instruction
stringlengths
24
29.9k
About several years ago I found a website during a pentest which had the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header set to "*". I made a POC to get the response of a webpage from an untrusted domain. The goal was to get the CSRF token from the webpage, which was displayed for logged in users. So the HTTP request performed by t...
I can't make Skype calls outside of my country because they are blocked. As far as I understand, Skype uses strong encryption for the calls, thus, making Deep Packet Inspection unable to detect it. If it's not DPI, then what it can be? People I know suggested me to use VPN, but I can't understand why, because Skype im...
Is my PHP authentication script secure? I noticed that the hashes start with the first two letters of the username. Could there be a security flaw using crypt() in such a way? <?php // Credentials : // admin / P4ssW0rd // j.doe / r0x0r $cred = array( 'admin' => 'adkFV/7Pa.Em.', 'j.doe' => 'j.4AzOhv10e1M' ); ...
I received a message recently on a droid phone that appeared to have originated from an Iphone in my contact list. I was able to look at the Iphone from which the message appeared to have originated and it showed the exact same message as having been sent from that Iphone. But I don't think the message actually origi...
Is it possible to add backdoor to a file with the same size and crc32 checksum (4bytes)? (The file does not contain byte code, it contains program code as text. The language is PHP.)
A one-time pad is known to be theoritcally secure, nothing can break it. However, if the key is reused, the one time pad becomes theoritically breakable. But even RSA is theorically breakable yet it's widely used because it's practically secure. So, is a One-Time pad with a sufficiently long looping key practically se...
I am doing a minor project on information security in which i am implementing techniques listed below to protect a HEALTH CARE database. Preventing SQL Injection (using prepared statements,validating,using a tokenization algorithm) Preventing CSRF attack (inserting a hidden token in the form) Preventing Brute Force at...
I'm still young (16 years old) and I haven't entered the security field yet. I'm curious how much programming I need to enter the security field. I can write real-life programs in Python. I can also understand programs written in different languages (Java, C/C++ C# every language that is C based). I can also write pro...
A critical security update for Adobe Acrobat Pro and Standard 9 on Mac OSX is only available over HTTP, and is unsigned code. Is there any out-of-band way to verify the download is authentically from Adobe?
If I have an encrypted RAR file which will only open using a password, and I opened a file directly from within WinRAR by double clicking the file inside WinRAR, I assume that WinRAR will create a temporary version somewhere in the drive (temp folder?) before opening it using the default application assigned by the use...
How do people who decrypt encrypted messages know they have decrypted to the correct message? Do they just keep decrypting until the message is in English (or any other language), or is there a standard, proven method that says that when a certain algorithm is applied to an encrypted message, the original message is re...
I have successfully exploited a program using ret2libc but I am running into a problem. Whenever I feed system() with /bin/sh I have nothing in return the program silently exit. However, if I feed echo val > /t and I read /t I get val. So I am able to run partial commands and I want to know which commands can be used ...
I have the following scienarion: a vulnerable program running in a server and can be accessed using netcat I have a copy of that program locally and I can exploit it locally using ROP: ./vuln garbage + &system() + &exit() + &"/bin/sh" now I want to exploit it remotely so technically I would be executing this command: ...
I'm sorry, i'm newbie in security, i'm looking for a software that detect changes in the whole operating system during its execution, that's helps analysing the behaviour of malicious software to know its impact in OS ? I've already seen this kind of software but i have forgot his name.
Within the design of my web application, I am trying to now choose the final steps of the members profiles for security. *I need to choose if I should use a system which you login with a username or email, and which is more secure? With the current members table design, I have this setup: The member ID is randomized o...
In several papers, I see the quote of the following security paper, which concerns SSL: EADS Defence and Security Systems SA. Investigations about ssl. http://www.eucybervote.org/Reports/MSI-WP2-D7V1-V1.0-02.htm. Unfortunately, I can't find it anywhere, by checking the address directly or by using a web crawler. Wh...
Disclaimer: I have low knowledge of X.509 and PKI, so I would appreciate an answer that is not entirely technical, i.e. by using real-life example scenarios.) I was searching for information about 4096-bit TLS certificates, found an article talking about it and how you could generate a self-signed certificate. Signi...
