November 9th, 2009

CBS 60 Minutes tackles cyber-terrorism

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 7:07 am

Categories: Arbitrary Code Execution, Black Hat, Botnets, Browsers, Data theft, Exploit code, Governments, Hackers, Malware, People's Republic of China, Russia, United States of America

Tags: Cyberterrorism, CBS Corp., Hacking, Security, Ryan Naraine

Could hackers get into the computer systems that run crucial elements of the world’s infrastructure, such as the power grids, water works or even a nation’s military arsenal?  Watch the CBS News 60 Minutes segment after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

August 12th, 2009

Advanced Mac OS X rootkit tools released

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 1:42 pm

Categories: Anti Virus, Apple, Arbitrary Code Execution, Black Hat, Complex Attacks, Data theft, Denial of Service (DoS), Exploit code, Kernel-level Exploits, Locally Running Web Servers, Malware, Open source, Research, Responsible disclosure, Rootkits, Viruses and Worms, Vulnerability research

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Tool, Dai Zovi, Rootkits, Productivity, Apple Mac OS X, Apple Mac OS, Operating Systems, Security, Spyware, Adware & Malware

Security researcher Dino Dai Zovi (of Pwn2Own fame) has released a suite of tools to demonstrate how to load an advanced rootkit on Mac OS X machines.

The tools were first discussed at this year’s Black Hat security conference where Dai Zovi (right) presented techniques to manipulate the way the Mach micro-kernel uses RPC calls to create hidden system calls or create kernel threads.

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August 3rd, 2009

Black Hat recap podcast: SSL, SMS, BIOS rootkits

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 2:10 pm

Categories: Anti Virus, Apple, Arbitrary Code Execution, Black Hat, Botnets, Browsers, Complex Attacks, Data theft, Denial of Service (DoS), Exploit code, Firefox, Hackers, Mobile (In)Security, Mozilla, Passwords, Patch Watch, Punditocracy, Responsible disclosure, iPhone

Tags: Black Hat, SSL, SMS, Rootkits, BIOS, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Podcasts, Ssl/Tls, Authentication/Encryption, Telephony

In this podcast, I chat with Threatpost.com co-editor Dennis Fisher about the big news coming out of the Black Hat security conference.  We discuss the attacks using SMS and MMS, rootkits in keyboards and BIOSes, vulnerabilities in SSL and the response from vendors to these problems. Listen here [mp3].

August 3rd, 2009

Apple patches Black Hat SMS attack flaw

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 4:37 am

Categories: Apple, Arbitrary Code Execution, Black Hat, Browsers, Denial of Service (DoS), Exploit code, Hackers, Malware, Mobile (In)Security, Open source, Patch Watch, Pen testing, Responsible disclosure, Viruses and Worms, Vulnerability research, Zero-day attacks, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Black Hat, Flaw, Apple Inc., SMS, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Telephony, Smart Phones, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics

On the heels of a Black Hat conference demo of an iPhone hijack via text messages, Apple has shipped an iPhone update with patches for the security flaw.

The iPhone OS 3.0.1 update, available only via iTunes, addresses a memory corruption issue in the way the device decodes SMS (text) messages.   Apple warned that a maliciously crafted SMS message may lead to an unexpected service termination or arbitrary code execution.

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July 27th, 2009

A Good Year for Security Collaboration

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 5:58 am

Categories: Adobe, Arbitrary Code Execution, Black Hat, Browsers, Complex Attacks, Data theft, Exploit code, Microsoft, Patch Watch, Punditocracy, Research, Responsible disclosure, Vulnerability research, Zero-day attacks

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Conficker Working Group, Security, Ryan Naraine

Guest Editorial by  George Stathakopoulos

It seems like just yesterday when I was at Black Hat.  Now as I get ready to fly to Las Vegas again, I look forward to seeing a lot of security researchers, hearing their latest exploits and how they fared over the last 352 days.  At the same time, it is a great opportunity to look back at the past year in security and ask myself, “was it a good year or a bad year?”

What comes immediately to mind when I think of the past year?  The rise of rogue security software, Conficker, two out-of-band security updates (thanks to the MSRC for the great work!) and of course the fact that cyber security has garnered national attention fueling the search for a cyber czar.   Security researchers and analysts have said that security investments like the security development lifecycle (SDL) are making products harder to crack.   More people are interested in secure development, as seen by the uptick in downloads of Microsoft !exploitable and Threat Modeling tools.  More companies – Adobe comes to mind – are clearly demonstrating their commitment to protecting customers through security fundamentals.  And really, the collaborative spirit was obvious across the industry over the past year.   Read the rest of this entry »

July 13th, 2009

ImageShack hacked by anti-full disclosure movement

Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 2:02 pm

Categories: Black Hat, Browsers, Exploit code, Hackers, Pen testing, Vulnerability research

Tags: Web, Malware, Exploit, Zero-day Bug, Spyware, Adware & Malware, Cyberthreats, Security, Viruses And Worms, Dancho Danchev

During the weekend, ImageShack, among the Web’s top ten most popular free image hosting services got compromised, with the millions of images hosted on it redirected to a single one explaining why it was hacked.

The anti-sec group responsible for the compromise describes itself as a “movement dedicated to the eradication of full-disclosure“, has also threatened web sites and communities publishing exploits in a full-disclosure fashion.

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June 4th, 2009

FTC shuts down notorious botnet ISP

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 1:58 pm

Categories: Black Hat, Botnets, Browsers, Data theft, Denial of Service (DoS), Hackers, Locally Running Web Servers, Malware, Microsoft, Passwords, Patch Watch, Rootkits, Viruses and Worms, Zero-day attacks

Tags: Internet Service Provider, Server, Bot, FTC, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Viruses And Worms, Internet, Security, Ryan Naraine

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shut down a U.S.-based Internet Service Provider for recruiting, hosting and actively participating in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and other harmful electronic content.

Pricewert LLC (also known as 3FN and APS Telecom) was shut down by a district court judge at the FTC’s. The ISP’s upstream providers and data centers have disconnected its servers from the Internet.

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November 11th, 2008

BBC hit by a DDoS attack

Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 11:22 am

Categories: Black Hat, Botnets, Denial of Service (DoS), Hackers, Malware, Pen testing

Tags: Security, BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, DDoS, Dancho Danchev

The British Broadcasting Corporation (bbc.co.uk) was hit by a DDoS attack on Thursday, according to a statement sent to the Inquirer :

“In a statement to the INQ, the BBC said the attack originated in a number of different countries but didn’t specify which. When the Beeb’s techies blocked international access to a limited subset of servers, it resulted in a marked improvement of the serving of bbc.co.uk. Service supplier Siemens was forced to block addresses and prevent the attack using other methods like changing the DNS settings.”

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November 10th, 2008

Cyber terrorists to face death penalty in Pakistan

Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 12:29 pm

Categories: Black Hat, Botnets, Governments, Hackers, Malware

Tags: Security, Cybercrime, Critical Infrastructure, Cyberterrorism, Pakistan, Dancho Danchev

According to a recently signed “Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance 2008” in Pakistan, any person who commits cyberterrorism causing the death of other people will face death penalty or life imprisonment :

“Whoever commits the offence of cyber terrorism and causes death of any person shall be punishable with death or imprisonment for life, and with fine and in any other case he shall be punishable with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, or with fine not less than ten million rupees, or with both.”

With cyber terrorism remaining an open topic term that could be greatly abused or wrongly interpreted, it’s interesting to see how a country with 3.5M Internet users reported in 2007 defines the term cyberterrorist, and is general cybecrime treated appropriately.

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September 25th, 2008

Memory exhaustion DoS vulnerability hits Google's Chrome

Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 4:33 pm

Categories: Black Hat, Browsers, Denial of Service (DoS), Exploit code, Google, Google Chrome, Hackers, Pen testing, Vulnerability research, Zero-day attacks

Tags: Aditya K Sood, EvilFingers, Denial of Service, Chrome, Dancho Danchev

Aditya K Sood from the EvilFingers community, which disclosed the first Chrome DoS vulnerability at the beginning of the month, has released a proof of concept demonstrating a memory exhaustion DoS vulnerability affecting Google’s Chrome versions Chrome/0.2.149.30 and Chrome/0.2.149.29 :

“The Google chrome browser is vulnerable to memory exhaustion based denial of service which can be triggered remotely.The vulnerability triggers when Carriage Return(\r\n\r\n) is passed as an argument to window.open() function. It makes the Google Chrome to generate number of windows at the same time thereby leading to memory exhaustion. The behavior can be easily checked by looking at the task manager as with no time the memory usage rises high. The problem lies in the handling of object and its value returned by the javascript function. Once it is triggered the pop ups are started generating. The Google Chrome browser generate object windows continuously there by affecting memory of the resultant system. Probably it can be crashed within no time. User interaction is required in this.”

What’s Google’s take on this flaw, and have they acknowledged it already? Zero Day asked the researchers.

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