DeepSec 2024 Talk: Remotely Snooping on Traffic Patterns using Network Protocols – Kirils Solovjovs

Sanna/ September 27, 2024/ Conference

The presentation features novel research on using different protocols to remotely measure network load and deduce network traffic patterns of a target using ICMP and other widely adopted protocols. The attack allows to distinguish between file upload, file download, video streaming, VoIP, web browsing, etc. depending on network conditions. This attack works even when done from a different AS. We asked Kirils a few more questions about his talk. Please tell us the top facts about your talk. There is predictable correlation between Bandwidth, Throughput, and Latency. It is possible to remotely measure the load (throughput over bandwidth) of a network endpoint. Measured traffic patterns can be used to deduce the type of traffic at the remote network endpoint. The internet is a series of tubes. How did you come up with it? Was

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DeepSec 2024 Talk: V2GEvil: Ghost in the Wires – Pavel Khunt & Thomas Sermpinis

Sanna/ September 26, 2024/ Conference

This research is dedicated to enhancing the cybersecurity of electric vehicles, focusing specifically on identifying vulnerabilities in the Electric Vehicle Communication Controller (EVCC). This controller facilitates communication with the Supply Equipment Communication Controller during the charging process. Accessible through the On-Board Charging (OBC) port, which is as publicly available as the gas tank in combustion engine vehicles. The research journey began by studying the electric vehicle charging ports, how they communicate, and the standards they follow, especially focusing on ISO 15118. Then, we closely looked at how On-Board Charging (OBC) works, especially its communication protocols during charging, focusing specially on the High-Level Communication (HLC). Our research efforts resulted in the development of a dedicated security tool. This tool examines and assesses the implementation of the EVCC (Electric Vehicle Communication Controller). It can simulate the

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DeepSec Talk 2024: RAT Builders – How to Catch Them All – Stephan Berger

Sanna/ September 25, 2024/ Conference

Cybercriminals now have unprecedented ease in creating their own remote access trojans (RATs), thanks to a plethora of open-source or leaked builders. One can generate a new binary with just a click of a button. We meticulously examine different builders, such as AgentTesla, DCRat, Nanocore, and others, to extract Indicators of Compromise. These indicators serve as valuable instruments for targeted hunting to detect infections within our networks. Building up on my research from last year, “N-IOC’s to rule them all”, we will analyze the binaries the same way, but this time with a focus on open-source builders for RATs. Initially, we scrutinize the distribution channels of different Trojans, pinpointing where individual builders are accessible for download. These sources range from GitHub, hosted as open-source projects, to other online platforms (such as VX-Underground). Subsequently, we

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DeepSec 2024 Talk: From Dungeon Crawling to Cyber Defense Drill: Using RPG Principles and LLM for Operational Team Dev – Aurélien Denis

Sanna/ September 23, 2024/ Conference

Continuous improvement/training is in the DNA of cybersecurity professionals, specifically for incident responders, which are always searching for new ways to learn and practice their technical and analytical crafts. This is even more the case in mature environments where Incident response teams may find themselves in a situation with few high stakes incidents, preventing them from applying their technical and thinking skills, thus lowering their readiness when a crisis occur. LLMs based conversational agents are becoming mainstream, and applications are countless. In the meantime, Tabletop Role-Playing Games (TTRPG) are found to be a great breeding ground for creativity and fun. To achieve the benefits of this game, preparation is needed and a game master must be present to keep the players engaged. So we leveraged the power of AI, mixed automation and past experiences

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DeepSec 2024 Talk: Living on the Edge: eBPF Defenses for Embedded System (in the Automotive Domain) – Reinhard Kugler (

Sanna/ September 20, 2024/ Conference

Linux has become a driving factor in the industrial and automotive domain. Vehicles are already a complex network of electrical components. In recent years, the technology stack and connectivity of vehicles have drastically evolved. Is all this complexity still safe and secure? How can embedded systems running different bus systems and physical interfaces be protected against modern attackers? The now mandatory updates of on-board components in these vehicles have introduced even new security challenges to this evolving landscape. Common Linux security measures, including capabilities, permissions, and mandatory access control, are already hitting their limits. Using eBPF technologies promises a flexible way to define security at runtime without the need to change the application code. Will this be as transformative for the embedded sector as it has been for the cloud? This talk presents hands-on