One of our clients is launching a new site and I've been tasked with making a short overview of the advantages/disadvantages of Akamai, Incapsula or other CDN providers who are strong with DDoS protection. Our main concerns are CDN Caching, bandwidth costs and DDoS protection. The site operates on a heavily customized ...
I am learning about Deauth attacks and how they work. I see that the Deauth frame has a reason code which indicates the reason for the deauth. I have tested the attack with aircrack-ng and this reason code always translates to "Class 3 Frame received from non associated station". Do other attack tools have the ability ...
I have a Linux server running SSHD and would like to know if its possible to configure it, such that from within the LAN you only need a RSA key to authenticate (on port X), but from outside the LAN the user would need to authenticate with both a RSA key and an OTP password generated by a PAM module (via port Y)? I tri...
I have been involved in disassembling Android apps using baksmali and dexpler. Whenever I disassemble an app, I find the packages and package hierarchy (that would have been available in development scenario) intact. For instance, when I disassemble a task manager app (MD5: 3377f8527479ab4e72bf9fa5eec62abe), I get the ...
Is there another way to verify someones public key without a CA signing it? A challenge-response authentication including some sort of UID of the smartphone? Smartphone A generates asymmetric key pair A sends public key K1 via internet to Smartphone B B recieves a public key K2 How can B be sure that K2 = K1 ?
When using msfvenom, I am under the assumption that the following syntax should give me shellcode without \x00 \x0a \x0d or \x40, because of the -b option msfvenom -p windows/shell/bind_tcp -b '\x00\x0a\x0d\x40' -f python However, every shell code I get still has one of these characters in it... e.g. buf = "" buf += ...
A flaw in WPS is that you can crack each half of the 8 numerical digits independently (2x 4 numerical digits are much easier than 1x 8 numerical digits). However, since the flaw was discovered, why not apply a patch and only send a response if and only if the client has the whole password right? Implement a time-out an...
I was an idiot and sent my passport and address to a scam artist I was hoping to rent an apartment from abroad. Luckily, I realized the trickery before sending anything else or any money. Unfortunately, the person is now using my passport and photos of me to lure in other people. I have two questions: What should I do...
I’m administrating a few Debian Linux server, and install package updates when apticron notifies me of them. Occasionally I see updates to linux-image-[something] packages, but don’t bother to reboot the server. How bad is this in terms of vulnerability?
I've tried to understand the content of the Finished message of TLS. I'm using WireShark to capture the traffic between my browser and the internet. I noticed a "strangeness" when the chosen ciphersuite is AES_GCM. Being it a stream-cipher, it has no padding, so, if I got it right, the data being sent in the Finished m...
I've tried to understand the content of the Finished Message of TLS. I'm using wireshark to capture the traffic between my browser and the internet. I noticed a "stangeness" when the chosen ciphersuite is AES_GCM. Beign it a stream-cipher, it has no padding, so, if I got it right, the data being sent in the Finished Me...
Is it a security risk to myself that I am not logging out of Twitter, Facebook, StackExchange, and a majority of the sites which I am using? Is there a chance for someone to hijack my session or cause damage to any of my online accounts? For my situation, I am limiting all of the damage I can by running a VPN and tryin...
When it comes to technologies that directly affect information security, how do you determine when it is better to use an automatic option instead of a manual option, and vice versa? I already feel uncomfortable letting my browser remember my passwords and letting my OS install updates automatically.
I've been examining various things under LSA in the registry, and I came across this: http://www.itsecdb.com/oval/definition/oval/gov.nist.usgcb.windowsseven/def/20016/Network-security-Allow-LocalSystem-NULL-session-fallback.html What exactly is Null session fallback? When does it occur? What sort of risk would I be lo...
I have to do a presentation on developing an authentication plan for a financial services application used to manage an investment portfolio. I have to develop use scenarios for the 2 functions (depositing money to a fund and withdrawing from it). How would the use scenarios differ?
I generate oauth2 access and refresh tokens and store them in my database. I generate these tokens using UUID v4 and remove the dashes. I used to delete the tokens after they expire but now I store all of them because I thought of something that could happen. What if an attacker stored locally all of the access tokens ...
