Black Hat and DEF CON: Hacks and Fun
The great annual experience of Black Hat and DEF CON starts in just a few days, and we here at IOActive have a lot to share. This year we have several groundbreaking hacking talks and fun activities that you won’t want to miss! For Fun Join IOActive for an evening of dancing Our very own DJ Alan Alvarez is back – coming all the way from Mallorca to turn the House of Blues RED. Because no one prefunks like IOActive. Wednesday, August 5th 6–9PM House of Blues Escape to the…
Differential Cryptanalysis for Dummies
Recently, I ventured into the crazy world of differential cryptanalysis purely to find out what the heck it was all about. In this post, I hope to reassure you that this strange and rather cool technique is not as scary as it seems. Hopefully, you’ll be attacking some ciphers of your own in no time! A differential cryptanalysis attack is a method of abusing pairs of plaintext and corresponding ciphertext to learn about the secret key that encrypted them, or, more precisely, to reduce the amount of time needed to…
Lawsuit counterproductive for automotive industry
It came to my attention that there is a lawsuit attempting to seek damages against automakers revolving around their cars being hackable (http://www.networkworld.com/article/2895535/microsoft-subnet/ford-gm-and-toyota-are-being-sued-for-dangerous-defects-in-their-hackable-cars.html). The lawsuit cites Dr. Charlie Miller’s and my work several times, along with several other researchers who have been involved in automotive security research. I’d like to be the first to say that I think this lawsuit is unfortunate and subverts the spirit of our research. Charlie and I approached our work with the end goals of determining if technologically advanced…
Life in the Fast Lane
Hi Internet Friends, Chris Valasek here. You may remember me from educational films such as “Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun”. If you have not heard, IOActive officially launched our Vehicle Security Service offering. I’ve received several questions about the service and plan to answer them and many more during a webinar I am hosting on February 5, 2015 at 11 AM EST. Some of the main talking points include: Why dedicate an entire service offering to vehicles and transportation? A brief history of vehicle security research and why…
Die Laughing from a Billion Laughs
Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way, and that’s what the XML Entity Expansion (XEE)[1] is about: a small string is referenced a huge number of times. Technology standards sometimes include features that affect the security of applications. Amit Klein found in 2002 that XML entities could be used to make parsers consume an unlimited amount of resources and then crash, which is called a billion laughs attack. When the XML parser tries to resolve, the external entities that are included cause the application to start…
ELF Parsing Bugs by Example with Melkor Fuzzer
Too often the development community continues to blindly trust the metadata in Executable and Linking Format (ELF) files. In this paper, Alejandro Hernández walks you through the testing process for seven applications and reveals the bugs that he found. He performed the tests using Melkor, a file format fuzzer he wrote specifically for ELF files. Introduction The ELF file format, like any other file format, is an array of bits and bytes interconnected through data structures. When interpreted by an ELF parser, an ELF file makes sense, depending upon…
Vicious POODLE Finally Kills SSL
The poodle must be the most vicious dog, because it has killed SSL. POODLE is the latest in a rather lengthy string of vulnerabilities in SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and a more recent protocol, TLS (Transport layer Security). Both protocols secure data that is being sent between applications to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) rings the death knell for our 18-year-old friend SSL version 3.0 (SSLv3), because at this point, there is no truly safe way to continue using it.
DC22 Talk: Killing the Rootkit
By Shane Macaulay I’ll be at DefCon22 a to present information about a high assurance tool/technique that helps to detect hidden processes (hidden by a DKOM type rootkit). It works very well with little bit testing required (not very “abortable” http://takahiroharuyama.github.io/blog/2014/04/21/memory-forensics-still-aborted/). The process also works recursively (detect host and guest processes inside a host memory dump). Plus, I will also be at our IOAsis (http://ioasislasvegas.eventbrite.com/?aff=PRIOASIS) , so come through for a discussion and a demo.
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 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 pentester’s point of view. I will cover some JDWP internals and…
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…