About two months ago the Bluetooth SIG renamed their latest standard, which was previously known as “Bluetooth v4.0”. When version numbers get higher and higher marketing likes to interfere and try something new. In this case: Bluetooth Smart.
Sounds smart, but is it?
Without getting into too much detail, let me quickly quote Wikipedia to get started:
“Cost-reduced single-mode chips, which enable highly integrated and compact devices, feature a lightweight Link Layer providing ultra-low power idle mode operation, simple device discovery, and reliable point-to-multipoint data transfer with advanced power-save and secure encrypted connections at the lowest possible cost.”
So we’re talking about the usual stuff: Lower energy consumption combined with more functionality. Great!
Ubertooth One - Photo from: ubertooth.sourceforge.net
Sounds smart, but is it safe?
With “Bluetooth Smart Ready” products just coming in it’s too early to tell. But one thing is for sure: 2012 will be the year where every major consumer product (smartphones, heart-rate straps or even simple clocks) will be equipped with it. Oh, and guess what… a new wireless standard doesn’t just come along with a new shiny gadget. Obviously you need an app for that. How about tracking your heart beat? Personally I’m looking forward for the first Bluetooth Smart Ready cardiac pacemaker…
And back to security: Either you trust the Bluetooth committee which states “Bluetooth technology is an industry leader when it comes to wireless data security.”, OR you ask somebody who would tell you the plain truth (given there is one): Michael Ossmann.
We did the latter and invited Michael to talk at TROOPERS12. He is a wireless security experts who also makes hardware tools to progress with his research. In early 2011 he successfully crowd-funded his latest gadget: Ubertooth One. A very capable Bluetooth monitoring device.
We’re looking forward to mid March where we all meet to discuss things in more depth at TROOPERS12. Until then keep yourself up-to-date and have a look into Michael’s latest blog entry: Bluetooth for Bad Guys
Have a wonderful Christmas time,
Florian
PS: Drop us a comment, when you find some “Bluetooth Smart Ready” labels under your Christmas tree 😉
During one of our pentests in some corporate environment we were to analyze an application-server called Liferay. Liferay comes with a lot of functionalities, runs on top of Apache Tomcat and includes a nice API that makes it very easy to add components or further functionality that are not part of the core. These (potentially selfmade) “addons” are called “portlets” and they can be inserted in any place in the frontend.
We quickly found an active default-account (test@liferay.com : test) which immediately led to the question: how to get access on the system-layer through the account on the application. Because we were not aware of any portlet which provided the desired functionality, we decided to write it on our own and created a straight-forward portlet for system level command execution.
As mentioned above, Liferay offers an API for adding portlets to the core. This can be done by creating a standard war-file which contains java-classes, including the desired functionality and some – in this case – Liferay-specific xml-based configuration files. War files are often used to expand the functionality of java-servers (e.g. Tomcat can also be extended via war-files) – it just needs to contain the application-specific xml-files.
Our java-class includes a html-form consisting of an input-field and a button, which sends commands (via GET) to the server. On the server the input gets executed in a shell – a new java HTTP-Shell is born. After some adjustments regarding to the operating system and the java compiler (1) we had a GET-Parameter-based HTTP-Shell.
The following steps are necessary to deploy the shell portlet:
3.) Execute create.bat / create.sh [Note: javac and jar must be installed in the PATH.]
4.) Have fun with the ShellPortlet.war
How to deploy the war-file?
1.) Login to your Liferay-System with a privileged user-account and open http://yourdomain.com/group/control_panel/manage
2.) You should find a category called “Server” on the left side in the navigation. Click “Install Plugin” and on the next site click “Install more plugins” followed by “Fileupload”
3.) Upload the war-file and use “tail -f $CATALINA_HOME/logs/catalina.out” or (on Windows) the Tomcat-console to observe the logs for any error/exception. When everything worked you’ll find an entry like “1 Portlet for ShellPortlet is available for use”
4.) Now go back to your mainpage via the link in the upper area “Back to Liferay”. Then click “Add” -> “More” and you will see all categories in which the portlets are sorted.
