Feature and Permission Policies. Security issues

Introduction In order to help enhance the user experience of their site, companies may ask to use features of your browser, such as geolocation or notifications to produce a more tailored experience. Web site developers may configure the site or allow third-party content, loaded in frames, to use...

The Disgruntled Employee?

When we talk about cyber threat actors one of the terms we use is “Disgruntled Employee”. Everyone knows what that means; someone who is fed up at work, has an axe to grind, feels aggrieved etc. There are sometimes other factors though, ones that aren’t as obvious… The symptoms and effects I was...

Embedded device research. The tools you’ll need

Over the last couple of years, we’ve run many courses on embedded device security. The focus is often defensive, but all the courses have an aspect of offensive: hacking demonstration and real devices so that you can understand the mindset of an attacker. To hack devices, you need tools. And the...

Mimosa Cloud. Invite friends, not hackers

TL;DR Global wireless network provider had an IDOR in their cloud management platform Anyone can create an account, anyone can upgrade that account to take control of anyone else’s devices Excellent VDP, responded to promptly Fixed in ONE WORKING DAY! Other vendors can learn from Mimosa Who? Mimo...

How to: Kerberoast like a boss

Kerberoasting: by default, all standard domain users can request a copy of all service accounts along with their correlating password hashes. Crack these and you could have administrative privileges. But that’s so 2014. Why write a blog post about this in 2019 then? It still works well, yet there...

The null choice. A social engineering example in the wild

With social engineering there are lots of ways to get what you want, depending on the circumstance of course. The null choice is one that works really well when your desired outcome isn't obvious to the people you're trying to dupe. There are ways and means of overcoming a null choice scenario...

Vulnerability disclosure buzzword bingo!

Play Buzzword Bingo With Us! In the last 5 or so years of research we’ve found a substantial number of products with vulnerabilities in their supporting apps and infrastructure, as well as in the devices themselves. Some were low-impact, some were just curiosities, but many critical flaws exposin...

A security researcher has made contact. What do I do?

Businesses say that they take security of customer data seriously but, when presented with a vulnerability, are often more concerned about their own reputation than the security of their customers. Handle disclosure correctly and you can do both: protect your customers and protect your reputation...

Connected camera cock up

I haven’t touched adult toy security for over a year now, mostly because we kept finding the same stuff over and over again. Besides, @internetofdongs has been doing some great work in this space, so it seemed pointless to duplicate his efforts. However, this morning, @dcuthbert tweeted us this: ...

Burp HMAC header extensions, a how-to

I was recently on a test where the client’s API used a custom authentication scheme to add a SHA256 HMAC dynamically on each request, based on the URL, time, and message body. My normal go-to for API testing is Postman especially when your client is lovely enough to give you definitions you can...

Pun-free Cylance vulnerability, fixed

TL;DR Blackberry Cylance for Windows is affected by three vulnerabilities. CVE-2021-32021 - Denial of service in message broker. CVE-2021-32022 - Low privileged delete using CEF RPC server. CVE-2021-32023 - Elevation of privilege in message broker. A heap overflow resulting in a denial of service...

The Return of Raining SYSTEM Shells with Citrix Workspace app

TL;DR Back in July I documented a new Citrix Workspace vulnerability that allowed attackers to remotely execute arbitrary commands under the SYSTEM account. Well after some further investigation on the initial fix I discovered a new vector that quite frankly should not exist at all since the...

Patchless AMSI bypass using SharpBlock

Introduction For those that followed my personal blog posts on Creating an EDR and Bypassing It, I developed a new tool called SharpBlock. The tool implements a Windows debugger to prevent EDR’s or any other DLL from loading into a process that SharpBlock launches. One feature that was missing fr...

Spying on old folks

We’ve tested plenty of kids GPS tracker watches over the years. Nearly all we looked at had critical security issues. For a BBC show a while back we were asked to investigate the security of similar trackers for the elderly. They’re a nice idea; allowing people to live independently for longer an...

Christmas socialising. Goodwill to all, and keep your devices safe

It’s that time of year again. Christmas parties, socialising, travelling, and time spent away from home. Seasonal socialising generally involves eating, drinking, and making merry, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The downside is that a “goodwill to all” attitude and an excess of alcohol caus...

Direct Memory Access (DMA) attacks. Risks, techniques, and mitigations in hardware hacking

TL;DR Direct Memory Access DMA attacks are a powerful class of attack that give read and write access to the memory of a target system, bypassing the main CPU to gain kernel privileges. We became interested in DMA attacks for expanding the toolkit for rooting embedded devices. A lot of embedded...

Serious Vulnerabilities in Dualog Connection Suite

TL;DR The flaws found in this maritime comms and connection suite were many, and not insignificant: Directory traversal 2FA challenge/response is performed in a client-side application Default install password SQL injection User data leakage Easily brute forcible password hashes Introduction Duri...

