1210, 2017

Google supports DeepSec 2017

René Pfeiffer/ October 12, 2017/ Conference, Internet

You have probably heard of Google. Well, you will be hearing more from them if you come to DeepSec 2017. They have agreed to support our conference. They will be on site, and you will be able to talk to them. Every year we aim to give you opportunities for a short-cut, for exchanging ideas, and for thinking of ways to improve information security. A big part of this process is fulfilled by vendors and companies offering service in the information security industry. This includes the many good people at CERTs and the countless brave individuals in the respective security team. So we hope you take advantage of Google’s presence at DeepSec. See you in Vienna!

1010, 2017

DeepSec2017 Workshop: SAP CTF Pentest : From Outside To Company Salaries Tampering – Yvan Genuer

Sanna/ October 10, 2017/ Conference, Training

The SAP business suite is widespread among enterprises. It is the heart of the operation, at least in terms of business logic, administration, accounting, and many other cornerstones of big companies. SAP itself was founded in 1972. Its software has now grown up and lives with the Internet and cloud platforms next door. Due to the SAP software being a platform itself, it is quite unwieldy for hackers to handle. If you believe this, then we recommend the SAP CTF Pentest training at DeepSec 2017! Yvan Genuer has something to show to you: SAP is boring, too big or too complicated? What about learning SAP Security during a fun CTF workshop? Additionally we’ll provide you with a pre-configured attacker VM with all tools required to perform workshop activities. Attendees learn how to work against

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0910, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: How To Hide Your Browser 0-days: Free Offense And Defense Tips Included – Zoltan Balazs

Sanna/ October 9, 2017/ Conference

There is a famous thought experiment described in the book A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. It deals with the possibility of unperceived existence; for example does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when no one is around to hear it? Given the many reports and mentions about zero-day exploits, the question might be rephrased. Does a zero-day exploit cause any effects when no one is able to detect its presence? Before we completely get lost in philosophy, the question has a real background. Zoltan Balazs wants to address the issue of zero-days in his DeepSec 2017 presentation. The idea seems somewhat contrary to intuition – protecting exploits from being disclosed. Zero-day exploits targeting browsers are usually very short-lived. These zero-days are actively gathered and analyzed by security researchers.

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0810, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: BITSInject – Control Your BITS, Get SYSTEM – Dor Azouri

Sanna/ October 8, 2017/ Conference, Internet, Security

Microsoft has introduced the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) into Windows 2000 and later versions of the operating system. Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 feature the version 4.0 of the protocol. BITS is designed to use idle bandwidth in order to transfer data to and from servers. BITS is an obedient servant, and it may be abused into doing transfers on behalf of others. Dor Azouri will present his findings regarding BITS at DeepSec 2007. Windows’ BITS service is a middleman for your download jobs. You start a BITS job, and from that point on, BITS is responsible for the download. But what if we tell you that BITS is a careless middleman? Current Windows software comes packaged with a mix of old and new features and components. New, shiny features and

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0710, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: XFLTReaT: A New Dimension In Tunnelling – Balazs Bucsay

Sanna/ October 7, 2017/ Conference, Security

“Our new tool XFLTReaT is an open-source tunnelling framework that handles all the boring stuff and gives users the capability to take care of only the things that matter”, says Balazs. “It provides significant improvements over existing tools. From now on there is no need to write a new tunnel for each and every protocol or to deal with interfaces and routing. Any protocol can be converted to a module, which works in a plug-and-play fashion; authentication and encryption can be configured and customised on all traffic, and it is also worth mentioning that the framework was designed to be easy to configure, use and develop.” We asked Balazs Bucsay a couple more questions about his talk: Please tell us the top 5 facts about your talk. Tunnelling is not new at all, but

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0610, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Insecurity In Information Technology – Tanya Janca

Sanna/ October 6, 2017/ Communication, Conference, Security

A lot is expected of software developers these days; they are expected to be experts in everything despite very little training. Throw in the IT security team (often with little-to-no knowledge of how to build software) telling developers what to do and how to do it, and the situation is further strained. This silo-filled, tension-laced situation, coupled with short deadlines and mounting pressure from management, often leads to stress, anxiety and less-than-ideal reactions from developers and security people alike. In this talk Tanya Janca will explain how people’s personal insecurities can be brought out by leadership decisions in the way we manage our application security programs, and how this can lead to real-life vulnerabilities in software and other IT products.  This is not a soft talk about “feelings”, this is a talk about creating

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0510, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Bypassing Web Application Firewalls – Khalil Bijjou

Sanna/ October 5, 2017/ Conference, Security

Everyone has firewalls or filters. They are now called application-level gateway (ALG) and have lots of features included. Algorithms, signatures, heuristics, protocol checks, verification; you name it. It’s all in there. But does it work? Obfuscation and evading technology has been around since the first filter was created. Anticipating what data might look like is hard, and some protocols were designed to be as ambivalent as possible, one might think. At DeepSec 2017 Khalil Bijjou will show you what can be done being evasive in the web. Security experts perform security assessments of web applications in order to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious users. Web Application Firewalls add a second layer of protection to web applications in order to mitigate these vulnerabilities. The attempt to bypass Web Application Firewalls is an

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0210, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Hacking The Brain For Fun And Profit – Stefan Hager

Sanna/ October 2, 2017/ Conference, Discussion

You are what you think. At least we think so. Is this mental model the right way to explore our surroundings and our interconnected world? Well, let’s find out by thinking about it. When we’re talking and thinking about security, we very often have a rather fixed mindset and keep using what we think are proven methods. We tend not to question our decisions and thoughts, and the way how our brains work reaffirms our bias and our mediocre choices. In this talk we take a closer look at how we are thinking, and how we can change or expand this as well as our perception, by hacking into our own brains in order to get a clearer picture of what we really want and need. New ways of thinking and creativity can be

