Administrivia, Conference

So, now is the opening and the keynote presentation by the magnificent Peter Zinn. This means that DeepSec 2018 has officially started. Since we do not live stream the talks, we will be away from the blog and mostly from Twitter until the end of the conference. Communication in meatspace has full priority. In case of urgent messages, use the contact information on our web site. We still use telephones, you know. In case you are at DeepSec and wish to comment on content, discussions, or summarise a presentation, please do. Post it on Twitter and mention us (or use a meaningful hashtag), we will retweet and pick up your thoughts later on the blog. Enjoy the conference!

2811, 2018

Discussing Threat Intelligence in the City of Spies – DeepINTEL 2018 has started

René Pfeiffer/ November 28, 2018/ Conference, DeepIntel

What’s the best place to discuss security and threat intelligence? Well, according to Austrian investigative journalist Emil Bobi there are over 7,000 spies living and working in Vienna. To quote the article: „Austria has been an international spy hub since the late 19th Century, when people from all parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire flocked to the city.“ Basically it’s ancient tradition going back to the 19th century. During DeepINTEL we will discuss modern threats – advanced, persistent, networked, or otherwise. The focus will be on indicators of suspicious behaviour, the human component of information security, challenges by drone technology, and how to protect sources of information.

2211, 2018

ROOTS 2018 Talk: Kernel-Assisted Debugging of Linux Applications – Tobias Holl, Philipp Klocke, Fabian Franzen

Sanna/ November 22, 2018/ Conference, ROOTS

On Linux, most—if not all—debuggers use the ptrace debugging API to control their target processes. However, ptrace proves unsatisfactory for many malware analysis and reverse engineering tasks: So-called split-personality malware often adapts its behavior in the presence of a debugger, yet ptrace makes no attempt to hide from a target process. Furthermore, ptrace enforces a strict one-to-many relation meaning that while each tracer can trace many tracees, each tracee can only be controlled by at most one tracer. Simultaneously, the complex API and signal-based communications provide opportunities for erroneous usage. Previous works have identified the newer uprobes tracing API as a candidate for building a replacement for ptrace, but ultimately rejected it due to lack of practical use and documentation. Building upon uprobes, we introduce plutonium-dbg, a Linux kernel module providing debugging facilities independent

2111, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Talk: Attacks on Mobile Operators – Aleksandr Kolchanov

Sanna/ November 21, 2018/ Conference, Security

I’d like to talk about telecom security. My research contains information about security of mobile operators: classic and new (or very rare) attack vectors and vulnerabilities. This presentation will consist of three main parts: First, I will share information on the security of mobile operators in general. I’ll tell you a little bit about why it is important (usually, phone numbers are used as a key to social networks, messengers, bank accounts, etc). So, if an attacker can hack a mobile operator, he can gain access to a big amount of user data and money. Also, in this part, I will tell you about typical SS7 attacks (how to intercept SMS or send fake ones). During the second part, I will tell you about different vulnerabilities and security issues. All of the problems I

2111, 2018

(Almost) (Pretty) Final ROOTS 2018 Schedule (last beta version) published!

René Pfeiffer/ November 21, 2018/ Administrivia, ROOTS

We have rearranged the ROOTS 2018 schedule to its final form. You may have noticed that it is more condensed. We thought it would be easier to connect, to discuss, and to exchange ideas without the stretch over two days. Furthermore it is easier to have sessions with a specific focus when there is more unallocated time to use. ROOTS 2018 will get its own keynote presentation, too. We are currently sorting out the details. You may wonder why there are so many empty slots. The reason is simple. ROOTS is an academic workshop. All presentations must be submitted formally correct. Then they are reviewed by the programme committee. The submitted content is graded according to the scientific methods used, research topic, evaluation of the results, the conclusion, and so on. After that there

2011, 2018

DeepINTEL 2018 Talk: Framing HUMINT as an information gathering technique – Ulrike Hugl