Is it secure to create a self signed certificate when just clients will send sensitive information to the server? After checking out the topic "What are the risks of self signing a certificate for SSL" it seems so, or am I wrong?
I had an Ubuntu VM running and I was using Firefox in it to look at tutorials; then my antivirus detected an attempt to forcefully install a fake Java Upgrader. From what I know about the VirtualBox NAT option for the network adapter... in fact, all the internet accessing options, is that they use the network capabili...
I want to implement a search over encrypted data. I found a blogpost, which explains 3 methods. One method is to use deterministic encryption, which I'm trying to implement. But my use case is a little bit different. My application provides end-to-end-encrytpion, so that I (as the service provider) cannot read user dat...
Please note: A majority of this question is based on the facts that a lot of my members and I are one step from being tin-foil hats. If you continue to read and answer this question, please remember this. I help run a community forums where we talk about technology news, progress being made, and overall how to try to ...
I'm trying to make a file uploader using PrimeFaces, but it is vulnerable to scripts: If someone tries to upload a file (e.g. a résumé) that includes JavaScript, this could get executed once the file upload is completed. Are there efficient ways to detect JavaScript code? I know parsing the file can detect the code, bu...
I am currently proud user of Feitan ePass2003 with OpenSC, however it is not 100% reliable on Windows, on Linux it's just perfect. Anyway I started to looking and I have two candidates eToken Pro 64K by SafeNet and AESKey by Athena, they are both supported by OpenSC, but I could not find any reseller in Central Europe,...
In a modern OS I think that: the .text section where binary assembled CPU instructions are stored cannot be modified the .data/.bss section is marked as no-execute so that the information there will only be treated as data, will never be executed by the CPU So how is it possible for an exploit containing a payload of...
I am having problems with Hydra and a JSON payload. The login request (intercepted with Fiddler), is the following: POST http://architectureservice.test.com/api/v1/login HTTP/1.1 Host: architectureservice.test.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:30.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/30.0 Accept: application/...
My requirements are: Requirement 1: Share public key to java server. Steps: Generate public-private keys in iOS app. Store the generated keys in keychain. Send generated public key to java server. Java server shall be able to store shared public key in database. Requirement 2: Store public key sent by java server. St...
I understand that an IDS/IPS working on layer 2 has more insight into what is going on. But considering IDS/IPS evasions, why is a layer 2 device preferable as compared to a layer 3 device that is still investigating on the same layer where the attacks are occuring ? Thanks in advance, ken
I don't want it to just check the extension of the file as these can easily be forged even MIME types can be forged using tools like TamperData. So is there a better way to check file types in PHP ?
Is there some sort of a (free) SSH tunneling suite like the one on the Pwnie Express' Pwn Plug (R2)? It has SSH over HTTP, DNS, ICMP, and other covert tunneling options and uses BackTrack 5 as a SSH revceiver. I would like the be able to test what kind of tunneling a network is vulnerable for on a Raspberry Pi instead ...
I recently responded to an incident of supposed malware infection. The symptoms were simply, "My computer freezes at random times." The response ended with replacement of the physical hard drive and re-imaging the machine. Later, I forensically imaged the 'broken' hard drive and have ran several malware detection scan...
[Sun May 11 12:24:46 2014] [error] [client private ip] [X_FORWARDED_FOR 27.159.207.165] Path not found: /contact_us_public.php/trackback/, referer: http://www.mydomain.net/contact_us_public.php Does anyone know what this might mean, or what kind of attack is being attempted? I noticed since friday (day before last) th...
I was guessing what could happen when all IPv4 be changed to IPv6 , like pen-testing tools and network configuration for common users. Will all the IPv4 be automatically translated to a IPv6 new one ? Or the user need to manually input the new version ? Won't this be a big trouble somewhere? What about tools that are ...
In one of my controllers I have this method: def method_name if current_user @model = Model.find(params[:id]) if @model.destroy flash.alert = 'Model deleted successfully' redirect_to models_path end end end I check if there is a current_user assigned by devise before givin...
What are the main vulnerabilities of TLS v1.1? Actually, no RFC describes v1.1 vulnerabilities, neither what pushed them to change to the new protocol 1.2 except the description given in section 1.2 of RFC 5246. Please note that I do not mean implementation vulnerabilities, I am only looking for issues with the protoco...