Dating apps that track users from home to work and everywhere in-between

TL;DR We were able to precisely locate and track the users of four major dating apps, potentially putting at risk 10 million users This risk level is elevated for the LGBT+ community who may use these apps in countries with poor human rights where they may be subject to arrest and persecution. Ap...

Ninja Turtles in your network: LAN Turtle 3G. A how-to for red teaming

Introduction This post will detail how to configure and utilise a LAN turtle 3G from Hak 5 to gain a persistent, remotely accessible presence within a network. With ethernet ports becoming less common on new hardware, many people have been forced into deploying an array of various dongles and...

A broken marriage. Abusing mixed vendor Kerberos stacks

My first DEF CON talk was nerve-racking but something I would definitely put myself through again. In hindsight I should have submitted a 45-minute talk as there were some elements missing from what I presented, based on additional research since submitting the CFP. With that in mind, and for tho...

Reverse Engineering the Tesla Firmware Update Process

TL;DR How does the Tesla update its firmware? What did we find when reverse engineering the display and instrument cluster? Here’s the result of a couple of weeks work, working on a real vehicle that mostly worked after we had finished. Part 1: analysing the hardware, complete with a 14 layer PCB...

HTTP Request Smuggling. A how-to

TL;DR HTTP Request Smuggling is not a new issue, a 2005 white paper from Watchfire discusses it in detail and there are other resources too. What I found missing was practical, actionable, how-to references. This post covers my findings and, hopefully, sheds some light on the intricacies of HTTP...

OBDeleven vulnerability

OBDelevens OBD-II dongle is an onboard diagnostics port module that connects to a mobile app over Bluetooth. It takes advantage of weaknesses in UDS secure access to unlock the vehicle ECU and enable enhanced diagnostics and some additional functionality. Some of these functions are only availabl...

IR & Forensics in the Cloud

More and more organisations are moving their business to the cloud. This makes securing data and being able to respond effectively to incidents in cloud environments an important topic. Having the skills on hand to properly collect digital forensics data in response to a legal dispute or during a...

Grid. Locked.

In the UK we are used to having a reliable and stable electricity grid. So stable that you can keep time with it. Before quartz clocks became common, mains powered clocks used the electricity grid frequency of 50Hz as their time reference, you can still find the odd central heating timer or old...

Tesla Killer: The Fuzzed and the Furious

The Tesla doesn’t have a conventional OBDII port onboard diagnostics as such. There’s a connector, but it’s just provided with +12V/ground in order to power things like insurance telematics dongles. Instead, there’s the Tesla diagnostics connector X427 which is where things get a bit weird. That...

Pen Testing Ships. A year in review

Partially driven by the upcoming inclusion of Cyber Security by the IMO International Maritime Organisation, 2019 was a really busy year for maritime security testing at PTP. What can we all learn from a year of evaluating the security of ships? We’ve been involved in all sorts of ship testing,...

Social engineering. When you’re the mark…

Who am I? I am Scott, and you may have met me, if you did your recollection of me will be unique most likely. I am a social chameleon. I can be your best mate, the lost friend you never knew you lost and even an expert in things you are interested in. I live off your stories and I weave my way in...

Different ‘smart’ lock, similar security issues

I was looking through Amazon and found this padlock at the cheaper end of the scale. For twenty of my well-earnt English pounds I could become the owner of a new and shiny SLOK lock. Image credit: Amazon It can be unlocked by BLE and can be shared to others, what could I do but buy one and revers...

Smart Locks: Dumb Security

Dave Lodge and I presented at the BSides Manchester pre-party, aka ‘beersides’ on the subject of not very smart locks. Doubtless you’ve already seen our work on the Tapplock over BLE and the API, our hardware work on the Fipilock, and maybe even our smart lock security interview with hardware.io...

Out Of Band, Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

Satellite receivers aboard maritime vessels can be tricky things to manage, yet are crucial to efficient operations of modern drilling rigs and ships. Particularly on rigs, it’s not that unusual for a receiver dish to be knocked out of alignment during drilling operations. Lose satcoms and you’re...

Quick wins with Adobe Experience Manager

Introduction Adobe Experience Manager AEM, is a comprehensive content management solution for building websites, mobile apps and forms. And it makes it easy to manage your marketing content and assets. If you've ever looked into AEM you may have heard of Mikhail Egorov @0ang3el. He has done some...

Hacking Hardware Password Managers: passwordsFAST

TL:DR Taking three hardware password managers I used them to: Learn the basics of hardware hacking Practice disassembling Perform chipset research Understand pinouts and protocols Read data off each device The passwordFast device uses different ways to store the data on a flash chip with a...

