"A hack attack that can expose users to malware exploits has infected more than 1 million webpages, at least two of which belong to Apple. The SQL injection attacks bombard the websites of legitimate companies with database commands that attempt to add hidden links that lead to malware exploits. While most of...
New Site Addressing Python Security
For you python developers out there, Craig Younkins sent the following to The Web Security Mailing List (which I moderate) this morning. "I'd like to invite you to a new community - http://www.pythonsecurity.org/ - which is now the central hub for security in Python. We're writing articles on security topics and how...
A reminder as to why using random salts is a good idea
I came across a post on stackoverflow that I felt was worth mentioning. The person was wanting to hash user passwords and implement per user salting. A response by Dave Sherohman provided a good overview as to why using random salts (instead of just using the user's username) is a good idea....
Why publishing exploit code is *generally* a bad idea if you're paid to protect
Update2: Further proof that people are abusing this in a wide scale and likely wouldn't have had the exploit code not been released. Update: I've clarified a few points and added a few others. Recently Tavis Ormandy (a google employee) discovered a security issue in windows, and days after notifying Microsoft published...
A reminder that CSRF affects more than websites
Maksymilian Arciemowicz has published an advisory outlining how one can perform CSRF attacks against FTP services, in this case Sun Solaris 10 ftpd. An attacker could embed a payload such as the following to execute commands on ftpd. <img src="ftp://.....////SITE%20CHMOD%20777%20FILENAME";> The NetBSD team addressed this issue by failing on large commands. The...
Paper: Feasibility and Real-World Implications of Web BrowserHistory Detection
Artur Janc and Lukasz Olejnik have published a whitepaper outlining CSS history techniques along with results of what they found from real world users. From the whitepaper"Browser history detection through the Cascading Style Sheets visited pseudoclass has long been known to the academic security community and browser vendors, but has been largely...
Mozilla releases browser checker to see if you're running vulnerable plugins
Mozilla has released a tool that identifies which browser plugins you have installed, identifies if it is vulnerable, and provides you with links to get the updates. Very handy! Browser Plugin Check: https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/
Release of Strict Transport Security http module for ASP.NET.
Sacha Faust has published an IIS http module for the Strict Transport Security protocol. From his blog "I’ve been tackling the problem of users connecting to online services from untrusted network. At work we typically call this the “Startbucks” scenario where a user is connecting to a random wifi and accessing corporate...
DAVTest: Quickly Test & Exploit WebDAV Servers
Chris Sullo sent us the following news entry "DAVTest attempts to aid a penetration tester when facing WebDAV enabled services by quickly testing file type upload capability and features, as well as checking for code execution. It supports MOVE and MKCOL, authentication, and uploading of included shell files." Download: http://security.sunera.com/2010/04/davtest-quickly-test-exploit-webdav.html
Apache Compromised Again
It appears someone used a combination of XSS on an Apache domain, a url shortener, and an issue tracking system to ultimately lead to rooting of 2 core Apache machines used to host bugzilla, and the main shell server. This is a great breakdown of a real world incident that people rarely...
Tools: CMS Explorer Tool Released
Sullo writes in "CMS Explorer is designed to reveal the the specific modules, plugins, components and themes that various CMS driven web sites are running. It can also search OSVDB.org for vulnerabilities in found components, as well as "bootstrap" a security proxy by downloading potential file names from the component's code repository...
RSnake joins google
In an April 1st shocker Robert "RSnake" Hansen (known in appsec circles as the prince of XSS) has just posted an entry on his site about his new gig at Google. "People tend to think of me as a Google hater, but the truth is the only thing I've hated about Google...
Be careful of "scheme relative urls" when performing 3xx redirects
Former coworker Sacha Faust has published an entry on how the lack of handling relative urls when implementing URL redirection can lead to open redirector's. Article: http://blogs.msdn.com/sfaust/archive/2010/03/30/saferedirect.aspx
TJX Hacker Gets Pwned, 20 Years In Prison
Could the trend of claiming not to know any better while hacking due to asperger's be coming to an end? From Wired "Convicted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for leading a gang of cyberthieves who stole more than 90 million credit and debit card...
Secure Application Development on Facebook Platform
Facebook and isecpartners have teamed up to write an article on developing secure applications on the Facebook platform. "This document provides a basic outline/best practice for developing secure applications on the Facebook platform. Facebook applications are web, desktop, or mobile applications that make use of the Facebook API to integrate tightly with...
Random FireFox URL handling Behavior
About a year ago I discovered this by accident and hadn't seen it published anywhere so thought it was worth mentioning. If you enter the following into the firefox URL bar it will follow them to www.cnn.com. [http://www.cnn.com] [http://]www.cnn.com [http://www].cnn.com Etc... You can also substitute [] for {} or " and it...
Cryptography experts bicker with former NSA director at RSA panel
I recently attended RSA and had a chance to see the cryptography panel. Towards the end of the panel an amusing amount of bickering began between the former NSA technical director (Brian snow) and folks such as Whit Diffie (inventor of diffie hellman key exchange), and Adi Shamir (co founder of RSA...
Web Security Dojo v1.0 release
From the announcement "Web Security Dojo is a turnkey web application security lab with tools, targets, and training materials built into a Virtual Machine(VM). It is ideal for both self-instruction and training classes since everything is pre-configured and no external network connection is needed. All tools and targets are configured to use...
Watcher 1.3.0 passive Web-vulnerability testing tool released
"A new update to the Watcher passive vulnerability detection and security testing tool has been released. Watcher is an open source addon to the Fiddler Web proxy that aids developers, auditors, and penetration testers in finding Web-application security issues as well as hot-spots for deeper review." - Casabasecurity The full announcement can...
XSS, SQL Injection and Fuzzing Barcode Cheat Sheet
Someone has published an amusing cheat sheet that will allow you to fuzz barcode scanning systems for common input validation issues such as XSS and SQL Injection. They even provide an online barcode generator which allows you to create your own payloads. Not much else to say really :) Link: http://www.irongeek.com/xss-sql-injection-fuzzing-barcode-generator.php



