2008, 2024

DeepSec Training 2024: Software Reverse Engineering Training Course for Beginners – Balazs Bucsay

Sanna/ August 20, 2024/ Conference, Training

The training course targets attendees who have little to no knowledge of reverse engineering but possess the ability to write simple programs in a programming language of their choice and also have a desire to learn reverse engineering of compiled applications. The course spans two days, during which low-level computing and the basics of architectures are explained. The primary target architectures of this course are Intel x86 and AMD x64, where we cover the fundamentals of computing and assembly language. Throughout the course, we will explore how to create basic programs in both C and assembly, and then explore the process of reverse engineering using disassembler, decompiler and debugger on Windows. Each day of the course emphasises hands-on labs, allowing participants to apply their newly gained knowledge in practical exercises. Theory alone quickly fades,

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1908, 2024

DeepSec publishes preliminary Schedule

René Pfeiffer/ August 19, 2024/ Conference, DeepIntel

We are happy and proud to present the preliminary schedule for DeepSec 2024! Again, the many submissions overwhelmed us. We could have filled the schedules for two or three conferences. The range of topics matches current events, your needs for improving digital defence, and insights into how vulnerable systems and humans are. Organic intelligence created all presentations 100%. No previous instructions had to be ignored. Also look at the trainings. We have selected very useful topics and feature expert trainers to guide you through the content. As usual, the schedule for DeepINTEL is only available on request. We hope to see you all in Vienna!

1808, 2024

Update on DeepSec, DeepINTEL, CfP Review, and the Things behind the Stage

René Pfeiffer/ August 18, 2024/ Administrivia

We have been more radio silent than usual in the past months. The main reason was a high workload on various ongoing projects. Given that more and more companies need to address IT security, there were policies to write and security controls to design. Furthermore, the looming NIS Directive II has put some managements into overdrive. And then there is and was the Summer heat. Climate change also impacts work in IT security. Not all environments have air conditioning. Mental work gets hard in hot temperatures. If you need to write code, policies, or technical documentation, then output is slower than usual. By the way, ISO has added climate change risks to businesses to its standards. Companies need to think about how the climate will impact risks to their business processes. It’s not the

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0108, 2024

DeepSec Call for Papers has officially ended – Review Phase opened

René Pfeiffer/ August 1, 2024/ Call for Papers, Conference

The call for papers process for DeepSec has officially ended. We tried to keep track with your submissions, but now we will deep dive into the review phase. You may have noticed that the trainings have already been published online. Usually, we publish the training slots earlier. We try to do this before the Summer, but this year the training review was delayed, because all reviewers were very busy. Now we have even more work because of the number of proposals for talks. Thank you all for your contributions! Creating the schedule will be hard, so bear with us and allow for one to two weeks for the reviews. We promise that all of you will receive either a confirmation when accepted or a message if your submission was declined. Don’t be discouraged or

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1207, 2024

Reminder: Call for Papers DeepSec/DeepINTEL is still open!

René Pfeiffer/ July 12, 2024/ Conference

It’s this time of the year again where the hot weather and deadlines collide. The call for papers for both DeepSec and DeepINTEL is still open! We are looking for original content, your creative ideas, and your invaluable experience. Please submit your proposal to our CfP manager. As always, we have a variety of topics we are interested in. The wonderful world of „artificial intelligence“ has taken the world and its CO2 output by storm. Large Language Models (LLMs) have „learned“ the Internet multiple times. Companies offering their LLM-based services promise to solve all kinds of tasks. What does this mean for IT security? Disinformation and propaganda are a big topic. Europe has already seen elections where structural disinformation played (and plays!) a vital role. Using false information in order to influence the voting

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1207, 2024

IT Security, Standards, and Compliance

René Pfeiffer/ July 12, 2024/ Call for Papers, Conference, Legal

You can often see the classic divide between technical and compliance persons in information technology within teams or organisations. Writing guidelines and writing configurations for implementation seem very different, with no overlaps. In reality, everyone has procedures. While they might not be written or follow a standardized format, having your ways of doing things is crucial to succeed in IT. The same goes for security. Creating policy documents and describing procedures in a way that technical minds can actually use them is a challenge. There is a crossover with the profession of writers who are experts in conveying nonfiction stories. And this is the origin of the schism between technicians and the compliance world. Badly written policies are a security risk, because no one takes them seriously. The purpose of your procedure documentation is

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1906, 2024

Creative Writing is beneficial for Information Security

René Pfeiffer/ June 19, 2024/ Security, Stories

Do you like a good movie? Do you enjoy a good book? Your favourites most probably began as a piece of writing. There is a surprising overlap between creative writing, writing code, doing mathematics, and enjoying a well-defined information security configuration. Everything meets at the written word. IT documentation has a terrible reputation. Since it is always one or more steps behind the actual configuration, people prefer reading configurations instead. The magic is to keep changes in sync with your documentation. Another ingredient is to write concisely and to create the right structure. While documenting IT infrastructure is not like writing a script for a movie, it requires describing everything in the right order. You need to make sure people can look things up and find systems and controls required for security. An IT

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1706, 2024

Online Security is threatened by Politics in the EU

René Pfeiffer/ June 17, 2024/ Communication, Security

A vote for the EU Chat Control disaster is scheduled again. If the vote passes, then this chat control system will destroy the security of communication platforms for all Internet users, organisation, and companies. Chat control basically disables end-to-end-encryption (E2EE). The proposals have been widely discussed, but it seems that the Belgian presidency decided to rush the topic right before the Summer break. Secure communications platforms such as Signal and Threema warned lawmakers. EuroISPA has published a statement of protest as well. E2EE is a cornerstone of information security. The chat control regulation would only affect citizens and businesses. Criminals will always have a way around this. The proposed mass surveillance is a security risk by itself. Nation state conducting espionage will welcome the weakening of the security posture and use it against the

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0906, 2024

DeepSec 2024 Press Release: State Attacks on Information Security continue unabated. End-to-end Encryption remains an important and threatened Component of Security.

