Florian Horsch on Insinuator.net - Bold Statements

The Hackers‘ Sanctuary City

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

TROOPERS has a long history of theming the conference every year. Usually we pick a surreal topic, a fun story which we think is worth to pick up on. Some of it starts as a crazy thought, others have been the result of long discussions. Most of them are online, only our master piece from 2016 is securely stored in the company’s vaults.

However, this year was different. Traveling across the globe, speaking at and attending other conferences, connecting with our peers and the community, we felt that 2017 was a particularly tough year for many of us, both professionally and personally. There was this doom and gloom baseline to it.

A Visual Guide to Day-Con 9

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to Dayton

In mid-October our friend Bryan Fite aka Angus Blitter invited the community for the ninth edition of Day-Con. Bryan’s annual security summit, which we regard as the sister event of TROOPERS, is a pretty good reason to visit lovely Dayton, Ohio.

And so we did… ERNW sent in five delegates. Delegates is Day-Con-speak for all attendees and speakers and such a subtle choice of wording sets the tone for the whole event. People seemed to be really focused and the roundtable-like setting during the talks (see above) provided a cozy atmosphere for in-depth expert chatting.

Reminiscing About Black Hat USA 2015

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

While searching for some photos for my last blog post on Thinkst Canary I found a couple more from our recent trip to Black Hat USA and DEF CON, which I consider worth sharing. Nothing too technical, just some visual impressions and comments from my side. Let’s get it on!

My colleague Patrik and myself arrived one day early before the briefings and headed right to Mandalay Bay to check out the Black Hat venue and get a feel for the city. The sheer size of just everything is mind-blowing.

Miner’s Canary Revival in IT Security

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

What is a Miner’s Canary?

Well, it’s a canary (these cute yellow songbirds some people have as a pet), and its main feature is that it dies before you will.

What the hack [pun intended]? And by the way… what has this to do with IT Security? Well… let me first quote Wikipedia on the birds:

“Canaries were once regularly used in coal mining as an early warning system. Toxic gases such as carbon monoxide, methane or carbon dioxide in the mine would kill the bird before affecting the miners. Signs of distress from the bird indicated to the miners that conditions were unsafe.” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_canary#Miner.27s_canary

3D-Printers in the Cloud

Wed, 27 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear readers,

with the rise of low-cost 3D-printers in the homes of thousands [1] of enthusiastic tinkerers the word spreads about these magical machines which can produce any mechanical, artsy, useful or useless parts you might come up with. Standing in living rooms worldwide, they don’t seem like a big threat [2] to anybody. But what happens if you connect them to the Internet?

HackRF – A Must-Have Gadget

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear readers,

today we welcomed Michael Ossmann at the ERNW headquarter for an exclusive workshop on his HackRF gadget. Everybody was quite excited to get hands-on with this shiny piece of hardware, which is currently crowd-funded on Kickstarter. For everybody who’s not familiar with Software Defined Radio (SDR): Let’s regard it as the ultimate tool when working with radio signals.

Michael Ossmann in the house.

Let’s quote Michael’s campaign website:

Transmit or receive any radio signal from 30 MHz to 6000 MHz on USB power with HackRF. HackRF is an open source hardware project to build a Software Defined Radio (SDR) peripheral.

Pre-Weekend Goody: TROOPERS13 Video

Thu, 11 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Enjoy! After seeing this I personally feel like signing up for the TROOPERS14 Enthusiast Package 😉

Carry on
Florian & Team

TROOPERS14 Registration Open + TROOPERS13 Photos Online

Sun, 30 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

**Dear blog followers, TROOPERS speakers & attendees,
**we hope you’re doing fine! Today we have a couple of great things to share with you:

TROOPERS14
Let’s start with a date. Get your calendar and mark March 17th – 21st 2014. It’s your TROOPERS14 holidays. One week full of high-end education, workshops, talks, reconnecting with friends, action, delicious food and one or the other party. You know the drill – more details further down.

VMDK Has Left the Building – Slides available

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A quick update on the workshop we’ve just finished at Hack in the Box 2012 Amsterdam:
Due to popular demand we decided to bring the slides online without wasting any more time. The official website of the conference is currently experiencing some problems due to high interest in all the stuff what was released in the last two days. Great conference!

Here you go: HITB2012AMS ERNW VMDK Has Left the Building [PDF, 6MB, link fixed]

ERP Platforms Are Vulnerable

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is a guest post by the SAP security expert Juan Pablo Perez-Etchegoyen, CTO of Onapsis. Enjoy reading:

At Onapsis we are continuously researching in the ERP security field to identify the risks that ERP systems and business-critical applications are exposed to. This way we help customers and vendors to increase their security posture and mitigate threats that may be affecting their most important platform: the one that stores and manages their business’ crown jewels.

