CVE-2020-16877: Exploiting Microsoft Store Games
TL; DR. This blog post describes a privilege escalation issue in Windows (CVE-2020-16877) I reported to Microsoft back in June, which was patched in October. This issue allows an attacker to exploit Windows via videogames by directly targeting how Windows handles Microsoft Store games. This issue could be exploited to elevate privileges from a standard user account to Local System on Windows 10.
A journey into defeating regulated electronic cigarette protections
TL;DR: This blog post does not encourage smoking nor vaping. The main focus of this blog will be defeating the protections of a regulated electronic cigarette to assess the ability of it being weaponized via a remote attacker by modifying its firmware and delivering it through a malware which waits for electronic cigarettes to be connected over USB or discovered over Bluetooth.
Breaking Bluetooth Low Energy – A Deep Dive (Breaking BLE series – part 2)
Maxine Filcher, Security Consultant at IOActive, continues from her ‘Introduction to Bluetooth Low Energy Exploitation,’ and presents a deep dive into the key components and tools for breaking BLE devices, from the perspective of a pentester and researcher.
Password Cracking: Some Further Techniques
A password hash is a transformation of a password using what we call a “one-way” function. So, for example, ROT-13 (rotate by half the alphabet) would be a very, very bad password hash function and would give fairly recognizable results like “Cnffjbeq123!”. The one-way property means it must be essentially impossible to construct the inverse function and recover the original, and functions like MD5 or SHA1 certainly meet that particular criterion. Iterated encryption functions like DES have also been used (for example LAN Manager hashes), but seem to have fallen…
Uncovering Unencrypted Car Data in BMW Connected App
TL; DR: Modern mobile OSes encrypt data by default, nevertheless, the defense-in-depth paradigm dictates that developers must encrypt sensitive data regardless of the protections offered by the underlying OS. This is yet another case study of data stored unencrypted, and most importantly, a reminder to developers not to leave their apps’ data unencrypted. In this case study, physical access to an unlocked phone, trusted computer or unencrypted backups of an iPhone is required to exfiltrate the data, which in turn does not include authentication data and cannot be used to control…
No buffers harmed: rooting Sierra Wireless Airlink devices through logic bugs
IOActive Labs – Ruben Santamarta, IOActive Principal Security Consultant, explores building a chain of exploits without harming a single buffer, rooting Sierra Wireless Airlink devices.
Cybersecurity Vigilance for a Historic Election
November 3rd is Election Day in the United States. Every election is important, but this election is particularly crucial. It is one of the most important elections in our lifetime—the 2020 election will determine the course of the United States for the next 10 years or more. With so much on the line, every vote counts—but the security and integrity of, and voter confidence in, the election itself are also at risk. The Senate Intelligence Committee determined that Russia influenced and interfered with the 2016 election, and US intelligence agencies…
Security Makes Cents: Perspectives on Security from a Finance Leader
Recently, it feels like the Internet is filled with stories of cyber-breaches and security breakdowns. As the world is more interconnected than ever, these stories are becoming all too familiar. In fact, there is a malicious web-based hacking event every 39 seconds, and 43% of them target small businesses. While a breach can occur in any area of a business, a corporate finance department is often uniquely positioned, with touch-points extending further outside the company than other groups. With touch-points up and down the supply chain,…
WSL 2.0 dxgkrnl Driver Memory Corruption
IOActive Labs – Joseph Tartaro, IOActive Associate Principal Consultant, shares a deeply technical exploration into dxgkrnl driver corruption issues.
IOActive Labs Blog
Reclaiming Hallway Con We have several exciting things happening with our blog content. Like many, we’ve been working to replace the value lost with the loss of face-to-face gatherings at meetings, conventions, and informal get-togethers. Many veterans of the conference circuit will tell you that by far the most valuable part of a typical conference is the hallway con, which refers to the informal discussions, networking, and often serendipitous meetings that happen outside the formal conference agenda. IOActive is helping reclaim hallway con by making some of that valuable content…