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2909, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Essential Infrastructure Interdependencies: Would We Be Prepared For Significant Interruptions? – Herbert Saurugg

Sanna/ September 29, 2017/ Conference

How would your day look without electrical power? Given the fact that we rely on information technology every single minute of our lives (well, mostly), this would be a very dark outlook indeed. Knocking out the power grid is a tactic used by the military. They have even special tools for disabling power lines and transformer stations. Progress has enabled network access for power plants and other parts of the grid. It’s not all about hacking stuff. There is a lot more involved when it comes to critical infrastructure, and this is why we have asked Herbert Saurugg, a renowned specialist on this topic, to conduct a presentation at DeepSec 2017. Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) are major topics almost everywhere. Its priority has also increased during recent years because of rising

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2809, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Uncovering And Visualizing Botnet Infrastructure And Behavior – Andrea Scarfo & Josh Pyorre

Sanna/ September 28, 2017/ Conference, Internet

When you read about information security, then you might get the impression that there are lots of nameless threats Out There™. Especially when it comes to networked malicious software, i.e. malware, that forms robot armies, the picture gets a lot more vague and foggy. So you need to get some details to sharpen your view. There are some means how to do this, and you will be told at DeepSec 2017 by Andrea Scarfo and Josh Pyorre. How much information about a botnet can one find using a single IP address, domain name or indicator of compromise (IOC)? What kind of behavior can be determined when looking at attacker and victim infrastructure? In an attempt to discover and analyze the infrastructure behind large-scale malware activity, Andrea and Josh began their research with known indicators

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2709, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Next-Gen Mirai Botnet – Balthasar Martin & Fabian Bräunlein

Sanna/ September 27, 2017/ Conference, Internet, Security

While you were living in a cave, devices took over the world and got connected to the network. This is the state of affairs we live in right now. As long as nothing happens we don’t notice anything about it. The Mirai (未来) botnet changed this all of a sudden. Consumer devices were drafted into an army of bots. Thanks to the proliferation of networked devices such as cameras, home routers, and others the botnet was very successful. The code was designed to run on embedded devices and is even online for inspection. Let’s take a look at how to improve Mirai. Badly secured embedded devices enabled the largest DDoS attack on critical networks seen to date: The Mirai attacks in 2016 were largely pegged on Internet-exposed telnet with default credentials. While such telnet

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2609, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Schedule Update, Review Status, Disputes, and Trainings

René Pfeiffer/ September 26, 2017/ Administrivia, Conference, High Entropy

The DeepSec 2017 schedule is still preliminary. We are almost done, and we have a small update. Some of you have noticed that the schedule featured a training about mobile security. The outline as shown as in the schedule was identical to a different course from a different trainer. We received a complaint, we got the course materials to compare, and it turned out that only the outline of the workshop as shown online was identical, and the original table of contents was not part of the submission we received during the call for papers. The dispute has been settled. The trainer has apologised to the creator of the original table of contents. Nevertheless the trainer has asked to withdraw his submission. This means we will try to replace the slot in the schedule

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2209, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Early Bird Tariff ends on 25 September

René Pfeiffer/ September 22, 2017/ Administrivia, Conference

The early bird tariff for DeepSec 2017 (and ROOTS) ends on 25 September 2017. We recommend buying your ticket now. Save some money! In addition we ask you to book the workshop you want to visit as early as possible! Every year we see sad faces, because the workshop of your choice had to be cancelled. Our trainers need a minimum number of attendees. Some trainers need to catch flights and spend good parts of a whole day travelling. They can’t come to Vienna if the minimum number of trainees is not met. So do yourself a favour, make up your mind now, and book the training you want to have. In case you cannot use online payment, let us know. We can invoice the ticket to you directly, if needed. Just drop us

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2009, 2017

Workshops, Trainings, Talks: DeepSec and ROOTS Schedule Update

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2017/ Administrivia, Conference

As you might have noticed, the DeepSec schedule is not complete yet. Furthermore the ROOTS schedule is not published at all. The reason for this are the still pending reviews. The major part concerns ROOTS. ROOTS is an academic workshop where academic publications are presented. There has been some confusion about the term workshop. In the context of ROOTS this means presentations. This is why we have replaced the word workshops on the DeepSec web site and in (hopefully) all texts with the word training. Trainings are the two-day, well, trainings in advance of the DeepSec conference days. ROOTS features presentations, also called workshops in ROOTS-context, as does the DeepSec conference (on the conference days). So we have trainings (the two-day training courses; one, the ARM exploit laboratory is for three days, be careful)

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2009, 2017

44CON revisited: Secure Design in Software is still a new Concept

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2017/ High Entropy, Interview, Security

We have been to 44CON, and we returned with lots of ideas and scary news about the state of security in devices and applications. Given the ever spreading Internet of Things (IoT) you can see why connecting random devices via a network with no second thoughts about design, updates, or quality control is a bad idea. Don Bailey illustrated this perfectly in the keynote titled The Internet of Us. His presentation touched all of information security, but IoT featured a prominent role. We are really surrounded by the Internet of SIM cards (sadly which we cannot call IoS). This opens up a new perspective and demystifies the IoT hype. You should watch Matt Wixey’s talk Hacking invisibly and silently with light and sound as soon as the videos are published. Matt discussed hardware hacking

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