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Overcoming challenges to build a cybersecurity career | Guest Dr. Chanel Suggs

Today's Cyber Work Podcast features Dr. Chanel Suggs, the Duchess of Cybersecurity®. Dr. Suggs is a teacher, business owner and thought leader and has appeared on TV and podcast platforms around the world to talk about cybersecurity and the hacker mentality. She also had an incredibly challenging and seemingly insurmountable upbringing. Her tumultuous story can be found in her book, “Against All Odds: Overcoming Racial, Sexual and Gender Harassment on the Digital Battlefield.” This episode contains a lot of heartbreak and some challenging stories, as well as incredible insights and some thoroughly important takeaways.

– Get your FREE cybersecurity training resources: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– View Cyber Work Podcast transcripts and additional episodes: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/podcast

0:00 - Free cybersecurity training resources
0:56 - Overview of today's episode
1:58 - Who is Chanel Suggs, the Duchess of Cybersecurity?
3:12 - Overcoming family obstacles
4:50 - What drew her to a career in cybersecurity
8:10 - First steps to learning IT and cybersecurity
10:45 - Earning cybersecurity certifications
12:20 - Making a cybersecurity training "dungeon"
14:40 - Workplace abuse and harassment
18:28 - Issues with hiring diverse candidates
22:23 - What is Wyvern Security?
27:25 - Changing the workplace culture
32:47 - Social media is key to finding diverse candidates
36:55 - Preventing burnout with employees
40:10 - Advice on earning advanced degrees
42:03 - Contract work vs. full-time employee
43:34 - Free resources and services
44:52 - What's Chanel Suggs book about?
47:48 - Outro

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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What's it like to work in emergency response? | Guest Christopher Tarantino

Learn all about emergency response — and the myriad techniques and skills that term implies — in today's episode featuring Christopher Tarantino, CEO of Epicenter Innovation. Is there a physical security component? Yes! Is there a cybersecurity component? Big time! Is there an educational element? Absolutely! Find out how disaster planning, preparation, remediation and post-event rebuilding and improvement are all opportunities to strengthen your security posture.

– Get your FREE cybersecurity training resources: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– View Cyber Work Podcast transcripts and additional episodes: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/podcast

0:00 - Free cybersecurity training resources
0:56 - Overview of today's episode
1:47 - Who is Christopher Tarantino?
3:25 - What does an emergency response team do?
4:38 - Resilience in emergency response
7:45 - Importance of boring innovation
9:30 - Higher ed emergency response example
13:13 - Healthcare, higher ed and government resilience
16:00 - Years-long education around disasters
21:03 - Biggest cybersecurity blind spots
25:00 - Skills required for emergency response careers
30:00 - Importance of communication across community
35:50 - Transitioning careers from cybersecurity to emergency response
44:10 - Learn more about Epicenter Innovation
44:35 - Outro

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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Shellcode: Base-N Decoding for Text-Only Compression and Obfuscation

Introduction

Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR), the binary equivalent to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), is ideal for storing a configuration to a shellcode/stager/loader. I’ve always wanted support for text-only compression to store API strings and URLs. CBOR currently doesn’t support compression, and while Zlib is recommended quite a lot for JSON, it wasn’t designed for short strings/input. A format like CBOR would benefit by supporting text-only compression, encryption and masking natively. In the meantime, however, developers are responsible for implementing those features independently.

Before we cover Base-N decoding, we should talk about some well-known compression algorithms and why they’re unsuitable for short inputs. Huffman encoding, for example, is a lossless compression method that assigns shorter bit strings to a range of bytes. The most frequently used bytes are assigned the least amount of bits, helping reduce the size of the original input. Recovering the original data requires the same bit-to-byte mappings used during encoding. These mappings, also known as “Huffman tables”, are stored with compressed data and can sometimes require more space than the input itself.

LZ encoding also isn’t suitable since it works by storing full strings or a “match reference” that consists of an offset and length to the same range of bytes found earlier. Zlib and LZMA are excellent compression algorithms, but are obviously designed specifically for large data blocks rather than short strings.

In this blog post, we’ll examine how effective it is to use Base-N decoding for text-only compression. It’s similar to Huffman encoding, but without the need for Huffman tables. The results will be compared with some of the following projects designed for compressing short strings:

UniShox2 is considered the best of all and uses a combination of three encoding methods:

  • Entropy coding (Huffman, Arithmetic)
  • Dictionary coder (LZ77,LZ78,LZW)
  • Delta encoding

Applications

In case you’re wondering why on earth compressing short strings would be useful, I’ve copied the following list of applications from the UniShox2 repository for you to consider.

  • Compression for low memory devices such as Arduino and ESP8266
  • Sending messages over Websockets
  • Compression of Chat application text exchange including Emojis
  • Storing compressed text in databases
  • Faster retrieval speed when used as join keys
  • Bandwidth cost saving for messages transferred to and from Cloud infrastructure
  • Storage cost reduction for Cloud databases
  • Some people even use it for obfuscation

Base-64 Encoding

I’ll assume most of you are familiar with Base-64 encoding, but not necessarily how it works internally. It’s a binary-to-text encoding scheme that converts 24-bits of binary to a 32-bit string. It uses 8-Bit ASCII characters to store 6-Bits of binary, which increases the data by approx. 33%. For example, encoding 32 bytes of binary would require 44 bytes of space for the encoded string. To calculate the necessary space, we divide the length of the binary by three and multiply by four. Taking into account any padding, we then align up by four. In C, we can use something like the following:

uint32_t OutLength = (((4 * (InLength / 3)) + 3) & -4).

The following is Base-64 encoding without using a lookup table.

#define ROTL32(v,n)(((v)<<(n))|((v)>>(32-(n))))

void
base64_encode(void *inbuf, int inlen, char *outbuf) {
    uint8_t  *in = (uint8_t*)inbuf;
    char     *out = outbuf;
    int      i;
    uint32_t len=0;

    while (inlen) {
        uint32_t x = 0;
        uint8_t c;
        // read 3 or less bytes. if required, pad with zeros
        for (len=i=0; i<3; i++) {
            x |= (i < inlen) ? in[len++] : 0;
            x <<= 8;
        }
        in += len;
        inlen -= len;
        len = (len * 8 + 4) / 6;
        // encode len bytes.
        for (i=0; i<len; i++) {
            x = ROTL32(x, 6);
            c = x % 64;
            if (c < 26) c += 'A';
            else if (c < 52) c = (c - 26) + 'a';
            else if (c < 62) c = (c - 52) + '0';
            else if (c == 63) c = '+';
            else c = '/';
            *out++ = c;
        }
    }
    // if required, add padding.
    while (len++ < 4) *out++ = '=';
    *out = 0;
}

Base-N Decoding

Since Base-64 encoding will increase the original data by 33%, what prevents us from using Base-64 decoding to reduce the size of arbitrary strings by 25%? The compression ratio upon conversion to binary entirely depends on what characters the string contains, so you’ll get different results depending on the input. However, decoding should always result in some compression of the original string. The following table lists the approximate decrease in space used by a string when using various Base-N decoding.

Base Input Alphabet % Decrease
2 64 x “0” 01 88
10 18446744073709551615 0123456789 50
16 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF 0123456789ABCDEF 44
26 THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
40
36
THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG2 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789 34
52 Thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 29
62 Thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog2 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 25

As you can see, a higher base number results in a lower compression ratio. And, of course, there are more printable characters required for punctuation, which will only decrease it further. My intention here isn’t to compete with or replace existing string compression tools. I’m merely pointing out that anyone can use Base-N decoding to compress strings with little effort. The following code in C can be used as a reference.

Base-N Compression with 64-Bit Integers

//
// Compress string using Base-N decoding.
//
uint64_t
base_n_compress(char str[], char base_tbl[]) {
    uint64_t val = 0, pwr = 1;

    size_t inlen = strlen(str);
    size_t base_n = strlen(base_tbl);

    for (size_t i=0; i<inlen; i++) {
        const char *ptr = strchr(base_tbl, str[i]);
        if (!ptr) return 0;
        int idx = (ptr - base_tbl) + 1;
        val += pwr * idx; 
        pwr *= base_n;
    }
    return val;
}

//
// Decompress string using Base-N encoding.
//
void 
base_n_decompress(uint64_t val, char base_tbl[], char str[]) { 
    size_t   base_n = strlen(base_tbl);
    uint64_t pwr = base_n;
    int      outlen, i;
    
    val--;
    
    for (outlen = 1; val >= pwr; outlen++) {
        val -= pwr; 
        pwr *= base_n;
    }
    
    str[outlen] = 0;

    for (i = 0; i < outlen; i++) { 
        str[i] = base_tbl[val % base_n]; 
        val /= base_n; 
    }
}

The only problem with this code is when the string converted to binary exceeds 2^{64} bits. Then we need to use bignum arithmetic. Of course, you won’t have that problem in some languages that already support multi-precision arithmetic. Getting a Python implementation of the same code without the 2^{64} bits limit is relatively simple.

Base-N Compression with Arbitrary Arithmetic

There are no limits to string compression once we start using bignum arithmetic. However, it makes more sense to use an algorithm designed specifically for large data blocks at some point. To demonstrate how it works with OpenSSL’s BIGNUM implementation. The following two functions work well for strings that might exceed 2^{64} bits. This code resolves the limitations of the previous code.