I'm using a standard user account and then run whatever as administrator so that I type in administrator password... I wonder if potentially undetected malicious software such as a trojan is able to log my administrator account password and use the logged password to gain privilege over the system? i.e. to setup a back...
If using one standard user account (for daily task) and one administrator account, then while in standard you can download some virus or whatever and put that into public folder. of course, assuming the malware is not detected. Then when admin log's in to it's administrator account, there is a posibility that admin wil...
I would like to use an asymmetric rather than symmetric signature for authorization, since I don't want a compromised service being able to forge authorization tokens (obviously). An authorization token is generated by an authentication server for a specific set of services, and returned to the client, always transpor...
I've read and seen articles on backdoors in the processors or at least the idea of that would render software based encryption worthless. I do know that routers and lots of the newer devices all have backdoors in them which allowed china to crack several major businesses like google ect... Would older hardware be more ...
I am actually working on a scolar presentation about Careto malware. I was really impressed by the time it took to discover it (at least 6 years, according to some compilation stamps), so to improve my presentation I am looking for statistics about the average time before a malware gets detected (i.e. the time between ...
I am trying to do some research on SSL certificates, and I've come across a number of reseller sites such as GoGetSSL, which offer certificates at much lower prices than what you would pay if you bought them directly from the certificate authority. I understand resellers buy certificates in bulk which allows them to p...
I know there's little reason to still use ENCRYPT() nowadays, what with bcrypt being almost ubiquitous and MySQL providing better hashes such as SHA1. But while dabbling with ENCRYPT() on MySQL 5.6.12 (OpenSuSE 13.1, x64), I noticed an anomaly with its output that I at first attributed to the entropy pool being deplete...
Today I got a warning from Microsoft saying that there was unusual activity on my account. Diving deeper I saw that there was a successful sign in from a Google owned IP address (according to ARIN). However, I use Two-Factor Authentication (Both on my Microsoft and Google account) and they were stopped at the token c...
Jetblue's password requirements specify that, among other stringent requirements: Cannot contain a Q or Z I can't fathom a logical reason for this, unless it were say, extremely common for the left side of keyboards to break, but then you wouldn't allow 'A' either :) What would be the reason for this security require...
Today I received a very suspicious email on my gmail account. When I analyzed the content of the message, this is what essentially made up the message. <center> <a alt="" src="sdfqdfsdfdfsdfsdfsfdfs" id="wzjlcoizurxciacwhxco" class="fsgfgsdfgdgdfgfdgdfgfgsdf" href="" href=" /1842260810 /vyx587xse262622a59f113...
My questions is related with static code analysis approach used by Veracode vs Fortify/AppScan. Veracode – Finds security flaws in application binaries and bytecode without requiring source Fortify/AppScan - Analyzes actual source code to identify security vulnerabilities. A) Is there an advantage/disadvantage of con...
Can I brute-force a password hash even if I don't know the underlying algorithm? For example if I get hold of a database with password hashes and the used hash algorithm is unknown, like a random mix of SHA/MD5/Bcrypt/custom/Salt/Pepper. Will a password cracking expert still be able to brute force the password hashes...
I am used to finding some random probing from script bots in my apache log files, but today I found some strange entries: 65.55.24.247 - - [25/Apr/2014:01:52:36 +0000] "GET /calendar/caldetail/id/281/num/1328144400 HTTP/1.1" 404 439 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)" 66.220.1...
Context I'm developping my own OCSP responder which signed its ocsp responses with its own self signed certificate caOcspBC.crt. You can find it here : https://github.com/Dinou/ocspResponder I want to get the revocation status from a certificate RC.crt issued from a CA certificate CA.crt thanks to openssl. All my cer...
There is a security hole CVE-2014-019 in the Linux kernel since 2.6.31-rc3 which allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and system crash) or gain privileges How serious would this be on my server where I allowed only some trusted friends full SSH access? As far as I understand, an attac...
I am doing a SQLi-Quiz. Below is the orignal statement. insert into users(name,pass) values('bob', [injection point here]) The statement is heavily filterd because the website which supplys the quiz doesn't want someone breaks the whole database. I can't find any way to get this one done so I search a hint on the foru...
