B-Sides
XRDP: Exploiting Unauthenticated X Windows Sessions
In this blog post we are going to describe some tools we created to find and exploit unauthenticated X Windows sessions. We recently presented these at BSides Cape Town.
What is X11? X also known as the X Window System is currently in its 11th version, hence the name X11. X is a basic windowing system which provides a framework for drawing and moving windows on a display device as well as interaction with a mouse and keyboard. X uses a client-server model, with the server being the computer running in front of a human user and the X client applications running anywhere on the network. This contradicts the normal view of a client-server model, where the server is running at a remote location and the client is running in front of the user. In short, X plays a central role in displaying graphical windows on a users terminal. The major use of X is for administering remote machines graphically (similar to a remote desktop session), however X only displays one window at a time. An example being an xterm (terminal) window.
BSides Cape Town Secret Squirrel Challenge Write-Up
Last weekend was the BSides Cape Town conference, currently ZA’s only hacker con. It’s a cool little con with big dreams that get a little closer each time. This year was a lot a fun and well put together, congrats to all of the speakers organisers and volunteers.
SP gave some talks; Charl spoke about where we’re headed in a talk entitled Love Triangles in CyberSpace; a tale about trust in 5 chapters. Chris discussed his DLL preloading work and released his toolset. Finally, Darryn & Thomas spoke about exploiting unauth’ed X sessions and released their tool XRDP, it was also their first con talk ever.
AutoDane at BSides Cape Town
Given the prevalence of Microsoft Active Directory domains as the primary means of managing large corporate networks both globally and in South Africa specifically; one of the common first goals of many internal penetration tests is to get Domain Administrator (DA) level access. To assist with this, a plethora of tools and techniques exist, from the initial “in” through to elevation of privilege and eventually extracting and cracking all domain credentials.
Competition winner announced
On Saturday Dec 3, at BSides Cape Town we announced the winner of a prize for local information security research. The purpose of the competition was twofold. Firstly, to highlight interesting research produced in .za for the purpose of publicising up ‘n coming security folks, since there are a few disparate communities (academic / industry is the greatest split). Secondly, to provide some degree of reward in the form of a cash prize. The prize is (unsurprisingly) not meant to compensate for time spent, but rather to give the typical researcher who conducts the work in their spare time some recognition and perhaps a cool gadget to associate with the work.
R5000 ZA research prize to be presented at B-Sides Cape Town, nominations sought
SensePost is proud to announce a competition to identify the best information security research published by a resident of South Africa in 2011 (Jan 1st to Dec 3rd). Much security research is unfunded and private but, when published, enters the toolsets and minds of security companies worldwide. South Africa’s security industry is best-described as “fledgling”, and we want to support researchers who produce quality research.
Heads up: even if you’re not a researcher, you can still win by nominating work, so continue reading.
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