Upcoming Blackhat & DEF CON talk: A Survey of Remote Automotive Attack Surfaces
Hi Internet, Chris Valasek here; you may remember me from such movies as ‘They Came to Burgle Carnegie Hall’. In case you haven’t heard, Dr. Charlie Miller and I will be giving a presentation at Black Hat and DEF CON titled ‘A Survey of Remote Automotive Attack Surfaces’. You may have seen some press coverage on Wired, CNN, and Dark Reading several days ago. I really think they all did a fantastic job covering what we’ll be talking about.
Hacking Washington DC traffic control systems
This is a short blog post, because I’ve talked about this topic in the past. I want to let people know that I have the honor of presenting at DEF CON on Friday, August 8, 2014, at 1:00 PM. My presentation is entitled “Hacking US (and UK, Australia, France, Etc.) Traffic Control Systems”. I hope to see you all there. I’m sure you will like the presentation. I am frustrated with Sensys Networks (vulnerable devices vendor) lack of cooperation, but I realize that I should be thankful. This…
Glass Reflections in Pictures + OSINT = More Accurate Location
By Alejandro Hernández – @nitr0usmx Disclaimer: The aim of this article is to help people to be more careful when taking pictures through windows because they might reveal their location inadvertently. The technique presented here might be used for many different purposes, such as to track down the location of the bad guys, to simply know in which hotel is that nice room or by some people, to follow the tracks of their favorite artist. All of the pictures presented here were posted by the owners on…
Hacking US (and UK, Australia, France, etc.) Traffic Control Systems
Probably many of you have watched scenes from “Live Free or Die Hard” (Die Hard 4) where “terrorist hackers” manipulate traffic signals by just hitting Enter or typing a few keys. I wanted to do that! I started to look around, and while I couldn’t exactly do the same thing (too Hollywood style!), I got pretty close. I found some interesting devices used by traffic control systems in important US cities, and I could hack them 🙂 These devices are also used in cities in the UK, France, Australia, China, etc.,…
Hacking the Java Debug Wire Protocol – or – “How I met your Java debugger”
By Christophe Alladoum – @_hugsy_ TL;DR: turn any open JDWP service into reliable remote code execution (exploit inside) <plagiarism> Kids, I’m gonna tell you an incredible story. </plagiarism> This is the story of how I came across an interesting protocol during a recent code review engagement for IOActive and turned it into a reliable way to execute remote code. In this post, I will explain the Java Debug Wire Protocol (JDWP) and why it is interesting from a penetration tester’s point of view. I will…
A Wake-up Call for SATCOM Security
During the last few months we have witnessed a series of events that will probably be seen as a tipping point in the public’s opinion about the importance of, and need for, security. The revelations of Edward Snowden have served to confirm some theories and shed light on surveillance technologies that were long restricted. We live in a world where an ever-increasing stream of digital data is flowing between continents. It is clear that those who control communications traffic have an upper-hand. Satellite Communications (SATCOM) plays a vital…
Bleeding Hearts
The Internet is ablaze with talk of the “heartbleed” OpenSSL vulnerability disclosed yesterday (April 7, 2014) here: https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt While the bug itself is a simple “missing bounds check,” it affects quite a number of high-volume, big business websites. Make no mistake, this bug is BAD. It’s sort of a perfect storm: the bug is in a library used to encrypt sensitive data (OpenSSL), and it allows attackers a peak into a server’s memory, potentially revealing that same sensitive data in the clear. Initially, it was reported…
Car Hacking 2: The Content
Does everyone remember when those two handsome young gentlemen controlled automobiles with CAN message injection (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqe6S6m73Zw)? I sure do. However, what if you don’t have the resources to purchase a car, pay for insurance, repairs to the car, and so on? Fear not Internet! Chris and Charlie to the rescue. Last week we presented our new automotive research at Syscan 2014. To make a long story short, we provided the blueprints to setup a small automotive network outside the vehicle so security researchers could start investigating Autosec…
A Bigger Stick To Reduce Data Breaches
On average I receive a postal letter from a bank or retailer every two months telling me that I’ve become the unfortunate victim of a data theft or that my credit card is being re-issued to prevent against future fraud. When I quiz my friends and colleagues on the topic, it would seem that they too suffer the same fate on a reoccurring schedule. It may not be that surprising to some folks. 2013 saw over 822 million private records exposed according to the folks over at DatalossDB – and…
Beware Your RSA Mobile App Download
It’s been half a decade since Apple launched their iPhone campaign titled “There’s an app for that“. In the years following, the mobile app stores (from all the major players) have continued to blossom to the point that not only are there several thousand apps that help light your way (i.e. by keeping the flash running bright), but every company, cause, group, or notable event is expected to publish their own mobile application. Today there are several hundred good “rapid development” kits that allow any newbie to craft…