Misc | Insinuator.net - Bold Statements

In this blog post, we quickly look into issues involving character devices. As is typical for Linux, everything is a file, so character devices are referenced as files, such as pseudo terminals (pts) under /dev/pts/. man pty briefly introduces the topic. Essentially, it is used to connect a program, such as a terminal emulator, to a shell. In the end, a pty can read and write like a regular file. A colleague already brought up the topic of ptys and character devices. But more recently a Twitter post and the accompanying advisory piqued my interest.

Misc

May 3, 2024 by Ahmad Abolhadid

Is Google Play Protect a Reliable Malware Detector?

Google Play Protect is a built-in Android solution that enhances devices’ security. Its main job is to detect and block malware on Android devices. Several malware families were known for bypassing Play Protect checks in recent years. This brings us to an important question: “Is Google Play Protect a Reliable Malware Detector?”. This blog post shows how Play Protect deals with various Android malware in different scenarios. I deal with Play Protect as a black box.

Misc

April 16, 2024 by Tillmann Oßwald

BSI Publishes Windows 10 SiSyPHuS Reports: Application Compatibility Infrastructure, Microsoft Defender Antivirus ETW Usage and Device Setup Manager Service

The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI – Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik) has published several papers ERNW created as part of the long-term SiSyPHuS Win10-Project. This project focuses on system analysis of selected parts of the Windows 10 operating system performed by ERNW.

Analysis of the Application Compatibility Infrastructure (ACI): In this work we present an overview of the ACI technology along with a technical analysis of the compatibility protocol which is used first to determine if a compatibility solution needs to be applied, and second, to apply said compatibility solution. Furthermore, threats and mitigation in the context of the technology are presented a long with a monitoring approach. Finally, configuration and logging capabilities are discussed.

Misc

February 6, 2024 by Florian Grunow

Considerations on AI-Security – Part I: Introduction and Nondeterminism

Hey there!

This is the first blog post in a series about issues we think are currently relevant in the field of AI-Security. The intention is not to get full coverage of the topic, but to point out things that seem practical and relevant. We will base some of our statements on lab setups and real-life examples. The technology that we will focus on is chat bots based on generative AI, mainly OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Right now, this specific application of AI in the wild seems to be the best way to demonstrate issues and pitfalls when it comes to IT security.

Misc

October 17, 2023 by Baptiste David

c0c0n 2023 – A Short Retrospective

Two weeks ago, I was at the c0c0n conference in Cochin (India). This conference is quite special for at least two considerations. At first, this is – to the best of my knowledge – one of the few conferences which officially brings together hackers, industrials, politics, and security forces. This is not always obvious for all these different persons to talk together, may be due to a lack of mutual understanding ?. But for a couple of days, all of them meet, talk, exchange, and they share mutual needs and appropriate solutions. And this may explain the second consideration, why c0c0n is one of the oldest cyber security conferences in India (more than 15 years). And yes, this is the conference where police forces directly pick you up from the gates of your plane at airport, sitting you at the back of a police car to drive you to your hotel with emergency lights ?

Misc

September 6, 2023 by Frank Block

Identification of (malicious) modifications in memory-mapped image files

I’m happy to announce the publication of the paper Windows memory forensics: Identification of (malicious) modifications in memory-mapped image files at this years DFRWS USA, and the release of the corresponding volatility plugin. With this research came also an update to the Ptenum family (affecting especially the ptemalfind plugin), which makes the plugins reliable in identifying modified pages despite memory combining, so make sure to grab the newest version from the Github repository.

Misc

August 2, 2023 by Gregor Debus

Select * from OpenStack - A Steampipe Plugin for OpenStack

Although, more and more companies start to move their IT-Infrastructure from on-premise to public cloud solutions like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, public cloud providers are not an option for every organization. This is where private cloud platforms come into play as they give organizations direct control over their information, can be more energy efficient than other on-premise hosting solutions, and offer companies the possibility to manage their data centers efficiently. OpenStack is a widely deployed, open-source private cloud platform many companies and universities use.

Misc

June 21, 2023 by Matthias Hamann

The DRACO Stream Cipher

In symmetric-key cryptography, we typically distinguish two types of encryption schemes: block ciphers and stream ciphers. Block ciphers divide a plaintext into blocks of a fixed size (e.g., 64 or 128 bits) and encrypt one such block of data as a whole. Stream ciphers, on the other hand, consider the plaintext as a continuous stream of data. The stream cipher maintains an internal state and in each step it outputs one bit or several bits and updates its internal state. The output bit stream is then combined with the plaintext, usually using the XOR operation. One advantage of stream ciphers is that their resource requirements are lower than those of block ciphers in many application scenarios. This makes them particularly useful in lightweight cryptography targeting resource constrained devices such as low-cost RFID tags.

Misc

May 25, 2023 by Florian Bausch

IMF Conference 2023 in Munich

The IMF Conference is the International Conference on IT Security Incident Management & IT Forensics. This year it took place from May 23 to 24 in Munich. The schedule lists a lot of interesting talks. One of the talks was my presentation on a paper about Ceph forensics, based on my Master Thesis:

The concept of Software Defined Storage (SDS) has become very popular over the last few years. It is used in public, private, and hybrid clouds to store enterprise, private, and other kinds of data. Ceph is an open-source software that implements an SDS stack.

Misc

May 5, 2023 by Friedwart Kuhn