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DeepSec 2024 Talk: Should You Let ChatGPT Control Your Browser? – Donato Capitella

Sanna/ September 19, 2024/ Conference

This presentation will explore the practical risks associated with granting Large Language Models (LLMs) agency, enabling them to perform actions on behalf of users. We will delve into how attackers can exploit these capabilities in real-world scenarios. Specifically, the focus will be on an emerging use cases: autonomous browser and software engineering agents. The session will cover how LLM agents operate, the risks of indirect prompt injection, and strategies for mitigating these vulnerabilities. We asked Donato a few more questions about his talk. Please tell us the top 5 facts about your talk. LLM Red Teaming tools are benchmarks useful for LLM builders, but they are less useful to developers or application security testers When talking about “LLM Application Security”, we need to focus on the use-case the LLM application is enabling The talk

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DeepSec Talk 2024: Blackbox Android Malware Detection Using Machine Learning and Evasion Attacks Techniques – Professor Dr. Razvan Bocu

Sanna/ September 18, 2024/ Conference

Over the past ten years, researchers have extensively explored the vulnerability of Android malware detectors to adversarial examples through the development of evasion attacks. Nevertheless, the feasibility of these attacks in real-world use case scenarios is debatable. Most of the existing published papers are based on the assumptions that the attackers know the details of the target classifiers used for malware detection. Nevertheless, in reality, malicious actors have limited access to the target classifiers. This talk presents a problem-space adversarial attack designed to effectively evade blackbox Android malware detectors in real-world use case scenarios. The proposed approach constructs a collection of problem-space transformations derived from benign donors that share opcode-level similarity with malware applications through the consideration of an n-gram-based approach. These transformations are then used to present malware instances as legitimate entities through

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DeepSec 2024 Talk: Far Beyond the Perimeter – Exploring External Attack Surfaces – Stefan Hager / khae

Sanna/ September 17, 2024/ Conference

Looking for intel in all the right places is an art that adversaries seem to have mastered; but for their own data, many companies seem to lose interest in examining anything that’s outside the “perimeter” – whatever that is supposed to be nowadays. Credential leaks, shadow IT, unofficial websites with official info – the list of assets far outside the data centers of companies is long and those assets nevertheless pose risks. Instead of turning a blind eye, it’s important (and necessary) to get an understanding of what kind of information is out there, ready to be used or abused and protect accordingly. What risks are “out there” and what is meant by “out there”? How can those risks be addressed? What tools are easily available? Gathering information is a valuable tool not only

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DeepSec 2024 Talk: Navigating the Storm: Emerging Threats in AWS Cloud Security – Miguel Hernández & Alessandro Brucato

Sanna/ September 16, 2024/ Conference

As cloud adoption speeds up, so too does the sophistication of attacks targeting cloud infrastructure. Our talk delves into the evolving landscape of AWS security, focusing on the burgeoning threat of crypto mining. We’ve witnessed a significant shift in the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers. This session will uncover the latest trends in cloud security, spotlighting new threat groups and their innovative methods for abusing AWS services. Attendees will learn about real-world threats involving AWS resources. We will explore the intricate ways these attackers infiltrate and collaborate with other groups in a large black market for credentials. Our discussion will also cover proactive strategies for detection and mitigation, empowering security professionals to safeguard their cloud infrastructure against these evolving threats. We asked Miguel and Alessandro a few more questions about their

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DeepSec 2024 Talk: Reversing Windows RPC in Enterprise Software for Fun and CVEs – Andreas Vikerup

Sanna/ September 13, 2024/ Conference

This talk will walk the audience through the dissection of Windows RPC usage in the enterprise software ManageEngine ADAudit Plus, which will unravel two CVEs and crack a CTF-like encryption/decryption process. We asked Andreas a few more questions about his talk. Please tell us the top 5 facts about your talk. This talk will guide the audience through a reverse engineering method that will ultimately lead to 2 CVEs in a product known as ManageEngine ADAudit Plus. The reviewed code will be human readable (as in not assembly language) which makes it easy to follow. There will be hurdles along the way to reach the goal and these will be highlighted and discussed in the presentation. How did you come up with it? Was there something like an initial spark that set your mind

