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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Security’ Category

This two-year-old X.org give-me-root hole is so trivial to exploit, you can fit it in a single tweet • The Register

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/02

If you run X.org, then patch now because of [WayBack] This two-year-old X.org give-me-root hole is so trivial to exploit, you can fit it in a single tweet • The Register

Overwrite arbitrary files? Load arbitrary code? As setuid root? Sure, why not!

This one got introduced in 2016, which is a lot more recent than an issue discovered in 2014 that was “ancient”: [WayBack] ‘Critical’ security bugs dating back to 1987 found in X Window • The Register:

27-year-old flaw and others slain in open-source patch batch

Via eXploit X: Give Me Root” – Computerphile

–jeroen

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Posted in History, Power User, Security | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – yandex/gixy: Nginx configuration static analyzer

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/26

[WayBack] GitHub – yandex/gixy: Nginx configuration static analyzer

Gixy is a tool to analyze Nginx configuration. The main goal of Gixy is to prevent security misconfiguration and automate flaw detection.

Right now Gixy can find:

You can find things that Gixy is learning to detect at Issues labeled with “new plugin”

This helps you prevent an nginx configuration issue that can server too many static content by using ../ in the web request which got a lot of attention last week, but was in fact already found during 2016 HCTF by Aklis, and presented by Orange Tsai (twitter/github/blog) various times in 2018, including [WayBack] hack.lu 2018.

.

Related:

–jeroen

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Posted in *nix, DevOps, nginx, Power User, Security | Leave a Comment »

Doctors disabled wireless in Dick Cheney’s pacemaker to thwart hacking – Naked Security

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/22

Medical devices are still vulnerable, five years after this became public:

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney’s doctors disabled his pacemaker’s wireless capabilities to thwart possible assassination attempts, he said in an interview with CBS’s ̶…

[WayBackDoctors disabled wireless in Dick Cheney’s pacemaker to thwart hacking – Naked Security

I knew they were, but never realised Dick Cheney had a modified one implanted.

Some people are more equal to others…

via: the below video “Freedom In My Heart And Everywhere” from the linux.conf.au 2012 Keynote by Karen Sandler.

–jeroen

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Posted in Development, Open Source, Power User, Security, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Some links on encrypting configuration files or sections

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/18

All encryption comes down to a combination of key management and tooling.

With more and more communication projects going on, encryption of the secrets (passwords, API keys, etc) in configuration files, especially the ones that might end up in (sometimes public) repositories will need my attention some day.

My gut feeling is that an asymmetric solution might work best for these kinds of problems.

Here are some links:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Encryption, Security, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Do change your underwear often, but not your passwords. Keep both of your desk and do not share them with anyone.

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/09/18

Maastricht University got 2 out of 3: [WayBack] https://twitter.com/ml2mst/status/1030626908629811200 – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+

–jeroen

via [WayBack] Marti van Lin 🇳🇱 🇮🇱 on Twitter : “Some useful advice from @MaastrichtU #Security #passwords #computerintelligence 😂😂😂 cc: @nixcraft… “

https://twitter.com/ml2mst/status/1030626908629811200

 

Posted in Power User, Security | Leave a Comment »

Some interesting presentations by Arjen Kamphuis

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/09/17

The missing of [WayBackArjen Kamphuis (@ArjenKamphuis) | Twitter, made me revisit some of his past videos. In addition, I made the list quite a bit longer, as I was not aware he made so many presentations.

Many, but not all, of these videos are listed no YouTube video channel of Arjen Kamphuis.

Be sure to read the book Information Security for Journalists – Gendo he co-authored with Silkie Carlo.

–jeroen

 

Posted in Power User, Security | Leave a Comment »

Privacy Badger was blocking fsdn.com CDN domains

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/09/14

Not sure why Privacy Badger blocked both fsdn.com and a.fsdn.com (if someone knows how to find that out: please let me know), but these are CDN domains are used by Slashdot and sf.net, so I have put a.fsdn.com from red to yellow (no cookies).

I have not unblocked s.fsdn.com, which redirects to sourceforge.net over TLS.

Related:

–jeroen

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Posted in Internet, Power User, Security | Leave a Comment »

https://altd.embarcadero.com/ TLS certificate does not match domain name

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/09/07

One of the domains not yet monitored at embarcaderomonitoring.wiert.me, was the altd download server for ISOs and installers on http and https level. Ultimately you want https, as most of these are about installers, so you do not want any man-in-the-middle to fiddle with them.