//
// Compress a string using Base-N decoding.
//
void
base_n_compress(BIGNUM *val, const char *str, const char *base_tbl) {
    size_t inlen = strlen(str);
    BIGNUM *pwr = BN_new();
    BIGNUM *tmp = BN_new();
    BIGNUM *base = BN_new();
    BN_CTX *ctx = BN_CTX_new();
    
    BN_one(pwr);  // pwr = 1
    BN_set_word(base, strlen(base_tbl));
    
    // for each character
    for (size_t i=0; i<inlen; i++) {
        // get index
        uint8_t idx = 0;
        const char *ptr = strchr(base_tbl, str[i]);
        if (!ptr) break;
        idx = (uint8_t)(ptr - base_tbl) + 1;
        
        BN_set_word(tmp, idx);       //
        BN_mul(tmp, tmp, pwr, ctx);  // tmp = pwr * idx
        BN_add(val, val, tmp);       // val += tmp
        BN_mul(pwr, pwr, base, ctx); // pwr *= base
    }
    
    BN_free(pwr);
    BN_free(tmp);
    BN_free(base);
    BN_CTX_free(ctx);
}

//
// Decompress a string using Base-N encoding.
//
std::string
base_n_decompress(BIGNUM *val, char *alpha) {
    const char *base_tbl = alpha;
    size_t outlen;
    std::string str;
    
    BIGNUM *pwr = BN_new();
    BIGNUM *base = BN_new();
    BIGNUM *rem = BN_new();
    BN_CTX *ctx = BN_CTX_new();
    
    BN_sub_word(val, 1);                 // val--;
    BN_set_word(pwr, strlen(base_tbl));  // pwr = strlen(base_tbl)
    BN_set_word(base, strlen(base_tbl)); // base = strlen(base_tbl)
    
    // obtain the length of string
    for (outlen=1; BN_cmp(val, pwr) >= 0; outlen++) {
        BN_sub(val, val, pwr);          // val -= pwr; 
        BN_mul(pwr, pwr, base, ctx);    // pwr *= base
    }
    
    // write string to buffer
    for (size_t i=0; i<outlen; i++) {
        BN_div(val, rem, val, base, ctx); // val % tbl_len
        unsigned long r = BN_get_word(rem);
        str.push_back(base_tbl[r]);
    }
    
    BN_free(pwr);
    BN_free(rem);
    BN_free(base);
    BN_CTX_free(ctx);
    
    return str;
}

Frequency Analysis

Base-N decoding doesn’t choose the length of bit strings optimally. It doesn’t assign the shortest amount of bits to bytes that occur more frequently in the string like Huffman encoding. If we only use a base number equal to the length of unique characters in the string, we can compress it much better. The following code can generate an optimal alphabet based on the string to compress.

//
// Generate an alphabet for optimal compression.
//
void
generate_alphabet(char *alpha, std::string str) {
    std::unordered_map<char, int> freq;
    
    // count frequency of each character in string we want to compress.
    for (const char &c: str) {
        freq[c]++;
    }
    
    // convert map to a vector and sort in ascending order.
    std::vector<std::pair<char, int>> elems(freq.begin(), freq.end());
    std::sort(elems.begin(), elems.end(), [](auto &left, auto &right) {
        return left.second > right.second;
    });

    // save each character to output buffer.
    for (auto &pair : elems) {
        *alpha++ = pair.first;
    }
}

We perform the same tests as before and see a distinct improvement. However, the higher compression ratio is more likely the result of a smaller lookup table/base number rather than sorting the most frequent characters in ascending order.

Base Input Alphabet % Decrease
1 64 x “0” 0 99
9 18446744073709551615 457106938 60
1 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF F 94
26 THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG OERUHTNGWBKCIQFXJMPSVLAZYD
40
27
THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG2 OERUTHNGW2BKCIQFXJMPSVLAZYD 39
26 Thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog oeruhfwbkciqTngxjmpsvtlazyd 40
28 Thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog2 oeruhfwbkciqTngxjmpsvtl2azyd 39

Compared to Other Libraries

The following examples are from the UniShox2 repository. Green columns highlight the best ratio, but these are only preliminary tests. The Base-N decoding uses frequency analysis before compression. I would not want to claim that Base-N compression outperforms UniShox2!

String Size UniShox2 Base-N
Decoding
Shoco
Beauty is not in the face. Beauty is a light in the heart. 58 30 31
46
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 44 31 27 38
WRITING ENTIRELY IN BLOCK CAPITALS IS SHOUTING, and it’s rude 61 47 38 58
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. 35 12 14 25
039f7094-83e4-4d7f-aa38-8844c67bd82d 36 18 18 36
2021-07-15T16:37:35.897Z 24 9 12
24
(760) 756-7568 14 7 6 14
This is a loooooooooooooooooooooong string 42 15 19 25

Summary

We see that Base-N decoding, which works similar to Huffman encoding, can be effective for compressing and obfuscating short strings. The results are even better when frequency analysis occurs before compression. Shuffling the bits used in the base table makes it possible to have a type of “polymorphic text-to-binary” algorithm. There are limitations, of course, like the need for multi-precision arithmetic when the conversion of string to binary exceeds 2^{32} or 2^{64} bit integers. However, perhaps someone will devise a more optimal algorithm that avoids the need for such.

Save the Environment (Variable)

By manipulating environment variables on process level, it is possible to let trusted applications load arbitrary DLLs and execute malicious code. This post lists nearly 100 executables vulnerable to this type of DLL Hijacking on Windows 11 (21H2); it is demonstrated how this can achieved with just three lines of VBScript.

Securing operational technology: ICS, IoT, AI and more | Guest Francis Cianfrocca

If you want to learn more about working with operational technology (OT) and internet-connected devices, then don't miss today's episode with Francis Cianfrocca, CEO of Insight Cyber Group. He discusses security problems around OT and IoT systems and shares some surprising stories of intruders in the electrical grid. He also talks about why it’s so hard to secure a set of machines that often pre-date computer technology and the small changes in your community that can make huge differences in the entire security industry.

– Get your FREE cybersecurity training resources: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– View Cyber Work Podcast transcripts and additional episodes: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/podcast

0:00 - Free cybersecurity training resources
0:56 - Overview of today's episode
1:48 - Who is Francis Cianfrocca and Insight Cyber? 
2:15 - Getting into tech and cybersecurity
4:13 - Francis' job roles and companies
5:22 - Early days of ICS systems security
10:15 - CEO duties at a cybersecurity startup 
12:19 - Why is infrastructure security so bad?
16:05 - Different approaches needed for ICS and IOT systems
20:23 - Catching intruders early on with industrial systems
22:45 - Using artificial intelligence in ICS security
24:50 - Bad actors are really good at reconnaissance
27:20 - ICS and IOT environments cannot have downtime
30:00 - Asset and behavioral inventory is difficult
31:42 - Real-world examples of rogue ICS software
36:30 - ICS vs. IOT security
42:57 - How to promote industrial security careers
46:07 - Impact of AI on cybersecurity careers
48:40 - Preparing for an ICS cybersecurity career
51:07 - What's Insight Cyber working on?
52:45 - Outro

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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Mark-of-the-Web from a red team’s perspective

Zone Identifier Alternate Data Stream information, commonly referred to as Mark-of-the-Web (abbreviated MOTW), can be a significant hurdle for red teamers and penetration testers, especially when attempting to gain an initial foothold.

Your payload in the format of an executable, MS Office file or CHM file is likely to receive extra scrutiny from the Windows OS and security products when that file is marked as downloaded from the internet. In this blog post we will explain how this mechanism works and we will explore offensive techniques that can help evade or get rid of MOTW.

Note that the techniques described in this blog post are not new. We have witnessed all of them being abused in the wild. Hence, this blog post serves to raise awareness on these techniques for both red teamers (for more realistic adversary simulations) and blue teamers (for better countermeasures and understanding of attacker techniques).

Introduction to MOTW

Mark-of-the-Web (MOTW) is a security feature originally introduced by Internet Explorer to force saved webpages to run in the security zone of the location the page was saved from. Back in the days, this was achieved by adding an HTML comment in the form of <!-–saved from url=> at the beginning of a saved web page.

This mechanism was later extended to other file types than HTML. This was achieved by creating an alternate data stream (ADS) for downloaded files. ADS is an NTFS file system feature that was added as early as Windows 3.1. This feature allows for more than one data stream to be associated with a filename, using the format “filename:streamname”.

When downloading a file, Internet Explorer creates an ADS named Zone.Identifier and adds a ZoneId to this stream in order to indicate from which zone the file originates. Although it is not an official name, many people still refer to this functionality as Mark-of-the-Web.

Listing and viewing alternate data streams is trivial using PowerShell: both the Get-Item and Get-Content cmdlets take a “Stream” parameter, as can be seen in the following screenshot.

The following ZoneId values may be used in a Zone.Identifier ADS:

  • 0. Local computer
  • 1. Local intranet
  • 2. Trusted sites
  • 3. Internet
  • 4. Restricted sites

Nowadays all major software on the Windows platform that deals with attachments or downloaded files generates a Zone.Identifier ADS, including Internet Explorer, Edge, Outlook, Chrome, FireFox, etc. How do these programs write this ADS? Either by creating the ADS directly or via the system’s implementation of the IAttachmentExecute interface. The behavior of the latter can be controlled via the SaveZoneInformation property in the Attachment Manager.

Note that Windows 10’s implementation of the IAttachmentExecute interface will also add URL information to the Zone.Identifier ADS:

For red teamers, it’s probably good to realize that MOTW will also get set when using the HTML smuggling technique (note the “blob” keyword in the screenshot above, which is an indicator of potential HTML smuggling).

The role of MOTW in security measures

The information from the Zone Identifier Alternate Data Stream is used by Windows, MS Office and various other programs to trigger security features on downloaded files. The following are the most notable ones from a red teamer’s perspective (but there are more – this list is far from complete).

Windows Defender SmartScreen

This feature works by checking downloaded executable files (based on Zone Identifier ADS) against a whitelist of files that are well known and downloaded by many Windows users. If the file is not on that list, Windows Defender SmartScreen shows the following warning:

MS Office protected view

The Protected View sandbox attempts to protect MS Office users against potential risks in files originating from the internet or other dangerous zones. By default, most MS Office file types flagged with MOTW will be opened in this sandbox. Many users know this feature as MS Office’s famous yellow bar with the “Enable Editing” button.

