1110, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Workshop: Exploiting Web Applications Protected By $WAFs

René Pfeiffer/ October 11, 2013/ Conference, Security, Training

We all use web applications on a daily basis. Search engines, portals, web sites, blogs, information pages and various other content accessible by web browsers accompany us every day. This means that web server are the first exposed systems you will have to protect when deploying web applications. Usually you would add filters to your network that inspect access to the software and block any malicious requests. Packet filters were the tool of choice. Now we have application level firewalls to deal with content and protocols used. In the case of web applications the market has introduced a new kind of device: the web application firewall (WAF). In theory WAFs understand HTTP and know how a web browser talks to a web server. In practice no two web applications are alike, because they may

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1010, 2013

Changes to the DeepSec 2013 Schedule – two new Talks

René Pfeiffer/ October 10, 2013/ Administrivia, Conference

We had to change the schedule for the DeepSec 2013 conference slightly. Unfortunately two talks were cancelled, because the speakers could not confirm their presence. We are sorry to hear that, but every one of us know Real Life Interference™ can bust the best of plans. We have replaced the talk slots with submissions by other speakers. We will hear about Uncovering your trails – Privacy issues of Bluetooth Devices by Verónica Valeros & Garcia Sebastian. Bluetooth capabilities are pretty widespread and can be found in devices all over the world – and your workplace, of course. To quote Sheldon Cooper: „Everything is better with Bluetooth.“ And so is attacking devices and leaking information about users and devices. The second talk is pending a description and will be announced in short on our Twitter

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1010, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: The Boomerang Effect – Using Session Puzzling To Attack Apps From The Backend

René Pfeiffer/ October 10, 2013/ Conference, Security

In past centuries attackers used battering rams to break down doors and siege artillery to blast holes into solid fortification walls. These were very tedious undertakings, so using alternate routes – possibly back-doors – were always highly regarded. Nowadays wonderful World of „Cyber“™ is no exception. The modern web-obsessed infrastructure has seen web browsers in local networks being compromised to access web-based back-end systems (through DNS rebinding attacks for example). Management consoles are a prime target, because once you gain access you probably can make the most out of elevated privileges. What about turning the back-end around and attack applications by it? Shay Chen has explored this attack vector and will present details in his talk at DeepSec 2013. Applications security mechanisms, secure software development processes, web application firewalls – collections of countermeasures that turn hacking

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0410, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Workshop: Attacks On GSM Networks

René Pfeiffer/ October 4, 2013/ Conference, Security, Training

Mobile phone networks have penetrated even the most remote areas of the Earth. You can send a tweet from Mount Everest if you like, the cell service is already there. In addition mobile phone networks feature 6 billion subscribers all over the world. Communication by mobile devices has entered the routine of daily life. It’s not all about talking. Smartphone, laptops, tablets and modems access the Internet by mobile phone networks. And as every security specialist knows: If there’s a network, then there are protocols, and these protocols can be attacked. True, it’s not as easy as TCP/IP since mobile phone networks feature sets of more complex protocols. Nevertheless these networks can be accessed, and you cannot block it. This is why you should get in touch with the threats to your organisation. DeepSec

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0310, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Keynote: Geopolitics and the Internet – the Meaning of “Hegemony”

René Pfeiffer/ October 3, 2013/ Conference, Discussion, Internet

Most of us think of the Internet as a place where the world virtually gathers and communicates without boundaries. It is regarded as a „virtual“ space where the confinement by borders of nation states is blurred by digital connectivity. People from all over the globe communicate with each other and form a truly cosmopolitan community. The trouble in paradise starts when countries switch off access to the Internet or prosecute whistle-blowers. Given the ever present notion of „cyber“ war we need to discuss geopolitics. It seems that the USA heavily dominates the Internet and regards it as its territory. Marcus Ranum will address the idea of hegemony and the USA with regards to the Internet in his keynote for the DeepSec 2013 conference: So, the topic is “the meaning of hegemony” – what does

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2609, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Workshop: Developing and Using Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence

René Pfeiffer/ September 26, 2013/ Conference, Security Intelligence, Training

The arsenal of components you can use for securing your organisation’s digital assets is vast. The market offers a sheer endless supply of application level gateways (formerly know as „firewalls“), network intrusion detection/prevention systems, anti-virus filters for any kind of platform (almost down to the refrigerator in the office), security tokens, biometrics, strong cryptography (just stay away from the fancy stuff), and all kinds of Big Data applications that can turn shoddy metrics into beautiful forecasts of Things to Come™ (possibly with a Magic Quadrant on top, think cherry). What could possibly go wrong? Well, it seems attackers still compromise systems, copy protected data, and get away with it. Security often doesn’t „add up“, i.e. you cannot improve your „security performance“ by buying fancy appliances/applications and piling them on top of each other. What

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2509, 2013

Workshops at DeepSec 2013 – One/Two Days and Dates

René Pfeiffer/ September 25, 2013/ Administrivia, Conference, Training

In case you are interested in attending a training at DeepSec 2013: We have changed the standard two day format for two of the nine workshops. The „Social Engineering Awareness Training“ and the „Secure Your Business By Business Continuity Plans“ workshops are the only courses that will be held for one day. The dates are: 19 November 2013 for the „Social Engineering Awareness Training“ 20 November 2013 for the „Secure your Business by Business Continuity Plans“ workshop We will add the dates to the ticket categories accordingly.

2509, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Workshop: Social Engineering Awareness Training – Win A Free Ticket!

