2502, 2016

DeepSec Video: Have We Penetrated Yet??

René Pfeiffer/ February 25, 2016/ Conference, Security

Testing the defences of a network,  applications, or infrastructure can be tough. Often you spend lots of days, the results not being proportionate to the time spent. How do you assess success when doing penetration testing? How to test, what tools to use, and who should be doing the testing? Johnny Deutsch has some answers for you. He held a presentation at DeepSec 2015 about this topic. We recommend watching this presentation to everyone thinking about requesting a penetration test or, of course, everyone actually doing these tests.

2402, 2016

DeepSec Video: Continuous Intrusion – Why CI Tools Are an Attacker’s Best Friends

René Pfeiffer/ February 24, 2016/ Conference, Security

Software development has made tremendous progress in the past decades. Tools to develop and to deploy applications have evolved. The trouble is that these tools often lack security design. Attacking software distribution channels such as update servers, package managers, and ISO downloads have been discussed widely in the past. What about the new kids on the bloc? Continuous Integration (CI) tools provide excellent attack surfaces due to no/poor security controls, the distributed build management capability and the level of access/privileges in an enterprise. At DeepSec 2015 Nikhil Mittal looked at the CI tools from an attacker’s perspective, using them as portals to get a foothold in a target’s network and for lateral movement. He showed how to execute attacks like command and script execution, credentials stealing, and privilege escalation; how to not only compromise the

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2302, 2016

DeepSec Video: DDoS – Barbarians at the Gate(way)

René Pfeiffer/ February 23, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Stories

Unfortunately the Internet doesn’t follow the rules of economic theory. Unlimited growth is a myth best kept for feeding your unicorns. Of course, the Internet has grown, but the mathematics and physics behind network flows stay the same. If your pipe is full, then you are going nowhere. This is why Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks still work. You can counter or evade these attacks, but they can happen. We invited Dave Lewis of Akamai to DeepSec 2015 to hear his view on the current state of affairs where DDoS is concerned. For the record: DDoS is not hacking and no hacking attack. Spread your „cyber“ somewhere else.

2202, 2016

DeepSec Video: HORNET – High-speed Onion Routing at the Network Layer

René Pfeiffer/ February 22, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security

Given that reconnaissance is the first step of a successful attack, anonymity has become more important than ever. The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) and the TOR project are prominent tools to protect against prying eyes (five or more). TOR is widely used. Users of anonymity services will notice that the price for extra protection is less speed in terms of latency and probably bandwidth. Researchers have published a method to attain high-speed network performance, called HORNET. HORNET is designed as a low-latency onion routing system that operates at the network layer thus enabling a wide range of applications. Our system uses only symmetric cryptography for data forwarding yet requires no per-flow state on intermediate nodes. This design enables HORNET nodes to process anonymous traffic at over 93 Gb/s. At DeepSec 2015 Chen Chen explained

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2002, 2016

DeepSec Video: HackingTeam – How They Infected Your Android Device By 0days

René Pfeiffer/ February 20, 2016/ Conference, Discussion, High Entropy, Security

Backdoors are very popular these days. Not only cybercrime likes extra access, governments like it too. There’s even a lucrative market for insecurity. You can buy everything your IT team defends against legally. Hacking Team is/was one of the companies supplying 0days along with intrusive software to take over client systems. Attila Marosi explained at DeepSec 2015 how products of Hacking Team were used to attack and compromise Android clients. There is no need to make a long introduction when speaking about the famous Remote Control System (RCS), the product of the Italian company Hacking Team. The huge amount – 400 GB – of leaked data gives rise to lengthy discussion and is extremely concerning for every part of the professionally, politically or even those superficially interested only. Enjoy Attila’s presentation. Be careful about

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1902, 2016

DeepSec Video: ZigBee Smart Homes – A Hacker’s Open House

René Pfeiffer/ February 19, 2016/ Conference, Security, Stories

The data protocols of SmartHomes are the FBI’s wet dream. Why? Because they have no security design. Take ZigBee for example. ZigBee is one of the most widespread communication standards used in the Internet of Things and especially in the area of smart homes. If you have for example a smart light bulb at home, the chance is very high that you are actually using ZigBee by yourself. Popular lighting applications such as Philips Hue or Osram Lightify and also popular smart home systems such as SmartThings or Googles OnHub are based on ZigBee. ZigBee provides also security services for key establishment, key transport, frame protection and device management that are based on established cryptographic algorithms. So a ZigBee home automation network with applied security is secure and the smart home communication is protected?

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1802, 2016

DeepSec Video: Not so Smart – On Smart TV Apps

René Pfeiffer/ February 18, 2016/ Conference, Security

„Smart“ follows the footsteps of „cyber“. Everything is smart nowadays. The problem is that using smart in this context just means a combination of „Turing complete“ and „connected to the Internet“. That’s it. This is a pretty low barrier for calling something „smart“. t DeepSec 2015 Markus Niemietz held a presentation about the state of affairs concerning SmartTVs where security is concerned: One of the main characteristics of Smart TVs are apps. Apps extend the Smart TVs menu with various functionalities, ranging from usage of social networks or payed streaming services, to buying articles on Ebay. These actions demand usage of critical data like authentication tokens and passwords, and thus raise the question of new attack scenarios and the general security of Smart TV apps. We investigate attack models for Smart TVs and their

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1702, 2016

DeepSec Video: Extending a Legacy Platform Providing a Minimalistic, Secure Single-Sign-On-Library