MWR (now F-Secure labs) has published a great technical write-up on this sandbox some years ago. Note that some MS Office file types cannot be loaded in the Protected View sandbox. SYLK is a famous example of this.

MS Office block macros downloaded from the internet

This feature was introduced in Office 2016 and later back-ported to Office 2013. If this setting is enabled, macros in MS Office files flagged with MOTW are disabled and a message is displayed to the user.

This warning message cannot be ignored by the end user, which makes it a very effective measure against mass-scale macro-based malware.

Visual Studio project files

Opening untrusted Visual Studio project files can be dangerous (see my presentation at Nullcon Goa 2020 for the reasons why). By default, Visual Studio will display a warning message for any project file which has the MOTW attribute set.

Application Guard for Office

This newly announced feature runs potentially malicious macros embedded in MS Office files in a small virtual machine (based on Application Guard technology) in order to protect the OS.

From the limited documentation available, the decision to run a document in a VM is based on MOTW. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to this technology yet, so I cannot confirm this statement through testing.

Strategies to get rid of MOTW

From a red teamer’s perspective, there are two strategies we can employ to evade MOTW. All of the techniques that we have witnessed in the wild can be categorized under the following two strategies:

  1. Abusing software that does not set MOTW – delivering your payload in a file format which is handled by software that does not set or propagate Zone Identifier information.
  2. Abusing container formats – delivering your payload in a container format which does not support NTFS’ alternate data stream feature.

Of course there is a third strategy: social engineering the user into removing the MOTW attribute (right click file -> properties -> unblock). But since this is a technical blog post, this strategy is out of scope for this write-up. And for the blue team: you can technically prevent your end-users from doing this by setting HideZoneInfoOnProperties via group policy.

Let’s explore the two technical strategies for getting rid of MOTW in more depth…

Strategy 1: abusing software that does not set MOTW

The first strategy is to deliver your payload via software that does not set (or propagate) the MOTW attribute.

A good example of this is the Git client. The following picture shows that a file cloned from GitHub with the Git client does not have a Zone.Identifier ADS.

For red teamers targeting developers, delivering your payloads via Git might be a good option to evade MOTW. This is especially relevant for payloads targeting Visual Studio, but that is material for a future blog post. 🙂

Another famous example of software that does not set a Zone.Identifier ADS is 7Zip. This archiving client only sets a MOTW flag when a file is double-clicked from the GUI, which means the file is extracted to the temp directory and opened from there. However, upon manual extraction of files to other locations (i.e. clicking the extract button instead of double-clicking), 7Zip does not propagate a Zone.Identifier ADS for extracted files. Note that this works regardless of the archiving file format: any extension handled by 7zip (7z, zip, rar, etc) will demonstrate this behavior.

This appears to be a conscious design decision by the 7Zip lead developer, as can be seen in the following excerpt from a discussion on SourceForge. More information can be found here.

As a side note, I wouldn’t recommend using 7Zip for extracting potentially dangerous files anyway, since it is a product known for making “odd” security decisions (such as the lack of ASLR…).

Strategy 2: abusing container formats

Remember that alternate data streams are an NTFS feature? This means that Zone Identifier ADS cannot be created on other file systems, such as FAT32. From a red teamer’s perspective we can exploit this behavior by embedding our payload in a file system container such as ISO or VHD(X).

When opening such a container with Windows Explorer, MOTW on the outside container will not be propagated to files inside the container. This is demonstrated in the screenshot below: the downloaded ISO is flagged with MOTW, but the payload inside the ISO is not.

Note that payload delivery via the ISO format is an evasion technique commonly observed in the wild. For example, TA505 is a prominent actor known to abuse this technique.

Message to the Blue Team

So, what does all of this mean when you are trying to defend your network?

First of all, the fact that a security measure can be circumvented does not render such a measure useless. There will be plenty of attackers that do not use the techniques described in this blog post. In particular, I am a big fan of the measure to block macros in files downloaded from the internet which is available in MS Office 2013 and subsequent versions.

Second, the techniques described in this blog post acknowledge a very important security paradigm: defense in depth. Do not engineer an environment in which your security depends on a single preventive measure (in this example MOTW).

Start thinking about which other measures you can take in case attackers are trying to evade MOTW. For example, if feasible for your organization, block container formats in your mail filter and proxy. Also, limit the impact of any malicious files that may have bypassed measures relying on MOTW, for example using Attack Surface Reduction rules.

I think you get the idea: don’t do coconut security – a single hard layer, but all soft when it’s cracked.

The post Mark-of-the-Web from a red team’s perspective appeared first on Outflank.

Red Team Tactics: Advanced process monitoring techniques in offensive operations

In this blog post we are going to explore the power of well-known process monitoring utilities and demonstrate how the technology behind these tools can be used by Red Teams within offensive operations.

Having a good technical understanding of the systems we land on during an engagement is a key condition for deciding what is going to be the next step within an operation. Collecting and analysing data of running processes from compromised systems gives us a wealth of information and helps us to better understand how the IT landscape from a target organisation is setup. Moreover, periodically polling process data allows us to react on changes within the environment or provide triggers when an investigation is taking place.

To be able to collect detailed process data from compromised end-points we wrote a collection of process tools which brings the power of these advanced process utilities to C2 frameworks (such as Cobalt Strike).

The tools (including source) can be found here:

https://github.com/outflanknl/Ps-Tools

Windows internals system utilities

We will first explore which utilities are available for harvesting process information from a Windows computer. We can then learn how these utilities collect such information, so that we can subsequently leverage these techniques in our red teaming tools.

The Windows Operating System is equipped with many out-of-the-box utilities to administer the system. Although most of these tools would fit the purpose of basic system administration, some lack the functionality we need for more advanced troubleshooting and monitoring. The Windows task manager for example, provides us basic information about all the processes running within the system, but what if we need more detailed information like the object handles, network connections or loaded modules within a particular process?

To collect detailed information, there is more advanced tooling available. For example the system utilities within the Sysinternals suite. As a Red Team operator with a long background in network and system administration I have always been a big fan of the Sysinternals tools.

When troubleshooting a slow performing server system or a possibly infected client computer, most times I started initial troubleshooting with tools like Process Explorer or Procmon.

From a digital forensics perspective these tools are also very useful for basic dynamic analysis of malware samples and searching for artefacts on infected systems. So why are these tools so popular among system administrators as well as security professionals? Let’s explore this by showing some interesting process information we can gather using the Process Explorer tool.

Using Process Explorer

First thing we notice when we start Process Explorer is the list/tree of all the processes currently active on the system. This provides us information about process names, process IDs, the user context and integrity level of the process and version information. More information can be made visible in this view by customizing the columns.

If we enable the lower pane, we can show all modules loaded within a specific process or switch to the handle view to show all the named handle objects being used by a process:

Viewing modules can be useful to identify malicious libraries being loaded within a process or – from a Red team perspective – if there’s a security product active (e.g. EDR) that injected a user mode API hooking module.

Switching to the handle view allows you to view the type and name of all named objects being used within the process. This might be useful to view which file objects and registry keys are opened or named pipes being used for inter-process communication.

If we double click a process name, a window with more detailed information will popup. Let’s explore some tabs to view additional properties from a process:

The image tab shows us information about the binary path, working directory and command line parameters. Furthermore, it shows information about the user context, parent process, image type (x86 vs x64) and more.

The thread tab provides information about running threads within the process. Selecting a thread and then clicking the stack button will display the call stack for this specific thread. To view the threads/calls running in kernel-mode, Process Explorer uses a kernel driver which is installed when running in elevated mode.

From a DFIR perspective, thread information is useful to detect memory injection techniques a.k.a. fileless malware. Threads not backed by a file on disk for example might indicate that something fishy is going on. To have more insights into threads and memory I strongly advise to also look at the Process Hacker tool.

Another interesting tab in Process Explorer is the TCP/IP tab. This will show all the network connection related to the process. From an offensive perspective this can be useful to detect when connections are made from a system under our control. An incoming PowerShell remoting session or RDP session might indicate that an investigation is started.

Leveraging these techniques offensively

Now we have looked at some interesting process information we can gather using Process Explorer, you might wonder how we can get access to the same information available from user-mode within our favourite C2 frameworks. Of course, we could use PowerShell as this provides us a very powerful scripting language and enables access to the Windows APIs. But with PowerShell under heavy security monitoring these days, we try to avoid this method. 

Within Cobalt Strike we can use the ps command within the beacon context. This command displays basic process information from all processes running on the system. Combined with @r3dQu1nn ProcessColor aggressor script this is probably the best method to easily collect process information.

The output from the ps command is useful for a quick triage of running processes, but lacks the detailed information which can help us to better understand the system. To collect more detailed information, we wrote our own process info utilities to collect and enrich the information we can gather from the systems we compromise.

Outflank Ps-Tools

Trying to replicate the functionality and information provided by a tool like Process Explorer is not an easy task. First, we need to figure out how these tools work under the hood (and within user-mode), next we need to figure out the best way to display this information from a console instead of a GUI.

After analyzing publicly available code it became clear that many low-level system information tools are heavily based on the native NtQuerySystemInformation API. Although the API and related structures are not fully documented, this API allows you to collect a wealth of information about a Windows system. So, with NtQuerySystemInformation as a starting point to collect overall information about all processes running in the system, we then use the PEB of individual processes to collect more detailed info about each process. Using the NtQueryInformationProcess API we can read the PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION structure from a process using its process handle and locate the PebBaseAddress. From there we can use the NtReadVirtualMemory API to read the RTL_USER_PROCESS_PARAMETERS structure which allows us to read the ImagePathName and CommandLine parameters of a process.