5.) If everything went right you will find a category named “Ownage” in this list. Click on it and drag&drop the shellportlet anywhere on your website.
6.) Have fun playing! 🙂
This shows – once again – that it’s not that hard to gain system-access over a (web-) application. Everyone who uses web-applications should secure the higher-privileged accounts by strong passwords or better deactivate them in case they are not needed. It also shows that – once again – comprehensive and reasonable hardening would have prevented the compromise of yet another system.
(1): The java-class must be compiled by the same compiler-version which the tomcat-server is using. (E.g.: If the tomcat uses jre1.6, the java-class in the war-file must be compiled by a javac which is out of the jdk1.6)
“This document was produced jointly with the OWASP mobile security project. It is also published as an ENISA deliverable in accordance with our work program 2011. It is written for developers of smartphone apps as a guide to developing secure apps. It may however also be of interest to project managers of smartphone development projects.
In writing the top 10 controls, we considered the top 10 most important risks for mobile users as described in (1) and (2). As a follow-up we are working on platform-specific guidance and code samples. We hope that these controls provide some simple rules to eliminate the most common vulnerabilities from your code.”
After having a first look at the document’s content I can, while not being a developer myself, state there’s a lot of valuable guidance in it. Which is particularly useful as our assessment experience shows that quite some things (examples to be discussed in this upcoming talk at Troopers) can go wrong as for application security on smartphones.
today I’ll give a short preview of my newest tool, pytacle. It is simply a little helper program to control gnuradio/airprobe/kraken/some_other_tools, convert their input/output and to find a use able clear/cipher text combination to break A5/1. In the end it should record, crack and decode/play a gsm phone call with ~5 mouse clicks.
Take a look at this video:
The code is not available yet, as its not finished 😉 the recording and cracking part are working, but the decoding doesn’t. I need to put some more time into the code, but there isn’t much spare in that time of the year 😀
We’re delighted to provide the first announcement of talks of next year’s Troopers edition. Looks like it’s going to be a great event again 😉
Here we go:
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Andreas Wiegenstein: Real SAP Backdoors
Abstract: In the past year the number of lecture sessions with traumatizing headlines about hacking SAP systems has dramatically risen. Their content, however, is usually the same. Insecure implementations of algorithms, side effects in commands, flawed business logic and designs that brilliantly miss the point of security. In essence, security defects built into the SAP framework by mistake.
This session, however, demonstrates several security defects in SAP NetWeaver that do not appear to have been created by mistake. In order to make a point, I will first discuss with the audience what exactly defines a backdoor. Then I will demonstrate several zero day security defects discovered by me & my team and finally discuss with the audience if these defects qualify as backdoors. All security defects shown are highly critical and have never been publically discussed before. They enable attackers to remotely execute arbitrary ABAP commands and arbitrary OS commands. In essence, full control over SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP.
Bio: Andreas Wiegenstein has been working as a professional SAP security consultant for 9 years. He performed countless SAP code audits and has been researching security defects specific to SAP / ABAP applications. He leads the CodeProfiler Research Labs at Virtual Forge, a team focusing on SAP/ABAP specific vulnerabilities and countermeasures. At the CodeProfiler Labs, he works on ABAP security guidelines, ABAP security trainings, an ABAP security scanner as well as white papers and publications.
Andreas has trained large companies and defense organizations on ABAP security and has spoken at SAP TechEd on several occasions as well as at security conferences such as BlackHat, HITB, Troopers and RSA. He is co-author of the first book on ABAP security (SAP Press 2009). He is also a founding member of BIZEC.org, the Business Security community.