Sanna/ June 9, 2024/ Press

The introduction of strong encryption has repeatedly led to disputes with authorities and the government in the past. Whether it’s mobile networks, email systems, messengers or the World Wide Web, every iteration of the technical protocols requires backdoors that jeopardise the entire communications infrastructure. The DeepSec conference warns against opening the door to espionage. Secure or insecure, that is the Question Encryption inevitably has to do with mathematics, and the algorithms used in encryption technologies almost always originate from mathematical research. There are ready-made and well-tested components for IT infrastructures that are freely available. The critical point in securing communication is always to prevent messages from being intercepted. The only way to do this is with end-to-end encryption (EE2E). The keys involved remain exclusively with the sender and recipient. All parties involved in forwarding

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0406, 2024

DeepSec 2024 Press Release: The limits of ‘AI’ language models lie in security. DeepSec warns: ‘AI’ language models generate content and override authorisations

Sanna/ June 4, 2024/ Conference, Press

    Language model algorithms, also known as generative artificial intelligence, continue to celebrate their supposed triumphant advance through many media platforms. Security researchers have analysed the products and revealed a number of weaknesses in the ‘AI’ applications. This year’s DeepSec conference is dedicated to the threats posed by ‘AI’ learning models that use incomplete restrictions to analyse public and sensitive data. Large Language Models (LLMs) as Auto-Completion The technical description of the many ‘artificial intelligence’ (‘AI’) products on the market is impressive. In simple terms, the concept behind the advertising campaigns consists of algorithms that copy as much data as possible, break it down and then recombine it to provide answers to any questions. The learning process when creating the language model is not initially monitored or moderated. Only in later phases does

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2505, 2024

Science Fictions meets Large Language Models

René Pfeiffer/ May 25, 2024/ Conference

Given the advertising of the manufacturers using a Large Language Model (LLM) is just like having a conversation with a person. The reality looks different. Google’s AI search has recently recommended to glue pizza together, eats rocks, or jump off the Golden Gate bridge when being depressed. This is clearly bad advice. Apparently these answers are or were part of the learning process. Incidents like this and the hallucinations of LLM algorithms have been discussed already. Science fictions fans will recall conversations with computer or AI simulations where someone tries to trick the machine do override security checks. The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) created a list of threats to LLM applications. The target audience are developers, designers, architects, managers, and organizations. Marc Pesce wrote an article about tests with different LLM implementations.

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3003, 2024

Ross Anderson has died

René Pfeiffer/ March 30, 2024/ High Entropy, Misc

We mourn the loss of security researcher Ross Anderson. His contribution to information security and digital privacy was significant. His book Security Engineering is a cornerstone for everyone diving into the complex world of digital security. Ross taught at the University of Cambridge and Edinburgh University. He was a very prolific writer and published insights into the technological aspects of information security. He will be missed.

2903, 2024

DeepSec and DeepINTEL 2024 Call for Papers is open

René Pfeiffer/ March 29, 2024/ Call for Papers

The call for papers is open! DeepSec and DeepINTEL are waiting for your input. We are looking for your talks and trainings. Tell us what you found and tell our trainees how to defend against attacks. Please submit proposals for trainings as early as possible. We try to fill at least half of the trainings slots before the Summer, so interested persons have some more time to plan their attendance. Our main aim for 2024 is to examine the weaknesses of Large Language Models (LLMs) and explore their potential for exploitation. The obvious way is to use the prompt, but there are ways to influence of poison the training data. We have seen publications and nascent source code doing this. The less obvious way of weaponising these algorithms is to spread disinformation. Generated content

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0403, 2024

Memory Safety revisited

René Pfeiffer/ March 4, 2024/ Conference

Memory safety is the most important problem in information security. This is something the White House and the NSA want you to believe. The recommendation is to use a different programming language, and all our problems will magically disappear. The proposal sounds a lot like the typical magical bullet solution, just like one of the many marketing promises of vendors since the 1990s. Attacks on memory buffers is the least of your current problems. Attackers use „living off the land“ attacks which use memory-safe scripting languages. If you look at the CWE statistics, then there are lots and lots of input validation errors that will bring down the security of many applications. Most web applications use questionable frameworks that are neither mature nor well-tested. Access to storage systems (SQL or NoSQL) still feature injections

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0602, 2024

Encryption refreshed, Plans for 2024

René Pfeiffer/ February 6, 2024/ Conference

Computer science is all about automation. Repetitive tasks are best done by machines. This is true for our TLS certificate, but maybe you noticed it expired a few days ago. As always, this was because of an automated task that didn’t do what it was supposed to do. We changed parts of our infrastructure, so a few lines of code were not running on the new hardware. Blame it on ChatGPT, but your browser can trust our certificate again. Last year’s DeepSec conference had a focus on the zoo of artificial intelligence algorithms. The AI revolution has so far only pushed the Large Language Model (LLM) algorithms and a discussion about copyright. The battlefield is real. Researchers from the University of Chicago have published the Glaze and Nightshade algorithms to counter unrestricted harvesting by

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