Tag: Security

Downside of keeping everything public – ICWATCH

Posted on by Usman

I have been writing and preaching about Social network information harvesting and why it is a bad thing (Check out the post here). I recently stumbled upon something, which is, publicly known though, but still worth mentioning. The mentioned “something” is a very good example of why too much information about one’s self is never a good idea.

I was having some fun with Riddler the other day. For those who do not know what Riddler is, well it is F-Secure’s search engine for web domains and much more. Unlike Shodan where all ports are scanned and then the headers are saved in a database, Riddler can be used to query about specific domains and subdomains and get some very very interesting information. So, as I was saying, that I was having fun with Riddler and I stumbled upon a strange subdomain of (Strange subdomain).

The ICWATCH, contains public database of mainly LinkedIn profiles of people in the United States government employees. Though the website is publicly known. It was quite astonishing to see how much information people have posted on their Linkedin accounts. It makes sense if someone is in sales or normal private sector job, but giving so much information and revealing what the person does, for intelligence community is, well not advised, in my opinion.

Back to the point, open-source intelligence (OSINT) is completely legal and any person/agency can easily gather information about anyone without committing a crime. I usually talk about advertisers, malicious hackers, social engineers etc, who use this to take advantage of the information collected and harm innocent users. People should keep in mind that tracking people across multiple social networking platforms is a trivial job nowadays, for a skilled hacker.

It is very important, not to disclose personal information on the internet. Especially social networks like Linkedin, Facebook, etc. Sharing personal stuff is never a bad thing, but people should be smart about what they share. If you are working for the government, there is no need of writing everything about what you do, on your Linkedin profile.

Peace!

Phrack 67 !!

Posted on by Usman


Phrack is one of  THE best hacking E-zines in the world !! Phrack’s 67th issue just released ! The most awaited release was a very big disappointment ! Phrack was and is known for its new technically super rich content about the Hidden networks, Compromising new technologies etc but this release was , except a few articles , very basic. For instance an awesome article on ProFTPd rooting but it was for an old version infact a very old version of the Software which was a bummer because getting your hands on a zero-day for proftpd would have been awesome ! 😀

Phrack team had alot of problem (apparently) before the release of this Issue of Phrack !  I dont know the exact issues but still they delayed it many times.  The whole team is different for issue 67 ! Maybe that was the problem ? Well the authors of Phrack 67 would be knowing that better.

All in all it was an ok release ! But if compared with the past releases , it was nothing !! I hope another issue comes out soon ! Maybe even this year 😀 !

Peace !

Facebook Attack

Posted on by Usman

Hey all ,

I was browsing through the net when I came across a Blog , which stated “Return of the Facebook Snatchers” . So naturally I opened the page and found , the ultimate breach of privacy for the Facebook Users !

Any one , even the users not registered at facebook can see the whole list of Users globally ! That is those profiles which are set to be found in their privacy list ! Check the Facebook Directory .

The original Blog is at : Skull Security.

It is very serious people !!

Food for thought !!

Posted on by Usman

Hey every body !! Its been along time i posted on my blog ! I recently had an interview with some security managers of a Multi National Company ! We discussed about alot of Network Security Issues ! Although my mind was kinda rusted because i have lately been working on Web Application vulnerabilities and bypass etc ! i was asked a few questions regarding IDS bypass ! That how it can be done ! and also questions about how to secure the internal network from browser exploits and web worms.And another problem to manage thousands of computers on a remote home/corporate network.

Well there were many solutions. We discussed some of them there but then it kept me thinking. So i came up with a solution.

Back in 2007 i was working with SUNray Thin Clients !! As you can see in the picture below ! What it does is exactly what dumb terminals used to do !They get booted from a remote server and every thing is loaded from that server. The problem was the remote management of 1000s of computers accross the country ! Now with this one can easily boot remote sunray clients through Satellite , from the central server at a central location.

Now the issues that could arise are that sunray thin clients are not a very good solution in some situations , that is if some one wants to use USB or some Director level dude wants to have full controll over which applications he/she has access to , is very difficult ! And then this solution fails. But normally it is the best solution for remote management of computers.

The second problem was IDS bypass ! Well that is pretty simple , what IDS/IDP Systems do is , that it scans the payload on the application layer level to check for anomaly or checks against a DB with signatures and also has many other ways to detect. But I am going to look at the  Application Layer level portion of the above sentence. Well to bypass it one can easily encrypt the payload ! Now it can be stopped by checking the destination port and that can also be changed !

The third one was to check n mitigate web browser attacks well the solution for that is Websense module for different Hardware firewalls and proxies , which scans the webtraffic for malicious traffic. 😉 ! Feel free to comment , if there are more solutions for the problems !

Stay safe 🙂

Anonymous Proxies , a menace for hackers & innocent users

Posted on by Usman

hey every body !

People usually hear that anonymous proxies should be banned because hackers use these to compromise systems. On the other hand proxies can be used to anonymously  surf  the internet. This is pretty comforting i know but we should all watch our step.

xc0re_eff_tor

TOR (The Onion Router) , is a free software used for anonymity by almost every body nowadays. It is nearly impossible to trace a user  , once it starts using TOR ! It looks pretty awesome but it has a vulnerability or a weakness !

The weakness is the Exit-node sniffing problem.

htw1
In the above picture taken from Tor official Website
Alice wants to communicate anonymously with bib what would happen is that her traffic would be routed through the TOR network , exiting from the other side and reaching its destination that is BOB in this case. Now the until a packet reaches the last node of the TOR network or the Exit Node , the packet is encrypted but ass soon as it reaches the exit node it is converted to plain text , At that point if a hacker owns that exit node and simply runs a sniffer , he/she can get alot of info on the user. . Even FBI or Law enforcement agencies can use this trick to get a lead on the hackers. Many hackers and agencies are using this technique presently.