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Mike Ossmann: Welcome to Bluetooth Smart
Abstract: Bluetooth Smart, formerly known as Bluetooth Low Energy, is an entirely new wireless protocol that is not backward compatible with “classic” Bluetooth. With consumer devices emerging in early 2012, this is the perfect time to review Bluetooth Smart and how it works. Packet captures from actual devices will be dissected, and particular attention will be given to the new security procedures specified for Bluetooth Smart. Depending on what devices are commercially available by the time of the conference, I may or may not have a live demo prepared with actual consumer devices. At the very least, I will be able to do a demo using development boards as targets.
Bio: Michael Ossmann is a wireless security researcher who makes hardware for hackers. He founded Great Scott Gadgets in an effort to put exciting, new tools into the hands of innovative people.
Previous work includes:
ShmooCon 2011: Project Ubertooth: Building a Better Bluetooth Adapter
ToorCon 2010: Real Men Carry Pink Pagers (with Travis Goodspeed)
ShmooCon 2010: Bluetooth Keyboards: Who Owns Your Keystrokes?
ShmooCon 2009: Building an All-Channel Bluetooth Monitor (with Dominic Spill)
Black Hat USA 2008: Software Radio and the Future of Wireless Security
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Daniel Mende & Enno Rey: Protecting Voice-over-IP in 2012
Abstract: We’ve recently conducted a number of pentests in (mostly large) VoIP environments. While the fraction of “traditional VoIP attacks” (re-direct/sniff VoIP traffic, reconstruct VoIP calls) has decreased over time, we’ve been able to severely compromise pretty much every environment due to implementation flaws on the infrastructure or “supporting systems” level. Based on a number of warstories, in this talk we will lay out what went wrong in the respective cases and how to protect from the (types of) attacks we performed. Some demos will add spice to the talk. Furthermore a number of previously undisclosed severe vulnerabilities in the crypto architecture of a major vendor’s VoIP solution will be presented.
Bios: Daniel and Enno are long time network geeks who love to explore network devices & protocols and to break flawed ones.
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Graeme Neilson: DISCQO: “Discourse on Implications for Security and Cryptography from Quantum Oddness”
Abstract: Quantum computing is a fascinating, emerging technology with a potentially huge impact on security. This talk introduces the principles of quantum computing and the current state of the art. This is followed by a discussion on the uses of quantum based computer systems within security, the potential implications for cryptography, now and in the future, and the possibility of hacking current quantum based cryptography systems.
What is quantum computing?
What is quantum key exchange?
Can quantum key exchange be hacked?
Will a quantum computer be able to decrypt all my encrypted data?
Do I need a quantum computer?
Do quantum computers even exist?
What are the implications of quantum computing on my current cryptography?
Bio: Graeme Neilson is NOT a quantum physicist or any other kind of physicist…not in this universe anyway…
Still, he does think it’s probable that he can help illuminate the subject of quantum computing for other non-physicists in IT. With over 14 years of experience in IT security Graeme currently works as a security researcher / consultant for Aura Information Security with specialisations in cryptography, reverse engineering and networking. Based out of New Zealand he is a regular speaker at international conferences including Blackhat, H2HC, CanSecWest, DayCon and Troopers.
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Pete Herzog: Securing Robot Mosquitoes with Laser Beams for Eyes in the Enterprise
Abstract: One day employees start bringing robot mosquitoes into the office. They have robot mosquitoes at home and just they’re so damn useful for checking mail, making appointments, singing naptime songs, and spying over the neighbor’s fence. So why wouldn’t they? Your security policy doesn’t expressly forbid robot mosquitoes with laser beams for eyes or anything like it so here they are: riding the internal WiFi, carrying who knows what diseases and parasites from public, cyber ponds, melting the plastic plants, boiling the water cooler, and causing all sorts of other disruptions. Before you can ban them though you see that the CEO starts to bring his robot mosquito with laser beams for eyes in too. And he wants you not only support it but to make sure it doesn’t get hacked. Sounds familiar, right?