Sanna/ November 20, 2018/ DeepIntel, Security Intelligence

NATO defines human intelligence (HUMINT) or hyoo-mint as “a category of intelligence derived from information collected and provided by human sources” (NATO Glossary of terms and definitions, APP-6, 2004) focusing on different kinds of information, for example data on things related to a human, information about a human’s specific knowledge of a situation, and other issues. HUMINT is differentiated into several categories like clandestine and overt collection. And: It is one of several other traditional intelligence collection disciplines, so called INTs; examples are SIGINT (signals intelligence), OSINT (open source intelligence), MASINT (measurements and signatures intelligence), GEOINT (geospatial intelligence), TECHINT (technical intelligence), SOMINT (social media intelligence), FININT (financial intellicence, gathered from analysis of monetary transactions), as well as CYBINT/DNINT (cyber intelligence/digital network intelligence, gathered from cyberspace). Intelligence Services deal with the analysis and collection of

1911, 2018

Special Offer for “Mastering Web Attacks with Full-Stack Exploitation” Training – get 3 for the Price of 1

René Pfeiffer/ November 19, 2018/ Conference

The DeepSec training Bug Hunting Millionaire: Mastering Web Attacks with Full-Stack Exploitation by Dawid Czagan has some seats left. Dawid has agreed to give away free access to two of his online courses for everyone booking tickets until Wednesday, 21 November 2018 (2359 CET). This gives you a perfect preparation for penetration testing, software development, and an edge for any bug bounty programmes out there. You can get a glimpse of the online trainings, well, online of course. Every penetration test and every attempt to defend your own assets can’t do without knowledge of web technologies. Since the Web has evolved from being simple HTML content, you absolutely have to know about all layers modern web applications use. The training will give you the means to understand what’s going on, to find bugs, and

1411, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Talk: RFID Chip Inside the Body: Reflecting the Current State of Usage, Triggers, and Ethical Issues – Ulrike Hugl

Sanna/ November 14, 2018/ Conference

Chipping humans can be seen as one of the most invasive biometric identification technologies. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) as the key technology in the field of the Internet of Things produces many applications. For example, human implants are used by scientists in the fields of cyborgism, robotics, biomedical engineering and artificial intelligence, by hobbyists for identification reasons to start their computers, cars, for smart home applications or to pay by credit card, by hospitals for the control of human biological functions of patients, but also by companies to tag their employees for security reasons and workplace surveillance. All in all, worldwide human implants are mainly used for security, healthcare, and private (individual) reasons. Beside some positive individual or organizational outcomes, implants may compromise privacy and raise manifold ethical questions. For example, research in the

1311, 2018

ROOTS 2018 Talk: The Swift Language from a Reverse Engineering Perspective – Malte Kraus & Vincent Haupert

Sanna/ November 13, 2018/ Conference, ROOTS

Over the last decade, mobile devices have taken over the consumer market for computer hardware. Almost all these mobile devices run either Android or iOS as their operating systems. In 2014, Apple introduced the Swift programming language as an alternative to Objective C for writing iOS and macOS applications. The rising adoption of this new language has to some extent obsoleted existing techniques for program analysis for these platforms, like method swizzling and “class-dump”. In this paper we discuss features of Swift binaries that help in reverse engineering the functionality of the contained code: We document the memory layout of compound data types and the calling convention used by the Swift compiler, as well as the runtime type information that is used by runtime and debugger when data types are not known statically. This

0911, 2018

Last Call for your Web Application Security Training – Break all teh Web and enjoy it!

René Pfeiffer/ November 9, 2018/ Conference, Security

The Internet is full of web applications. Sysadmins used to joke that HTTP is short for Hypertext Tunnelling Protocol, because anything but web content is transported via HTTP these days. It’s the best way to break out of restricted environment, too. So the chances are good that you will need the skills for dealing with all kinds web. Fortunately our training Bug Hunting Millionaire: Mastering Web Attacks with Full-Stack Exploitation conducted by Dawid Czagan has a few seats left. Don’t get distracted by the title. Focus on the phrase full-stack exploitation. It’s not just about sending HTTP requests and seeing what the application does. It’s all about using the full spectrum of components and technologies used for modern web applications. The training is not only suited for information security researchers. The course addresses REST

0911, 2018

ROOTS 2018: How Android’s UI Security is Undermined by Accessibility – Anatoli Kalysch