I have been logging incoming connections with iptables for a while and I have been observing the following popping up periodically: 11:45:10 my.com kernel: IPTABLES: SRC=220.255.XX.XXY DST=192.168.1.2 LEN=40 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=59 ID=50687 PROTO=TCP SPT=443 DPT=54102 SEQ=21105 ACK=0 WINDOW=0 RES=0x00 RST URGP=0 11:4...
I have just come out of hospital and have in the region of 30 e-mails from gmail over the past few days 'linking' a gmail account to my (hotmail) email address. I have not done this once never mind 30 times! the supposed gmail accounts are made up of random letters and numbers eg vvcxzzx.comvcxzdfgh.com@gmail.com How ...
As an exercise for class, I'm creating a class that manages user sessions. The session details are stored in a database and also there is a $_SESSION[user_id] variable to carry in between pages. The idea is that it would be hard for an attacker to steal the cookie AND the ip address AND the user agent AND to keep the s...
I would like to just have a single .pdf document that has all of my passwords and sensitive info included, but have it password protected so that I could store it in Dropbox and sync it to multiple computers/phones/etc. If I use the 256bit AES encryption with the latest version of acrobat, is this just as safe as passw...
A few years ago we had that awesome Linux distribution called Damn Vulnerable Linux. But unfortunately it looks like the project is dead. So my question is are there other Linux distributions which are meant to be hacked (explicit in the view of exploit development). Also welcome would be applications on the Windows p...
Lets first assume some things: There exists an Adversary There exists a known Group of Users of a certain System. The User can communicate to the System through a small set of (to user and adversary) well-known Servers. The Adversary wants to know if a certain User communicated with the System The Adversary has a lot ...
I was reading through the IETF's Public Key Pinning Extension for HTTP (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-websec-key-pinning-12). The acknowledgements section has the following: Thanks to Trevor Perrin for suggesting a mechanism to affirmatively break Pins Unfortunately, the link is broken in informativ...
My home network Edimax AR-7084gB ADSL modem/router with firmware verison 2.9.5.0(RUE0.C2A)3.5.18.0 was exploited from WAN few days ago. The attacker changed DNS server settings - primary server to 192.99.14.108 and secondary to 8.8.8.8. The first DNS server served a trojan virus (detected as Crypt3.NRM by AVG) via a fa...
I'm requesting some help with a particular breach of access that we've experienced in our environment. the attacker is an internal employee who has made a few notes about the environment that I simply do not understand clearly. here are a few things he has claimed that I would like a little clarification on if someone...
Are there known exploits where a query of the form: select foo from bar where id = 6 can be turned into: select * from select foo from bar where id = random stuff It's clear that a badly formed app could easily allow injection against the point in the query where the literal 6 is. I have a case in hand where that was...
I'm working on an implementation of Klein's wep attack. For that, I've set up a router with wep encryption and collected 50,000 unique IVs from it. I tried only calculating K[0], meaning - the first byte of the key. I run on all my IVs and calculated the equation as the paper says while keeping a record of the number o...
No matter we are talking about Information Security, or cyber security or IT security... I always hear first about "the moth" being the first security threat. But I don't believe it is when talking about cyber security. I believe that the infamous MARK II moth is a computer related incident, and it is even a security ...
Lately (and not so lately), you can hear a lot about cyber security. It is really hard to find an official description about this matter so, let's take the ISO 27032 description: "Cybersecurity” or “Cyberspace security”, defined as the “preservation of confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in ...
Can a website see my IMEI number? I have been banned from a website for multiple accounts, although I always cleared cookies, disconnected and reconnected from "the cloud" which gives me a different IP address every time. How do they know?
I am just trying to get the basics of PKI and TLS and understand how it works. I came across Mozillas post about pkix where they mention that the new library allows graph processing and hence it handles cross-signed certificates, which is difficult via prior libraries since they use trees. This also removes the require...
Say I buy a prepaid sim-card with 3g data and put it in a used 3g modem (dongle) or a used smartphone and then create a Hotspot. How would it technically be traced back to me? The ISP should see a Mac/IMEI of a device that isnt linked to me, and the IP is linked to an anonymous SIM-card. Am I missing something here?