With these API’s as the basic fundament of our code, we wrote the following process information tools:

  • Psx: Shows a detailed list of all processes running on the system.
  • Psk: Shows detailed kernel information including loaded driver modules.
  • Psc: Shows a detailed list of all processes with Established TCP connections.
  • Psm: Show detailed module information from a specific process id (loaded modules, network connections e.g.).
  • Psh: Show detailed handle information from a specific process id (object handles, network connections e.g.).
  • Psw: Show Window titles from processes with active Windows.

These tools are all written as reflective DLLs in C language and can be reflectively loaded within a spawned process using a C2 framework like Cobalt Strike (or any other framework which allows Reflective DLL injection). For Cobalt Strike we included an aggressor script which can be used to load the tools using the Cobalt Strike script manager.

Let’s explore each individual tool running within Cobalt Strike to demonstrate its functionality and which information can be gathered using the tool:

Psx

This tool displays a detailed list of all the processes running on the system. The output can be compared to the output from the main screen of Process Explorer. It shows us the name of the process, process ID, parent PID, create time and information related to the process binaries (architecture, company name, versions e.g.). As you can see it also displays interesting info from the active kernel running on the system, for example the kernel base address, which is information useful when doing kernel exploitation (calculating ROP gadget offsets e.g.). This information can all be gathered from a normal user (non-elevated) context.

If we have enough permissions to open a handle to the process, we can read more information like the user context and integrity level from its token. Enumerating the PEB and its related structures allows us to get information about the image path and command line parameters:

As you may have noticed, we’re reading and displaying version information from the process binary images, for example company name and description. Using the company name it is very easy to enumerate all active security products within the system. Using this tool, we’re comparing the company names of all active processes against a list of well-known security product vendors and display a summary of the results:

Psk

This tool displays detailed information about the running kernel including all the loaded driver modules. Just like the Psx tool, it also provides a summary of all the loaded kernel modules from well-known security products.

Psc

This tool uses the same techniques to enumerate active processes like Psx, except that it only displays processes with active network connections (IPv4, IPv6 TCP, RDP, ICA):

Psm

This tool can be used to list details about a specific process. It will display a list of all the modules (dll’s) in use by the process and network communication:

Psh

Same as Psm, but instead of loaded modules, shows a list of handles in use by the process:

Psw

Last but not least the Psw tool. This tool will show a list of processes which have active window handles opened on the desktop of the user, including the window titles. This is useful to determine which GUI applications are opened by a user without having to create desktop screenshots:

Use cases

So how is this useful in offensive operations, you might wonder? After initial access to a compromised asset, we usually use this information for the following purposes:

  • Detecting security tooling on a compromised asset. Not only by process information names, but also by loaded modules.
  • Identifying user-land hooking engines through loaded modules.
  • Finding opportunities for lateral movement (via network sessions) and privilege escalation.

After initial compromise, you can periodically poll detailed process information and start building triggers. For example, we feed this information automatically into our tool RedELK. We can then start building alerts on suspicious changes in process information such as:

  • A security investigation tool has been started or a new end-point security product has been installed.
  • Incoming network connections from the security department via RDP or PowerShell remoting.
  • Another process has opened a handle on one of our malware artefacts (e.g. a file used for persistence).

Conclusion

In this blogpost we demonstrated how tools like Sysinternals Process Explorer can be used to get more detailed information about processes running on a system and how this information can help administrators and security professionals to troubleshoot and investigate a system for possible security or performance related issues.

The same information is also very relevant and useful for Red Teams having access to compromised systems during an assessment. It helps to better understand the systems and IT infrastructure from your target and periodically polling of this information allows a Red Team to react on possible changes within the IT environment (an investigation trigger, for example).

We replicated some of the functionality provided by tools like Process Explorer so we can benefit from the same information in offensive operations. For this we created several process monitoring tools, which can be used within a C2 framework like Cobalt Strike. We demonstrated how to use the tools and which information can be gathered by using the tools.

The tools are available from our GitHub page and are ready to be used within Cobalt Strike.

The post Red Team Tactics: Advanced process monitoring techniques in offensive operations appeared first on Outflank.

RedELK Part 2 – getting you up and running

This is part 2 of a multipart blog series on RedELK: Outflank’s open sourced tooling that acts as a red team’s SIEM and also helps with overall improved oversight during red team operations.

In part 1 of this blog series I have discussed the core concepts of RedELK and why you should want something like this. In this blog post I will walk you through integrating RedELK into your red teaming infrastructure. In future parts I will explain the core functionality of RedELK, and on the alarming of detection by blue teams.

In this blog I use the 1.0.1 release of RedELK . You can get it here.

Core concepts of RedELK

RedELK should be regarded as an addition to your red teaming infrastructure. Your operation will continue without RedELK. However, you will soon experience that an ops without RedELK feels like working partly blind.

There are a few core concepts that help you better understand how RedELK works and that help you with an easy deployment:

  • A separate RedELK instance is intended per engagement. It is not recommended to mix operational data from multiple engagements into the same RedELK server.
  • Each RedELK installation consists of the following three components:
    1. RedELK server;
    2. redir package installed on each of your redirectors;
    3. teamserver package installed on each of your C2 servers.
  • RedELK allows you to define different attack scenario names within a single engagement. This is useful for multi-scenario engagements such as TIBER, e.g. scen1, scen2 and scenX. You could also use this to differentiate between different campaigns or otherwise differentiate between multiple goals for the same client, e.g. phisrun1, longhaul, shorthaul4, etc.
  • Hopefully you already have the good practice of deploying new infrastructures per red team engagement. You should treat the RedELK server in the same way: install freshly at new engagements. Upgrading or re-installation of RedELK is not supported.
  • A RedELK server is of high confidentiality as it stores all operational data as well as all traffic data. You may want to position this in a secured network segment.
  • Inbound traffic to a RedELK server is limited to HTTP for the Kibana web interface and TLS-encrypted filebeat->logstash traffic from your redirectors and C2 team servers. A RedELK server initiates outbound rsync traffic to your c2 team servers and HTTP(S) to online security vendor such as Virus Total, abuse.ch, malwaredomains.com, Greynoise, etc.
  • The performance impact on your redirectors and C2 team servers is very limited: it is only filebeat that is installed on both, and a little cron script to copy logs to a central directory on the C2 team servers.
    A RedELK server requires beefy hardware. It runs the full Elastic stack, and over time will contain a reasonable amount of data. A dual core CPU and 8GB RAM is recommended.
  • Redirectors serve as anonymization layer in red team operations. However, in the case of RedELK their purpose is extended to also serve as a logging layer. This means it is recommended to point your Domain Fronting/CDN endpoints to a redirector that you fully control and where you have the RedELK redir package installed. If you point directly to your C2 team server, you miss the traffic data.

The picture below shows a better overview of how the different components interact and how the data flows to and from the RedELK server.

Lab network setup

For this demo, I have setup a lab with the following characteristics:

  1. Target network with multiple machines.
  2. Two attack scenarios, one for shorthaul and the other for longhaul.
  3. Two Cobalt Strike Team servers, each for different purpose
  4. Two redirectors, one running Apache, the other running HAProxy.
  5. The Apache redirector is reachable via a Domain Fronting setup using Azure CDN. It sends its C2 traffic to a dedicated C2 server. Decoy traffic is sent to amazon.com
  6. The HAProxy redirector sends C2 traffic to a different C2 server. Decoy traffic is sent to a decoy website we setup ourselves.

A general overview of the test lab setup can be seen in the picture below. Note that the RedELK server is not included in this overview:

Naming
RedELK has a few requirements to the naming of objects. These are explained indetail on the wiki. In this demo lab I use the following names:

Attackscenario: shorthaul

  • CDN entry DNS name: ajax.microsoft.com
  • CDN endpoint name: redelkdemo.azureedge.net
  • CDN origin hostname: redira1.totallynotavirus.nl
  • Apache redir DNS name: redira1.totallynotavirus.nl
  • Apache redir FileBeatID: redira1
  • Apache redir frontend name: http-AzureDF
  • Apache redir C2 backend name: c2-c2server1
  • Apache redir decoy backend name: decoy-amazon
  • C2 server DNS name: c2server1.totallynotavirus.nl
  • C2 server FileBeatID: c2server1

Attackscenario: longhaul

  • HAProxy redir DNS name: redirb1.totallynotavirus.nl
  • HAProxy redir FileBeatID: redirb1
  • HAProxy redir frontend name: http-straight
  • HAProxy redir C2 backend name: c2-server2
  • HAProxy redir decoy backend name: decoy-staticerror
  • C2 server DNS name: c2server2.totallynotavirus.nl
  • C2 server FileBeatID: c2server2

RedELK server info

  • RedELK server DNS name: redelk.totallynotavirus.nl

The CDN configuration is shown below. Don’t forget to set the caching behavior to ‘Bypass Cache’ within the Caching Rules rules of the endpoint. There are several blog posts explaining how to do this, including this great post by @rvrsh3ll.

Each Cobalt Strike server requires two things: the Mallable profile, and the listener setup. The Mallable profile I’ve used in this example is based on the same that ships with RedELK, and can be found here. Note that this profile requires you to insert the host header of your Domain Fronting CDN endpoint name. If you don’t want domain fronting you can remove the Host Header Host directive.

Mallable profile using the CDN setup

The important things with listener setup is to use a HTTP Host that is frontable, and to use the hostname of the CDN endpoint in the Host Header field.

The example above is for the CDN redir-teamserver setup. I have configured the other Cobalt Strike teamserver with a rather basic HTTP listener setup.

With the test lab setup explained, let’s focus on the RedELK specific installation.

Initial installation

First, download RedELK and extract the package. Check with version you get, there may be newer versions available:


curl -L https://codeload.github.com/outflanknl/RedELK/tar.gz/1.0.1 -o redelk_v1.0.1.tgz tar zxvf redelk_v1.0.1.tgz

Before we can run the installers on the different systems we need to:

  1. Generate TLS certificates used for the secured traffic between filebeat on redirectors/c2 team servers and the RedELK server
  2. Generate three installation packages for redirectors, c2 team servers and for the RedELK server.

