2602, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Using Memory, Filesystems And Runtime To App Pen iOS And Android

René Pfeiffer/ February 26, 2014/ Conference

Your iOS or Android smartphone can do a lot. „There’s an app for that!“ is also true for information security. So what can you do? We have seen smartphones used as an attack platform for penetration testing. You can use them for wardriving, and, of course, for running malicious software (next to „normal“ software which can do a lot too). At DeepSec 2013 Andre Gironda unlocked some of the mysteries of the iDevice and Android-device memory intrinsics, filesystem/process sandboxes, and the OO runtime by walking through the techniques, including common obfuscations. His talk is recommended to anyone interested in the capabilities of modern smartphones.

1102, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Bypassing Security Controls With Mobile Devices

René Pfeiffer/ February 11, 2014/ Conference, Security, Stories

Controls blocking the flow of data are an important tool of defence measures. Usually you need to enforce your organisation’s set of permissions. There are even fancy gadgets available to help you cope with data loss in terms of unauthorised access. This only works in controlled environments. Fortunately the modern IT policy allows intruders to bring their own tools in order to circumvent security controls. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is all the fashion these days, and it really helps evading defence mechanisms. At DeepSec 2013 Georgia Weidman of Bulb Security LLC talked about what you can do with mobile devices and what you have to address when protecting your data. „…Companies are putting a lot of faith in these security mechanisms to stop the threats to mobile devices. In this talk we put

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0302, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Uncovering your Trails – Privacy Issues of Bluetooth Devices

René Pfeiffer/ February 3, 2014/ Conference, Security

Devices with Bluetooth capabilities are all around us. We have all gotten used to it. Smartphones, laptops, entertainment electronics, gaming equipment, cars, headsets and many more systems are capable of using Bluetooth. Where security is concerned Bluetooth was subject to hacking and security analysis right from the start. Bluedriving, Bluejacking, cracking PIN codes, and doing more stuff severely strained the security record. Either people have forgotten Bluetooth’s past, ignore it, or have it turned off. At DeepSec 2013 Verónica Valeros and Sebastián García held a presentation which revisits the information Bluetooth devices transmit into their environment. They developed a suite to do Bluedriving more efficiently and shared their findings with the DeepSec audience. If you think Bluetooth is not a problem any more, you should take a look at their talk.

1901, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Cracking Open “Secure” Android Containers

René Pfeiffer/ January 19, 2014/ Conference

Cell phones, especially the smart ones, become more and more part of your company’s infrastructure. These devices accumulate software (a.k.a. „apps“), authentication tokens, passwords, and a lot of data worthy of protection. While smartphone systems have their own protection mechanisms, not every one of them might work reliably. Chris John Riley explains in his presentation held at DeepSec 2013 why „secure“ containers on Android phones might not be as secure as advertised. Please make sure that you show this presentation to anyone riding the „BYOD“ train. You might want to rethink what you let your users put on their phones.

1511, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Bypassing Security Controls With Mobile Devices

René Pfeiffer/ November 15, 2013/ Conference, Security

How do you counter threats emerging from a new trend? Well, standard practice is to buy a new appliance, add-on, or similar magic trick. People do this currently with the trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Once you say yes to BYOD, you just gave Santa Claus (or your chief financial officer) more options for Christmas presents. There is Mobile Device Management (MDM in short), plus you can do a lot of filtering at the edge of your network(s). Still mobile devices are a threat. At DeepSec 2013 Georgia Weidman of Bulb Security LLC will show you how the threats work in real environments. Testing if your wonderful BYOD playground works for attackers can be done by taking your MDM’s promises to the limits. Let’s see if your MDM has ever heard of

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1311, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Building The First Android IDS On Network Level

René Pfeiffer/ November 13, 2013/ Conference, Development, Security

Being popular is not always a good thing and here’s why: As mobile devices grow in popularity, so do the incentives for attackers. Mobile malware and threats are clearly on the rise, as attackers experiment with new business models by targeting mobile phones. The threat to mobile devices, however, is not limited to rogue versions of popular apps and adware. Threat actors are also pouncing on mobile users’ banking transactions. Android continues to be a primary target for malware attacks due to its market share and open source architecture. Nowadays, several behaviour-based malware analysis and detection techniques for mobile threats have been proposed for mobile devices but only about 30 percent of all Android smart phones and tablets have security apps installed. At DeepSec 2013 Jaime Sanchez (@segofensiva) will present AndroIDS, a signature-based intrusion

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0811, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Mobile Fail: Cracking Open “Secure” Android Containers

René Pfeiffer/ November 8, 2013/ Conference, Security

Over the last few years the desire to have information at our fingertips whenever and wherever we want has driven us more and more towards mobile devices. The convenience of having our email, files and access codes available to us on our smartphones or tablets has given rise to a new problem… that of securing our sensitive data on an inherently insecure device. The same form factor that makes smart phones the easy choice for remote access to email and services also makes them easy to lose. In response, we’ve begun to move security closer to the data, relying on “secure” container applications to keep our private and company data secure. Mobile apps such as LastPass, Dropbox, Evernote, GOOD for Enterprise, and may others all offer differing degrees of security. In this presentation Chris

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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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3008, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Automation in Android & iOS Application Security Review

