Category: Security

Books: Secret History of the Internet and Virtual Shadows

I picked up some books recently based on some reviews via the British Computer Society.

On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and its Founders details the development of the various online systems which paved the web to the Internet and web that we know today. This was not a linear progression. The classic bulletin boards and the like (based on screeching modems, ah memories…) were not on the same path and eventually fell by the wayside but certainly gave many their first tastes of the online world. Oh, and the telephone bills to match.

Yes, the likes of Prestel and Delphi do feature. It is an interesting read and also details the political and personal wranglings that were going on. It is a shame that Compunet (my first online experience) is not featured but I did learn about the more official Commodore 64 services that existed.

Virtual Shadows: Your Privacy in the Information Society deals with, predictably, privacy in the Information Society! Some of the material will be a bit obvious to those with a background in this stuff (e.g. why blogs are popular and how they work) but some of the detail in risk assessment of the information you leave online is absorbing. Naturally, social networking sites form a key part of this as does the protection of children. I found the later parts of the book the best as they dealt with the current and upcoming threats to our privacy in general, be they ID cards or the ‘feature creep’ of CCTV and other surveillance systems. I had never heard of ‘Sousveillance’ before either!

I recommend both books so check them out.

Workshop: The Evolution of an Exploit

I attended a workshop provided by MWR InfoSecurity on ‘The Evolution of an Exploit’ recently (Full details in PDF format).

A lot of security presentations can be a bit weak in terms of technical content, essentially just being “SECURITY IS GOOD. CAREFUL, OR THE MONSTERS WILL GET YOUR DATA”. The sort of scaremongering designed to get those who are perhaps not particularly technically aware to open their wallets in fear.

Don’t get me wrong: Security is vital but it must be understood properly.

Anyway, this was an excellent workshop. It followed a particular vulnerable product and the stages taken from analysing the network traffic and producing ‘fuzzy’ packets, through analysing the crash data in a debugger, to crafting an actual exploit. The network-based exploit gave a remote shell with Administrator privileges to the target box. Game over!

I particularly liked the fact that at each stage the software packages used were fully demonstrated to get the desired result. So I’ve got a few more toys to play with when I can find the time! Also, the workshop did not shy away from assembly to demonstrate how overflow exploits actually work.

Things which particularly grabbed my attention:

  1. Fuzzing is not just a case of sending random data. To make it more useful, it is always based around the packet format which the target will accept. Best use of your time.
  2. The Metasploit platform. Very cool framework. In particular I liked how once you have your exploit packet, you can fill the shellcode section with, well, whatever exploit in their database that fits. Download something, give a remote shell, scan a network… so many possibilities.
  3. Just how “Duh” the mistake made by the developers of the vulnerable software was. The client essentially passed the memory address of the function that should be executed next to the server . “Never trust the client” is a classic security mantra, so this one particularly takes the biscuit.

I recommend the workshop, and the Marks and Spencer provided cuisine was not bad either 😉