Both steps are done with the initial-setup.sh script. You can run this initial setup on the RedELK server, but it is also tested macOS clients.

Important note: Make sure to edit the details of the TLS Certificate Authority in the certs/config.cfg file prior to running the script. Make sure to not make typos here: TLS is non-forgiving, resulting in blocked data flows to your RedELK server. Troubleshooting is difficult, so pay attention while performing this step.

In this case I’ve configured the TLS config file to use redelk.totallynotavirus.nl as DNS.1, and I’ve removed the DNS.2 and IP.1 lines.
After editing the TLS config file, run the installer:


./initial-setup.sh certs/config.cnf

Output should look like:

Installation on redirector

In this demo setup I have created two redirectors, one running Apache (used via the CDN), the other running HAProxy for the direct HTTP communication. Both redirectors need the redirs.tgz package generated in the previous step. So copy them over to the remote systems.

Before we can run the installers on the redirectors we need to configure Apache and HAProxy to be more verbose in their logging. This requires a modified config. Luckily RedELK ships with example configs for these extra logging directives, and can be found here. Let’s walk through the required steps.

Redirector setup

I will start with the Apache one. We need to enable required Apache modules, make a new site, configure the new site according to the Cobalt Strike profile and according to the RedELK logging requirements. This can be done as following:


apt-get install apache2 a2enmod rewrite proxy proxy_http proxy_connect ssl proxy_html deflate headers a2dissite 000-default.conf curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/outflanknl/RedELK/master/example-data-and-configs/Apache/redelk-redir-apache.conf -o /etc/apache2/sites-available/redelkdemo.conf

Now open Apache config file, change the two occurrences of $$IP_OF_YOUR_C2SERVER to your C2 team server’s address (in my case c2server1.totallynotavirus.nl), define a friendly hostname (in my case redira1) and make sure to configure an informative name for the frontend (in my case www-http) and for the backends (in my case decoy and c2). See example in screenshot below.

Enable the site and start apache:


a2ensite redelkdemo.conf
service apache2 restart

As traffic hits your redirector the log file /var/log/access-redelk.log should be filled.

Now it is time to run the RedELK redir installer. Copy the redirs.tgz package from the initial setup step over to your redirector. Extract the tgz file and run the following command:


install-redir.sh $FilebeatID $ScenarioName $IP/DNS:PORT

In my case I ran:


./install-redir.sh redira1 shorthaul redelk.totallynotavirus.nl:5044

The installer should exit without errors, and filebeat should be started. Note that the filebeat log file will report errors as the RedELK server isn’t configured yet so the incoming Filebeat traffic is not acknowledged.

The setup of the HAproxy redirector is largely similar. You can find an example config here. The RedELK installer command I ran is:


./install-redir.sh redirdb1 longhaul redelk.totallynotavirus.nl:5044

Installation on C2 team server

The installation on the Cobalt Strike C2 teamservers is rather straight forward. Copy the teamservers.tgz package to the teamserver and run the installer using:


install-teamserver.sh $FilebeatID $ScenarioName $IP/DNS:PORT

These parameters should sound familiar. 🙂
I’ve ran the following command:


./install-teamserver.sh c2server1 shorthaul redelk.totallynotavirus.nl:5044

Important note: you want to keep the $ScenarioName the same as used during installation on the redirector. If you’ve failed to do so, or want to rename the scenarioname or the host at a later moment, just edit the fields in the /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml file.

The installation on the other c2 team server is roughly the same, of course using FilebeatID c2server2 and scenario name longhaul.

Installation on RedELK server

The installation on the RedELK server requires no parameters. Just copy and extract the elkserver.tgz file, and run:


./install-elkserver.sh

You should see something like this.

As the installer tells you, there are a few mandatory things left to do:

  1. edit the configuration /etc/cron.d/redelk. This is required to rsync the Cobalt Strike logs, screenshots, downloaded files, etc to the local RedELK server. This *greatly* enhances ease of use during the ops.
  2. edit the configuration files in /etc/redelk/. I recommend at least the alarm.json.conf if you want alarms, and iplist_redteam.conf to define what external IP addresses are used for testing purposes and you naturally don’t want alarms on. But please check out all the details as also described at the RedELK wiki

See below screenshots for the edits in my example.

Contents of /etc/cron.d/redelk
Masked contents of /etc/redelk/alarm.json.conf
Contents of /etc/redelk/iplist_redteam.conf

Test the access

Browse to the HTTP port of the RedELK server. Login with your own creds, or use the default redelk:redelk. As soon as data is flowing you should find data in the indices.

Do you see data? Great! In the next blog post I will walk you through the specifics.

Troubleshooting

Still no data there? Here are some troubleshooting tips.

  • Did any of the installer packages report any error? If so, check the local installer log file.
  • Did you use the correct name for the TLS setup in the initial-setup.sh script?
  • Did you point filebeat to the correct DNS name or IP address? Check /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml for the value of hosts. The value should match to something listed as DNS or IP in the TLS config file for the initial-setup.sh.
  • Is Filebeat correctly sending data? Check /var/log/filebeat/filebeat on redirs and teamservers. Sadly, the exact error messages are cryptic at best. In our experience, most often it comes down to a TLS-DNS-certificate mismatch.
  • Is Logstash on the redelk server reporting errors in /var/log/logstash/logstash-plain.log?
  • Are there any beacons running, and/or is there traffic flowing to your infra? If not, well, RedELK doesn’t have any data if there is no data 🙂
  • “It is not DNS. It can’t be DNS. Ah crap, it was DNS.” Make sure the DNS records are correctly configured.
  • Check the wiki of the project.
  • Still having issues? Create an issue at GitHub.

The post RedELK Part 2 – getting you up and running appeared first on Outflank.

Abusing the SYLK file format

This blog is about the SYLK file format, a file format from the 1980s that is still supported by the most recent MS Office versions. As it turns out, this file format is a very good candidate for creating weaponized documents that can be used by attackers to establish an initial foothold. In our presentation at DerbyCon 8 we already demonstrated some of the powers of SYLK.

In this blog post we will dive into additional details of this file format. We also provide recommendations for mitigations against weaponized SYLK files.

Introduction

SYLK stands for SYmbolic LinK, a file format that was introduced in the 1980s. Commonly, SYLK files have the file extension .slk. SYLK is a file format which uses only displayable ANSI characters and it was created to exchange data between applications (such as spreadsheets and databases).

The file format is hardly used nowadays and documentation on it is scarce. Wikipedia has limited details on SYLK. Probably the best documentation available is the file sylksum.doc, authored by Microsoft and last updated in 1986 (!). We have hosted a copy of this file here. The File Formats Handbook by Gunter Born describes additional details on SYLK (it’s a 1995 book, second hand copies available on Amazon).

Despite being an ancient file format, the file extension .slk is still mapped by default to Excel on the most recent MS Office versions (confirmed on 2010, 2013 and 2016).

We are not the first offensive security researchers to look into the SYLK file format. Previously, Matt Nelson has demonstrated how DDE attacks can be combined with SYLK. This method has been weaponized in various malware samples that were observed in the wild, such as this one and this one.

In this blog post we will demonstrate that the power of SYLK goes beyond DDE attacks. In particular, malicious macros can be embedded in this file type as well.

No protected mode

There is one important reason why the SYLK format is appealing to attackers: the Protected View sandbox does not apply to this file format. This means that if a weaponized SYLK file is delivered via email or web and the Mark-of-the-Web flag is applied, the target user is not bothered with this warning message.

In addition, SYLK files with the .slk extension have the following characteristics.

Altogether, this makes SYLK a good candidate for weaponization.

XLM macros in SYLK

This unanswered question on an Excel forum caught our eye. Would it be possible to embed macros in SYLK? Simply trying to save an Excel file with a VBA project to SYLK did not work: a warning message was displayed that the macro project would be lost in this file format. Repeating this attempt with Excel 4.0 / XLM macros didn’t work either.

After studying the scarce documentation that is available on SYLK and after countless hours of experiments, we finally achieved our goal: macros can be embedded in the SYLK file format.

Open notepad, paste the following text and save it to a file with the .slk extension:

ID;P
O;E
NN;NAuto_open;ER101C1
C;X1;Y101;EEXEC("CALC.EXE")
C;X1;Y102;EHALT()
E

Double click the file to open it in Excel. Click “Enable Content” to enable macros and calculator will pop.

Let’s dive into how this works. Each line of a SYLK input file must be no longer than 260 characters (otherwise Excel will display an error message and will not parse that line). Every line consists of one or more records marked with semicolons:

  • The first line with the “ID” and “P” records is a marker that indicates this file is a SYLK file.
  • The second line with the “O” record sets options for this document. “E” marks that it is a macro-enabled document.
  • The third line has a names record “NN”. We set the name “Auto_open” for the cell at row 101, column 1 (“ER101C1”).
  • The fourth and fifth lines define cell content (“C”). “X” and “Y” records mark row and columns (e.g. row 1, column 101 in the first “C” line). Record “E” defines an expression value for this cell, in our case two Excel 4.0 macro functions.
  • The last line holds the end of file record (“E”).

In short, this basic SYLK file example defines a cell named Auto_open that executes the EXEC() and HALT() Excel 4.0 macro functions (so this is not VBA!). If you target Excel in a different language, beware of localized Auto_open event names. For example, in Dutch this has to be renamed to “Auto_openen”.

Process injection with SYLK

Now that we can embed macros in SYLK, we can do much more than simply popping calculator. In our previous blog post on Excel 4.0 / XLM macros, we have already demonstrated the power of this macro type. The following proof of concept demonstrates shellcode injection using macros in SYLK:

The code for this proof of concept is available from our GitHub page.