There will always be new technologies. Many of those new technologies pose new risks, perhaps even risks we hadn’t considered as risky to us before. So someone has to secure those new technologies. But how do we secure something we know so little about? Well, there’s a methodology for that. This talk will cover how to test new technologies, how to create the right policy for them, and how to control them, including robot mosquitoes with laser beams for eyes.
Bio: Pete Herzog is the Managing Director of the security research organization ISECOM and the creator of the OSSTMM.
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Chema Alonso: Excel (and Office apps) Kills the Citrix (or Terminal Services) Star
Abstract: Microsoft Office (and Excel) are common applications in big companies and in a big amount of cases they are published through Terminal Services or Citrix. However, securing that environment against malicious users is very complicated. In this talk you’ll see a lot of demos hacking Citrix and Terminal Services using Excel… and maybe you’ll be scared after having seen this session.
Bio: Chema Alonso is a Security Consultant with Informatica64, a Madrid-based security firm. Chema holds respective Computer Science and System Engineering degrees from Rey Juan Carlos University and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. During his more than six years as a security professional, he has consistently been recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). Chema is a frequent speaker at industry events (Microsoft Technet / Security Tour, AseguraIT) and has been invited to present at information security conferences worldwide including BlackHat Briefings, Defcon, ShmooCon, HackCON, Ekoparty and RootedCon. He is a frequent contributor on several technical magazines in Spain, where he is involved with state-of-the-art attack and defense mechanisms, web security, general ethical hacking techniques and FOCA, the meta-data extraction tool which he co-authors.
Abstract: In many organizations “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) approaches are either subject to intensive discussion or are already practiced (with or without “proper governance”). Usually two security controls are of particular interest in BYOD scenarios, that are container solutions and acceptable use policies (AUPs).
The speakers have contributed to BYOD “implementations” in several environments and – based on actual case studies – are going to discuss three main aspects in their talk:
– What’s the role of the supply chain of a device, in BYOD settings? Is it possible to securely process – e.g. by means of a container solution – sensitive data on a device that was acquired on ebay or that the VIP using it received “as a present during an industry fair in an emerging market country”?
– What level of security is actually provided by container solutions? Do they sufficiently secure data (incl. temporary data) and which user behavior might be required for this?
– When are good AUPs needed and which elements should be included in those?
The goal of the talk is to enable the audience to realistically assess the security approaches and risks in BYOD scenarios.
Bios: Rene Graf leads the “Mobile Security” team at ERNW and has performed a number of BYOD projects including pentests of container solutions and forensic analyses of devices used by CxOs. Enno Rey leads the “Risk and Security Management” team at ERNW and has undertaken the risk assessments in several BYOD projects and written the accompanying AUPs.
Currently there’s quite some discussion ongoing why it took Apple so long to fix a severe vulnerability in the update process of iTunes. A severe vulnerability which could easily be exploited by means of an automated tool called evilgrade which can be downloaded here (Hi Francisco!). Just one small note here: did you know that evilgrade was first shown and released at the 2008 edition of Troopers? We had a number of initial releases of tools in the last years (like wafw00f at the 2009 edition and VASTO at the 2010 edition) and we will continue this fine tradition in 2012. I can already promise that some nice code is going to be released for the first time at Troopers12…
The above is the exact title of a Gartner research note published some days ago. Its main thesis is that an increased convergence of carriers’ MPLS and Internet infrastructures onto shared IP infrastructures requires that enterprises re-evaluate their security and performance risks.
While I do not agree with the overall line of reasoning in the paper, it still highlights a number of interesting points when it comes to MPLS security. Which in turn reminds me of quite some stuff we’ve done in the past, mainly our Black Hat Europe 2009 talk “All your packets are belong to us – Attacking backbone technologies”. Today we’ll release an updated version of the accompanying whitepaper as a kind-of technical report. Its title is “Practical Attacks against MPLS or Carrier Ethernet Networks” and it can be found here.