I'm working at a company who is currently working to secure their mobile app (iOS native) by adding check points to security sensitive screens on the device (data is stored in the iOS keychain). User will be prompted to re-enter their password upon viewing these screens that present this data. One our requirements from...
There is a question bugging me a after reading on network security. Theoretical situation: there is a packet-filtering firewall, which only accepts tcp/ip communication with destination port 22 on a protected private network. (The port on a machine outside this protected network is not specified in the firewall's rules...
Have a few thoughts on the topic, but the general gist is if a user inputs a new password, is it possible to have a high confidence that a password is not being reused elsewhere? By elsewhere, I mean on any systems not controlled by you.
Scenario: Alice prepares an URL link to Bob's web service (e.g., http://www.bob.com/sensitiveData/123?login=mallory). Alice gives the URL link to Mallory. Mallory follows the link to trigger an action in Bob's system. Alice's link is intended for Mallory. Note that Mallory is authenticated by Alice but not by Bob. Bo...
Wondering if there's any research behind the most common password reset cycle I've seen of 90-days, and if there's any research that gives any insight into how to optimize password resets to reduce password reuse.
Looking for research on the count and complexity of passwords that an average user is actively using. Note: Also, just to be clear, by research, this is not a request for you to respond with an answer entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. Likely the best answer would be base...
I'm trying to find all vulnerabilities in my given system. Assume a malicious user has the executable (.exe file) of my .NET application (C#), and a malicious DLL he or she created. Can the DLL be injected into my executable to run code contained in the DLL?
I've been developing web apps for quite some time now. While making websites, the "remember me" feature is one of the most trivial (read as must-have-for-clients) feature to be implemented. Until today, I was just using the default implementations provided by the ASP.NET authentication system - which I must say, is pre...
I'm studying the SSL/TLS protocol, more specifically its handshake. I know that initially, a client sends a Client Hello message to the server which includes the TLS version supported by the client. I have an application that uses HTTPS connections, implemented with WinHTTP in the client and Apache Java in the server. ...
If a certificate has a limited duration of, say 5 years, but it gets somehow compromised after 2 years, waiting the 3 remaining years for it to get invalid is not a real solution to the breach problem. (3 years is eternity in IT, I guess) Also, if the encryption method gets cracked (à la WEP), you also need to update e...
I'm trying to understand what are the risks derived from unprotected communications within the same device, by the use of the loopback interface. I've verified it is possible to capture packets, with administrative privileges, on both Linux and Windows systems, by using Wireshark or RawCap/SocketSniffer tools. Would it...
I'm seeing a lot of Content Security Policy (CSP) reports raised because of client-side malware. Many have "blocked-uri" entries like randomstring.cloudfront.net, something.akamaihd.net and so on. I would like to detect CSP reports caused by malware, so I can ignore them. Ignoring *.cloudfront.net doesn't seem right, i...
I have been reading about oauth and 'how to create apis'. In oauth2, there is what they call the authentication dance where the client will be requesting a request token using a consumer key and consumer secret. This request token will be used to acquire an access token. The expiring access tokens will be used for req...
I've recently been introduced to Kali Linux's webkiller tool, located in the websploit category. It works on the concept of Tcpkill. I don't understand how the DoS attack with Tcpkill works. Can someone explain it in detail?
I am testing a website, basically mapping the site using burpsuite. But there is one link(https) that I can not process while the proxy on firefox is enabled. It asks me for certificates and when I ensure that I understand the risks and click on "add exception" the "confirm exception" icon doesnt seem to work,it just s...
I have the potential for a printer to be connected through USB and through a network cable at the same time. The USB would be connected directly to a computer which is part of a private network. According to this: Attacking an office printer? Printers can definitely be used as an attack vector. If the networks that...
Can SSL encrypt the relative path I would like to visit in a site? If I would like to make a login system with GET instead of POST, can SSL encrypt the part "?username=user1&password=pass1".
We are next to launch an iOS app in App Store which is asking us for a privacy policy url as part of process when this app is being uploaded to app store. We and most of our users are outside USA and our local privacy information regulations might not be equivalent to USA.One of the questions of our team is that under ...