Hacking Hardware Password Managers: Royal Vault Password Keeper

TL;DR: Taking three hardware password managers I used them to: Learn the basics of hardware hacking Practice disassembling Perform chipset research Understand pinouts and protocols Read data off each device The royal password vault boards looked to be reused from a previous hardware device with...

Schiphol hijack false alarm. An insiders view of what happened

I had the misfortune of being at Schiphol last night as this unfolded: All ended well, delayed by about an hour. Had the incident been real, it could have been much worse. Here’s what the pilot had to say about it thanks to @asantosb: Our flight was at D16, the incident flight was directly the...

Do you know your OpSec?

Open Source Intelligence OSINT is any information in the public domain that an attacker can dig up about you. Because of that it forms the basis of every Red Team engagement, as threat actor scenarios are created using publicly available information. Bearing that in mind it makes sense to review...

In Flight Entertainment System Security

Contrary to alarmist stories in the press, it really isn’t practically possible to hack an airplane from the in-flight entertainment system IFE/IFEC. The ‘C’ adds Connectivity, so internet access Whilst earlier moving map systems did take a feed from the flight management system, particularly so...

Soldering for Reverse Engineering. Swapping out eSIMs with “normal” SIMs

Sometimes, the mobile devices we work on only have cellular data connections. In those instances, we’re usually pretty interested in trying things like this to get credentials for the APN so we can start snooping around on that. We’re also really interested in monitoring what kind of traffic is...

Drilling open a smart door lock in 4 seconds

The BBC asked us to have a look at some smart locks for a TV show recently. We didn’t have much prep time, but were genuinely shocked by just how easy this one was to compromise. Usually, we spend time looking at Bluetooth/RF, the mobile app, the API and then move on to hardware. This time we...

GPS watch issues… AGAIN

Over the last year of looking at kids GPS tracking watches we have found some staggering issues. With these devices it almost seems that having multiple security issues is the new normal. While parents and guardians may get a feeling of security from using these devices, our testing and research...

Windows Server settings. Administrative Templates – Network Items. A security how-to

This is the first part of a multi part series looking at the settings within Windows Server that are looked at as part of a standard build review. Sometimes a red team exercise, where the consultant turns up with ninja gear, lock picks and grappling hooks isn’t what you need in a security...

Why the Raspberry Pi isn’t suitable for IoT

Let’s start by praising the Raspberry Pi: it has brought cheap computing to many, has inspired and enabled education and undoubtedly been a huge benefit. I use my own Pi daily, and we have often used its flexibility to perform hardware testing, from accessing UART to reading flash memory. So why ...

EFB Tampering 2. Device Integrity

TL;DR Electronic Flight Bag EFB integrity varies between different airlines and devices Aviation cyber security is becoming increasingly prominent with regulators EFBs often connect to unsecure networks including public Wi-Fi Security measures are not always effective and can be inconsistent Devi...

DEF CON 28: Introduction to ACARS

This post is a companion to the DEF CON 28 video available here What is ACARS? ACARS Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, pronounced ‘ay-cars’ which is an avionics system used to for sending text messages between ground and airborne stations. This is a light touch on the topic...

Hardcoding Keys. Is that Wyse?

A couple of years ago, we were testing a large system of around 3000 Wyse terminals, all operating unattended. To configure themselves, they download a configuration file called wlx.ini from a webserver. This file contained a few fields that seemed interesting - ChangeRootPassword and...

Vulnerabilities that (mostly) aren’t: LUCKY13

TL;DR LUCKY13 is more an attack than a vulnerability LUCKY13 was patched over a decade ago … so it’s really unlikely that your server is vulnerable now Its an implementation issue Disabling CBC ciphers is still a good idea … but not because of susceptibility to LUCKY13 There is no material risk i...

Database Integrity Vulnerabilities in Boeing’s Onboard Performance Tool

This post is released in a co-ordinated manner with Boeing. TL;DR: Security gaps in older, unprotected Windows desktop versions of Boeing’s Onboard Performance Tool OPT could make certain Electronic Flight Bags EFB more susceptible to attack. In particular, OPT’s use of plain text configuration...

Top 10 Cloud security tips

About half of the pen tests we’re asked to do involved cloud services at some point. We’ve even tested a cloud platform on an aeroplane – the irony was not lost on us! There is a multitude of ways to improve the security of your cloud platforms and often those ways are ever-changing or obscured...

Getting a persistent shell on a 747 IFE

TL:DR The Coronavirus pandemic has hit the airline industry hard. One sad consequence was early retirement of most of the 747 passenger fleet. This does however create opportunities for aviation security research, as airframes are parked up before parting out in breakers yards. This 747 was flyin...

2021. The age of the super vulnerability?

I don’t know about you, but to me it seems that every week we are seeing another vulnerability that not only grants significant access to the vulnerable system but also more widely internally. This last week we have seen the latest round of Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities. The April 2021 updat...