0802, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Top 10 Security Mistakes In Software (Development)

René Pfeiffer/ February 8, 2014/ Conference, Security, Stories

Everybody makes mistakes. It’s no surprise that this statement applies to software development, too. When you deal with information security it is easy to play the blame game and say that the application developers must take care to avoid making mistakes. But how does software development work? What are the processes? What can go wrong? Answering these questions will give you an insight into ways to avoid being bitten by bugs. Peter af Geijerstam of Factor 10 talked about security mistakes in software development in his presentation held at the DeepSec 2013 conference. We recommend his presentation for everyone dealing with information security, not just software developers.

0702, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Malware Datamining And Attribution

René Pfeiffer/ February 7, 2014/ Conference, Security

Popular culture totally loves forensics (judging by the number of TV shows revolving around the topic). When it comes to software a detailed analysis can be very insightful. Most malicious software isn’t written from scratch. Some components are being reused, some are slightly modified (to get past the pesky anti-virus filters). This means that (your) malware has distinct features which can be used for attribution and further analysis. In his talk at DeepSec 2013 Michael Boman explained what you do with malicious software in order to extract information about its origins. Use the traces of its authors to attribute malware to a a individual or a group of individuals. It gives you an idea about the threats you are exposed to and is a good supplement to your risk assessment.

1701, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Cracking And Analyzing Apple iCloud Protocols

René Pfeiffer/ January 17, 2014/ Conference

The „Cloud“ has been advertised as the magic bullet of data management. Basically you put all your precious eggs into one giant basket, give it to someone else, and access your data from everywhere – provided you have a decent Internet connection. Since someone else is now watching over your data, you do not always know what protocols and security measures are in place. Few „cloud“ solutions publish what they actually do. Apple’s iCloud system is no different. Vladimir Katalov (ElcomSoft Co. Ltd.) explained in his talk at DeepSec 2013 how the iCloud protocol works and how you can develop your own clients to access your own data in Apple’s „cloud“ infrastructure. His reverse-engineering work is based on publicly available information. Have a look!

0211, 2012

DeepSec 2012 Training: SAP Security In-Depth

René Pfeiffer/ November 2, 2012/ Security, Training

Your SAP installation is probably the most critical system in your company’s infrastructure. At the same time the informations accessed and processed by SAP systems origin from many sources. Securing infrastructure with this complexity is not an easy task, and testing your security measures requires a great deal of knowledge and training. In addition your will probably run web services talking to your SAP system – which is quite handy for attackers. In case you are short on knowledge about your own SAP deployment, there’s help. There will be an SAP security workshop at DeepSec 2012! The SAP Security In-Depth training will show you how to find out if your SAP infrastructure is secured. Knowing about segregation of duties and securing roles and profiles is fine in theory, but you have to make sure

Read More

2708, 2012

Take-Away Security Tools Probably Aren’t

René Pfeiffer/ August 27, 2012/ Discussion, Security

You have probably read one of the many reviews of security tools published in the depths of the Internet. A lot of magazines feature articles with the headline „Top n Tools for $TASK“. While reviews are a nice way of being introduced to new things, especially tools and software, you have to be careful when it comes to reviewing the security aspects of code or your new favourite tool. First of all you cannot analyse the security design and possible flaws by reading the FAQ section of the project web site or the user manual. You have to evaluate the code and the components it uses. Don’t be fooled or distracted by encryption for it doesn’t necessarily secure anything. Getting a security design right is very hard, and sprinkling cryptography over serious design flaws

Read More

2909, 2011

Talk: Why the Software we use is designed to violate our Privacy

René Pfeiffer/ September 29, 2011/ Conference

Most of us are used to take advantage of  the fruits of the Web 2.0. There is web e-mail, online backups, social networking, blogs, media sharing portals (for audio/video), games, instant messaging and more – available for private and corporate users. A lot of sites offer their services for free (meaning without charging anything), thus increasing the number of accounts created. Nevertheless you pay something. You are being mined for information and data. Some of these products collect our data directly. In such cases, the exchange of user data for free services is well known, at least to many savvy users. However, many other products do not collect our private data. Instead, they quietly facilitate and enable data collection by other parties. It all depends on the business model. Of course most portals and

Read More

2406, 2010

Native Code Protection and Security

René Pfeiffer/ June 24, 2010/ Development, Internet

The Mozilla vice president of products announced that Firefox doesn’t need to run native code anymore when it comes to plugins. The idea is called crash protection for it aims to keep the web browser alive when a plugin fails to run correctly. At the same time the magical words about the future being in the hands of (open) web standards and HTML5 are uttered. What does this imply in terms of security? Is there any benefit? The thought of having more reliable web browsers is certainly tempting. It is also true that overloading the browser with plugins increases the „angle of attack” to the point of stalling or most probably catching some malware floating around on the Web. The message seems to be that seperating vulnerable plugins from the browser doesn’t rule out

Read More