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DeepSec 2024 Talk: A Practical Approach to Generative AI Security – Florian Grunow & Hannes Mohr

Sanna/ September 12, 2024/ Conference

The rise of applications based on AI (mostly generative AI) forces us to think about the security and privacy implications of these systems. We will try to make sense about the attack surface of generative AI applications, what practitioners in the field need to consider in development and operations, and how they can derive security measures for these systems. We will first dive into the range of generative AI applications using examples of the OpenAI ecosystem. This will give the audience an understanding about the fundamental problem of AI from a security perspective. We then offer an insight into the attack surface that those applications have. This will help understand what needs to be secured and what can be secured. Many times, good old security best practices will be a good start, although AI

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DeepSec Talk 2024: GenAI and Cybercrime: Separating Fact from Fiction – Candid Wüest

Sanna/ September 11, 2024/ Conference

Are we standing at the brink of an AI Armageddon? With the rise of Generative AI (GenAI), cybercriminals allegedly now use unprecedented AI tools, flooding the digital world with sophisticated, unblockable threats. This talk aims to dissect the hype and uncover the reality behind the use of GenAI in cybercrime. We will explore the growing use of deepfakes in scams, exemplified by a million dollar fake BEC video conference call. From son-in-trouble scams to KYC bypass schemes, deepfakes are becoming versatile tools for cybercriminals and a nightmare for defenders. Turning to phishing attacks, we’ll discuss how GenAI personalizes and automates social engineering, significantly increasing the volume of attacks. However, they still require an account to send from and some payload. Having the ultimate phishing text does not mean you are not blocked. We’ll also

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DeepSec 2023 Talk and Breakout Session: Let’s Prepare for the Unexpected – Erlend Andreas Gjære

Sanna/ November 15, 2023/ Conference

What happens when a large group of more or less connected individuals need to deal with a cyber incident, together? In this interactive hands-on session, we will try to experience – first-hand – just how challenging it can be to keep information flowing, make the right decisions and protect our assets while dealing with a simulated crisis. We asked Erlend a few more questions about his talk and breakout session. Please tell us the top 5 facts about your talk and workshop. This will be an interactive session, and everyone can join! We are going to prepare for a cyber incident, together People share anonymous inputs via their phones Participants also receive individual updates on their phones There will be a breakout session afterwards for a deep-dive tabletop How did you come up with

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DeepSec 2023 Talk: Oil – But at What Cost: Azerbaijan and the EU’s Murky Partnership – Pavle Bozalo

Sanna/ November 3, 2023/ Conference

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has rightfully sought to reduce its dependence on Russian oil with the ultimate aim of completely eliminating it. In this quest for trustworthy oil suppliers, Brussels has turned to countries such as Azerbaijan who, although wealthy in oil, have dubious human rights records and who, in many ways, are at the forefront of cyber surveillance and cyberwarfare. This quest has come at a cost, with the EU keeping mum on Azerbaijan’s armed invasion of the Nagorno-Karabakh territories southwards of Armenia – a scenario otherwise eerily similar to Russia’s armed invasion. As it cracks down on spyware within the EU, the European Commission buys Azeri President Aliyev’s oil, apparently unaware of hackers from Baku rolling out spyware and remote access trojans. Not only do Armenian officials find

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DeepSec 2023 Tech Track Workshop: Tabletop Exercise/War Games – Julian Botham & Aron Feuer

Sanna/ October 21, 2023/ Conference

The objective of an tabletop exercise is to assess and enhance an organization’s preparedness and executive decision-making protocols in the event of a ransomware attack. The exercise will simulate a ransomware attack on critical systems, culminating in encrypted files and a ransom demand. Participants will role-play as C-suite executives, IT security managers, legal advisors, and the public relations team. The exercise will cover key activities, such as initial incident identification, activation of the incident response team, internal and external communication protocols, decision-making concerning ransom payment, coordination with law enforcement, system recovery and restoration, and post-incident analysis. We asked Julian and Aron a few more questions about their tabletop exercise. Please tell us the top 5 facts about your talk. The average ransom in 2023 is $1.54 million, almost double the 2022 figure of $812,380

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