René Pfeiffer/ September 25, 2013/ Conference, Training

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” You probably know this question. It’s a philosophical thought experiment questioning observation and knowledge of reality. There is a similar gedankenexperiment for information security: “If your organisation receives a spear phishing e-mail and no one is around to read it, does it create a security breach?” Communication is essential for everyone these days. If you run a business, you are forced to deal with communication on a daily basis. This didn’t start with the Internet. The telephone was first, and before there were letters and all kinds of ways to relay word from A to B. It’s a good idea to go back in time to avoid being distracted by technology but Trojan Horses

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2309, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Workshop: Secure your Business by Business Continuity Plans

René Pfeiffer/ September 23, 2013/ Conference, Training

Quite a lot of companies stay in business, because they operate continuously and reliably. Few have the luxury to close shop for an extended period of time. If you do, then you are either fabulously successful or in deep trouble. Regardless of what you have in mind for your enterprise you should think of implementing a business continuity plan (BCP) sooner or later. Since designing and implementing a BCP is no piece of cake, we offer you a one day training at DeepSec 2013 where you can get started. The workshop will be conducted by Michel Wolodimiroff, who has over 25 years of experience in dealing with information technology. He will walk you through all bad dreams  of failing infrastructure, data loss, compromised systems, and worse catastrophes you might not even have thought of.

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2209, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Schedule is Final!

René Pfeiffer/ September 22, 2013/ Administrivia, Conference, Schedule

The schedule for DeepSec 2013 is final. We had to rearrange some talks, because not all of the speakers we selected confirmed their appearance (that’s real life interference; we hope to see them at some future DeepSec events). The topics look great! We hope you get as much restless nights worrying about your data and infrastructure as we do! ☺ The workshop line-up is especially impressive. It now features 9 trainings in total. Two of the trainings are one day courses, so it might be easier to convince your workload to squeeze some lectures by experts into your busy schedule. This year’s workshops allow you to learn about attacking GSM networks (and thus their clients!), web applications (and their clients too), people (don’t pick up the phone!), IDS/IPS systems (we bet you never saw

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2109, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Europe In The Carna Botnet – Telnet’s Threat To The Largest Economy

René Pfeiffer/ September 21, 2013/ Conference, Security

Botnets have been around since 1999. These herds of networked and compromised systems (called zombies) are the tool of the trade for many groups. It’s the  zombie outbreak of the information age. The analysis of existing botnets is an important task of security researchers around the globe. The study of the malware involved, the infection process and the inter-node communication of the infected systems is crucial for the dismantling of the botnet. Therefore we are happy to present Parth Shukla’s talk on the Carna botnet. It was created by an anonymous hacker to create a census of the (IPv4) Internet. Parth has been analysing the devices that formed part of the Carna Botnet. The data concerning the devices was provided by the anonymous researcher. He has distributed the relevant data to many CERTs and

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2009, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Static Data Leak Prevention In SAP – The Next Generation Of Data Loss Prevention

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2013/ Conference, Security

Once you use information technology you will have to worry about leaks. Applications can leak data when attached to the network (any network!). That’s no breaking news, but it might be bad news for you and your data. Fortunately there are good news, too. There is a talk by Andreas Wiegenstein about ways of data leak/loss prevention (DLP) and a new methodology which might help your organisation: In the age of digital industrial espionage, protecting intellectual property has become a key topic in every company. In the past, companies addressed data leaks by implementing so called content-aware Data Loss/Data Leak Prevention (DLP) software. Such software analyzes data moving through an IT landscape and reports unauthorized transfer of critical data, i.e. transfers beyond the company’s network borders. The key purpose of this methodology is to

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1609, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Top 10 Security Mistakes In Software

René Pfeiffer/ September 16, 2013/ Conference, Security

Software Development and information security are tightly tied together. A bug attracts vulnerabilities and bugs and vulnerabilities combined can be turned into exploits to compromise systems. In an ideal world security starts at the design or development stage. While you probably will never be able to completely eliminate bugs in (your) code due to the complexity of modern applications and their dependencies, you still can improve the security record by paying attention. So where do you get started? What are the most common mistakes made during the software development process that leads to security problems in the finished product? Peter af Geijerstam will address the top 10 security mistakes in his talk at DeepSec 2013. Mistakes during software development do not always have to be caught at the quality assurance stage. You can catch

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1509, 2013

Crypto Wars by Black Boxes and Standards

René Pfeiffer/ September 15, 2013/ High Entropy, Security

Intelligence services go after cryptography. That’s the news you have probably read in the past weeks. That’s no surprise. They have been doing this for centuries. If your job is to intercept and analyse communication, then cryptography gets in your way (provided the target uses it properly). Intelligence services have been dealing with creating and breaking ciphers since their existence. How do you break cryptography? What can you do to attack encrypted communication? There are multiple ways to obtain messages in clear text. Attack the encrypted data! This is widely known as cryptanalysis. Basically you intercept the encrypted message and try to deduce the plain text. Given sufficient failures in the history of cipher designs, this is pretty hard with most modern ciphers. Algorithms used today are developed and tested to withstand attacks like

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1209, 2013

DeepINTEL 2013 – Thank you!

René Pfeiffer/ September 12, 2013/ Conference, Security Intelligence

The second DeepINTEL conference ended two days ago. We had great talks and met wonderful people sharing insights and exchanging thoughts about how to cope with information security. Our thanks go to everyone attending DeepINTEL 2013! In case you missed this year’s opportunity, there will be a DeepINTEL 2014 conference. Its date will be announced at DeepSec 2013. If you have content for DeepINTEL 2014, please get in touch with us as soon as possible!