  • Create shellcode without null bytes. Example with msfvenom:
    msfvenom -c messageBox -a x86 --platform windows -p windows/messagebox TEXT="Hello from shellcode!" -b "\x00" -f raw > messagebox.bin
  • Create a SYLK file that embeds and loads the shellcode:
    python shellcode_to_sylk.py messagebox.bin > file.slk

Based on proof of concept code that we shared with MDSec in an early stage of our research, Dominic Chell has also embedded process injection using SYLK payloads in his SharpShooter tool.

Disguising SYLK as CSV

An interesting feature is that SYLK files can be disguised as other Excel file types, including the comma-seperated values (CSV) type. Upon parsing of a file with the .csv extension, Excel will automatically detect if the file is a SYLK file when the file starts with the header “ID;P” which is typical for SYLK. If this is the case, the following dialogue will be presented to the user:

If the user clicks “Yes”, the file will be opened as a SYLK file instead of CSV. So, with one additional warning message we can embed a malicious macro in a text-based file with the .csv extension.

Abusing SYLK on Mac

The SYLK file format is also supported on MS Office for Mac. The .slk extension maps to Excel for Mac by default and Excel 4.0 / XLM macros are supported as well, rendering this file format a very good candidate for weaponization on Mac.

Things get even more interesting when a target uses an outdated version of MS Office for Mac. MS Office 2011 for Mac contains a vulnerability where no warning message is displayed before macro execution in SYLK files. My colleague Pieter has previously blogged about this. Since Microsoft does no longer support this version of MS Office, this vulnerability will not be fixed. Unfortunately, we still spot Mac users with this outdated MS Office version from time to time.

SYLK and antivirus

In theory, SYLK files are easy to scan for a security product since the file format is very simple. However, in practice, it appears that many antivirus products do not particularly bother about this file format. In our experience, detection signatures and heuristics for malicious SYLK files by most antivirus products are quite poor.

We hope that this blog post contributes to a better understanding of the dangers of SYLK files and that antivirus vendors will act upon this. With an increase of malicious SYLK samples in the wild there is definitely a motivation to do so.

Also, it should be noted that the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) does not catch macros in SYLK. As the AMSI engine for macros only hooks into VBA, it is blind to Excel 4.0 / XLM based macros.

Mitigation

The best way to mitigate abuse is to completely block SYLK files in MS Office, which can be achieved through File Block settings in the MS Office Trust Center settings.

This GUI can be a bit confusing. A checkbox under “Open” means that a blocking action is defined for that filetype. So a checkbox under “Dif and Sylk Files” and selecting “Do not open selected file types” is what you need to configure in order to block opening of SYLK files.

Note that this setting can also be managed via Group policy:

  • The relevant policy can be configured under Microsoft Excel 2016\Excel Options\Security\Trust Center\File Block Settings.
  • Set “Dif and Sylk” to “Enabled: Open/Save blocked, use open policy” to prevent users from opening SYLK files in MS Office.

Another opportunity for mitigation is that macros in a SYLK document do adhere to macro security settings configured in MS Office. While completely disabling macros is not a viable option in many organisations, the following good practices can reduce the risk posed by malicious macros in SYLK and other MS Office file formats:

  • MS Office 2013 and 2016 have a feature to block macros in files that are downloaded from the internet. Set a DWORD value for blockcontentexecutionfrominternet to “1” under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word\Security. This setting can also be managed via GPO. Enable the setting “Block macros from running in Office files from the Internet” which can be found under Microsoft Excel 2016\Excel Options\Security\Trust Center.
  • In addition, Attack Surface Reduction rules can be used to set boundaries to what macros can do on a system.

Any feedback or additional ideas? Reach out on Twitter!

The post Abusing the SYLK file format appeared first on Outflank.

Cybersecurity project management: A peek behind the curtain | Cyber Work Live

Last year, Cyber Work Live brought you into the world of cybersecurity project management — with tips for acquiring your skills, improving your resume and getting your foot in the door. But what does the day-to-day work of cybersecurity project managers look like?

Jackie Olshack and Ginny Morton return to answer that question. They’ll also share experiences they’ve gained while working on some of their biggest projects!

– Get your FREE cybersecurity training resources: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– View Cyber Work Podcast transcripts and additional episodes: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/podcast

0:00 - Intro
0:50 - Who is Jackie Olshack? 
1:24 - Who is Ginny Morton? 
2:52 - Can non-technical PMs move into the tech space?
8:50 - Best way to manage projects with limited resources
13:30 - What certificates are needed for project management jobs?
18:52 - How do you kick off a cybersecurity project?
28:41 - How do you keep the project on schedule?
34:15 - Tips for networking in remote working situations
36:55 - Dealing with slowdowns and delays in projects
43:35 - Importance of a supportive environment in projects
47:40 - Dealing with delays from other teams in projects
50:35 - Tips for managing multiple projects at once
55:35 - How can teams support their project manager
56:35 - Transitioning into a cybersecurity career
59:00 - Outro and Infosec Skills giveaway

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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OWASP Top 10: What cybersecurity professionals need to know | Guest John Wagnon

On today's episode, our old pal John Wagnon, Infosec Skills author and keeper of the secrets of OWASP, joins me to talk about the big changes in the OWASP Top 10 that happened at the end of 2021, his own class teaching the Top 10, and some job tips, study hints and career pivots for people interested in these vulnerabilities. Find out why access managers are going to rule the world someday!

– Get your FREE cybersecurity training resources: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– View Cyber Work Podcast transcripts and additional episodes: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/podcast

0:00 - Free cybersecurity training resources
0:56 - Overview of today's episode
1:43 - Who is John Wagnon? 
2:50 - Working in cybersecurity and teaching OWASP
4:18 - What is the OWASP Top 10?
7:51 - How did the OWASP Top 10 change in 2021?
15:48 - Why do these security issues never go away?
19:06 - Cybersecurity roles using the OWASP Top 10
23:43 - What's covered in John's OWASP Top 10 courses?
26:42 - How to get hands-on cybersecurity experience
30:24 - Vulnerability-related cybersecurity career paths
34:16 - What is John working on with Infosec and Fortinet?
35:37 - Using your career as a learning opportunity
37:16 - Learn more about John Wagnon and OWASP
38:30 - Outro

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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Shellcode: Data Masking

Introduction

There are more than four ways to mask data, but these are the main ones to focus on in this post.

  1. Lossless Compression
  2. Encryption
  3. Steganography
  4. Shuffling

If we want to detect a compressed or encrypted stream of bytes but can’t rely on a file header for a signature, the best way is by using something like a Chi-Square test. The more uniform the data is, the more likely it is to be compressed or encrypted.

Steganography is better at masking. Some image formats already use lossless compression to reduce the size of files. The PNG format, for example, uses Zlib, and the high compression ratio will result in the file having a high amount of entropy. The GIF format also uses LZW as its compression method but is limited to 256 colours, which results in losing information during the encoding process. Of course, you have the option of parsing GIFs manually, but PNG is probably easier to work with in most image encoding libraries.

Involutions

In mathematics, an involution, or an involutory function, is a function that is its own inverse; For the following instructions, I’m merely using this word to describe what they do in practice. Executed once will mask data, and executing again will unmask. These are very common but also very weak when used alone.

1) eXclusive-OR bitwise operation
    xor   eax, -1

2) Bitwise NOT
    not   eax
    xor   eax, -1

3) Bitwise Negation
    neg   eax
    imul  eax, -1
    
4) Circular Shift
    shrd  eax, eax, 16
    ror   eax, 16
    rol   eax, 16
    ror   al, 4
  
5) Byte Swapping
    bswap eax
    xchg  al, ah

The circular shift and byte swapping operations are much closer to a permutation. They could also be used on large arrays in addition to the shuffling.

Random Shuffling

Let’s imagine you want to shuffle a deck of cards for an online poker game. The shuffling algorithm must be unbiased, and the results can’t be predictable before a game begins. Many who have asked for such an algorithm know of the Fisher-Yates shuffle. It’s an algorithm for generating a random permutation of a finite sequence. It was proposed by Ronald Fisher and Frank Yates in their book Statistical Tables for Biological, Agricultural and Medical Research published in 1939. Richard Durstenfeld modified the algorithm in 1964, and Donald E. Knuth popularised it in his 1968 book The Art of Computer Programming, hence why some refer to it as the Knuth Shuffle.

The following code in C illustrates how one might shuffle a byte array. Here, we’re using the current time as a seed to initialise the PRNG, which wouldn’t be recommended for a poker game. 😀

void
fisher_yates_shuffle(void *inbuf, size_t inlen) {
    uint8_t *in = (uint8_t*)inbuf;
    uint8_t t;
    
    srand(time(0));
    
    for (size_t i = inlen - 1; i > 0; i--) {
        uint32_t j = rand() % (i + 1);
        uint8_t = in[i];
        in[i] = in[j];
        in[j] = t;
    }
}

Obtaining a unique sequence of numbers to shuffle the array is problematic. Most software will use a pseudorandom number generator (PRNG). However, knowing how to generate the same sequence of numbers used to shuffle a deck of cards allows us to determine where every card is and even reverse the process. But that’s precisely what makes Fisher-Yates useful for masking. We want to unshuffle our masked data later; it’s just that rand() isn’t suitable. We need something else.

Keyed/Seeded/Deterministic Shuffling

Apart from rand() being weak for shuffling, unshuffling the array would require starting with the last number returned by it. rand() doesn’t support this type of random access, therefore our unshuffling algorithm would be required to generate the exact same sequence of numbers and store each one in memory before starting to unshuffle. We need a function that can produce deterministic values based on a seed or key. Seeded or keyed shuffling and unshuffling is really what we need.

