Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

Thursday began innocently enough and then I encountered:

The tumult of articles started (I think) with: Internet of Dildos: A Long Way to a Vibrant Future – From IoT to IoD, covering security flaws in Vibratissimo PantyBuster, MagicMotion Flamingo, and Realov Lydia, reads in part:

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The results are the foundations for a Master thesis written by Werner Schober in cooperation with SEC Consult and the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten. The first available results can be found in the following chapters of this blog post.

The sex toys of the “Vibratissimo” product line and their cloud platform, both manufactured and operated by the German company Amor Gummiwaren GmbH, were affected by severe security vulnerabilities. The information we present is not only relevant from a technological perspective, but also from a data protection and privacy perspective. The database containing all the customer data (explicit images, chat logs, sexual orientation, email addresses, passwords in clear text, etc.) was basically readable for everyone on the internet. Moreover, an attacker was able to remotely pleasure individuals without their consent. This could be possible if an attacker is nearby a victim (within Bluetooth range), or even over the internet. Furthermore, the enumeration of explicit images of all users is possible because of predictable numbers and missing authorization checks.
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Other coverage of the vulnerability includes:

• ‘Panty Buster’ Toy Left Private Sex Lives Of 50,000 Exposed (Forbes)
• A Remote-Controlled Sex Toy Exposed 50,000 People’s Sex Lives, Says Security Company (The Daily Caller)
• Bluetooth ‘Panty Buster’ smart mock-cock fails penetration test (The Register)
• This smart vibrator can be ‘easily’ hacked and remotely controlled by anyone (ZDNet)
• The internet of dildos is here, and it’s vulnerable as hell (Yahoo! Finance)
• The ‘internet of dildos’ is not very secure (LMTonline)

Vibratissimo product line (includes the PantyBuster).

The cited coverage doesn’t answer how to incentivize end-to-end encrypted sex toys?

Here’s one suggestion: Buy the PantyBuster or other “smart” sex toys in bulk. Re-ship these sex toys, after duly noting their serial numbers and other access information, to your government representatives, sports or TV figures, judges, military officers, etc. People whose privacy matters to the government.

If someone were to post a list of such devices, well, you can imagine the speed with sex toys will be required to be encrypted in your market.

Some people see vulnerabilities and see problems.

I see the same vulnerabilities and see endless possibilities.

Thomas Dullien/Halvar Flake’s presentation Weird Machines, exploitability, and proven unexploitability won’t embed but you can watch it on Vimeo.

Great presentation of the paper I mentioned at: Weird machines, exploitability, and provable unexploitability.

Includes this image of a “MitiGator:”

Views “software as an emulator for the finite state machine I would like to have.” (rough paraphrase)

Another gem, attackers don’t distinguish between data and programming:

OK, one more gem and you have to go watch the video:

Proof of unexploitability:

Mostly rote exhaustion of the possible weird state transitions.

The example used is “several orders of magnitude” less complicated than most software. Possible to prove but difficult even with simple examples.

Definitely a “watch this space” field of computer science.

Appendices with code: http://www.dullien.net/thomas/weird-machines-exploitability.pdf

AutoSploit

From the webpage:

As the name might suggest AutoSploit attempts to automate the exploitation of remote hosts. Targets are collected automatically as well by employing the Shodan.io API. The program allows the user to enter their platform specific search query such as; Apache, IIS, etc, upon which a list of candidates will be retrieved.

After this operation has been completed the ‘Exploit’ component of the program will go about the business of attempting to exploit these targets by running a series of Metasploit modules against them. Which Metasploit modules will be employed in this manner is determined by programatically comparing the name of the module to the initial search query. However, I have added functionality to run all available modules against the targets in a ‘Hail Mary’ type of attack as well.

The available Metasploit modules have been selected to facilitate Remote Code Execution and to attempt to gain Reverse TCP Shells and/or Meterpreter sessions. Workspace, local host and local port for MSF facilitated back connections are configured through the dialog that comes up before the ‘Exploit’ component is started.

Operational Security Consideration

Receiving back connections on your local machine might not be the best idea from an OPSEC standpoint. Instead consider running this tool from a VPS that has all the dependencies required, available.

What a great day to be alive!

“Security experts,” such as Richard Bejtlich, @taosecurity, are already crying:

There is no need to release this. The tie to Shodan puts it over the edge. There is no legitimate reason to put mass exploitation of public systems within the reach of script kiddies. Just because you can do something doesn’t make it wise to do so. This will end in tears.

The same “security experts” who never complain about script kiddies that work for the CIA for example.

Script kiddies at the CIA? Sure! Who do you think uses the tools described in: Vault7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed, Vault 7: ExpressLane, Vault 7: Angelfire, Vault 7: Protego, Vault 8: Hive?

