Building

Insecure Boot: Injecting initramfs from a debug shell

Many Linux hardening guides focus on well-known protections: full-disk encryption, Secure Boot, and password-protected bootloaders. While these measures are critical, they often overlook a subtle but serious attack vector: the ability to drop into a debug shell via the Initial RAM Filesystem (initramfs). This oversight can enable an attacker with brief physical access to bypass conventional boot protections and inject persistent malware into the system.

In this post, it is demonstrated how this attack works on modern Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu and Fedora, and explained why existing guidance often fails to mention it.

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Breaking

Disclosure: Potential Limitations of Apple ADE in Corporate Usage Scenarios

Apple Automated Device Enrollment (ADE) is presented as a way to automate and simplify the enrollment process of Apple devices within Mobile Device Management (MDE) solutions. This blog post is aimed at organizations currently planning or even already using this feature and making you, the reader, aware of potential limitations of this process that might otherwise not be clearly addressed in your companies’ device management process.

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Breaking

Disclosure: Apple ADE – Network Based Provisioning Bypass

Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions are used to centrally manage mobile devices in corporate environments. This includes the monitoring of the device, automatic installation/removal of apps or certificates and restrict the functionality. Even though MDM solutions exist for multiple vendors, we will look specifically on Apple devices enrolled via Intune. When an Apple device is registered for Automated Device Enrollment (ADE), it will automatically download and apply these policies during the initial setup and prior to the first boot.

During a customer project, we identified a network-based provisioning bypass which prevents the iPad to fetch and apply the provisioning profiles. Continue reading “Disclosure: Apple ADE – Network Based Provisioning Bypass”

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Building

ERNW Hardening Repository

Today we started publishing several of our hardening documents to a dedicated GitHub repository — and we’re quite excited about it! It took a while to develop a suitable markdown template to support all the requirements you have when you write a hardening guide, but we’re online now!

At the moment, only a few hardening guides are online, but that should continuously increase in the future.

Click here for the GitHub ERNW Hardening Repository!

Cheers,

Matthias

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Building

Internet Information Service 7.5 Hardening Guide

Internet Information Services (IIS) contains several components that perform important functions for the application and Web server roles in Windows Server. As it is designed to be used in an enterprise environment, the security of this system must be kept at a high level.

By default IIS implements a lot of basic security measures, but are these the relevant ones to protect your business? Continue reading “Internet Information Service 7.5 Hardening Guide”

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