Research and Development

analysis

By way of an introduction to our talk at Black Hat Europe, Security Advisory EMEAR would like to share the background on our recent research into some common Active Directory integration solutions. Just as with Windows, these solutions can be utilized to join UNIX infrastructure to enterprises’ Active Directory forests. Continue reading

In this post we look at an alternative to compiling shared object files when exploiting vulnerable setUID programs on Linux. At a high level we’re just going to copy the binary and insert some shellcode. First we take a look the circumstances that might lead you to use this option. Also check out this previous post on setUID exploitation. Continue reading

In this post we look at at one of many security problems that pentesters and security auditors find in setUID programs. It’s fairly common for child processes to inherit any open file handles in the parent process (though there are ways to avoid this). In certain cases this can present a security flaw. This is what we’ll look at in the context of setUID programs on Linux. Continue reading

Modern autonomous vehicles use a number of sensors to analyse their surroundings and act upon changes in their environment. A brilliant idea in theory, but how much of this sensory information can we actually trust? Cisco’s Security Advisory R&D team, a.k.a. Portcullis Labs, decided to investigate further. Continue reading

In the modern age, where computers are used for nearly everything we do, the damage that can be caused to a company by cyber-attacks is substantial, with companies losing millions in regulatory fines, compensation and declining share prices. While some of these breaches have been caused by vulnerabilities within the target company’s infrastructure/software, a large quantity of them began with a phishing attack. Continue reading

It’s not every day we get to assess biometric systems from a security perspective, they are still somewhat esoteric and testing them doesn’t quite fit with the usual slew of things that come along with being a security consultant. Recent engagements reminded us of just how interesting this facet of the industry can be and so we decided to write up a little something around biometrics. This article will cover some of the history and the basics of biometrics and some of the biometric-centric attacks you may come across… Continue reading

This year, one member of the Portcullis team went to one of the biggest security events in France: SSTIC (Symposium sur la sécurité des technologies de l’information et des communications). This post will highlight the most interesting presentations. Many of the slides, articles and videos are available on the SSTIC web site, but they are mostly in French. Continue reading