You didn’t think CIA staff only use tools they develop themselves from scratch did you? Neither do “security experts,” even ones capable of replicating well known tools and exploits.

So why the complaints present and forthcoming from “security experts?”

Well, for one thing, they are no longer special guardians of secret knowledge.

Ok, in practical economic terms, AutoSploit means any business, corporation or individual can run a robust penetration test against their own systems.

You don’t need a “security expert” for the task. The “security experts” with all the hoarded knowledge and expertise.

Considering “security experts” as a class (with notable exceptions) have sided with governments and corporations for decades, any downside for them is just an added bonus.

Critical Flaw in All Blizzard Games Could Let Hackers Hijack Millions of PCs by Mohit Kumar.

From the post:

A Google security researcher has discovered a severe vulnerability in Blizzard games that could allow remote attackers to run malicious code on gamers’ computers.

Played every month by half a billion users—World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo III, Hearthstone and Starcraft II are popular online games created by Blizzard Entertainment.

To play Blizzard games online using web browsers, users need to install a game client application, called ‘Blizzard Update Agent,’ onto their systems that run JSON-RPC server over HTTP protocol on port 1120, and “accepts commands to install, uninstall, change settings, update and other maintenance related options.”
… (emphasis in original)

See Kumar’s post for the details on “DNS Rebinding.”

Unless you are running a bot net, why would anyone want to hijack millions of PCs?

If you wanted to rob for cash, would you rob people buying subway tokens or would you rob a bank? (That’s not a trick question. Bank is the correct answer.)

The same is true with creating government or corporate transparency. You could subvert every computer at a location but the smart money says to breach the server and collect all the documents from that central location.

How to breach servers? Target sysadmins, i.e., the people who play computer games.

PS: I would not be overly concerned with Blizzard’s reported development of patches. No doubt other holes exist or will be created by their patches.

Deliberately Insecure Web Application: OWASP WebGoat

From the webpage:

WebGoat is a deliberately insecure web application maintained by OWASP designed to teach web application security lessons. You can install and practice with WebGoat in either J2EE or WebGoat for .Net in ASP.NET. In each lesson, users must demonstrate their understanding of a security issue by exploiting a real vulnerability in the WebGoat applications.

WebGoat for J2EE is written in Java and therefore installs on any platform with a Java virtual machine. Once deployed, the user can go through the lessons and track their progress with the scorecard.
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WebGoat’s scorecards are a feature not found when hacking Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Hacks of the OPM are reported by its inspector general and more generally in the computer security press.

Schneider Electric: TRITON/TRISIS Attack Used 0-Day Flaw in its Safety Controller System, and a RAT by Kelly Jackson Higgins.

Industrial control systems giant Schneider Electric discovered a zero-day privilege-escalation vulnerability in its Triconex Tricon safety-controller firmware which helped allow sophisticated hackers to wrest control of the emergency shutdown system in a targeted attack on one of its customers.

Researchers at Schneider also found a remote access Trojan (RAT) in the so-called TRITON/TRISIS malware that they say represents the first-ever RAT to infect safety-instrumented systems (SIS) equipment. Industrial sites such as oil and gas and water utilities typically run multiple SISes to independently monitor critical systems to ensure they are operating within acceptable safety thresholds, and when they are not, the SIS automatically shuts them down.

Schneider here today provided the first details of its investigation of the recently revealed TRITON/TRISIS attack that targeted a specific SIS used by one of its industrial customers. Two of the customer’s SIS controllers entered a failed safe mode that shut down the industrial process and ultimately led to the discovery of the malware.

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Teams of researchers from Dragos and FireEye’s Mandiant last month each published their own analysis of the malware used in the attack, noting that the smoking gun – a payload that would execute a cyber-physical attack – had not been found.

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Perhaps the most amusing part of the post is Schneider’s attribution of near super-human capabilities to the hackers:

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Schneider’s controller is based on proprietary hardware that runs on a PowerPC processor. “We run our own proprietary operating system on top of that, and that OS is not known to the public. So the research required to pull this [attack] off was substantial,” including reverse-engineering it, Forney says. “This bears resemblance to a nation-state, someone who was highly financed.”

The attackers also had knowledge of Schneider’s proprietary protocol for Tricon, which also is undocumented publicly, and used it to create their own library for sending commands to interact with Tricon, he says.
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Alternatives to a nation-state:

• 15 year old working with junked Schneider hardware and the Schneider help desk
• Disgruntled Schneider Electric employee or their children
• Malware planted to force a quick and insecure patch being pushed out

I discount all the security chest beating by vendors. Their goal: continued use of their products.

Are your Schneider controllers are air-gapped and audited?