First, some background on CREST in the form of blatant plagiarism...

CREST — The Council for Registered Ethical Security Testers - exists to serve the needs of a global information security marketplace that increasingly requires the services of a regulated and professional security testing capability. They provide globally recognised, up to date certifications for organisations and individuals providing penetration testing services.

For organisations, CREST provides a provable validation of security testing methodologies and practices, aiding with client engagement and procurement processes, and proving that your company is committed to providing testing services to the highest standard.

For individuals, CREST provides an industry leading qualification and career path for security penetration testers. By gaining a CREST certification you are proving that you are committed to your professional development in security testing.

CREST has been serving the industry as a pivotal player in the Penetration Testing landscape for many years now, and has also recently established a government-approved chapter in Australia.

There have been numerous discussions about CREST in South Africa over the years and we believe now is the time to take the conversation further. Ian Glover - President of CREST - will be in South Africa next week to deliver a presentation at the ITWeb Security Summit in Johannesburg, and this affords interested parties and excellent opportunity to discuss the concept with him.

With the support of ITWeb we're setting up a workshop to be held at the Sandton Convention Center from 10h00 to 12h00 on Thursday 17 May to meet with Ian, understand the process, and discuss a possible path forward.

Interested parties, whether from testing companies or clients, should please RSVP by commenting on this post (we'll keep it private) or mailing us via info <at> sensepost <dot> com.

Be part of the discussion. We look forward to hearing from you!

This year, for the fourth time, myself and some others here at SensePost have worked together with the team from ITWeb in the planning of their annual Security Summit. A commercial conference is always (I suspect) a delicate balance between the different drivers from business, technology and 'industry', but this year's event is definitely our best effort thus far. ITWeb has more than ever acknowledged the centrality of good, objective content and has worked closely with us as the Technical Committee and their various sponsors to strike the optimal balance. I don't think we have it 100% right yet, and there are some improvements and initiatives that will unfortunately only manifest at next year's event, but this year's program (here and here) is nevertheless first class and comparable with almost anything else I've seen.

Dominic White was interviewed for a short video that sums it all up quite nicely.

<Shameless plug>If you're in South Africa, and you haven't registered, I highly recommend that you do</Shameless plug>

This year's Summit explores the idea that trust in CyberSpace is "broken" and that, one for one, all the pillars we relied on to tame the Internet and make it a safe place to do business in, have failed. Basically the event poses the question: "What now"?

We've tried hard to get all our speakers to align in some way with this theme. Sadly, as is often he case, we had fewer submissions from local experts then we hoped, but we were able to round up a pretty killer program, including an VIP list of visiting stars.

After the plenaries each day, the program is divided into themed tracks where talks on a topic are grouped together. Where possible we've tried to include as many different perspectives and opinions as possible. Here's a brief summary of my personal highlights:

Plenaries:

• Eddie Schwartz - "A State of Dynamic Risk: Containment and Victory in a World of Advanced Threats
• Moxie Marlinspike - "The demise of SSL & Internet Trust"
• Kenneth Geers - "Cyber War - Beyond Theory"
• Charlie Miller - "Banned in the USA"
• Joshua Corman - "Where do we go from here? Adapting to modern adversaries"
• Haroon Meer - "Information Security: The things we dont say…"

Finally, there's excellent looking full-day workshop titled "Security in an era of BYOD" with Dan Crisp and Lynn Terwoerds.

Its gonna be excellent. See you there!

As 44Con 2012 starts to gain momentum (we'll be there again this time around) I was perusing some of the talks from last year's event...

It was a great event with some great presentations, including (if I may say) our own Ian deVilliers' *Security Application Proxy Pwnage*. Another presentation that caught my attention was Haroon Meer's *Penetration Testing considered harmful today*. In this presentation Haroon outlines concerns he has with Penetration Testing and suggests some changes that could be made to the way we test in order to improve the results we get. As you may know a core part of SensePost's business, and my career for almost 13 years, has been security testing, and so I followed this talk quite closely. The raises some interesting ideas and I felt I'd like to comment on some of the points he was making.

As I understood it, the talk's hypothesis could be (over) simplified as follows:

1. Despite all efforts the security problem is growing and we're heading towards a 'security apocalypse';
2. Penetration Testing has been presented as a solution to this problem;
3. Penetration Testing doesn't seem to be working - we're still just one 0-day away from being owned - even for our most valuable assets;
4. One of the reasons for this is that we don't cater for the 0-day, which is a game-changer. 0-day is sometimes overemphasized, but mostly it's underemphasized, making the value of the test spurious at best;
5. There are some ways in which this can be improved, including the use '0-day cards', which allow the tester to emulate the use of a 0-day on a specific system without needing to actually have one. Think of this like a joker in a game of cards.

