0610, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Insecurity In Information Technology – Tanya Janca

Sanna/ October 6, 2017/ Communication, Conference, Security

A lot is expected of software developers these days; they are expected to be experts in everything despite very little training. Throw in the IT security team (often with little-to-no knowledge of how to build software) telling developers what to do and how to do it, and the situation is further strained. This silo-filled, tension-laced situation, coupled with short deadlines and mounting pressure from management, often leads to stress, anxiety and less-than-ideal reactions from developers and security people alike. In this talk Tanya Janca will explain how people’s personal insecurities can be brought out by leadership decisions in the way we manage our application security programs, and how this can lead to real-life vulnerabilities in software and other IT products.  This is not a soft talk about “feelings”, this is a talk about creating

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0510, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Bypassing Web Application Firewalls – Khalil Bijjou

Sanna/ October 5, 2017/ Conference, Security

Everyone has firewalls or filters. They are now called application-level gateway (ALG) and have lots of features included. Algorithms, signatures, heuristics, protocol checks, verification; you name it. It’s all in there. But does it work? Obfuscation and evading technology has been around since the first filter was created. Anticipating what data might look like is hard, and some protocols were designed to be as ambivalent as possible, one might think. At DeepSec 2017 Khalil Bijjou will show you what can be done being evasive in the web. Security experts perform security assessments of web applications in order to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious users. Web Application Firewalls add a second layer of protection to web applications in order to mitigate these vulnerabilities. The attempt to bypass Web Application Firewalls is an

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0210, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Hacking The Brain For Fun And Profit – Stefan Hager

Sanna/ October 2, 2017/ Conference, Discussion

You are what you think. At least we think so. Is this mental model the right way to explore our surroundings and our interconnected world? Well, let’s find out by thinking about it. When we’re talking and thinking about security, we very often have a rather fixed mindset and keep using what we think are proven methods. We tend not to question our decisions and thoughts, and the way how our brains work reaffirms our bias and our mediocre choices. In this talk we take a closer look at how we are thinking, and how we can change or expand this as well as our perception, by hacking into our own brains in order to get a clearer picture of what we really want and need. New ways of thinking and creativity can be

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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

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2809, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Uncovering And Visualizing Botnet Infrastructure And Behavior – Andrea Scarfo & Josh Pyorre

Sanna/ September 28, 2017/ Conference, Internet

When you read about information security, then you might get the impression that there are lots of nameless threats Out There™. Especially when it comes to networked malicious software, i.e. malware, that forms robot armies, the picture gets a lot more vague and foggy. So you need to get some details to sharpen your view. There are some means how to do this, and you will be told at DeepSec 2017 by Andrea Scarfo and Josh Pyorre. How much information about a botnet can one find using a single IP address, domain name or indicator of compromise (IOC)? What kind of behavior can be determined when looking at attacker and victim infrastructure? In an attempt to discover and analyze the infrastructure behind large-scale malware activity, Andrea and Josh began their research with known indicators

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2709, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Next-Gen Mirai Botnet – Balthasar Martin & Fabian Bräunlein

Sanna/ September 27, 2017/ Conference, Internet, Security

While you were living in a cave, devices took over the world and got connected to the network. This is the state of affairs we live in right now. As long as nothing happens we don’t notice anything about it. The Mirai (未来) botnet changed this all of a sudden. Consumer devices were drafted into an army of bots. Thanks to the proliferation of networked devices such as cameras, home routers, and others the botnet was very successful. The code was designed to run on embedded devices and is even online for inspection. Let’s take a look at how to improve Mirai. Badly secured embedded devices enabled the largest DDoS attack on critical networks seen to date: The Mirai attacks in 2016 were largely pegged on Internet-exposed telnet with default credentials. While such telnet

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2009, 2017

Workshops, Trainings, Talks: DeepSec and ROOTS Schedule Update

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2017/ Administrivia, Conference

As you might have noticed, the DeepSec schedule is not complete yet. Furthermore the ROOTS schedule is not published at all. The reason for this are the still pending reviews. The major part concerns ROOTS. ROOTS is an academic workshop where academic publications are presented. There has been some confusion about the term workshop. In the context of ROOTS this means presentations. This is why we have replaced the word workshops on the DeepSec web site and in (hopefully) all texts with the word training. Trainings are the two-day, well, trainings in advance of the DeepSec conference days. ROOTS features presentations, also called workshops in ROOTS-context, as does the DeepSec conference (on the conference days). So we have trainings (the two-day training courses; one, the ARM exploit laboratory is for three days, be careful)

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2608, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Talk: Malware Analysis: A Machine Learning Approach – Chiheb Chebbi

Sanna/ August 26, 2017/ Conference, Security

Software has a character. It can be beneficial. It can also be malicious. A networked business world and the Internet of connected individuals make life for malicious software, also known as malware, easier. Just like international travel facilitates the spread of diseases and parasites, the networked globe is a big advantage for malware. Researcher can hardly keep up with the numbers of detected viruses, worms, and trojan horses. So why not let machines look for malware on their own? Certainly automation already benefits the hunt for malicious code. Chiheb Chebbi has some ideas that can help. Threats are a growing problem for people and organizations across the globe. With millions of malicious programs in the wild it has become hard to detect zero-day attacks and polymorphic viruses.This is why the need for machine learning-based

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2408, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Keynote: Social Science First! – Dr. Jessica Barker