A PRNG is also a Deterministic Random Bit Generator (DRBG). The DRBG/PRNG-generated sequence is not truly random because an initial value, called the PRNG’s seed (which may include truly random values), entirely determines the output bits generated by it. Therefore, we can replace rand() with a stream cipher like RC4, ChaCha, or a block cipher like AES in Counter (CTR) mode and generate deterministic values.

NIST has defined how to construct a DRBG from CTR mode in SP 800-90Ar1, but it’s unnecessary to use this for masking. Rather than implement a DRBG, we just need to encrypt the range index using a secret key and then derive an unbiased number within that range from the ciphertext. The following code tries to demonstrate how it might be done in practice.

#if defined(_WIN64)
//
// SPECK128-256
//
#define WORDLEN 64
#define PRNG_MAX_INT (INT64_MAX + 1)
#define ENCRYPT_KEY_LEN 32
#define ENCRYPT_BLOCK_LEN 16
#define R(v,n)(((v)>>(n))|((v)<<(64-(n))))
typedef unsigned long long W;

void 
encrypt(void*mk,void*p){
    W k[4],*x=(W*)p,i,t;

    for (i=0; i<4; i++) k[i] = ((W*)mk)[i];

    for (i=0; i<34; i++) {
        x[1] = (R(x[1], 8) + x[0]) ^ k[0],
        x[0] = R(x[0], 61) ^ x[1],
        k[1] = (R(k[1], 8) + k[0]) ^ i,
        k[0] = R(k[0], 61) ^ k[1];
        t = k[1], k[1] = k[2], k[2] = k[3], k[3] = t;
    }
}

#else
//
// SPECK64-128
//
#define WORDLEN 32
#define PRNG_MAX_INT (INT32_MAX + 1)
#define ENCRYPT_KEY_LEN 16
#define ENCRYPT_BLOCK_LEN 8
#define R(v,n)(((v)>>(n))|((v)<<(32-(n))))
typedef unsigned int W;

void 
encrypt(void* mk, void* p) {
    W k[4],*x=(W*)p,i,t;

    for (i=0; i<4; i++) k[i] = ((W*)mk)[i];

    for (i=0; i<27; i++) {
        x[0] = (R(x[0], 8) + x[1]) ^ k[0],
        x[1] = R(x[1], 29) ^ x[0],
        t = k[3],
        k[3] = (R(k[1], 8) + k[0]) ^ i,
        k[0] = R(k[0], 29) ^ k[3],
        k[1] = k[2], k[2]=t;
    }
}
#endif

W
prng_word(void *key, W max) {
    W r, x[2], ctr = 1, d = ((-max) / max) + 1;
    if (d == 0) return 0;
    
    for (;;) {
        x[0] = max;
        x[1] = ctr++;
        
        encrypt(key, x);
        
        r = x[0] / d;
        if (r < max) return r;
    }
}

void
shuffle(void *seed, void *inbuf, size_t inlen) {
    uint8_t *in = (uint8_t*)inbuf;
    
    for (size_t i = inlen - 1; i > 0; i--) {
        uint32_t j = prng_word(seed, (i + 1));
        uint8_t t = in[i];
        in[i] = in[j];
        in[j] = t;
    }
}

void
unshuffle(void *seed, void *inbuf, size_t inlen) {
    uint8_t *in = (uint8_t*)inbuf;
    
    for (size_t i = 0; i < inlen; i++) {
        uint32_t j = prng_word(seed, (i + 1));
        uint8_t t = in[i];
        in[i] = in[j];
        in[j] = t;
    }
}

There are times when elements of the array will remain in the same position after shuffling. This typically happens with small arrays. In that case, something else is required for masking. Now, if you know of a way to fix that, feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email.

Summary

Shuffling doesn’t provide any confidentiality for the masked data like encryption does and doesn’t reduce its size like compression does. However, shuffling a large enough array using a secure cipher and secret key to generate a sequence of numbers can probably make it difficult to recover the original data without the key used to initialise the PRNG. That seems helpful in masking data and better than an XOR. But of course, something like this is in no way intended or implied to be a suitable replacement for encryption and shouldn’t be used for any critical information!

References

Dynamic caching: What could go wrong?

Tl;DrThe Engintron plugin for CPanel presents a default configuration which could expose applications to account takeover and / or sensitive data exposure due to cache poisoning attacks. Whenever a client sends a request to a web server, the received response is processed and served by the back-end service each time. In case of an high […]

Your personal data is everywhere: What can you do about it? | Guest Mark Kapczynski

Today on the Cyber Work Podcast, Mark Kapczynski of OneRep reminds us of an awful truth most people either don’t know or don’t like to think about. Your personal information — your address, your phone number, your age — all of these things are on the public internet! Mark talks about OneRep’s mission to scrub personal information from these sites, suggests changes that could help prevent this problem, and shares ways you could base a career in this fight for data privacy and autonomy. All that and a detour into grade-school home computer shenanigans on today's episode.

– Get your FREE cybersecurity training resources: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– View Cyber Work Podcast transcripts and additional episodes: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/podcast

0:00 - Free cybersecurity training resources
0:56 - Overview of today's episode
1:50 - Who is Mark Kapczynski? 
2:44 - Data breaches are a way of life
3:36 - Getting started in IT and cybersecurity
5:41 - Helping the film industry go digital
7:31 - Transitioning industries from paper to digital
9:53 - What types of personal data are on the internet?
12:40 - How people search sites sell PII and make money
14:50 - How to get personal information removed from sites
18:07 - What type of services does OneRep offer?
19:19 - How is public personal data used in cybercrime?
23:01 - How can consumers limit personal data exposure?
26:38 - Regulatory changes needed to protect personal data
29:00 - Who owns your personal data?
30:55 - Web 3.0, smart contracts and other tech needed
33:58 - Jobs and careers related to data privacy
36:38 - Every professional needs to understand data
39:50 - What makes a data professional's resume stand out?
41:50 - What is OneRep?
44:30 - Outro

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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DIY at OFFZONE 2022: how to level up your conference badge

The badges for OFFZONE 2022 will be just as memorable as previous years. We promise to deliver a sleek design with plenty of interactive features.

Let’s briefly recount the evolution of the OFFZONE badge. At the last conference, we made it in the form of an interactive printed circuit board (PCB) designed as a 3.5-inch floppy disk. The board could be accessorized: participants could attach a display, IR receiver, and other interesting things right at the soldering zone at the venue.

Starting from 2020, we’ve been postponing OFFZONE, so the 2020 badge design has never taken flight 😔

Internals of the OFFZONE 2022 badge

This year, we decided to split the traditional badge functionality: now the conference badge will operate as a wallet for your Offcoins, the currency used at the event, while the tasks will be moved to a separate device. But this doesn’t mean that the badge is now plain vanilla. Its main features in 2022 are customization and the creation of add-ons with unique designs. This could have become reality back in 2020, but, alas… no need to spell it out for you here, right?

Every add-on starts with a connector. This is a four-pin plug that makes the thing connectable to the badge’s main board. And because we’re using a connector, there will be no need for any soldering. The main board will have at least 2 slots for add-ons, which can be hand made by any participant. When creating them, you will have to adhere to some technical limitations, which we will tell you further down the line.

An add-on doesn’t have to necessarily have a full-fledged circuit of microcontrollers, transistors, and other crafty electrical modules. If you’re not really into the intricacies of circuitry, you can get by with a couple of LEDs and an unusual form of your textolite board. Even with this simplistic design approach, you can still have your jolt of fun!

How to create an add-on

Here’s your step-by-step guide to designing your own add-on.

0. Read the requirements:

  • Maximum dimensions: 5 cm x 5 cm
  • Connector location: at the bottom and approximately in the center of your add-on
  • Maximum power consumption of the add-on electrical circuit: 100 mA
  • Solder mask colors: green, red, yellow, blue, black, or white
  • Screen print colors: red, yellow, blue, black, or white
  • Power supply for your electrical circuit: 3.3 V
  • Connection interface: I2C
  • PCB topology: single or double-sided, one conducting layer per side
  • PCB input data format: Gerber

For convenience, our colleagues abroad have standardized the add-on pinout and size. All this was jokingly called a “shitty connector.” It hurts to look at these specs, but anyway it has all the data you need to design your own add-on.

1. Come up with an idea. Your idea can be anything: a meme character, your personal symbol, a company’s logo, or even a cat’s nose. At its simplest, you can get away with just a ready image, preferably in a vector SVG or DXF format, and import it into the PCB design software. You may be better off if you use black-and-white images for import. Also, we advise you the graphics editor Inkscape to prepare your images for import.

Here’re some add-ons from DEF CON to inspire you:

2. Think of extra features if you need them

3. Choose your development toolset. At this stage, decide which computer-aided design (CAD) system you’re going to use. There’re tons of PCB layout software out there for all tastes and colors. Here’re the most popular and accessible tools: KiCAD, EasyEDA, DipTrace, and CircuitStudio. KiCAD is open-source and free to use. The other three are commercial products whose trial versions offer enough functionality to create your own add-on.

It’s difficult to give advice on the choice of any particular CAD system. Each has its pros and cons, so just play around with the options.

4. Learn the basic CAD features. All CADs have a fair number of tutorials with examples of use. Also, they all have a similar development pipeline: once you get the hang of a CAD system, you won’t have much trouble learning another one.

We would recommend that you practice PCB design as follows:

  • Use basic components to build a simple electrical circuit made up of a couple of LEDs.
  • Fill out the rules to check the topology.
  • Experiment with different options for solder masks, metallization, and screen printing in your PCB editor.
  • Try to import images to the board.
  • Figure out the mechanism for creating polygons and layout verification.
  • Lay out your first PCB.

5. Design your add-on board. If you’re already experienced in PCB development or have confident CAD skills, you can move on to laying out your add-on.

