This post is about some new (or sort of new) elliptic curves for use in cryptographic protocols. They were made public in mid-December 2020, on a dedicated Web site: https://doubleodd.group/There is also a complete whitepaper, full of mathematical demonstrations, and several implementations. Oh noes, more curves! Will this never end? It is true that there … Continue reading Double-odd Elliptic Curves
Category: Research
Domestic IoT Nightmares: Smart Doorbells
Preface Half way through 2020, UK independent consumer champion Which? magazine reached out to us and asked if we could assist investigating the security of a series of domestic IoT devices and to perform a vulnerability assessment of each device. The assessments included smart plugs and smart/connected doorbells. We also worked on a number of … Continue reading Domestic IoT Nightmares: Smart Doorbells
Helping Engineering Teams Tackle Security Debt in Embedded Systems: U-Boot Configuration Auditing Introduced in Depthcharge v0.2.0
Depthcharge v0.2.0 is now available on GitHub and PyPi. This release introduces new “configuration checker” functionality and includes some major updates intended to improve usability. A tl;dr summary can be found in the CHANGELOG file. This blog post dives a bit more into the motivations for the changes, envisioned use-cases, and how this update fits … Continue reading Helping Engineering Teams Tackle Security Debt in Embedded Systems: U-Boot Configuration Auditing Introduced in Depthcharge v0.2.0
An Adventure in Contingency Debugging: Ruby IO#read/IO#write Considered Harmful
Recently, I was working on weaponizing a particular bug with a colleague. For reasons unfathomable to me, we've been implementing our exploit in Ruby. As part of this, we wrote a rinky-dink port scanner that attempts to find instances of the service on a given host because it has a propensity to pick random ports … Continue reading An Adventure in Contingency Debugging: Ruby IO#read/IO#write Considered Harmful
ABSTRACT SHIMMER (CVE-2020-15257): Host Networking is root-Equivalent, Again
This post is a technical discussion of the underlying vulnerability of CVE-2020-15257, and how it can be exploited. Our technical advisory on this issue is available here, but this post goes much further into the process that led to finding the issue, the practicalities of exploiting the vulnerability itself, various complications around fixing the issue, … Continue reading ABSTRACT SHIMMER (CVE-2020-15257): Host Networking is root-Equivalent, Again
Tool Release – HTTPSignatures: A Burp Suite Extension Implementing HTTP Signatures
HTTPSignatures is a PortSwigger Burp Suite extension that implements the Signing HTTP Messages draft-ietf-httpbis-message-signatures-01 specification draft document. What motivated my creation in this tool was the lack of an easy way to test applications and services using HTTP Signatures. This extension allows Burp Suite users to seamlessly test applications that require HTTP Signatures. What are … Continue reading Tool Release – HTTPSignatures: A Burp Suite Extension Implementing HTTP Signatures
ICS/OT Security & the evolution of the Purdue Model: Integrating Industrial and Business Networks
In this recording of a presentation by NCC Group's Damon Small at Hou.Sec.Con in October 2020, he outlines the evolution of the Purdue Reference Model in ICS/OT security, which draws the security boundaries between users, ICS networks, and business networks, and shows the dramatic ways in which these boundaries have blurred in recent years, necessitating … Continue reading ICS/OT Security & the evolution of the Purdue Model: Integrating Industrial and Business Networks
Technical Advisory: containerd – containerd-shim API Exposed to Host Network Containers (CVE-2020-15257)
Vendor: containerd Project Vendor URL: https://containerd.io/ Versions affected: 1.3.x, 1.2.x, 1.4.x, others likely Systems Affected: Linux Author: Jeff Dileo CVE Identifier: CVE-2020-15257 Advisory URL: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/security/advisories/GHSA-36xw-fx78-c5r4 Risk: High (full root container escape for a common container configuration) Summary containerd is a container runtime underpinning Docker and common Kubernetes configurations. It handles abstractions related to containerization and … Continue reading Technical Advisory: containerd – containerd-shim API Exposed to Host Network Containers (CVE-2020-15257)
Conference Talks – December 2020
Editor's note: Updated December 14th 2020 to include CCC presentation and December 16th 2020 to include No cON Name presentation. This month, members of NCC Group will be presenting their work at the following conferences: Jon Szymaniak, "Guiding Engineering Teams Toward a More Secure Usage of U-Boot," to be presented at the Open Source Firmware … Continue reading Conference Talks – December 2020
TA505: A Brief History Of Their Time
Threat Intel Analyst: Antonis Terefos (@Tera0017)Data Scientist: Anne Postma (@A_Postma) 1. Introduction TA505 is a sophisticated and innovative threat actor, with plenty of cybercrime experience, that engages in targeted attacks across multiple sectors and geographies for financial gain. Over time, TA505 evolved from a lesser partner to a mature, self-subsisting and versatile crime operation with … Continue reading TA505: A Brief History Of Their Time