Author Archives: securityresearch

Pimp my Chrome

You might be wondering about the title. Let me tell that you shall have your answer by the end of this story.

Hacking has been considered as a mysterious act of 0s and 1s that can either make you or destroy you. Along these lines, things have been simplified to a large extent after the growth of Y2K syndrome and web technologies. This is an effort to simplify certain things that can help you in your pen-testing cycle.

The Google Chrome has a lion’s share in the worldwide usage statistics by W3Schools. Close to half the world’s internet population depends on Google Chrome for browsing the World Wide Web.

Read the full story on InfosecInstitute Resources!

Cheers

3psi!

Threat Modeling – Finding defects early in the cycle

Finding a proven pattern to find defects early in your cycle saves not just money but also the time required to patch those defects. Threat modeling is a tested and proven method to meet this objective. This procedure evaluates the vulnerabilities that can potentially exist in a target under observation. The vulnerabilities may or may not exist, but assuming that they do and then proceeding with the Software development Life Cycle is a pro-active way of securing your applications.

Prioritizing the area that needs more focus in order to reduce the attack surface is the primary aim of this model. This assessment is done as an iterative process which comes in to picture when new modules are added in to the application. The end result of this assessment is the security profile of that particular application under observation.

In this article, I shall explain about a famous security engineering pattern called the STRIDE model. The acronym STRIDE stands for:

Spoofing
Tampering
Repudiation
Information Disclosure
Denial of Service attacks
Elevation of privilege

Read it in full at InfosecInstitute.

Regards

3psil0nlambda

Whats your Identity??

Identity management as a platform is an emerging branch of Information security. Top vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle have taken serious plunges into the Identity management arena. In this article, we shall see what it takes to implement an Identity management solution. Information security comprises various individual components that need to go hand in hand. One of the most important components is Identity management. Be it an intrusion prevention system, site advisors, or anti-malware solutions, each has one common requirement, the identity of the user. Identity management comprises various smaller components, such as LDAP authentication, active directory authentication, authentication chain mechanisms, one-time password transactions, Kerberos authentication, and integrated Windows authentication. A successful Identity management solution uses all these flavors seamlessly.

Read the full article at InfosecInstitute Resources.

Cheers

3ps!l0nLaMbDa

A prototype model for web application fingerprinting: w3 scrape

Web application fingerprinting is one of the most important aspects of the information gathering phase of ethical hacking. This allows us to narrow down the criteria instead of playing around with a large pool of possibilities. Fingerprinting simply means identification of objects using a certain methodology. Web application fingerprinting, specifically, is meant for identifying applications running on the HTTP server.

If you’re wondering what can be unearthed by web application fingerprinting…….. Continue Reading

Cheers!

3psil0nLaMbDa

Quick and Dirty Burpsuite Tutorial

Hi all,

In this article, we are going to see another powerful framework that is used widely in pen-testing. Burp suite is an integration of various tools put together to work in an effective manner to help the pen-tester in the entire testing process, from the mapping phase to identifying vulnerabilities and exploiting the same.

For complete article visit: http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/burpsuite-tutorial/

-3ps!l0nlamda

Sneak Peak into Exploitation

It’s a well-known saying that gathering maximum information about the enemy is half the work done in defeating him. The same holds true when you are about to attack a target (a potential victim); the first step is to gather as much information as possible. Information gathering can be broadly classified into two categories – Active and Passive. In an active reconnaissance phase, you probe the target directly to reveal information, and in passive reconnaissance, the attacker tries to extract information indirectly.

Generally an attacker tries to seek information about the Domain Name, Network Blocks, and system architecture and system enumeration via the Internet. For gaining remote access into the victim’s PC, he would also seek information about authentication mechanisms. If the attack is happening within the network, the information under siege would be network protocols, TCP and UDP services, system enumeration, and general network topology and architecture. So usually the network range is determined initially which is then followed by discovering open ports on the target. Following this, the services and enumeration of users, workgroups, etc. takes place.

Full story at InfosecInstitute.

Cheers

3psil0nlambda

System Exploitation with Metasploit

Dear readers!!

This is another post on Metasploit and Evading windows firewall.

Metasploit is an exploit development framework that facilitates penetration testing of IT systems. This tool initially started off as a game and was taken over by Rapid 7 for maintenance and further development. The main objective of this article is to learn the basics of exploitation with Metasploit and then climb the ladder gradually to the advanced level. Metasploit is a ruby driven environment. It allows us to develop exploits in ruby language and integrate them with existing repositories. Ruby language also allows us to use the existing exploits within its file system to carry out an attack. With this in mind, let’s brush up the key terms needed for this article.

To continue reading this article Click here.

Cheers

3psil0nlambda

Reconnaissance with Images

Hi Readers!!

Lets see how the Images speak this time.

Gathering data on a target is extremely important if we plan to execute an attack in a more efficient manner. A typical attack scenario starts with a long reconnaissance process. In this case “reconnaissance” refers to the gathering of information in any and all possible manners regarding a particular object of interest. We can gather information from websites online, dumpster-diving offline, and also through the classic act of social engineering. Online information gathering emerged after millions of people all over the world started participating in social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter etc. People started to maintain a virtual image of themselves, which may, or may not, be similar to their real-world image. In this article, we shall see the social implications of these dual personas and how they can lead to the exploitation of vanity. We shall also look into how someone’s life can be affected and the risks of geo-localization. This article also features various tools used to perform reconnaissance with the images.

For the full article click here.

Cheers

3psil0nlambda

Virtualization Security in Cloud Computing

Hi Readers!!

Recently I have started writing for Info-sec institute. Here goes my first about security in the cloud!!

2011 ended with the popularization of an idea: Bringing VMs (virtual machines) onto the cloud. Recent years have seen great advancements in both cloud computing and virtualization On one hand there is the ability to pool various resources to provide software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service. At its most basic, this is what describes cloud computing. On the other hand, we have virtual machines that provide agility, flexibility, and scalability to the cloud resources by allowing the vendors to copy, move, and manipulate their VMs at will. The term virtual machine essentially describes sharing the resources of one single physical computer into various computers within itself. VMware and virtual box are very commonly used virtual systems on desktops. Cloud computing effectively stands for many computers pretending to be one computing environment. Obviously, cloud computing would have many virtualized systems to maximize resources.

Read the full article here.

Cheers

3psil0nlambda