Robots Want Bitcoins too!
Ransomware attacks have boomed during the last few years, becoming a preferred method for cybercriminals to get monetary profit by encrypting victim information and requiring a ransom to get the information back. The primary ransomware target has always been information. When a victim has no backup of that information, he panics, forced to pay for its return.
Security Theater and the Watch Effect in Third-party Assessments
Before the facts were in, nearly every journalist and salesperson in infosec was thinking about how to squeeze lemonade from the Equifax breach. Let’s be honest – it was and is a big breach. There are lessons to be learned, but people seemed to have the answers before the facts were available. It takes time to dissect these situations and early speculation is often wrong. Efforts at attribution and methods take months to understand. So, it’s important to not buy into the hysteria and, instead, seek to gain a clear vision…
Cryptocurrency and the Interconnected Home
There are many tiny elements to cryptocurrency that are not getting the awareness time they deserve. To start, the very thing that attracts people to cryptocurrency is also the very thing that is seemingly overlooked as a challenge. Cryptocurrencies are not backed by governments or institutions. The transactions allow the trader or investor to operate with anonymity. We have seen a massive increase in the last year of cyber bad guys hiding behind these inconspicuous transactions – ransomware demanding payment in bitcoin; bitcoin ATMs being used by various dealers to…
Easy SSL Certificate Testing
tl;dr: Certslayer allows testing of how an application handles SSL certificates and whether or not it is verifying relevant details on them to prevent MiTM attacks: https://github.com/n3k/CertSlayer. During application source code reviews, we often find that developers forget to enable all the security checks done over SSL certificates before going to production. Certificate-based authentication is one of the foundations of SSL/TLS, and its purpose is to ensure that a client is communicating with a legitimate server. Thus, if the application isn’t strictly verifying all the relevant details of the…
SCADA and Mobile Security in the IoT Era
Two years ago, we assessed 20 mobile applications that worked with ICS software and hardware. At that time, mobile technologies were widespread, but Internet of Things (IoT) mania was only starting. Our research concluded the combination of SCADA systems and mobile applications had the potential to be a very dangerous and vulnerable cocktail. In the introduction of our paper, we stated “convenience often wins over security. Nowadays, you can monitor (or even control!) your ICS from a brand-new Android [device].” Today, no one is surprised at the appearance of an…
Hidden Exploitable Behaviors in Programming Languages
In February 28th 2015 Egor Homakov wrote an article[1] exposing the dangers in the open() function from Ruby. The function is commonly used when requesting URLs programmatically with the open-uri library. However, instead of requesting URLs you may end up executing operating system commands. Consider the following Ruby script named open-uri.rb: require ‘open-uri’ print open(ARGV[0]).read The following command requests a web page: # ruby open-uri.rb “https://ioactive.com” And the following output is shown: <!DOCTYPE HTML> <!–[if lt IE 9]><html class=”ie”><![endif]–> <!–[if !IE]><!–><html><!–<![endif]–><head> <meta charset=”UTF-8″> <title>IOActive is…
AmosConnect: Maritime Communications Security Has Its Flaws
Satellite communications security has been a target of our research for some time: in 2014 IOActive released a document detailing many vulnerabilities in popular SATCOM systems. Since then we’ve had the opportunity to dive deeper in this area, and learned a lot more about some of the environments in which these systems are in place. Recently, we saw that Shodan released a new tool that tracks the location of VSAT systems exposed to the Internet. These systems are typically installed in vessels to provide them with internet connectivity…
Embedding Defense in Server-side Applications
Applications always contain security flaws, which is why we rely on multiple layers of defense. Applications are still struggling with their defenses, even though we go through exhaustive measures of testing and defense layers. Perhaps we should rethink our approach to application defense, with the goal of introducing defensive methods that cause attackers to cease, or induce them to take incorrect actions based on false premises. There are a variety of products that provide valuable resources when basic, off-the-shelf protection is required or the application source code is…
Are You Trading Securely? Insights into the (In)Security of Mobile Trading Apps
The days of open shouting on the trading floors of the NYSE, NASDAQ, and other stock exchanges around the globe are gone. With the advent of electronic trading platforms and networks, the exchange of financial securities now is easier and faster than ever; but this comes with inherent risks. From the beginning, bad actors have also joined Wall Street’s party, developing clever models for fraudulent gains. Their efforts have included everything from fictitious brokerage firms that ended up being Ponzi schemes[1] to…
Exploiting Industrial Collaborative Robots
Traditional industrial robots are boring. Typically, they are autonomous or operate with limited guidance and execute repetitive, programmed tasks in manufacturing and production settings.1 They are often used to perform duties that are dangerous or unsuitable for workers; therefore, they operate in isolation from humans and other valuable machinery. This is not the case with the latest generation collaborative robots (“cobots”) though. They function with co-workers in shared workspaces while respecting safety standards. This generation of robots works hand-in-hand with humans, assisting them, rather than just performing automated, isolated operations. Cobots can learn movements, “see” through…