Sell Your Own Device – A Field Study on Decommissioning of Mobile Devices

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

On Friday we released our latest technical newsletter with the fancy title “Sell Your Own Device – A Field Study on Decommissioning of Mobile Devices”. It is the result of a field study on decommissioned mobile business devices bought on eBay and about how stored data may be extracted in different ways.

As always we love to share plenty of practical advise: At the end of the newsletter you will find the mitigating controls to securely handle mobile devices at the end of their life cycle process.

Diving Into Real-World Security Threats to SAP Systems

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is a guest post by the SAP security experts of BIZEC. Enjoy reading:

On March 20^(th), the first BIZEC workshop will be held at the amazing Troopers conference in Heidelberg, Germany. For those still unfamiliar with BIZEC: the business application security initiative is a non-profit organization focused on security threats affecting ERP systems and business-critical infrastructures.

The main goals of BIZEC are:

Raise awareness, demonstrating that ERP security must be analyzed holistically.
Analyze current and future threats affecting these systems.
Serve as a unique central point of knowledge and reference in this subject.
Provide experienced feedback to global organizations, helping them to increase the security of their business-critical information.
Organize events with the community to share and exchange information.

The “BIZEC workshop at Troopers 2012” will dive into the security of SAP platforms. Still to this day, a big part of the Auditing and Information Security industries believe that Segregation of Duties (SoD) controls are enough to protect these business-critical systems.
By attending this session, InfoSec professionals and SAP security managers will be able to stop “flying blind” with regards to the security of their SAP systems. They will learn why SoD controls are not enough, which current threats exist that could be exploited by evil hackers, and how to protect their business-critical information from cyber-attacks.

How Safe is Smart?

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

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.”

A Sneak Peek into TROOPERS12

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Here we go again: TROOPERS12 is scheduled for March 19^(th) – 23^(rd) 2012 in Heidelberg, Germany.

Those who attended TROOPERS before know for what we are up to. For all newcomers I’ll quickly outline what’s going to happen:

TROOPERS is your premium IT security event in Europe. Think of your usual IT educational event without annoying sales pitching and outdated topics. Now add a superb conference location, an elite line-up of international researchers and practitioners as well as an organizing team not dedicated to make a living doing this, but to celebrate our craftsmanship together with like-minded people.

TROOPERS11 – Slides available

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

TROOPERS11 slides are available now! Please find them here: http://www.troopers.de/troopers11/downloads/

TROOPERS11 was a blast! We received great feedback from all attendees and speakers. This really pushes ourselves towards the next goals and an even better security conference in 2012.

We’re happy that everybody got home safely with new ideas and inspirations in mind. On a side note: The awesome TROOPERS badge caused trouble for some of you with the airport security 😉 I really hope everybody could find a way to take it back home. It will hopefully find its way to an adequate place right next to your old memorabilia (cup of the first won soccer match, your college degree or photos from your first ballet show). Regard it as the proof of your latest achievement and tell everybody proud and loud: WE ARE TROOPERS.

Research on “Application Virtualization” – Results online now

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Just wanted to let you know that we sent out ERNW Newsletter 32 end of last week. As we promised it includes the results of research regarding the question “Is browser virtualization a valid security control in order to mitigate browser based security risks?”.

Simon did a great job with writing the latest newsletter. It’s a 30-page document which should help you to have a basis for well-informed decisions when it comes to the deployment of an application virtualization technology.

Try Loki!

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Everybody who is interested in our newest tool ‘Loki’ is welcomed to head over to ERNW’s tool section and download it. Take this monster for a spin and let us know in the comments how you like it. Loki’s coding father Daniel is more than happy to answer your questions and criticism.

You don’t even know what Loki is?

In short: An advanced security testing tool for layer 3 protocols.

ERNW at NinjaCon (fka PlumberCon)

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday we made our way to Vienna to participate and contribute to NinjaCon (formerly known as PlumberCon, before Nintendo Inc. claimed their rights ;)).

After our arrival Oliver held a five hour workshop on Penetration Testing and did the finishing touches on his slides about ‘Attacking Cisco Enterprise WLANs‘, which he will deliver later today together with Daniel. And last but not least Daniel will be the Packet Master of PacketWars™ Vienna taking place in the evening.

TROOPERS10 presentation materials finally online

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’m happy to announce that the presentations and a majority of the videos from TROOPERS10 are finally available to you.

You’ll find the slides at the conference’s website troopers.de, more precisely here. Plenty of videos were uploaded and are now ready for streaming at viddler.com/TROOPERS. Enjoy!

Please excuse the long waiting time – this is a big point on our ‘improvements for upcoming events’ list. Talking about improvements: If you have any suggestions, criticism or even praise for past or upcoming events – let us know in the comment section.