2809, 2012

DeepSec 2012 Talk: AMF Testing Made Easy

René Pfeiffer/ September 28, 2012/ Conference

Protocols are fun. When it comes to security, protocols are both loved and loathed. Security researchers have fun breaking them. Developers have a hard time designing them (this is why short-cuts will be taken and weaknesses are introduced). Penetration testers are sent to discover broken protocols and to exploit them. Attackers usually know some bits about protocols, too. This is where you come in. Regardless on which side you are on, you need to know, too. It’s not always about security, though. Typical software deployment or development requires testing, too. Luca Carettoni has good news for you either way. Despite the popularity of Flex and the AMF binary protocol, testing AMF-based applications is still a manual and time-consuming activity. This research aimed at improving the current state of art, introducing a new testing approach

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1106, 2012

Software Development and Security Training

René Pfeiffer/ June 11, 2012/ Security, Training

Prior to every DeepSec conference we offer two-day trainings, and we regularly advertise trainings on secure software development. Attending security-centric workshops is really not meant as a humiliation. Modern (and not so modern) software development deals with a lot of code and dependencies. Even if your code is clean and well-written there’s a chance that something you rely on isn’t. This happens a lot with library functions (think DLLs) and thus can happen in high level programming languages, too. A training focussing on security will sharpen your „spider sense“ and you will be able to detect sections of code that can go wrong more easily. This is also true for reading documentation. Take a look at CVE-2012-2122. In essence you can get access to some MySQL database servers by repeatedly trying to access an

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1111, 2011

Talk: Advances in IDS and Suricata

René Pfeiffer/ November 11, 2011/ Conference

Intrusion Detection Systems were very much in demand over 10 years ago. The widely known Snort IDS software is a prominent tool. Other vendors have their own implementations and you can readily buy or download thousands of rules distributed in various rule sets. Cranking up the sensitivity will then easily give you more alerts than you will ever be able process sensibly. This is the mindset that settles once they hear „IDS“ or „IPS“. We don’t think this view is still true. That’s why Victor Julien and Eric Leblond, Open Information Security Foundation, will talk about Advances in IDS and Suricata at DeepSec 2011. You have probably heard of Suricata, the next generation intrusion detection engine. Development of Suricata started in 2008 and war first released as stable in December 2009. Past DeepSec conferences featured

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1610, 2011

Talk: Extending Scapy by a GSM Air Interface

René Pfeiffer/ October 16, 2011/ Conference

Scapy is the „Swiss Army tool“ among security software. Scapy is a powerful interactive packet manipulation program. It is used for scanning, probing, testing software implementations, tracing network packets, network discovery, injecting frames, and other tasks. So it’s a security power tool useful for a lot of tasks in security research. Wouldn’t it be nice to add some capabilities on layer 3 of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol? This layer covers the UM interface that connects mobile network clients over the air interface to the base stations. Capturing packets on this link alone would be a great benefit to security researchers. Laurent ‘kabel’ Weber of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum will talk about „Extending Scapy by a GSM Air Interface and Validating the Implementation Using Novel Attacks“ at DeepSec 2011. Laurent’s talk describes the enhancement

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2309, 2011

Workshop: Web Hacking – Attacks, Exploits and Defence

René Pfeiffer/ September 23, 2011/ Conference

In 2011 we have seen a lot of articles about „cyber“ attacks in the media. Judging from the media echo it looks as if a lot of servers were suddenly compromised and exploited for intruding into networks. While attacks usually take advantage of weaknesses in software, servers do not develop vulnerabilities over night. Most are on-board by design, by accident or by a series of mistakes. The first line of defence are web applications. Every modern company has a web site or uses web portals. Attackers know this and look for suitable attack vectors. If you want to improve your security, you have to start right at this first line. This is why we recommend the workshop Web Hacking – Attacks, Exploits and Defence by Shreeraj Shah & Vimal Patel of Blueinfy Solutions. As

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