6. Export your files into Gerber, the manufacturing format.

After you’ve laid out the add-on board, you will need to perform a simple yet important step — export the printed circuit board project into Gerber files. This should render a group of files that is a layer-by-layer description of your board.

To view the resulting Gerber files, you can use Altium 365 Viewer:

7. Choose your production method: factory or toner transfer.

There’re quite a few Chinese factories out there: PCBWay, JLCPCB, ALLPCB, etc. As an upside, this gives cheap and quality results, as a downside, your PCB will take some time to arrive, as it will have quite the distance to travel. That’s why you might want to consider a local manufacturer.

The other, hardcore option is to create the add-on by yourself using the toner transfer or photoresist method. It’s hard, pricey and time-consuming, but captivating!

Here’re some boards made using toner transfer:

8. Order your PCB from a factory or make your own using toner transfer.

By now, you should have settled on the production method. Are you going with factory? Great, now you have to place your order. Typically, that includes filling out a form on the manufacturer’s website, uploading your Gerber files, and making the payment.

However, if you’ve chosen the path of a true samurai and decided to make the add-on board yourself, it’s time to stock up on the necessary materials and get to work. There’re tons of instructions and recommendations on the web for PCB etching, so you won’t get lost.

9. Stock up on cocoa and patience. At this point, there will be some PCB magic going on in the factory (if you chose contract manufacturing) or in your kitchen (if you opted for toner transfer).

10. Profit!

By this stage, you should have received your PCB from the manufacturer or completed your own. Well done! Examine the result carefully.

In case something didn’t work out or doesn’t match your original idea, panic not. Developing any PCB, or electronics in general, is a process of iterations, and an add-on is no exception. Fix the errors and repeat the order or manufacturing step. If you’ve reached this stage, you already know how to design a PCB.

And if you were able to achieve the desired result in the first attempt, congrats!

11. Come around to OFFZONE 2022 and show off your PCB.

Keep in mind that the third international conference on practical cybersecurity OFFZONE will be held on August 25–26. It will bring together security specialists, developers, engineers, researchers, lecturers, and students from dozens of countries. It focuses only on technical content dedicated to current industry trends. To learn how to participate, visit the event’s website.

Keeping your inbox safe: Real-life BEC attacks and email fraud careers | Guest John Wilson

Today's episode is all about email fraud. John Wilson, head of the cyber intelligence division at Agari by HelpSystems, discusses Business Email Compromise (BEC), spearphishing, whaling, romance fraud and more. If you can name it, John’s studied it. And he's likely collected intel that’s managed to freeze cybercriminals’ assets — and even put them away. He gives career tips and advice for engaging in threat research at all levels, we discuss the pyrrhic victory that is the modern spam filter, and John tells me why BEC fraud hunters’ best asset is a degree in psychology! All that and loads more, today on Cyber Work!

– Get your FREE cybersecurity training resources:  https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– View Cyber Work Podcast transcripts and additional episodes: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/podcast

0:00 - Free cybersecurity training resources
0:58 - Overview of today's episode
1:58 - Who is John Wilson? 
3:02 - Getting into cybersecurity
4:58 - How spam has evolved over the years
8:12 - Why pursue a career in fraud?
11:10 - 3 primary vectors for email attacks
15:20 - Is BEC ever an insider threat?
16:16 - Is education making a difference on BEC attacks?
20:55 - Tracking down BEC actors and recovering assets
23:50 - Two angles to preventing BEC attacks
29:12 - Careers related to BEC and phishing prevention
34:42 - How to gain cybersecurity experience and get hired
37:25 - Agari and email fraud protection
42:16 - Outro

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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Analysis of a Command Injection in VBScript

Reading Time: 7 minutes In this writeup we present the analysis and exploitation of a VBScript command injection vulnerability we stumbled upon during a penetration test on a .NET web application. What makes this vulnerability stand out is the fact that at first glance it could be mistaken for a common SQL injection. After a few exploitation attempts, we […]

Merry Hackmas: multiple vulnerabilities in MSI’s products

Reading Time: 2 minutes This blog post serves as an advisory for a couple MSI’s products that are affected by multiple high-severity vulnerabilities in the driver components they are shipped with. All the vulnerabilities are triggered by sending specific IOCTL requests and will allow to: Directly interact with physical memory via the MmMapIoSpace function call, mapping physical memory into […]

Driver Buddy Reloaded

Reading Time: 5 minutes As part of Yarix's continuous security research journey, during this year I’ve spent a good amount of time reverse-engineering Windows drivers and exploiting kernel-mode related vulnerabilities. While in the past there were (as far as I know), at least two good IDA plugins aiding in the reverse engineering process: DriverBuddy of NCC Group. win_driver_plugin of […]

Crucial’s MOD Utility LPE – CVE-2021-41285

Reading Time: 7 minutes Crucial Ballistix MOD Utility is a software product that can be used to customize and control gaming systems, specifically LED colours and patterns, memory, temperature, and overclock.During my vulnerability research, I’ve discovered that this software utilizes a driver, MODAPI.sys, containing multiple vulnerabilities and allowing an attacker to achieve local privilege escalation from a low privileged […]

Homemade Fuzzing Platform Recipe

Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s no secret that, since the beginning of the year, I’ve spent a good amount of time learning how to fuzz different Windows software, triaging crashes, filling CVE forms, writing harnesses and custom tools to aid in the process.Today I would like to sneak peek into my high-level process of designing a Homemade Fuzzing Platform, […]

Root Cause Analysis of a Printer’s Driver Vulnerability

Reading Time: 8 minutes Last week SentinelOne disclosed a "high severity" flaw in HP, Samsung, and Xerox printer's drivers (CVE-2021-3438); the blog post highlighted a vulnerable strncpy operation with a user-controllable size parameter but it did not explain the reverse engineering nor the exploitation phase of the issue. With this blog post, I would like to analyse the vulnerability […]

Reverse Engineering & Exploiting Dell CVE-2021-21551

Reading Time: 11 minutes At the beginning of the month, Sentinel One disclosed five high severity vulnerabilities in Dell’s firmware update driver.As the described vulnerability appeared not too complicated to exploit, a lot of fellow security researchers started weaponizing it. I was one of, if not the first tweeting about weaponizing it into a _SEP_TOKEN_PRIVILEGES overwrite exploit, and with […]

Chaining Bugs: NVIDIA GeForce Experience (GFE) Command Execution

Reading Time: 5 minutes NVIDIA GeForce Experience (GFE) v.<= 3.21 is affected by an Arbitrary File Write vulnerability in the GameStream/ShadowPlay plugins, where log files are created using NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM level permissions, which lead to Command Execution and Elevation of Privileges (EoP). NVIDIA Security Bulletin – April 2021 NVIDIA Acknowledgements Page Introduction Some time ago I was looking for […]

Malware Analysis: Ragnarok Ransomware

Reading Time: 11 minutes The analysed sample is a malware employed by the Threat Actor known as Ragnarok. The ransomware is responsible for files’ encryption and it is typically executed, by the actors themselves, on the compromised machines. The name of the analysed executable is xs_high.exe, but others have been found used by the same ransomware family (such as […]

Cybersecurity has a marketing problem — and we're going to fix it | Guest Alyssa Miller

On today's episode, we're breaking down phrases you've heard a million times: “security is everyone’s job,” “humans are the weakest link in the security chain,” “it’s not if you get breached, but when.” Returning guest Alyssa Miller drills into these comforting nostrums and explains why, even when they’re used for well-intended purposes, they often act to limit the conversation and the options, rather than address the hard work needed to overcome these evergreen problems. You’re not going to want to miss this one, folks! It’s all that, plus a little bit of book talk, today on Cyber Work!

– Start learning cybersecurity for free: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– View Cyber Work Podcast transcripts and additional episodes: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/podcast
– Get the Cybersecurity Career Guide by Alyssa Miller: https://alyssa.link/book

0:00 - Intro
1:38 - Alyssa's tweet that inspired this episode
4:00 - Why you need to read the Cybersecurity Career Guide
9:10 - Cybersecurity platitudes and clichés
11:30 - Cliché 1: "It's not if you get breached, but when"
18:44 - Cliché 2:"Just patch your shit"
24:58 - Cliché 3: "Users are the weakest link"
32:34 - Cliché 4: "Security is everyone's job"
35:52 - Cliché 5: What is a "quality gate"?
44:14 - Cliché 6: "You just need passion to get hired"
48:14 - How to write a better cybersecurity job description 
50:15 - Business value of diversity and inclusion
52:52 - Building a security champions program
55:12 - Where can you connect with Alyssa Miller?
56:44 - Outro

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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What does a secure coder do? | Cybersecurity Career Series

Secure coders are responsible for developing and writing secure code in a way that protects against security vulnerabilities like bugs, defects and logic flaws. They take proactive steps to introduce secure coding methodologies before the application or software is introduced into a production environment, often following recommendations from the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Foundation.

– Free cybersecurity training resources: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/free
– Learn more here: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/skills/train-for-your-role/secure-coder/

0:00 - Intro
0:25 - What does a secure coder do?
5:48 - How do you become a secure coder?
9:46 - What skills do secure coders need?
12:28 - What tools do secure coders use?
17:08 - What roles can secure coders transition into?
19:50 - What to do right now to become a secure coder

About Infosec
Infosec believes knowledge is power when fighting cybercrime. We help IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications while empowering all employees with security awareness and privacy training to stay cyber-safe at work and home. It’s our mission to equip all organizations and individuals with the know-how and confidence to outsmart cybercrime. Learn more at infosecinstitute.com.

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Linux Kernel Exploit Development: 1day case study

Introduction I was searching for a vulnerability that permitted me to practise what I’ve learned in the last period on Linux Kernel Exploitation with a “real-life” scenario. Since I had a week to dedicate my time in Hacktive Security to deepen a specific argument, I decided to search for a public vulnerability without a public […]
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