TLS on altd fails

Upitmerobot is not yet smart enough to check validity of TLS certificates on https connections.

Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, wget, curl and ssllabs however are.

altd hides as much from itself as possible

Uptimerobot did not like monitoring the plain http://altd.embarcadero.com/ and https://altd.embarcadero.com/ URLs, because the altd is not browsable, so it tries to hide most of its structure from access. This means they both return an odd response:

Those responses are actually 404 errors (note the - minus sign after curl --trace-ascii: it sends the trace to stdout):

$ wget http://altd.embarcadero.com/
--2018-09-05 10:44:23-- http://altd.embarcadero.com/
Resolving altd.embarcadero.com (altd.embarcadero.com)... 88.221.144.40, 88.221.144.10
Connecting to altd.embarcadero.com (altd.embarcadero.com)|88.221.144.40|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2018-09-05 10:44:23 ERROR 404: Not Found.

$ curl --verbose http://altd.embarcadero.com/
*   Trying 88.221.144.40...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to altd.embarcadero.com (88.221.144.40) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: altd.embarcadero.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.54.0
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
< Server: Apache
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
< Content-Length: 16
< Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2018 08:45:57 GMT
< Connection: keep-alive
< 
* Connection #0 to host altd.embarcadero.com left intact
File not found."

$ curl --trace-ascii - http://altd.embarcadero.com/
== Info:   Trying 88.221.144.40...
== Info: TCP_NODELAY set
== Info: Connected to altd.embarcadero.com (88.221.144.40) port 80 (#0)
=> Send header, 84 bytes (0x54)
0000: GET / HTTP/1.1
0010: Host: altd.embarcadero.com
002c: User-Agent: curl/7.54.0
0045: Accept: */*
0052: 
<= Recv header, 24 bytes (0x18)
0000: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
<= Recv header, 16 bytes (0x10)
0000: Server: Apache
<= Recv header, 45 bytes (0x2d)
0000: Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
<= Recv header, 20 bytes (0x14)
0000: Content-Length: 16
<= Recv header, 37 bytes (0x25)
0000: Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2018 08:47:19 GMT
<= Recv header, 24 bytes (0x18)
0000: Connection: keep-alive
<= Recv header, 2 bytes (0x2)
0000: 
<= Recv data, 16 bytes (0x10)
0000: File not found."
File not found."== Info: Connection #0 to host altd.embarcadero.com left intact

This is also the reason that WayBack does not want to archive that link, but it can be archived at [Archive.ishttps://altd.embarcadero.com/.

Luckily, a Google search for site:altd.embarcadero.com revealed there is a non-installer file short enough (~72 kibibytes) for Uptime robot to check, so it now verifies it can access these:

–jeroen

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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, cURL, Encryption, HTTPS/TLS security, Monitoring, Power User, Security, Uptimerobot, wget | Leave a Comment »

Nice thread starting on the current state of CAs promoting OV/EV instead of doing innovation, with many comments on how to properly use LetsEncrypt

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/08/24

[Archive.isThread by @sleevi_: “It’s a real shame that CAs have gotten so high off their own supply, that they’ve become blind to the real problems they cause by p… – Kristian Köhntopp – Google+

On CAs: [Archive.is] Thread by @sleevi_: “It’s a real shame that CAs have gotten so high off their own supply, that they’ve become blind to the real problems they cause by promoting OV/EV. It’s almost as if they believe that 1988 had all the solutions, and we’ve been declining since then. Example: Let’s say we accept that organizational identity is a valuable component. Coupling it to TLS is terrible, because it encourages all the bad practices we see – such as making it hard to obtain or automate certificates, discouraging key rotation, extending cert lifetime […]”

–jeroen

Twitter thread:

https://twitter.com/sleevi_/status/1012321195562237952

 

Posted in Encryption, Let's Encrypt (letsencrypt/certbot), Power User, Security | Leave a Comment »

Hack The Box :: Penetration Testing Labs

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/08/13

Cool playground:

An online platform to test and advance your skills in penetration testing and cyber security.

Source: Hack The Box :: Penetration Testing Labs

Via [WayBack] hackthebox – Penetration testing labs This is an amazing platform – super addictive! Hack The Box is an online platform al… – Jürgen Christoffel – Google+

–jeroen

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, Security | Leave a Comment »