René Pfeiffer/ February 17, 2016/ Conference, Stories

Even if you are not running a mainframe you probably have some old applications which you still need and whose code you cannot lift into the present (technology-wise). This is something you need to address. Despite decades of security research and authentication standards there’s still a vast amount of systems with custom solutions and embedded user databases. Such systems are typically hard to securely integrate with others. We analysed an existing system of an organisation with approximately 12.000 sensitive user data sets and uncovered severe vulnerabilities in their approach. We developed a minimal, secure Single-Sign-On-Solution and demonstrated the feasibility of implementing both a minimal Identity Provider and a minimal Service Provider with only a few lines of code. We provided a simple blueprint for an Identity Provider and an easy to use Service Provider

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1602, 2016

DeepSec Video: Legal Responses Against Cyber Incidents

René Pfeiffer/ February 16, 2016/ Conference, Legal

Despite current efforts to adapt existing legal instruments to regulate hostile activities in cyber space, there is uncertainty about the legal situation of actors affected by these actions. Part of this uncertainty is due to the fact that the cyber domain is technically complex; there is a strong need for collaboration between technical and legal subject matter experts, collaboration which is difficult to achieve. This talk summarizes the current legal status of Cyber Attacks. It defines a taxonomy of possible cyber-incidents, and analyses the predictable consequences of each type of cyber-incident with the purpose of mapping cyber-incidents to different legal frameworks. Oscar Serrano held a presentation at DeepSec 2015 about legal issues with digital attacks.

1502, 2016

Go dark with us! Submit a presentation to DeepINTEL 2016!

René Pfeiffer/ February 15, 2016/ Call for Papers, Conference, Security Intelligence

Information security without intelligence is less than half the fun. That’s why we organise the DeepINTEL 2016 conference. The focus is entirely on the intelligence side of security. Given the events in the recent months it’s about time that you get your focus right and turn your radar on. Flying blind will get you into trouble. The DeepINTEL is a single track / two day event that addresses mainly critical infrastructure, state organizations (administrative and law enforcement), accredited CERTs, finance organizations and trusted parties and organizations with a strong relation or partnership to the aforementioned. Due to the sensitive topics and the nature of the participants and speakers we will have a vetting process for participants. We’d like to know our audience, so that we all can talk freely and openly during the event.

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1502, 2016

DeepSec Video: illusoryTLS – Nobody But Us. Impersonate,Tamper and Exploit

René Pfeiffer/ February 15, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security

Cryptographic backdoors are a timely topic often debated as a government matter to legislate on. At the same time, they define a space that some entities might have practically explored for intelligence purposes, regardless of the policy framework. The Web Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) we daily rely on provides an appealing target for attack. The entire X.509 PKI security architecture falls apart if a single CA certificate with a secretly embedded backdoor enters the certificate store of trusting parties. Do we have sufficient assurance that this has not happened already? Alfonso De Gregorio presented at DeepSec 2015 his findings and introduced illusoryTLS. Aptly named illusoryTLS, the entry is an instance of the Young and Yung elliptic curve asymmetric backdoor in the RSA key generation. The backdoor targets a Certification Authority public-key certificate, imported in

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1302, 2016

DeepSec Video: Measuring the TOR Network

René Pfeiffer/ February 13, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security

A lot of people use TOR for protecting themselves and others. Fortunately the TOR network is almost all around us. But what does it do? How can you get access to metrics? TOR is an anonymisation network and by design doesn’t know anything about its users. However, the question about the structure of the user base often arises. Some people are just interested in the size of the network while others want details about the diversity of its users and relays. Furthermore, TOR is used as a circumvention tool. It is interesting to automatically detect censorship events and to see how the number of users changes in those countries. TOR’s measurement team tries to give answer to those (and more) questions. At DeepSec 2015 Jens Kubieziel explained the collection of different data and how

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1202, 2016

DeepSec Video: Cryptographic Enforcement of Segregation of Duty within Work-Flows

René Pfeiffer/ February 12, 2016/ Conference, Security

Calling for encryption and implementing it may be easy at a first glance. The problem starts  when you have to grant access to data including a segregation of duty. Workflows with Segregation-of-Duty requirements or involving multiple parties with non-aligned interests (typically mutually distrustful) pose interesting challenges in often neglected security dimensions. Cryptographic approaches are presented to technically enforce strict auditability, traceability and multi-party-authorized access control and thus, also enable exoneration from allegations. At DeepSec 2015 Thomas Maus held a presentation explaining the problems and possible solutions.

1102, 2016

DeepSec Video: Agile Security – The Good, The Bad, and mostly the Ugly

René Pfeiffer/ February 11, 2016/ Conference, Security

How do you manage your technical and operational security? Do you follow a model? If so, what’s the flavour? Do you borrow concepts from software development? In case you do or you plan to do, then Daniel Liber might have some ideas for you. At DeepSec 2015 he held a presentation about Agile and a possible relation to information security. Buzzwords about Agile are flying around in overwhelming speed, talks about Scrum, Kanban, XP and other methodologies and practices are thoroughly discussed while security is still left as a ‘high level’ talk, or, sometimes, as understanding how to adapt from traditional development methodologies. Some best practices will leave you scratching your head, unsure what was the original intention and without understanding how to implement security in Agile, effectively. This talk will help security engineers,

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1002, 2016

DeepSec Video: How to Break XML Encryption – Automatically

René Pfeiffer/ February 10, 2016/ Conference, Security

XML is often the way to go when exchanging information between (business) entities. Since it is older than the widespread adoption of SSL/TLS, there is a special standard called XML Encryption Syntax and Processing. You can use XML encryption to encrypt any kind of data. So far, so good. But In recent years, XML Encryption became a target of several new attacks. These attacks belong to the family of adaptive chosen-ciphertext attacks, and allow an adversary to decrypt symmetric and asymmetric XML ciphertexts, without knowing the secret keys. In order to protect XML Encryption implementations, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published an updated version of the standard. Juraj Somorovsky (Ruhr University Bochum) held a presentation at DeepSec 2015 explaining what these attacks look like. .