2011, 2010

DeepSec: Mobile Radio Networks as Targets for Virtual Warfare

René Pfeiffer/ November 20, 2010/ Press

Vienna – The times when a mobile phone was used solely to make calls are long gone, now it’s all about making pictures and surfing the Internet. The groundbreaking success of the iPhone is just one example for the fact that mobile phones have long since outgrown their original use. Youths and adults use them every day  to get information about recent news, the weather or navigation for a future trip with the car. Having the new all-purpose information device by the hand has become a habit. But what happens if criminals or assassins attack the mobile phone network? Cyber War: Public Life in the Crosshairs “The GSM radio network is used by more than 200 countries and holds many spectacular flaws which we want to illustrate.”, explains René Pfeiffer, organiser of the international

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1911, 2010

Schedule is stable

René Pfeiffer/ November 19, 2010/ Schedule

The schedule of DeepSec 2010 has been declared stable¹. Unfortunately three speakers had to cancel their presence because of unforeseen reasons. We have managed to fill the slots, so that we have a full schedule and lots of issues to think about. The schedule on the web will now be frozen for print. Any further changes will always be reflected on our web site. We’re looking forward to see you all! ¹ We thought it would be a good idea since declaring code stable is common in software development. ☺

1711, 2010

DeepSec: Vacance 2.0 – Risque accru de cambriolage lié aux annonces de départ en vacance sur les réseaux sociaux.

René Pfeiffer/ November 17, 2010/ Press

La conférence sur la sécurité informatique met en garde contre les risques liés aux notifications de départ. Au début des vacances de la Toussaint, beaucoup d’allemands ont parlé de leur projet de voyage sur internet , sans se rendre compte du danger d’une telle annonce. Les risques s’accentuent encore avec l’arrivée du nouveau service de localisation «facebook lieux». Les utilisateurs y indiquent, au moyen de leurs portables, le lieu où ils sont afin de tenir leurs contacts au courant. «Au moment des vacances, beaucoup d’entre eux se laissent aller à poster sur un blog, sur twitter ou Facebook. Révéler son lieu de vacance, par exemple sur Facebook Lieux, augmente d’autant les risques d’effraction chez soi» explique René Pfeiffer, organisateur de la conférence DeepSec qui aura lieu du 23 au 26 novembre 2010 à Vienne.

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1511, 2010

A Brief History of GSM A5/2 and 2G/3G Security

René Pfeiffer/ November 15, 2010/ Stories

MiKa and me shared some knowledge about the design flaws and the state of security in 2G/3G networks. The idea was to present an overview. Those networks have been shrouded in NDAs for too long. It is good to see that this is changing. Given the fact that millions of people use this technology on a daily basis, there should have been more publications and a deeper analysis many years ago. GSM features four A5 encryption algorithms. They are called A5/0, A5/1, A5/2 and A5/3. A5/0 is basically plaintext, because no encryption is used. A5/1 is the original A5 algorithm used in Europe. A5/2 is a weaker encryption algorithm created for export (the weakness is a design feature). A5/3 is a strong encryption algorithm created as part of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project. The

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1211, 2010

Conférence DeepSec: Focus sur la situation précaire de la sécurité du réseau mondial de téléphonie mobile.

René Pfeiffer/ November 12, 2010/ Press

33 interventions et 8 workshops par des experts internationaux en sécurité informatique. La conférence internationale DeepSec sur la sécurité rassemblera à Vienne, du 23 au 26 novembre 2010, l’élite mondiale dans le domaine de la sécurité des réseaux et du hacking. Cette année, l’accent sera porté sur la sécurité des systèmes mobiles et de leurs utilisateurs ainsi que sur l’infrastructure de la prochaine génération. Les sociétés d’informatique et de sécurité, les usagers, les responsables d’administrations, les chercheurs, la communauté hacker se verront à nouveau offrir la chance de participer à une programmation abondante comprenant 33 interventions et 8 workshops. «Nous sommes très heureux de permettre à tant d’experts d’échanger, pour la quatrième fois, leurs expériences et leurs idées autour du thème essentiel de la sécurité des technologies de l’information» nous explique René Pfeiffer, organisateur

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1210, 2010

Thoughts about Secure Communication and Wiretapping

René Pfeiffer/ October 12, 2010/ Communication

Secure communication is a very important cornerstone of modern network design and corporate infrastructure. The need to communicate securely is part of everyday life. Businesses, political groups, individuals, governments, non-governmental organisations, and many others use secure communication. The basic idea is that you put a decent portion of trust into the way you exchange messages. Typically the message is only seen by the sender and the recipient. Many take this property of message exchange for granted, but you have to use suitable protocols to meet this goal. Secure communication protocols usually use encryption or steganography to protect and hide the transported messages. Anyone intercepting the data transmission must not be able to decode the original message(s) sent. This is the idea, and when designing secure protocols there is no way around it. Some use

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1409, 2010

Vacation 2.0 and its Disadvantages

René Pfeiffer/ September 14, 2010/ Security

Imagine you are the CEO of a small company. You have some days off. You relax, buy a newspaper and have a coffee. After browsing through the news and financial section you stumble upon a full-page advertising of your own company. The text reads: Dear world, our office is completely deserted. No one’s working at the moment. The rooms are completely unattended. No one will pick up the phone. Only the security guards will walk by and superficially check the door handles. Although the doors are tightly locked and the windows are (probably) closed, you can be sure that no one will enter the office space until INSERT_DATE. So if you want to try picking our locks and rearranging the furniture, feel free. You can take what you want. The coffee machine is plugged

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0709, 2010

DeepSec conference focuses on the precarious security situation in the world-wide mobile phone network

