Misc

White Paper on Incident Handling First Steps, Preparation Plans, and Process Models

We just published my Whitepaper about First Steps, Preparation Plans, and Process Models for Incident Handling, that I wrote to pass the time between Christmas and New Year. The whitepaper sums up information that I consider to be useful to prepare for IT security incidents as a conclusion from the incidents in which we supported over the past year. Continue reading “White Paper on Incident Handling First Steps, Preparation Plans, and Process Models”

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Misc

Woolim – Lifting the Fog on DPRK’s Latest Tablet PC

Niklaus, Manuel and me had a great time speaking about one of the latest Tablet PCs from DPRK at 33C3 this year. Our work on RedStar OS from last year revealed a nasty watermarking mechanism that can be used to track the origin and distribution path of media files in North Korea. We have seen some interesting dead code in some of RedStar’s binaries that indicated a more sophisticated mechanism to control the distribution of media files. We got hands on a Tablet PC called “Ul-lim” that implemented this advanced control mechanism.

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Misc

Research Diary: Bluetooth. Part 2

Recently we posted first part of our Bluetooth research diary. Today, we want to continue on that topic and tell you about Bluetooth proxying and packet replay with a new tool.

This time we had a new gadget to play with: our colleague Florian Grunow shared with us a curious IoT device – Bluetooth socks… real socks that you control with an app to heat your feet. The future is here… 😉 Continue reading “Research Diary: Bluetooth. Part 2”

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Misc

Research Diary: Bluetooth

As you probably know we perform research on a regular base at ERNW.

We – Olga and Rafael – started with a research project about Bluetooth. Our first goal was to gain some knowledge about the tools used by most Linux systems to communicate with Bluetooth hardware, such as BlueZ. A good help for that was the amazing Bluetooth hacking workshop we had before (check the link in our blog!)

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Misc

A Journey Into the Depths of VoWiFi Security

T-mobile pioneered with the native seamless support for WiFi calling technology embedded within the smartphones. This integrated WiFi calling feature is adopted by most major providers as well as many smartphones today. T-mobile introduced VoWiFi in Germany in May 2016. You can make voice calls that allows to switch between LTE and WiFi networks seamlessly. This post is going to be about security analysis of Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi), another name for WiFi calling, from the user end. Before we get started, let me warn you in advance. If you are not familiar with telecommunication network protocols, then you might get lost in the heavy usage of acronyms and abbreviations. I am sorry about that. But trust me, after a while, you get used to it 🙂 . Continue reading “A Journey Into the Depths of VoWiFi Security”

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Misc

Welcome to Insinuator.net 2.0

It’s almost exactly seven years since Enno published the very first blog post on Insinuator.net. Meanwhile, quite a few things changed. It’s not only the ERNW Universe which grew significantly, but also Insinuator’s place within this universe was slightly adjusted. What started as an almost independent IT-Security blog became more and more the major publication medium of ERNW.

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Misc

Introducing the Kernel Space Invaders

Today it is my pleasure to shortly introduce ERNW’s Capture the Flag team, the Kernel Space Invaders. As a long-time CTF enthusiast, I’m really amazed how many of us make the time to tackle IT security challenges also on the weekends or evenings. Even if we cannot participate in all CTFs out there (which would be challenging anyways given the large number of CTF events happening nowadays), we started to compile a repository of some of our write-ups — I hope some of you will enjoy!

 

Cheers,

KSI

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Misc

To Control Something

Some years ago I discussed the meaning of the term “control” in this post, but at the time I was mainly referring to the noun “control”. Given I’ll extensively use the term “control” as a verb in the next parts of “the DMZ series” and some upcoming talks I reflected a bit on its meaning (as a verb). In the following I’ll lay out the definition/understanding to be employed at those occasions.

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Misc

Another Perspective in Vulnerability Disclosure

As you know we (as in ERNW) are quite involved when it comes to vulnerability disclosure and we’ve tried to contribute to a discussion at several occasions, such as Reflections on Vulnerability Disclosure and ERNW Newsletter 50 Vulnerability Disclosure Reflections Case Study.

In this post I want to add (yet) another perspective, motivated by a disclosure procedure which just happened recently. Continue reading “Another Perspective in Vulnerability Disclosure”

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Misc

Sending Mixed Signals – What Can Happen in the Course of Vulnerability Disclosure

Update:

Given there’s quite some speculation and, as we think, misinformation going around we think it’s helpful to add/clarify the following information:

  • we fully comply with the injunction and we have no intentions to violate it. we do not plan to publish any technical information besides the report (agreed upon with FireEye themselves) and the slides (based on the former) anyway. No 3rd parties except for the ones involved (FireEye, lawyers) have received any additional technical information from our side, let alone an earlier version of the report.
  • the injunction covers accompanying details mostly within the architecture space, but not the core vulnerabilities themselves. Those are not part of the injunction.
  • we stand by the timeline as provided below. In particular, the following two points:
    – FireEye received a draft version of the report which had the objectionable material (as identified by the cease and desist letter) fully removed on August 11th.
    – according to the cease and desist letter FireEye’s lawyer sent us, they were informed – from our side – about the planned talk at 44CON on Jul 23rd.
  • there’s an injunction, but not a lawsuit. I used the term “sue” after consulting Merriam-Webster which states: “sue: to seek justice or right from (a person) by legal process”, but this might have been misinterpreted by some readers. As stated, there’s a pending injunction, but not a lawsuit.

Please note that we won’t share legal documents with 3rd parties or publish them as we consider this inappropriate.
Please note further that, during the whole process, our goal was to perform a responsible disclosure procedure with its inherent objectives (namely vulnerability remediation by vendor and education of various stakeholders involved, see also here or here). We consider this disclosure process as concluded. We don’t see a need to add technical details from our side as we feel that the objectives of responsible disclosure are met (not least as patches are released since quite some time and both vendor & finder have released reports).

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We’ve just released an ERNW Newsletter titled “Playing With Fire: Attacking the FireEye MPS” which describes several (meanwhile patched) vulnerabilities in FireEye‘s “Malware Protection System” (webMPS) version 7.5.1. Right now Felix gives a talk at 44CON in London on the topic, including some demos. He will release the slides after the talk => to catch the respective announcement you might follow him on Twitter (which is probably a good idea anyway if you’re interested in vulnerability research).

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