Enjoy reading,
Enno
btw: for those of you who have actually read the Gartner paper… did you notice their repeated reference to customer RFIs/RFPs not covering a carrier’s separation between their public Internet and MPLS infrastructures? Here’s a document that describes how a given carrier’s trustworthiness might be evaluated and which furthermore contains an excerpt from an RFI (written back in 2006!) which, amongst others, ask for this very point…
On last year’s TROOPERS11, Matthias (mluft) and I gave a talk on Multifunction Devices. Hardly surprising: It was related to the state of secure operation of MFDs. It was heavily motivated by experiences we collected out in the wild. We faced a frightening low level of awareness concerning the role of MFDs for the overall security picture – in particular regarding the processing of sensitive data…
However, instead of only showing and proving well-known weaknesses and vulnerabilities, we decided to adapt ERNW’s Seven Sistersmodel in order to match the needs of secure MFD operation and to develop some kind of guideline. As Matthias already lost some words on this, I’m not gonna waste your valuable time by repeating, what has already been said. However I described our approach and our thoughts on that topic in a recently published ERNW Newsletter. If for what ever reason you didn’t see our talk or even didn’t attend TROOPERS11 at all, have a look on Newsletter 37 and give us feedback on what you think about the whole topic…
Btw: Enno just wrote some lines about what’s so special about the TROOPERS conference. In case you might want to discuss mentioned and related topics at first hand, think about joining TROOPERS12. For our part, we cannot wait to come together at Heidelberg next March.
Once again there’s a reference to some action movie here, as some of you may have immediately spotted ;-).
For the record: this one is from “Snake Plissken”, the main protagonist in John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York”. There’s another well-known quote of the same character in the kind-of sequel “Escape from L.A.” which goes like: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. I’m aware that this is not the initial source (but French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr presumably is, at the time in French ;-)); still this gives a nice transition to today’s topic.
To make it short: there’s pieces of software out there which – regardless of ongoing attempts to patch or even rewrite them – just remain crap, security-wise. Regular readers of this blog may have seen (read) me mentioning some of those. Right now I’d like to draw your attention to another one of my all-time favorites in the “is crappy. has been crappy for a long time. will probably continue do to so for a long time” list. Curtain up! for ISC BIND.
ISC published this advisory today (in case you’re too lazy to follow the link, here some quick facts: “BIND 9 Resolver crashes after logging an error in query.c”; severity “serious”; exploitable “remotely”; CVSS 7.8). Apparently it’s exploited in the wild. It’s at least the 5th unauthenticated remote DoS in BIND 9 in the last twelve months (here’s their advisories). And here’s another quote, this time from the BIND 10 project page:
“The architecture of BIND 10 concentrates on these technical aspects: modularity, customizability, clusterization, integration, resilience, and runtime control.”
See what’s missing? You got it. So good luck to those of you still running BIND. Call it snake… oil…
This week I stayed some days in Zurich, to give a workshop and to meet both clients and fellow researchers (kudos again to C. for the awesome office tour @Google). In the course of one of those dinners somehow Troopers was mentioned and a guy asked: “I’ve heard of the conference. What’s so special about it?”
Funnily enough I didn’t even have to respond myself as a 2011 attendee coincidentally present at the table jumped in and started praising the event (“best con ever. great spirit, great talks”). Obviously this gave me a big grin… but it reminded as well me that some of you might ask themselves the very same question.
In my opening remarks of the 2011 edition I tried to describe the Troopers approach and spirit. You can find it here. As for the speakers’ perspective I’d like to point you to this blogpost that Chema (Alonso) wrote before the 2010 edition. It pretty much summarizes how we take care of “our rock stars”…
Btw: the CfP will be open in some days. As in the previous years, there are only few slots left (as most are already assigned to hand-selected speakers).
About two months ago the Bluetooth SIG renamed their latest standard, which was previously known as “Bluetooth v4.0”. When version numbers get higher and higher marketing likes to interfere and try something new. In this case: Bluetooth Smart.