René Pfeiffer/ September 7, 2010/ Press

DeepSec 2010 features 33 talks and 8 workshops by international experts Vienna, 31 August 2010. The international security conference DeepSec brings together the world’s elite in network security and hacking in Vienna from 23 to 26 November 2010. This year, the conference focuses on the security of mobile systems and their users, as well as on the next-generation infrastructure. IT and security companies, users, officials, researchers and the hacker community have the opportunity to take part in the conference with 33 talks and 8 workshops scheduled this year. “We are happy to offer for the fourth time so many experts the chance to exchange ideas and experiences on the most important security issues of everyday IT work in our modern days”, says René Pfeiffer, organiser of DeepSec. Live attacks on iPhone through a weak

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2908, 2010

It’s tiem*) again: NAT66

Mika/ August 29, 2010/ Internet, Security

ITT *) : NAT66 (picture unrelated) In this thread we discuss NAT Maybe the picture is related. We all want to have our communications as safe as possible and we choose appropriate security mechanisms to achieve this goal. We follow “Best Current Practices”, recommendations from security experts and we follow traditions in our own organization. And there is an old tradition, maybe too old to get it out of our heads: NAT will add to security. It will not. Full stop. No Discussion. The topic has been closed long ago and there is no need to microwave it and serve it as a quick midnight-snack just because you feel a little bit hungry, just because you have the feeling there is something missing. We are living on a new diet in the IPv6 world.

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2708, 2010

Are Hackers Speeding on the Information Highway?

Mika/ August 27, 2010/ High Entropy

(or “Has our Security Crashed?”) I just came back from a discussion with our national CERT and took some thoughts back home: (TL;DR section at the end) I have the impression, that some of our security mechanisms, which seemed so sturdy and and healthy until recently, are turning soft and weak in our hands. The developments in the last few years were definitely on the fast lane, breaking all speed limits and no data-highway patrol was there to stop them from speeding. The traditional approach to define security mechanisms (let’s call them technical controls) doesn’t really seem right to me any more: Raise the bar to a level, where the remaining risk is acceptable for the next “X” years, assuming that technology advances at a certain rate. (Use a reasonable number of years for

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2008, 2010

Schedule for DeepSec 2010 published

René Pfeiffer/ August 20, 2010/ Schedule

Reviewing the submissions took us a while longer than anticipated. The reason was the high-quality content you submitted. We had to make some tough decisions and could have easily filled three or four days of In-Depth security talks and many more workshops. We hope that the schedule we published yesterday satisfies your interest and gives some CIOs something to think about. We tackle the security of the GSM network (which is failing, as was reported at DeepSec 2009 already). We also show you how to probe the security of GSM networks (there’s a whole two-day workshop if you want to dive into the gory details). Watch out for remote binary planting! Just yesterday Mitja Kolsek reveiled that about 200 Microsoft Windows applications are vulnerable to remote code execution. We deal with SAP security by

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1108, 2010

CfP revision is almost done

René Pfeiffer/ August 11, 2010/ Administrivia, Schedule

We’re almost finished with the review of presentations and trainings submitted via the Call for Papers form. Everyone will get a notification during the next couple of days. You really sent us a lot of high-quality content, and we are proud to set the stage for your research results. Some vendors might not be as happy as we, but let’s see what happens. Expect the preliminary schedule soon.

0208, 2010

Sneak Preview – your cellphone can be tapped

René Pfeiffer/ August 2, 2010/ Schedule, Security

You probably have a cellphone. Your company might even provide an additional one. Your boss most certainly uses a cellphone. What do you use it for? Do you share details about your private life via phone conversations? Did you ever talk to a business partner about confidential offers? Do you rely on cellphone when it comes to important messages? If so you might be interested in hearing some news about the state of security of mobile networks. Most of them are broken, outdated or both when it comes to security. Details of the security issues have been presented at DeepSec 2009 by Karsten Nohl. During Defcon18 in Las Vegas a security researcher successfully faked several attendees’ cell phones into connecting to his phony GSM base station during a live demonstration that had initially raised

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0108, 2010

Hole196 debunked?

Mika/ August 1, 2010/ Security

(Warning: some technical details, not suited for the TL;DR type of audience) “WPA2 vulnerability discovered” was a headline that caught my attention for several reasons: Someone detected a security flaw in 802.11 RSNA (vulgo “WPA2”) that slipped Chuck Norris’ attention for 3 years (replace the name with any respected security researcher). It’s from a Best-of-breed, Award-winning, World-market-leader etc… company. Reminds me of the CfP submission we received from Ligatt Security. But maybe (hopefully) I’m wrong. Virtually all results of the search engine you prefer point to a copy&paste of the press release without any details (as of Jul 28th). Is this just a result of our copy&paste journalism? I have the impression, that nobody verified the possibility in detail. For example JJ from “Security Uncorked” writes (although expressing clear doubt about the impact): “Without

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2807, 2010

How to secure Wireless Networks

René Pfeiffer/ July 28, 2010/ Security

You have probably followed the news and heard about AirTight Networks’ demonstration of the WPA2 design flaw. What does this mean for operators of wireless networks? Do you have to care? Do you feel threatened? Is there a way to feel better again? First take a look what the design flaw means and what the attack looks like. Hole 196 means that „an insider can bypass WPA2 private key encryption and authentication to sniff and decrypt data from other authorized users as well as scan their Wi-Fi devices for vulnerabilities, install malware and possibly compromise those Wi-Fi devices”. So an attacker has to be authenticated before she can use the exploit. This does not mean that „WPA2” is compromised entirely (yet). It just means that we (maybe) deal with a design flaw. Attacking „WPA2”

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