TAPing the Stack for Fun and Profit: Shelling Embedded Linux Devices via JTAG
While it may not come as a surprise to those who have worked with embedded devices, it is not uncommon to find the JTAG interface on embedded devices still enabled, even in production. Often cited as providing “ultimate control” over a device, JTAG debugging usually provides the user with full read/write privileges over device memory (and by extension over MMIO) as well as the ability to read and write control registers. On a simpler embedded device (for example, a “smart” lock), leveraging open JTAG can be fairly straightforward: dump the…
Warcodes II – The Desko Case
Six months ago we published a blog post describing ‘Warcodes’ a novel attack vector against industrial barcode readers used in the baggage handling systems deployed at a significant number of international airports. This time we targeted boarding gate readers used as part of the passenger boarding and flow control.
Hiding in the Noise | Corey Thuen
Greetings! I’m Corey Thuen. I spent a number of years at Idaho National Laboratory, Digital Bond, and IOActive (where we affectionately refer to ourselves as pirates, hence the sticker). At these places, my job was to find 0-day vulnerabilities on the offensive side of things. Now, I am a founder of Gravwell, a data analytics platform for security logs, machine, and network data. It’s my background in offensive security that informs my new life on the defensive side of the house. I believe that defense involves…
Low-hanging Secrets in Docker Hub and a Tool to Catch Them All | Matías Sequeira
TL;DR: I coded a tool that scans Docker Hub images and matches a given keyword in order to find secrets. Using the tool, I found numerous AWS credentials, SSH private keys, databases, API keys, etc. It’s an interesting tool to add to the bug hunter / pentester arsenal, not only for the possibility of finding secrets, but for fingerprinting an organization. On the other hand, if you are a DevOps or Security Engineer, you might want to integrate the scan engine to your CI/CD for your Docker images. GET THE…
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.
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…