Blog
44Con Challenge
In a similar fashion to the BlackHat challenge held earlier this year, we’re giving away a free ticket to our BlackOps course at this year’s 44Con. As a penetration tester, knowledge of an issue is not enough when one needs to demonstrate risk to a client. Furthermore, when large numbers of potential targets are involved, it becomes crucial that effective attacks are packaged and automated to allow for mass-pwnage.
Privilege Escalation in SQL Server (Depending on some dodgy requirements)
I was playing with a few SQL server idiosyncrasies more than a year ago before becoming so completely distracted with the whole SAP protocol-decoding business. Having some time on my hands for once, I thought I would blog it.
Early last year, I found it possible to create jobs owned by other users on MS SQL Server (2000, 2005 and 2008) by an unprivileged user – providing the user had the capability of creating or altering stored procedures in the [master].[dbo] schema. The reason for this, comes as a result of cross-database permissions being chained, by default, across the system databases [master], [msdb] and [tempdb]. According to Microsoft, this is by design.
BlackOps – Post Exploitation Fun and Games
Brilliant, the client has decided to implement their own CMS and you’ve found a variable that’s vulnerable to SQL injection. Starting up your favourite SQL exploitation tool, you upload a suitable web shell and fire up the browser. In an instant, you control that server, but do you really own the box?
Looking back at the major hacks of the last 18 months, attackers used a variety of techniques to obtain sensitive information. For the RSA hack, social engineering was used, allegedly consisting of a malicious Excel spreadsheet sent from a web master at a recruitment website. Once loaded, Poison Ivy was dropped on the host and the games began. Attackers started recon exercises, pivoting between hosts and finally exfiltrated the data (the rest is well-known and publicised). In the case of HBGary, attackers compromised their systems using a similar approach as the RSA attackers did: target an individual using social engineering using an earlier toehold to expand to a foothold. These types of attackers might have a fancy new name (Advanced Persistent Threats) but at the end of the day, they are using techniques that have been around for a while.
Black Hat Training Classes Update
Hey All,
We’re about locked and loaded down here in ZA – ready to tackle the looooong journey to Vegas for Black Hat. If you’re headed to Black Hat but haven’t yet booked training there’s still time, so I thought I’d push out a brief update on what’s still available from our stable of courses. As many of our courses have sold out we opened second classrooms and as a result have plenty of space to accommodate late comers!
Solution for the BlackHat Challenge
We had published a network protocol analysis challenge for free entry to our BlackHat 2012 Vegas training courses and received seven correct answers. We’d like to thank those who attempted this challenge and hope that they find it useful.
The winner, Peter Af Geijerstam managed to respond first, with the correct answer. As a result, he wins a free place on any of our Hacking By Numbers courses. Here is a brief solution for it:
BlackHat Challenge
This year marks a special anniversary for us at SensePost in that we’ve been training at BlackHat for over a decade now. To celebrate this, we thought we’d give away a free ticket to any of our courses on offer at this year’s BlackHat Briefings in Las Vegas.
With data breaches happening almost on a monthly basis these days, everyone is turning to encryption in order to protect their information. Bob, a rather tech-savvy gentleman, works for a FTSE 100 company and they’ve written their own secure message implementation. You’ve been tasked to perform a penetration test and noticed that after compromising their shared document server, an internal web application leaked the source code used by the company for the client and the server.
RSA SecureID software token update
There has been a healthy reaction to our initial post on our research into the RSA SecureID Software Token. A number of readers had questions about certain aspects of the research, and I thought I’d clear up a number of concerns that people have.
The research pointed out two findings; the first of which is in fact a design vulnerability in RSA software’s “Token Binding” mechanism. The second finding is another design issue that affects not only RSA software token but also any other software, which generates pseudo-random numbers from a “secret seed” running on traditional computing devices such as laptops, tablets or mobile phones. The correct way of performing this has been approached with hardware tokens, which are often tamper-resistant.
A closer look into the RSA SecureID software token
Widespread use of smart phones by employees to perform work related activities has introduced the idea of using these devices as an authentication token. As an example of such attempts, RSA SecureID software tokens are available for iPhone, Nokia and the Windows platforms. Obviously, mobile phones would not be able to provide the level of tamper-resistance that hardware tokens would, but I was interested to know how easy/hard it could be for a potential attacker to clone RSA SecureID software tokens. I used the Windows version of the RSA SecurID Software Token for Microsoft Windows version 4.10 for my analysis and discovered the following issues:
CREST South Africa? Let’s talk…
First, some background on CREST in the form of blatant plagiarism…
CREST – The Council for Registered Ethical Security Testers – exists to serve the needs of a global information security marketplace that increasingly requires the services of a regulated and professional security testing capability. They provide globally recognised, up to date certifications for organisations and individuals providing penetration testing services.
For organisations, CREST provides a provable validation of security testing methodologies and practices, aiding with client engagement and procurement processes, and proving that your company is committed to providing testing services to the highest standard.
ITWeb Security Summit 2012
This year, for the fourth time, myself and some others here at SensePost have worked together with the team from ITWeb in the planning of their annual Security Summit. A commercial conference is always (I suspect) a delicate balance between the different drivers from business, technology and ‘industry’, but this year’s event is definitely our best effort thus far. ITWeb has more than ever acknowledged the centrality of good, objective content and has worked closely with us as the Technical Committee and their various sponsors to strike the optimal balance. I don’t think we have it 100% right yet, and there are some improvements and initiatives that will unfortunately only manifest at next year’s event, but this year’s program (here and here) is nevertheless first class and comparable with almost anything else I’ve seen.