2404, 2023

#DeepSec Press Release: IT Security Has A Deficit In Defence

Sanna/ April 24, 2023/ Press, Security

[DeepSec traditionally leans more on the defence side of things. So we published this article.] Many people are now aware of the importance of information security, but how to operate secure systems is often not obvious. The reason lies in the deficit of real defence measures. This may sound paradoxical, but many products on the market deal with the activities after a successful attack. The prevention of attacks is mostly ignored. This year’s DeepSec conference therefore wants to provide some tuition in digital defence measures. Fire extinguishers instead of fire protection A simple scenario will serve as an illustration. Imagine that a company accumulates flammable material in its offices for historical reasons. Grown procedures lead to the fact that more and more hazardous materials are distributed throughout the premises. There is plenty of space.

Read More

1311, 2021

Updated Health Protection Guidelines – Information about hybrid Configuration of DeepSec & DeepINTEL 2021

René Pfeiffer/ November 13, 2021/ Administrivia, Conference

The City of Vienna has announced changes to the health protection regulations. The regulations are still not in effect, but we expect them to be in place in the course of the next week. The city council is more strict than the rest of Austria, so make sure to update on local regulations. We have updated the health protection document on our web site. Basically the access to the conference is limited to persons having recovered from CVOID-19 and vaccinated persons. Additional information can be found by using one of the following links: Latest COVID-19 information Information about COVID-19 (City of Vienna) DeepSec will be at the conference hotel and feature live streams for every track. Some speakers will present remotely. All presentation will be available on site and via the streams. Links for

Read More

2802, 2021

Management Console Access – Obscurity by Security and vice versa

René Pfeiffer/ February 28, 2021/ Discussion, Security

Every discussion about security sooner or later connects to the wonderful word obscurity. Mentioning security by obscurity is a guaranteed way of losing sight of the facts. It is vital to actually fix weaknesses and introduce strong separation of systems when implementing security. Furthermore, the leakage of useful information to potential adversaries should be eliminated. That’s the theory. Enter the discussions we have witnessed in real life and in the Internet. A common tactic is to strip information from communication protocols that is not needed for transporting the message. Version numbers, host names, addresses, and other pieces of data are often removed when a server answers requests. Especially web applications send a ton of useful information to clients. You can see the structure of the web space, components used for rendering, server systems involved,

Read More

2905, 2020

Administrivia Update: Regulations, Ticket Shop, and DeepSec

René Pfeiffer/ May 29, 2020/ Administrivia, Conference

Clear guidelines for events and conferences slowly emerge here in Austria. We have some news on how DeepSec, DeepINTEL, and ROOTS will look like in November. We will compile the set of regulations in a separate document and publish it on our web site. The constraints set by the authorities contain no show-stoppers for the event and the trainings. We will carefully work out a concept which we will use in November for everything that is going on on site in Vienna. 😷 We have the full support of our conference hotel, and we are confident that we can increase health protection and decrease risks for everyone attending. In addition we found some bug in the ticket shop system. The tickets for DeepINTEL, DeepSec conference / training, and ROOTS can be bought via the

Read More

1908, 2019

DeepSec Training: Black Belt Pentesting / Bug Hunting Millionaire – Mastering Web Attacks with Full-Stack Exploitation

René Pfeiffer/ August 19, 2019/ Conference, Training

Web applications are gateways for users and attackers alike. Web technology is used to grant access to information, public and sensitive alike. The latest example is the Biostar 2 software, a web-based biometric security smart lock platform application. During a security test the auditors were able to access over 1 million fingerprint records, as well as facial recognition information. How can you defend against leaks like this? Well, you have to understand all layers of the application stack. Modern web applications are complex and it’s all about full-stack nowadays. That’s why you need to dive into full-stack exploitation if you want to master web attacks and maximize your payouts. Say no to classic web application hacking. Join the training session at DeepSec 2019 and take advantage of Dawid Czagan’s unique hands-on exercises and become

Read More

0510, 2018

DeepSec 2018 Talk: Leveraging Endpoints to Boost Incident Response Capabilities – Francisco Galian, Mauro Silva

Sanna/ October 5, 2018/ Conference, Security

The information technology world is full of terms and acronyms. You got servers, nodes, clients, workstations, mobile devices, lots of stuff talking via the network to even more stuff. And then you got security breaches. How do you detect the latter? Well, you look for things out of the ordinary. Error messages, anomalies in behaviour, activity outside the usual time slots as system is being used, and the like. What’s the best place to look? Answer: The systems directly in touch with all the interactions attackers are interested in – endpoints. Most organisations fail to properly detect or even respond to incidents. A factor that significantly contributes to this fact is the lack of visibility on endpoints. That being said, endpoint logging can be very noisy and most organizations don’t have infrastructure to cope

Read More

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.

