KaiOS is a mobile operating system, forked from the discontinued Firefox OS, in which all the mobile applications running on a KaiOS-based mobile device are built using web technologies, such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. In this independent research project, we demonstrate that six of the pre-installed mobile applications are vulnerable to remote, and local, … Continue reading Whitepaper – Exploring the Security of KaiOS Mobile Applications
Category: Whitepaper
Cyber Security of New Space Paper
NCC Group's Transport Security Practice has co-authored with the Surrey Center for Cyber Security and the Surrey Space Center a new paper titled 'Cyber security in New Space'. It provides analysis of the threats, challenges and key technologies related to the satellite industry.
Research Report – Zephyr and MCUboot Security Assessment
Over the years, NCC Group has audited countless embedded devices for our customers. Through these security assessments, we have observed that IoT devices are typically built using a hodgepodge of chipset vendor board support packages (BSP), bootloaders, SDKs, and an established Real Time Operating System (RTOS) such as Mbed or FreeRTOS. However, we have recently … Continue reading Research Report – Zephyr and MCUboot Security Assessment
Whitepaper – Coinbugs: Enumerating Common Blockchain Implementation-Level Vulnerabilities
By Aleksandar Kircanski and Terence Tarvis A good amount of effort has been dedicated to surveying and systematizing Ethereum smart contract security bug classes. There is, however, a gap in literature when it comes to surveying implementation-level security bugs that commonly occur in basic PoW blockchain node implementations, discovered during the first decade of Bitcoin’s … Continue reading Whitepaper – Coinbugs: Enumerating Common Blockchain Implementation-Level Vulnerabilities
Whitepaper – Microcontroller Readback Protection: Bypasses and Defenses
By Sultan Qasim Khan Microcontrollers commonly include features to prevent the readout of sensitive information in internal storage. Such features are commonly referred to as readback protection or readout protection. This paper describes common readback protection implementation flaws, discusses techniques that can be used to defeat readback protection, and provides guidance to implement effective readback … Continue reading Whitepaper – Microcontroller Readback Protection: Bypasses and Defenses
Whitepaper – A Tour of Curve 25519 in Erlang
By Eric Schorn An introduction to elliptic curve cryptography theory alongside a practical implementation in Erlang. This whitepaper may be downloaded below. A Tour of Curve25519 in ErlangDownload
Whitepaper – XML Schema, DTD, and Entity Attacks: A Compendium of Known Techniques
by Timothy D. Morgan and Omar Al Ibrahim The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is an extremely pervasive technology used in countless software projects. A core feature of XML is the ability to define and validate document structure using schemas and document type definitions (DTDs). When used incorrectly, certain aspects of these document definition and validation … Continue reading Whitepaper – XML Schema, DTD, and Entity Attacks: A Compendium of Known Techniques
Whitepaper – A Heap of Trouble: Breaking the Linux Kernel SLOB Allocator
by Dan Rosenberg In this paper, we will systematically evaluate the implementation of the Linux kernel SLOB allocator to assess exploitability. We will present new techniques for attacking the SLOB allocator, whose exploitation has not been publicly described. These techniques will apply to exploitation scenarios that become progressively more constrained, starting with an arbitrary length, … Continue reading Whitepaper – A Heap of Trouble: Breaking the Linux Kernel SLOB Allocator
Whitepaper – Weaning the Web off of Session Cookies: Making Digest Authentication Viable
by Timothy D. Morgan In this paper, we compare the security weaknesses and usability limitations of both cookie-based session management and HTTP digest authentication; demonstrating how digest authentication is clearly the more secure system in practice. We propose several small changes in browser behavior and HTTP standards that will make HTTP authentication schemes, such as … Continue reading Whitepaper – Weaning the Web off of Session Cookies: Making Digest Authentication Viable
Whitepaper – HTTP Digest Integrity: Another look, in light of recent attacks
by Timothy D. Morgan Recent history has proven that web communications security is highly lacking in redundancy. That is, simple breaks in common protocols, such as SSL/TLS or the authentication mechanisms which support it, often lead to catastrophic gaps in security. Recent examples of this fragile architecture abound, and even when protocols and implementations themselves … Continue reading Whitepaper – HTTP Digest Integrity: Another look, in light of recent attacks