Month: July 2013

Building
by Matthias Luft

Basic OS X Hardening & DMA

In the course of a recent endpoint assessment, we also had a OS X 10.8 client system as a target. While we still rely on the Firewire “capability” of unlocking systems on a regular base (using this great tool), we noticed that Apple released a patch to disable Firewire DMA access whenever the system is in a locked state (e.g. with an active screensaver or no user logged in). As we test the Firewire DMA access vulnerability quite often (at least we thought so 😉 ) to prepare for demonstrations in the board room or client assessments, we were quite surprised that we must have actually missed that nice update. In order to verify the effectiveness of the patch, we ran our typical test bed and can quite happily confirm that the update successfully mitigates Firewire DMA access in locked system states.

Beside breaking into unpatched OS X client using Firewire DMA access ;-), we also noticed some lack of hardening guides related to Apples current OS X version 10.8, so we also compiled a basic checklist for OS X hardening measures which we want to share with you:
ERNW_Checklist_OSX_Hardening.pdf

Enjoy,
Matthias

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Misc
by Enno Rey

Responsible Disclosure and Academic Freedom, Again

Reading this article from the Guardian,  on this guy apparently being banned from fully discussing research results in his talk at upcoming USENIX Security, leaves me scratching my head once more. Things might (as so often) be more complex than they seem, but this looks like yet-another misconception as for the contribution of security research (and its public discussion) to the greater good of us all. Which is unfortunate for the speakers (I’ve been in a similar situation once, receiving a threatening legal letter from a very large organization one day before one of our Black Hat presentations and can tell you that stuff like that doesn’t add to one’s anticipation of the talk or the event…), for the audience (including some ERNW guys who will be a USENIX-SEC, so, btw, expect a summary post here) and for the whole community of security researchers.

Ross Anderson from the University of Cambridge (so just ~ 100 miles from Birmingham, where Flavio Garcia works) formerly gave a very nice response when one of his students was approached in a similar fashion. Based on the publicly available information, the judge in the above case did not follow this reasoning. Which I think, is not a good thing for all of us.

Still, have a great remainder of the weekend everybody,

Enno

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Events
by Enno Rey

IPv6 Hackers Meeting @ IETF 87, Berlin

Next to IETF 87 going on in Berlin in a few days there will be an informal meeting of the “IPv6 Hackers” on Tuesday. We really look forward to personally meet a number of people who we (so far) only know from the associated mailing list or similar machine-enhanced exchange. We hope to contribute as well. Based on the stuff of this workshop from the IPv6 Security Summit at Troopers13 we might give a short project presentation along the lines of “Some Notes on Testing the Real-World IPv6 Capabilities of Commercial Security Products”, providing an overview of some testing done on commercial gear, together with a discussion of testing approaches, tools and key aspects.

I currently discuss this potential input with the guy who gratefully organized the meeting. In any case I encourage everybody interested in IPv6 security to show up there (you don’t have to be registered to IETF 87) as there’s not much that can substitute meeting in person to discuss how to make the IPv6 world a safer place.

best

Enno

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Breaking
by Daniel Mende

BlackBerry 10 USB Modes

So we got these shiny new BlackBerry Q10 and Z10 device laying on the desk one morning. It’s my first BlackBerry, I have to admit, but never the less, the hole wushy GUI and touchy glass stuff wasn’t my main concern, instead i took a look at the stuff going on while you connect the phone (do i have to call it blackberry? its a phone, isn’t it?) to your computer.

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Building
by Enno Rey

Some Notes on Types of Security Controls & the Way they’re Implemented in Enterprise Environments

Welcome back, Dear Reader,

in this post I’d like to share some reflections on the (potentially inefficient) way some security controls can be observed to be deployed in complex organisations and what this may mean for the future of those controls.

In general the space of security controls can be categorized according to different schemes, such as:

  • By fundamental principle (preventive, detective, reactive, corrective, deterrent, compensating etc. security controls. see for example this overview or this one or some illustration here).
  • By “state of matter” (e.g. components, implementation, operations. again, for some supplemental information look at this one).
  • By type of admission: whitelisting vs. blacklisting (some general discussion here, the respective Schneier-Ranum Face-Off to be found here, and this is only Bruce’s half, but with a number of comments).
  • Related to the overall architecture of implementation: centralized vs. distributed.

For today’s topic I’ll just focus on the latter two and will introduce those shortly.

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Misc
by Enno Rey

Ganz Gallien?

“Nein! Ein von unbeugsamen Galliern bevölkertes Dorf hört nicht auf, dem Eindringling Widerstand zu leisten.”

This is a famous quote pretty much every German kid used to know. Not sure if this still applies though, my three haven’t touched Asterix comics so far. Anyhow, you might ask why I cite this.

Simple answer: see this recent article from the Guardian on a Utah-based ISP “resisting some pressure”. That’s the spirit…

Have a great Sunday everybody,

Enno

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Breaking
by Felix Wilhelm

Reverse Engineering Tools Part 1: BinDiff

When teaching courses on topics like Reverse Engineering or Malware Analysis we always emphasize the need to minimize unneeded work. Because reversing an unknown binary is a time consuming and complex process, tools that simplify the RE process are invaluable when working under time pressure. In this blogpost series I will present multiple tools and techniques that can help to reverse an unknown binary. Please note that these articles do not contain cutting edge research but rather target at newcomers. However, I hope to also provide some useful and interesting information for moreexperienced practitioners.
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Building
by Friedwart Kuhn

EMET v4.0 with New Certificate Trust Feature Released

Microsoft released EMET v4.0  with a new (security) feature that enables protection against fraudulent websites or compromised root certification authorities (do you remember Comodo, DigiNotar, DigiCert, Turktrust et al. ;-)?)

EMET defines via “certificate trust“ a trust chain between the domain name of a website (and its associated website certificate) and a root CA certificate. This is done through so called “pinning rules”. Here is one of the default pinning rules of EMET 4.0 for the domain name login.live.com:

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