When Black Hat convenes next week in Las Vegas, it will be a rich environment for gathering tools that can be used to tighten security but also – in the wrong hands – to carry out exploits.
Researchers presenting generally point out the value these releases hold for researchers like themselves who operate in experimental environments as well as for enterprise security pros who want to build better defenses against such attack tools.
Presenters will detail a broad range of exploits they’ve carried out against devices, protocols and technologies from HTTP to internet of things gear to the techniques penetration testers use to test the networks of their clients.
Here is a sampling of some of the scheduled educational briefings coming up next week along with a description of the free tools that will accompany them.
HTTP/2 & QUIC – Teaching Good Protocols To Do Bad Things
Presenters: Carl Vincent, Sr. Security Consultant, Cisco, and Catherine (Kate) Pearce, Sr. Security Consultant, Cisco
These two researchers took a look at HTTP/2 and QUIC, two Web protocols used to multiplex connections. The researchers say they are experiencing déjà vu because they have found security weaknesses in these protocols that are reminiscent of weaknesses they found two years ago in multipath TCP (MPTCP). Back then they discovered that because MPTCP changed paths and endpoints during sessions, it was difficult to secure the traffic and possible to compromise it. “This talk briefly introduces QUIC and HTTP/2, covers multiplexing attacks beyond MPTCP, discusses how you can use these techniques over QUIC and within HTTP/2, and discusses how to make sense of and defend against H2/QUIC traffic on your network,” according to the description of their talk. They say they will release tools with these techniques incorporated.
Applied Machine Learning for Data Exfil and Other Fun Topics
Brian Wallace, Senior Security Researcher, Cylance, Matt Wolff, Chief Data Scientist, Cylance, and Xuan Zhao, Data Scientist, Cylance
This team applied machine learning to security data to help analysts make decisions about whether their networks are facing actual incidents. They say lacking an understanding of machine learning can leave you at a disadvantage when analyzing problems. “We will walk the entire pipeline from idea to functioning tool on several diverse security-related problems, including offensive and defensive use cases for machine learning,” they write in describing their briefing. They plan to release all the tools, source code and data sets they used in their research. They’ll also include an obfuscation tool for data exfiltration, a network mapper and a command and control panel identification module.
GATTacking Bluetooth Smart Devices – Introducing a New BLE Proxy Tool
Slawomir Jasek, IT Security Consultant, SecuRing
The internet of things is rife with devices that make use of Bluetooth Low Energy, but they don’t always take advantage of all the security features of the technology. “A