Sanna/ August 24, 2017/ Conference, High Entropy, Security

While the schedule is still preliminary, we have already some confirmations from our speakers. We are happy to announce Dr Jessica Barker as the keynote speaker for DeepSec 2017. Information security has a lot to do with interactions. Despite AI (a.k.a. Assisted Intelligence), „smart“ assistants (a.k.a. paper clips on steroids), and a metric ton of gadgets we still have a lot of contact with human beings. Marketing departments and tech people lost in code often forget this. Jessica will give you something to think about which you can’t discuss with Siri, Alexa, the Google AI, or even HAL 9000. Bruce Schneier popularised the concept in 1999: cyber security is about people, process and technology. Yet almost two decades later, the industry still focuses so much more on technology than the other two dimensions of

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1708, 2017

DeepSec 2017 Preliminary Schedule published

René Pfeiffer/ August 17, 2017/ Administrivia, Conference, Training

After two weeks of intense reviewing we have published the preliminary schedule for DeepSec 2017. There are some blanks to fill, but this will be done in the coming weeks. We still have to do some reviews and wait for the speaker’s confirmation. In case you noticed, the ROOTS track is not filled yet. The call for papers was extended to 26 August. This means the ROOTS schedule will be published at the end of September. We have to give the programme committee ample time to review all submissions. So if you want to present your research at ROOTS 2017, please ready your submission. Science first!

1011, 2016

DeepSec 2016 – expect 48 Hours of Failures and Fixes in Information Security

René Pfeiffer/ November 10, 2016/ Conference, Discussion

The conference part of DeepSec 2016 has officially started. During the workshops we already discussed a lot of challenges (to phrase it lightly) for infrastructure and all kinds of software alike. The Internet of Things (IoT) has only delivered major flaws and gigantic Distributed Denial of Service attacks so far. There is even a worm for LEDs these days. And we haven started the conference preparations yet. So we have plenty of reasons to talk about what went wrong, what will go wrong, and what we can do about it. The world of information security is not always about good news. Something has to break, before it can be repaired – usually. Systems administrators know this, for some it’s their daily routine. Nevertheless we hope everyone at DeepSec gets some new insights, fresh ideas,

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0911, 2016

DeepSec 2016 Talk: Obfuscated Financial Fraud Android Malware: Detection And Behavior Tracking – Inseung Yang

Sanna/ November 9, 2016/ Conference, Development, Internet, Report, Security

In Korea in particular, hackers have distributed sophisticated and complex financial fraud android malware through various means of distribution, such as SMS phishing, Google play, compromised web servers and home routers (IoT). In some cases, both smartphone and PC users are targeted simultaneously. Inseung Yang and his team collect mobile android malware via an automated analysis system, detect obfuscations and malicious packer apps. In his presentation Inseung Yang will describe trends of malicious android apps and obfuscated mobile malware in Korea. He’ll explain the policy methods for Korean mobile banking and the attack methods used by hackers, f.ex. the stealing of certifications, fake banking apps that require the  security numbers issued to users when they open their accounts, Automatic Response Service(ARS) phishing attacks in conjunction with Call Forwarding, and the requesting of the One Time Password(OTP) number. But

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0811, 2016

DeepSec 2016 Talk: Systematic Fuzzing and Testing of TLS Libraries – Juraj Somorovsky

Sanna/ November 8, 2016/ Conference, Development, Security

In his talk Juraj Somorovsky presents TLS-Attacker, a novel framework for evaluating the security of TLS libraries. Using a simple interface, TLS-Attacker allows security engineers to create custom TLS message flows and arbitrarily modify TLS message contents in order to test the behavior of their TLS libraries. Based on TLS-Attacker, he and his team first developed a two-stage TLS fuzzing approach. This approach automatically searches for cryptographic failures and boundary violation vulnerabilities. It allowed him to find unusual padding oracle vulnerabilities and overflows/overreads in widely used TLS libraries, including OpenSSL, Botan, and MatrixSSL. Juraj’s findings encouraged the use of comprehensive test suites for the evaluation of TLS libraries, including positive as well as negative tests. He and his team used TLS-Attacker to create such a test suite framework, which finds further problems in TLS libraries. TLS-Attacker is an open source tool, and is currently being deployed for internal

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0411, 2016

DeepSec2016 Talk: Smart Sheriff, Dumb Idea: The Wild West of Government Assisted Parenting – Abraham Aranguren & Fabian Fäßler

Sanna/ November 4, 2016/ Conference, Legal, Security, Stories

Would you want to let your kids discover the darker corners of the Internet without protection? Wouldn’t it be handy to know what they do online, to be alerted when they search for dangerous keywords and to be able to control what websites they can visit and even when they play games? Worry no longer, the South Korean government got you covered. Simply install the “Smart Sheriff” app on your and your kids’ phones. Smart Sheriff is the first parental-control mobile app that has been made a legally required, obligatory install in an entire country! Yay, monitoring! Well, something shady yet mandatory like this cannot come about without an external pentest. And even better, one that wasn’t solicited by the maintainer but initiated by the OTF and CitizenLab and executed by the Cure53 team!

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0311, 2016

DeepSec2016 Talk: Of Mice and Keyboards: On the Security of Modern Wireless Desktop Sets – Gerhard Klostermeier

Sanna/ November 3, 2016/ Conference, Internet, Security

Wireless desktop sets have become more popular and more widespread in the last couple of years. From an attacker’s perspective, these radio-based devices represent an attractive target both allowing to take control of a computer system and to gain knowledge of sensitive data like passwords. Wireless transmissions offer attackers a big advantage: you don’t have to be around to attack something or someone. Plus the victims often don’t know what it happening. At DeepSec 2016 Gerhard Klostermeier will present the results of research on the matter of wireless mouse/keyboard attacks. Furthermore you he will demonstrate ways in which modern wireless desktop sets of several manufacturers can be attacked by practically exploiting different security vulnerabilities. We recommend this talk to anyone still using old-fashioned input devices for creating content. Gerhard is interested in all things

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