René Pfeiffer/ August 30, 2013/ Conference, Security

Even if you do not want to follow the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) hype you might have to deal with mobile operating systems and applications running on them. Once you have a need to deploy a system, you need to know how to review the security. Hemil Shah will explain in his talk how you can deal with this problem. Mobile application hacking and its security is becoming a major concern in today’s world – especially with BYOD and user’s jailbreaking/rooting their devices. In the last few years we have seen a range of new attack vectors and methods of exploitation for these devices. Mobile applications are vulnerable to various sets of different attacks like local storage, user data harvesting, activity spying, unauthorized event injection, UI jacking, tab jacking, traffic redirection, logical attacks,

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0811, 2012

DeepSec 2012 Talk: Pentesting iOS Apps – Runtime Analysis and Manipulation

René Pfeiffer/ November 8, 2012/ Conference, Security

Since one of the focus topics of DeepSec 2012 deals with mobile computing and devices, we asked Andreas Kurtz to elaborate on his presentation about pentesting iOS apps: „Apple’s iPhone and iPad are quite trendy consumer devices, and have become increasingly popular even in enterprises nowadays. Apps, downloaded from the AppStore or developed in-house, are supposed to completely change and optimize the way of work. Suddenly, managers have access to business intelligence information, data warehouses and financial charts on their mobile devices: Apps are used as front ends to executive information systems and, thus, are carrying around loads of sensitive data. At a first glance it seems, that there’s nothing new on it. Indeed, it is quite common to remotely access critical business data. However, the popularity of mobile devices, combined with the sensitive

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2009, 2012

DeepSec 2012 Workshop: Attacks on GSM Networks

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2012/ Conference

We are proud to follow the tradition of breaking hardware, software, code, ciphers or protocols. When it comes to mobile phone networks, you can break a lot. The workshop on Attacks on GSM Networks will show you the current state of affairs and some new tricks and developments. The attacks that will be discussed during the training are not theoretical, they are feasible and can be exploited to be used against you. Knowing about the capabilities of your adversaries is absolutely important since virtually no organisation or business runs without the use of mobile networks. What do you have to expect? Well, attendees will spend about half the time re-visiting the key aspects of GSM’s security features and their publicly known weaknesses. During the other half, attention is being paid to the hands-on practical

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3105, 2012

Securing Walled Gardens

René Pfeiffer/ May 31, 2012/ Discussion, Security

Setting up walled gardens around fancy mobile devices (and probably other computers) is very fashionable among vendors. In theory there is a controlled environment where malicious software is virtually unknown. The vendor can implement a strict quality assurance and can tether any aberrant developers to policies. Since a wall is a fundamental security device the vendor gets the psychological bonus of users feeling protected. So with all security issues solved there is no need to break out of the walled garden, right? How do you explain this tweet about the newly released Absinthe jailbreak then? @chronicdevteam: Some stats since release of #Absinthe – 211,401 jailbroken iPad3’s and 973,086 devices newly jailbroken! If walled gardens are so perfect, why do millions of users want to break out? Paul Ducklin has explored this phenomenon in an

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2505, 2012

Bring Your Own Spy – BYOD gone wrong

René Pfeiffer/ May 25, 2012/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

It is reasonably safe to assume that anyone doing business has meetings from time to time. Meeting people and talking to them (or listening) is part of many company’s culture. What do you bring for your meeting? A computer? Maybe. Paper and pencils? Old school but why not. Your cell phone? Most probably! Unfortunately this also means that you might invite some spies to the conference. We have already bashed described talked about the BYOD conundrum challenge. Combining the BYOD approach with information security is hard bordering on the impossible. There are some strategies out there for securing your device(s) (in this case from Software Advice, but others have check lists, too). You can also use the Might of Security Policies™ against the threat (we all know that all users follow any written policy

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0211, 2011

Talk: Defeating BlackBerry Malware & Forensic Analysis

René Pfeiffer/ November 2, 2011/ Conference

Mobile phones have caught up on the malware side. Your phone can most probably now be infected by malicious software and be part of a botnet in the worst case. How do you analyse compromised devices? Do you have the right tools at hand? Maybe you don’t need any tools for you won’t find anything. Sheran A. Gunasekera explains in his talk Defeating BlackBerry Malware & Forensic Analysis at DeepSec 2011 how the forensic analysis of malware can be defeated. In the recent years, more prominence has been given to BlackBerry malware either in the wild or to commercially available kinds. Traditionally, using signature based malware scanners have been the way to detect and remove these malicious programs. Most smartphones can be fitted with anti-virus/-malware scanners these days. However Sheran will look at a different

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1910, 2011

Press Release: From Car to „Zombie“ – Data-driven Attacks on Automobiles

DeepSec Organisation/ October 19, 2011/ Press

Data-driven Attacks on Automobiles Security conference DeepSec broaches the issue of automobile security  Vienna – Hacking attacks on cars sound like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster. However, they’re possible today and pose a real threat for individuals and the automotive industry. The international security conference DeepSec, which takes place between the 15th and 18th of November 2011 chose the security of mobile phones, cars and their users as central topics for this year’s conference. „As in the years before we want to present exciting and controversial topics which concern not only experts, but most of us directly or indirectly in 7 workshops and 34 talks.The liability of modern cars to attacks is on of our topics.” says René Pfeiffer, organiser of DeepSec. “DeepSec acts as neutral platform to connect the hacker-community with IT

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