In the first blog post we talked about the dangers that your cookies are exposed. Now it is time to keep your cookies safe. Time to know what protection mechanisms there are, how to use them and why. Continue reading
This document aims to analyse and explore data collected from technical assurance engagements during 2016. Continue reading
What are cookies and why are they important? Continue reading
At Portcullis, one of the more frequent assessments we perform are web application assessments. One of the main challenges we face during these assessments is to look for information that can either help escalate our privileges or allow us to gain access to different functionalities of the web application. Unauthorised access to functionality can often be considered an issue however, testing for this can also lead to information about the type of web server an application is running on, the underlying host and its version. Continue reading
Recently, researchers at Trustwave’s SpiderLabs spoke at Black Hat Europe on the dangers of simply reflecting data back to the requesting user as part of an HTTP request/response exchange. When you think about it, this stands to reason, after all, it’s what Cross-site Scripting attacks are born from. What’s interesting is that the new research discussed another way in which it could be exploited. Continue reading
We recently announced our sponsorship of EMF Camp 2014, were ready to go Portcullis flags in tow and will be heading on over to Milton Keynes to help get EMF ready.
While there we will not only be sponsoring the Lounge where people can come and enjoy a space to relax and drink beer and setting up Portcullis Village where people can visit us and exchange ideas but we will be having members of Portcullis hosting talks throughout the weekend. Continue reading
Alternate Data Streams (ADS) have been present in modern versions of Windows for a long time. If you are using a NTFS filesystem, you can bet that you are using them. As penetration testers, we can use that OS-specific feature in our advantage. In the following posts information required to understand and identify potential ADS-related issues will be provided. This post will provide the required background to understand some common scenarios that could be useful during the penetration testing engagements. Continue reading
The previous post about session management was about how to improve the security of web sessions. An aspect which was not addressed in that post is how to identify that a session is not in active use any more but where the user has manually logged out. For example, a user who was using a banking application and closed the tab without logging out the application. Continue reading
Session management is a crucial part of web applications and therefore it is also the target of numerous kinds of attacks. Critical web applications, such as banking applications, require complete control of the users’ sessions to prevent abuses or session hijacking attacks. Continue reading
URL shorteners are a main-stay of Internet use these days, helping users to cut down unsightly long URLs to concise links that can be easily shared. Social media has helped to fuel the popularity of the various services available, but how do you know if you can trust the link you’re clicking? I’ve always been wary of shortened links and decided I’d take a look at how you can check what it is you’re actually clicking on. Continue reading