Read More

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

Read More

2601, 2017

The Sound of „Cyber“ of Zero Days in the Wild – don’t forget the Facts

René Pfeiffer/ January 26, 2017/ Discussion, High Entropy

The information security world is full of buzzwords. This fact is partly due to the relationship with information technology. No trend goes without the right amount of acronyms and leetspeaktechnobabble. For many decades this was not a problem. A while ago the Internet entered mainstream. Everyone is online. The digital world is highly connected. Terms such as cyber, exploit, (D)DoS, or encryption are used freely in news items. Unfortunately they get mixed up with words from earlier decades leading to cyber war(fare), crypto ransom(ware), dual use, or digital assets. Some phrases are here to stay. So let’s talk about the infamous cyber again. In case you have not seen Zero Days by Alex Gibney, then go and watch it. It is a comprehensive documentary about the Stuxnet malware and elements of modern warfare (i.e.

Read More

3011, 2016

Scanning for TR-069 is neither Cyber nor War

René Pfeiffer/ November 30, 2016/ Discussion, High Entropy, Internet

The Deutsche Telekom was in the news. The reason was a major malfunction of routers at the end of the last mile. Or something like that. As always theories and wild assumptions are the first wave. Apparently a modified Mirai botnet tried to gain access to routers in order to install malicious software. The attacks lasted from Sunday to Monday and affected over 900,000 customers. These routers often are the first point of contact when it comes to a leased line. Firewalls and other security equipment usually comes after the first contact with the router. There are even management ports available, provided the ISP has no filters in place. The TR-069 (Technical Report 069) specification is one management interface, and it has its security risks. Now that the dust has settled the Deutsche Telekom

Read More

2010, 2016

DeepSec2016: 0patch – Self-healing Security Updates. DeepSec and ACROS Security Introduce a Platform for Micropatches

Sanna/ October 20, 2016/ Conference, Development, Schedule, Security, Training

As soon as a security gap in an computer application is made public the anxious wait begins. Whether it is software for your own network, online applications or apps for your mobile devices, as a user you will quickly become aware of your own vulnerability. The nervousness increases. When will the vendor publish the security update? In the meanwhile is there anything you can do to reduce the risks? Alternatively, how long can you manage without this certain software? To provide answers to these questions is the central point of security management. Some vendors have fixed dates for security updates. However, occasionally unscheduled updates take place, while some vendors wait quite a few years before they release another update. And this is only true for applications that are still in production or come with a support

Read More

2010, 2016

DeepSec2016 Talk: AMSI: How Windows 10 Plans To Stop Script Based Attacks and How Good It Does That – Nikhil Mittal

Sanna/ October 20, 2016/ Conference, Development, Security

In his talk Nikhil Mittal will focus on AMSI: In Windows 10, Microsoft introduced the AntiMalware Scan Interface (AMSI), which is designed to target script based attacks and malware. Script based attacks have been lethal for enterprise security and with the advent of PowerShell, such attacks have become increasingly common. AMSI targets malicious scripts written in PowerShell, VBScript, JScript, etc. It drastically improves detection and the blocking rate of malicious scripts. When a piece of code is submitted for execution to the scripting host, AMSI steps in and scans the code for malicious content. What makes AMSI effective is that no matter how obfuscated the code is, it needs to be presented to the script host in clear text and unobfuscated. Moreover, since the code is submitted to AMSI just before execution, it doesn’t

Read More

0809, 2016

DeepSec 2016 Talk: CSP Is Dead, Long Live Strict CSP! – Lukas Weichselbaum

Sanna/ September 8, 2016/ Conference

The Content Security Policy (CSP) is an additional layer of security for web applications. It is intended to detect and mitigate certain types of attacks. CSP is deployed by using the HTTP Content-Security-Policy header for publishing a policy. The policy instructs the web client how various resources will be used, where they come from, and the like. Violations of the policy can be reported to an application. Basically you can give the web client important hints what to expect. The reporting helps your intrusion detection process since the web clients usually understand the Web better than IDS modules. Lukas Weichselbaum is working at Google, and he will explain how CSP can be bypassed. In this presentation I’ll highlight the major roadblocks that make CSP deployment difficult. I talk about common mistakes, about how we automatically bypassed

Read More

0303, 2016

DeepSec Video: Visualizing Wi-Fi Packets the Hacker’s Way

René Pfeiffer/ March 3, 2016/ Communication, Conference, Security, Stories

Like the Force wireless data/infrastructure packets are all around us. Both have a light and a dark side. It all depends on your intentions. Lacking the midi-chlorians we have to rely on other sources to get a picture of the wireless forces in and around the (network) perimeter. At DeepSec 2015 Milan Gabor held a presentation about visualisation of wi-fi packets: Today visualizing Wi-Fi traffic is more or less limited to console windows and analyze different logs from an aircrack-ng toolset. There are some commercial tools, but if we want to stay in the Open/Free Source Code (FOSS) area we need to find better solutions. So we used ELK stack to gather, hold, index and visualize data and a modified version of an airodump tool for input. With this you can create amazing dashboards,

Read More