Preface: IPython offers an enhanced read-eval-print loop (REPL) environment particularly well adapted to scientific computing. In other words, IPython is a powerful interface to the Python language.
Background: IPython provides a rich toolkit to help you make the most out of using Python, with:
Powerful Python shells (terminal and Qt-based).
A web-based notebook with the same core features but support for code, text, mathematical expressions, inline plots and other rich media.
Support for interactive data visualization and use of GUI toolkits.
Flexible, embeddable interpreters to load into your own projects.
Easy to use, high performance tools for parallel computing.
Vulnerability details: IPython could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system, caused by improper permission assignment. By sending a specially-crafted request, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code from the current working directory.
Preface: Because humans have destroyed the environment. Therefore, natural disasters resemble God’s punishment. In the digital world, the situation is the same. The reason for the penalty is the design weakness of the software.
Background: Perhaps the younger generation has not experienced “Y2K” technical problems because they are still children. The millennium bug is about 22 years until today. I think many people have forgotten. The digital world disaster is similar to the Old Testament description of the earth flood, and God instructed to build an ark to save the species.
Fundamental design weakness: On a 32-bit Linux system, the maximum value that time_t can represent is 0x7ffffffff. When time_t takes the maximum value, it means that the system time is 2038-01-19 03:14:07, but when the clock keep going, time_t will overflow and become A negative value. At this time, the system time will start over and the operating system and upper-layer software will run incorrectly.
IoT current status 2021: The trend by today – 8-bit and 16-bit MCUs had been the hardware of choice for IoT devices, but 32-bit MCUs are now becoming increasingly popular, leading to many manufacturers using two different powered processes in devices. Therefore, your RTOS should be scalable in order to manage any future MCU upgrades.
Reports indicate that there will be 35.82 billion IoT devices installed worldwide by 2021 and 75.44 billion by 2025.
Remedy: In order to remedy this technical limitation. Software developer require to use GNU C Library 2.32 and Musl libc 1.2 to build user space for 64-bit time_t. Musl, a C standard library, is mainly used on operating systems based on the Linux kernel. The target is embedded systems and mobile devices. It is released under the MIT license. The author is Rich Felker. The purpose of developing this library is to write a clean, efficient, and standard-compliant C standard library.
Expectation: We pass a new challenge token to the younger generation, because they have grown up now. It’s your turn.
Preface: CISA is aware of a compromise of the Codecov software supply chain in which a malicious threat actor made unauthorized alterations of Codecov’s Bash Uploader script, beginning on January 31, 2021.
Background: A Supply Chain Attack Gone Undetected for 2 Months.Codecov has over 29,000 enterprise customers, including reputed names like Atlassian, Washington Post, GoDaddy, Royal Bank of Canada, and Procter & Gamble.
Vulnerability details: Regarding to this cyber security incident, Through vendor investigation, they are now have additional information concerning what environment variables may have been obtained without authorization and how they may have been used. The issue occurred due to an error in Codecov’s Docker image creation process that enabled the actors to extract sensitive credentials and modify the Bash Uploader script. Meanwhile it let the attacker exfiltrate sensitive information. For more details, please refer to link – https://about.codecov.io/security-update/
Preface: SAML 2.0 implementation for Service Providers based on etree and goxmldsig, a pure Go implementation of XML digital signatures.
Background: “nil” in Go that represents zero values for pointers, interfaces, channels, maps, slices and function types.
Vulnerability Details: A NULL pointer dereference occurs when the application dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid, but is NULL, typically causing a crash or exit.
Reference: When “Go” initializes the pointer, it assigns the value of pointer i to nil, but the value of i represents the address of *i. If nil, the system has not assigned an address to *i. So at this time, * i assignment will have problem occur.
Remedy: Official announcement not announce yet. See whether it can apply the similar syntax to do a short term remediation of this design weakness? The gosmal2 package has encountered the similar technical matter (nil point dereference) on Aug 14, 2019 . For more details, please refer to diagram.
Preface: Apple paid $75,000 to the hacker for reporting the camera hijacking bugs. As said, bug is never ending. Perhaps next round will be yours.
Background: If you let your friend access your phone for 5–7 minutes, they could have downloaded spyware. Perhaps this action only for joking. As a matter of fact, hacker can implant malicious code into a web page to conduct the similar function. Most recently, Apple paid $75,000 to the hacker for reporting the camera hijacking bugs.
Observation: Referring to the attached picture, a simple html file can easily trigger the iphone camera function. Because the control effect of apple is very good. Therefore, it will trigger the control and then let you know. In fact, a hacker hijacked your iPhone camera through a software application or website. However, the iPhone owner can know which application can access your camera. Therefore, it is recommended to check the phone settings in a timely manner. Apple paid $75,000 to the hacker for reporting the camera hijacking bugs. As said, bug is never ending. Perhaps next round will be yours.
Chrome and Safari on iOS can access your lens without special markup and can perform both AJAX POST and synchronous form POST operations just like a desktop browser. So, please be careful to use your phone doing web browsing.
Preface: Do you have doubt for the road map of application penetration test? I believe that it is a logical step. Sometimes, you will concerning the limit time windows for remediation for different of vulnerability result. The penetration tester will narrow down the work scope especially the high risk rating vulnerability item. Since this is the highest priority job which requires customer to do the remedy.