Sanna/ November 9, 2018/ Conference, ROOTS

Android’s accessibility API was designed to assist users with disabilities, or temporarily preoccupied users unable to interact with a device, e.g., while driving a car. Nowadays, many Android apps rely on the accessibility API for other purposes, including apps like password managers but also malware. From a security perspective, the accessibility API is precarious as it undermines an otherwise strong principle of sandboxing in Android that separates apps. By means of an accessibility service, apps can interact with the UI elements of another app, including reading from its screen and writing to its text fields. As a consequence, design shortcomings in the accessibility API and other UI features such as overlays have grave security implications. This talk will provide a critical perspective on the current state of Android accessibility and selected UI security features.

0811, 2018

DeepINTEL 2018 Talk: Risk Management in Complex Scenarios – Oscar Serrano

Sanna/ November 8, 2018/ Conference, DeepIntel, Security

ICT risk management is a well-stabilized practice and as such is supported by international security standards and guidelines. But, despite advances in the legal and policy areas and the maturation of standardized frameworks for efficient risk management, it has still not become a controlled, systematic process in the cyber security domain of most organizations. One of the problems preventing organizations from having an enterprise approach to cyber security risk management is that these efforts have not been supported by commensurate investment to produce robust, technical implementations of suitable risk management methodologies and supporting systems. Although some tools do exist, such as PILAR, CRAMM, Ebios, Mehari, or Octave, they all implement different risk management methodologies and all of them are implemented to satisfy the need of specific users. None of them is a truly enterprise

0611, 2018

Binary Blob Apocalypse – Firmware + Cryptography = less Security

René Pfeiffer/ November 6, 2018/ High Entropy, Security

A couple of years ago we had a chat with one of our sponsors, Attingo. They are specialised in data recovery from all kinds of media and in all kinds of conditions. Since vendors keep secrets from the rest of the world, the data rescuers do a lot of reverse engineering in order to decode the mysteries of firmware blobs. Guess what they recommend: Don’t trust important tasks to firmware code! It’s the worst software written on this planet. If software gets something wrong, firmware is the best candidate for big SNAFUs. Solid state disks (SSDs) have recently joined the gallery of failures. Carlo Meijer and Bernard van Gastel have published an article titled Self-encrypting deception: weaknesses in the encryption of solid state drives (SSDs). They analysed the implementation of hardware full-disk encryption of

0511, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Training: Advanced Infrastructure Hacking – Anant Shrivastava

Sanna/ November 5, 2018/ Conference, Training

Whether you are penetration testing, Red Teaming or trying to get a better understanding of managing vulnerabilities in your environment, understanding advanced hacking techniques is critical. This course covers a wide variety of neat, new and ridiculous techniques to compromise modern Operating Systems and networking devices. We asked Anant a few more questions about his training. Please tell us the top 5 facts about your training. Constantly evolving course: Every year each iteration has something new added to it. (Minimum 25%, maximum 50% of the course gets an upgrade every year). Developed by Practitioners: The course is developed by regular pentesters deriving challenges from real life pen-testing scenarios. All of our trainers are full time pentesters and part time trainers. Covers a whole breadth of infrastructure: From IPv4/v6 to databases, to OSINT, Windows, Linux,

0511, 2018

DeepINTEL 2018 Talk: Cyber Threat Intelligence – The Next Era of Cyber Security? – Markus Auer

Sanna/ November 5, 2018/ DeepIntel, Security Intelligence

The DeepINTEL security intelligence conference focuses on threats, indicators of compromise, and strategic counter measures. Information security is more than superficial. This is why we have asked Markus Auer to hold a presentation at DeepINTEL (28 November 2018). He explains his ideas in short: We are tired of adding new products to our ever-growing security structure. Although this has been a common practice for years, it does not bring lasting success. Attacks continue to occur – faster, more comprehensively and with much greater impact and rising costs. Despite all protection levels and measures, the current security approach fails. We want to stop the expansion and purchase of more reactive products that are targeted to the recent attack. Instead, security operations should be improved by aligning existing security technologies and teams and using the information

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: