Black Hat Presentations, Flash App Tools, Free AV and News

The next BlackHat.com webcast will be about Mobility and Security on May 21 1pm PDT (Friday, May 22, 2009 at 4 AM in Manila, according to The World Clock).

Black Hat Webcast 9 (34MB audio, around 79 mins running time; WebSync version is here) is a preview of the Black Hat Conference in Amsterdam that was held from April 16-17, 2009 (see link to presentations below).
The following people and their presentation topic were in this webcast:

Enno Ray – Attacking Backbone Technologies
Charlie Miller and Vincenzo Iozzo – Fun and Games with Mac OS X and iPhone Payloads
Stefano Zanero – Web App Firewall Based on Anomaly Detection
Roberto Gassira’ and Roberto Piccirillo – Hijacking Mobile Data Connections

Past Black Hat Conferences:
Video of Charlie Miller and Vincenzo Iozzo’s presentation on Mac and iPhone payloads (152 MB)
Black Hat Europe 2009 (Amsterdam) Media Archives
Black Hat USA 2008 Archives

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Flash App Vulnerability Tools

Exposing Flash Application Vulnerabilities with SWFScan
Flare
SWFIntruder

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Free Anti-Virus

F-Secure Online Scanner Beta Program

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InfoSec News

(Inquirer.net) Has your e-mail address won in a lottery?
(Computerworld PH) Report: Web continues to rise as security threat

(Inquirer.net) RP gov’t websites vulnerable to hacking
(Inquirer.net) Cyber spies hack into DFA computers
(Inquirer.net) RP needs cybersecurity program–CICT
(Inquirer.net) PNP experts tell how to catch a hacker

(Inquirer.net) Purge 2-M ‘flying’ voters, Comelec told
(Manila Times) Lawmaker to hack Comelec electronic counting machines
(Inquirer.net) Hack poll machines and win P100M
(Inquirer.net) P100M hack reward ‘dishonors’ poll automation
(Inquirer.net) Hacking poll results to take lots of time
(Inquirer.net) Comelec to tap DOST on poll machine testing
(Inquirer.net) Comelec mulls inclusion of more provinces in poll automation

(Inquirer.net) Comelec eyes YouTube stardom to lure voters

(PhilStar) Is quitting Twitter more popular than re-tweeting?
(IT Matters.com) Twitter — a rising marketing channel?

(PhilStar) Globe backs ICT Awards

(Inquirer.net) RP seeks removal from USTR watch list
(Inquirer.net) Twitter, Facebook abuzz over Pacquiao win

(Computerworld) Facebook’s privacy options
(Computerworld) How Facebook mucks up office life
(Wired) PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security

(SecurityFocus) Researcher argues for CERTs with teeth
(Inquirer.net) Cyberspies hack into US fighter project
(H Security) Linux cache poisoning attacks easier than on Windows?
(Computerworld) 20 kick-ass network research projects

(Computerworld) Leaked copies of Windows 7 RC contain Trojan
(Computerworld) Botnet probe turns up 70GB of personal, financial data
(Computerworld) Heartland earns back spot on PCI-approved list

(The Register) Security researchers fret over Adobe PDF flaw
(H Security) Demo exploits for new vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader
(SecurityFocus) Companies slowest to fix Office, Acrobat flaws
(SecurityFocus) JavaScript flaw reported in Adobe Reader

(The Register) US Congress wants hack teams for self-penetration
(Boston.com) US looks to hackers to protect cyber networks
(NY Times) ‘Hackers wanted’ ad fed security misconception

(The Register) Botnet hijacking reveals 70GB of stolen data
(The Register) Twitter breach gives behind-the-scenes Obama peek

(The Register) Firefox finds more pesky bugs
(H Security) Firefox 3.0.10 fixes critical vulnerability

(The Register) Hacker behind P2P botnet gets no jail time
(The Register) US military’s cyberwar rules ‘ill-formed,’ says panel
(NY Times) Panel Advises Clarifying U.S. Plans on Cyberwar
(The Register) Adobe users imperiled by critical Reader flaw

(H Security) Lost+found: Worms, Exploits, Online Scanners
(NY Times) H.P. Labs Pulls Out the Measuring Stick

Advertisement

Happy New Year to All :)

A lot of people in the Philippines are probably still hungover from the long vacation from Dec 25 to Jan 4, unless of course they were part of sales, or a BPO… anyway, on to the news:

OpenVAS 2.0 was released around two weeks ago, and a respected security expert (who wishes to remain anonymous) thinks it is, “fast approaching the maturity level needed to truly compete with Nessus in the vulnerability assessment area.”

The OpenVas 2.0 press release states that:
OpenVAS is a fork of the Nessus security scanner which has continued development under a proprietary license since late 2005. Since the release of OpenVAS 1.0.0 in October 2007, the OpenVAS developers continued the auditing of the code inherited from Nessus and have added a variety of useful features for OpenVAS users, for server administrators and for developers of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs).

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Some of the Philippines’ high ranking government officials may want to look into cellphone voice encryption (as mentioned in this SecurityPark.net article) before calling some other high ranking government official so that they wouldn’t need to give a televised public apology (wink).

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Speaking of mobile phone security, there was a DOS vulnerability found in Nokia Series 60 cellphones just before new year’s eve called the “Curse of Silence”, which either stops the cellphone from receiving SMS until a factory reset is done (Series 60 2.6 and 3.0 devices) or not all SMS’s are received (Series 60 2.8 and 3.1).

This is done via the following steps (check out the demo video link below):
For Series 60 phones v2.2, 2.3, 3.0 and 3.1 attack target phones
1. create an email that has an e-mail address with more than 32 characters followed by a space.
2. set TP Protocol Identifier of SMS Message to Internet Electronic Mail
3. send message to target (eleven times to Series 60 v 3.1, only one message is needed for all other versions)

There are currently no client side workarounds published as of the moment. If ever you work for Smart Communications, Globe Telecom or Sun Cellular maybe your network team can take heed of the suggestion in the document that “network operators should filter messages with TP-PID ‘Internet Electronic Mail’ and an email address of more than 32 characters or reset the TP-PID of these messages to 0”. I also do not have a Series 60 phone mentioned in the list so I cannot test if it can affect cell phones here in the Philippines. Kindly drop me a line in case you were able to test this.

Phones affected:
S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1 (S60 3.1):
Nokia E90 Communicator
Nokia E71
Nokia E66
Nokia E51
Nokia N95 8GB
Nokia N95
Nokia N82
Nokia N81 8GB
Nokia N81
Nokia N76
Nokia 6290
Nokia 6124 classic
Nokia 6121 classic
Nokia 6120 classic
Nokia 6110 Navigator
Nokia 5700 XpressMusic

S60 3rd Edition, initial release (S60 3.0):
Nokia E70
Nokia E65
Nokia E62
Nokia E61i
Nokia E61
Nokia E60
Nokia E50
Nokia N93i
Nokia N93
Nokia N92
Nokia N91 8GB
Nokia N91
Nokia N80
Nokia N77
Nokia N73
Nokia N71
Nokia 5500
Nokia 3250

S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 3 (S60 2.8):
Nokia N90
Nokia N72
Nokia N70

S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 2 (S60 2.6):
Nokia 6682
Nokia 6681
Nokia 6680
Nokia 6630

More details can be found in a must see video (21 MB) and a document (6.8 KB) on the website of Tobias Engel, who is a member of the Chaos Computer Club.

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Microblogging site Twitter had a major breach and has phishing problems reports HeiseSecurity, SCMagazineUS, and SecurityFocus. Apparently, US President elect Barack Obama’s and Britney Spears’ accounts were compromised.

In related news, (The Register) Bogus LinkedIn profiles punt malware to fools.

A security update for the popular email client Mozilla Thunderbird was recently released. (Heise Security report, SCMagazineUS report)

The recently found MD5 vulnerability links:
(SCMagazineUS) MD5 insecurity affects all internet users
(SCMagazineUS) Hackers find hole to create rogue digital certificates
(Heise Security) Verisign/RapidSSL close 25C3 MD5 vulnerability
(SecurityFocus) Survey: One in seven SSL certificates are weak

Info Sec News, Dec 8, 2008 Updated

Upcoming details for this month’s Patch Tuesday can be found in Heise Online’s Microsoft wants to close six critical holes and PC World’s Microsoft readies Eight New Security Patches.

A Secunia blog states that 98% of all PC’s aren’t fully patched as was also reported in The Register and SCMag UK. No doubt this contributes to the millions of PC’s out there that are used as zombies unbeknownst to their owners. This happens mostly because people have too much confidence in their Anti Virus in stopping all threats. I’ll write about this more in another post, as for now, you might want to check out Secunia’s freely available Personal Software Inspector to check for patches their PCs may need.

Trend Micro researchers though, say that vulnerabilities only play a minor role (5%) in attacks. And that most attacks (53%) come in the form of Social Engineering attacks wherein the user is duped into downloading malware. An example of this would be fake anti-virus products that take up the top three positions in BitDefender’s Top e-threats (Heise Security also gives the list here). Which reminds me of what Zot O’Conner said in his talk at the Renaissance Makati in late October… that you cannot design a security product to defend against a user that just clicks and accepts anything.

In related news, Security Park reports that Human error continues to be the top cause of IT security breaches primarily because individuals are given the option to bypass them.

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Other Security News
Center for Strategic and International Studies publishes report on Securing Cyberspace
Distributed SSH attacks bypass blacklists
New variant of DNSChanger in mass DNS hijack
The debate resumes over Mac Security
Identity Theft breaches on the increase in the US
(Security Focus) US Commission calls for Cybersecurity Czar
(Security Park) Free malware search tool helps financial institutions identify web attacks targeting their websites
SANS Webcast on December Threat Update
SANS Webcast on What Works in Security Information and Event Management
(Linux Security) New Wireshark Packages fix Vulnerabilities
(Linux Security) Never Installed a Firewall on Ubuntu? Try Firestarter
(Linux Security) Debian: New Linux 2.6.24 packages fix several vulnerabilities
(NY Times) Thieves Winning Online War, Maybe Even in Your Computer
(Translated by Google) 21 Million German Citizen’s Account Numbers in Circulation