How do you deal with application vulnerabilities? I also encountered this error because the high-risk level vulnerability made me nervous. Believe it or not, whether an application system can do a good vulnerability management sometimes depends on how hard the penetration tester analyzes the collected information. Below example can let you know my statement is true.
Get for POST (Risk: informational) – A request that was originally observed as a POST was also accepted a a GET. This issue does not represent a securit weakness into itself. However it may facilities simplification of other attacks. For example if the original is subject to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), then this finding may indicate that a simplified (GET based) XSS may also be possible.
Hey Guys, don’t be worry too much. But you should be careful when you do the application penetration test report next time. Be remember that ask your consultant once you got a question.
Preface: User Account Control (UAC) is a fundamental component of Microsoft’s overall security vision. UAC helps mitigate the impact of malware.
Synopsis: UAC Bypass Using eventvwr.exe was exploited by malware in 2017. Microsoft fixes Eventvwr.exe UAC Bypass Exploit in Windows 10 Creators Update. In Windows 10 Creators Update preview build 15007, Microsoft seems to have fixed the UAC bypass method involving eventvwr.exe. But the investigator still discovered similar of UAC bypass exploit technique was used by ransomware. In April of 2019, expert found a new type of ransomware named Sodinokibi. Their design utilize a module loaded into memory functions as a loader on phase 1. Meanwhile it will try to conduct UAC bypass if the processes privileges are insufficient.
The mechanism of UAC bypass technique not limit to use eventvwr.exe. The attacker can writes itself to the registry key (Software\Classes\mscfile\shell\open\command) and launches a new instance of explorer.exe to execute compmgmtlauncher.exe. Whereby it executes anything configured in the registry key Software\Classes\mscfile\shell\open\command\ then execute a script (see above diagram).
So, we have a basic concept that if we only following vendor announcement conduct a patch management will not be a efficient technique to protect your machine avoid ransomware attack.
Objectives and definitions for establishing light weapons: In order to avoid the detection of the anti-malware mechanism, quite a lot of notorious APT malware will be relied on design weakness of UAC. As a result, it can bypass the access control, meanwhile it can significant increase the successful rate of the phase one of cyber attack because it bring the difficulties to the defense mechanism. The fact is that only detect a simple script or code not easy to predict what the intention was. When Wannacry ransomware was born, perhaps the design goal is SMB vulnerability. But it lack of competence of the attack strategy. Whereby, when ransomware take the action to deleting the shadow copies of the system requires local administrator rights the User Account Control will prompt the user for allowing elevated privileges in order to execute the operation (see below diagram). So it alert the end user something will be happened when it click. Therefore the new generation of ransomware try to management this design weakness.
Ransomware author leverage UAC Bypass technique: A novel technique, Dridex User Account Control (UAC) bypass method characterized by its use of recdisc[.]exe, a Windows default recovery disc executable, and its loading of malicious code via impersonated SPP[.]dll. Perhaps you might say, this vulnerability has been fixed by Microsoft. But the market feedback is as follow:
Microsoft doesn’t consider UAC a security barrier, and thus they often don’t fix UAC bypasses. These bypasses are common and easy. The following figure shows another scenario of UAC bypass. Let’s open our eyes and see what happens in the evolving world of cybersecurity?
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Additional topic: I am wishing that the Coronavirus will be gone in next morning. Perhaps it was not possible but such punishment to man kind that has been enough!
Preface: Arbitrary File Upload but require regular user sign in. Perhaps it lose the access control!
Product description: NewsOne is a web based application and fully responsive news & magazine script. Anyone can start your own media/press website with just few clicks without any codding knowledge.
Vulnerability details: Auth as a regular user. Go to specify URL (see attached diagram) and upload any file you want via <input type=”file” name=”user_image”> field. From security point of view, An attacker can use this vulnerability to perform a variety of malicious activities, including defacement, disclosure, and malware infection.
Preface: Malware detection, SIEM and predictive technology enhance the detective and preventive control in cyber security world. However the hacker still have solutions to conduct infiltration thus compromise the system. Attacker exploit integer overflow do the evasion. From technical point of view. It is difficult to detect.
Historical records of cyber attack who exploit integer overflow vulnerability:
Observation: According to my observations, there are technical limitation on software engineering, most likely the cyber criminal keen to develop a technique sound like F117. That is invisible to radar (IDS) and infrared (SIEM). Perhaps online web application shall require user input function. Even though software developer introduce pull down menu function. However it is not able to lack of name and password input. So this is the objective we highlight today. Integer overflow technique exact can provides silent attack. As a result it form a bridge let attacker execute the 2nd phase of attack. For instance in C environment, The range of unsigned char is (0 – 255). So if the input password length is 260, it will cause integer overflow . So passwd_len actually has a length of 4, so you can bypass the length limit. If buf parameter has design limitation, stuffed 260 length of data into it, it will cause stack overflow.
Preface: Ghidra is one such well-known software reverse engineering toolkit that the NSA agency has been using for a long time.
Synopsis: He ensured the audience that there’s no backdoor in Ghidra, said Rob Joyce, the cybersecurity adviser to the NSA director.
About installation: Quick and simple way
Prerequisite: Since “Ghidra” relies on JDK 11+ and therefore your Linux OS might require to update. For example: I am using Fedora system. In order to avoid any technical problem occurs during installation. My Fedora upgrade to Fedora 28.
1. Before kick start do the installation, please confirm your current OS whether compatibility with JDK 11+.
2. If you don’t have any technical concerns about item 1, you can download the software by going to the url below.