To begin with, let's consider the term "Penetration Testing", which sits at the core of the hypotheses. This term is widely used to express a number of security testing methodologies and could also be referred to as "attack & penetration", "ethical hacking", "vulnerability testing" or "vulnerability assessment". At SensePost we use the latter term, and the methodology it expresses includes a number of phases of which 'penetration testing' - the attempt to actually leverage the vulnerabilities discovered and practically demonstrate their potential impact to the business - is only one. The talk did not specify which specific definition of Penetration Test he was using. However, given the emphasis later in the talk about the significance of the 0-day and 'owning' things, I'm assuming he was using the most narrow, technical form of the term. It would seem to me that this already impacts much of his assertion: There are cases of course where a customer wants us simply to 'own' something, or somethings, but most often Penetration Testing is performed within the context of some broader assessment within which many of Haroon's concerns may already be being addressed. As the talk pointed out, there are instances where the question is asked "can we breached?", or "can we be breached without detecting it?". In such cases a raw "attack and penetration" test can be exactly what's needed; indeed it's a model that's been used by the military for decades. However for the most part penetration testing should only be used as a specific phase in an assessment and to achieve a specific purpose. I believe many services companies, including our own, have already evolved to the point where this is the case.

Next, I'd like to consider the assertion that penetration testing or even security assessment is presented as the "solution" to the security problem. While it's true that many companies do employ regular testing, amongst our customers it's most often used as a part of a broader strategy, to achieve a specific purpose. Security Assessment is about learning. Through regular testing, the tester, the assessment team and the customer incrementally understand threats and defenses better. Assumptions and assertions are tested and impacts are demonstrated. To me the talk's point is like saying that cholesterol testing is being presented as a solution to heart attacks. This seems untrue. Medical testing for a specific condition helps us gauge the likelihood of someone falling victim to a disease. Having understood this, we can apply treatments, change behavior or accept the odds and carry on. Where we have made changes, further testing helps us gauge whether those changes were successful or not. In the same way, security testing delivers a data point that can be used as part of a general security management process. I don't believe many people are presenting testing as the 'solution' to the security problem.

It is fair to say that the entire process within which security testing functions is not having the desired effect; Hence the talk's reference to a "security apocalypse". The failure of security testers to communicate the severity of the situation in language that business can understand surely plays a role here. However, it's not clear to me that the core of this problem lies with the testing component.

A significant, and interesting component of the talk's thesis has to do with the role of "0-day" in security and testing. He rightly points out that even a single 0-day in the hands of an attacker can completely change the result of the test and therefore the situation for the attacker. He suggests in his talk that the testing teams who do have 0-day are inclined to over-emphasise those that they have, whilst those who don't have tend to underemphasize or ignore their impact completely. Reading a bit into what he was saying, you can see the 0-day as a joker in a game of cards. You can play a great game with a great hand but if your opponent has a joker he's going to smoke you every time. In this the assertion is completely true. The talk goes on to suggest that testers should be granted "0-day cards", which they can "play" from time to time to be granted access to a particular system and thereby to illustrate more realistically the impact a 0-day can have. I like this idea very much and I'd like to investigate incorporating it into the penetration testing phase for some of our own assessments.

What I struggle to understand however, is why the talk emphasizes the particular 'joker' over a number of others that seems apparent to me. For example, why not have a "malicious system administrator card", a "spear phishing card", a "backdoor in OTS software" card or a "compromise of upstream provider" card? As the 'compromise' of major UK sites like the Register and the Daily Telegraph illustrate there are many factors that could significantly alter the result of an attack but that would typically fall outside the scope of a traditional penetration test. These are attack vectors that fall within the victim's threat model but are often outside of their reasonable control. Their existence is typically not dealt with during penetration testing, or even assessment, but also cannot be ignored. This doesn't doesn't invalidate penetration testing itself, it simply illustrates that testing is not equal to risk management and that risk management also needs to consider factors beyond the client's direct control.

The solution to this conundrum was touched on in the presentation, albeit very briefly, and it's "Threat Modeling". For the last five years I've been arguing that system- or enterprise-wide Threat Modeling presents us with the ability to deal with all these unknown factors (and more) and perform technical testing in a manner that's both broader and more efficient.

The core of the approach I'm proposing is roughly based on the Microsoft methodology and looks as follows:

1. Develop a model of your target environment, incorporating all players, locations, and interfaces. This is done in close collaboration between the client and the tester, thus incorporating both the 'insider' and the 'outsider' perspective;
2. Enumerate all potential risks, and map them to the model. This results in a very long and comprehensive list of hypothetical risks, which would naturally include the 0-day, but also all the other 'jokers' that we discussed above;
3. Sort the list into some order of priority and group similar hypothetical risks together;
4. Perform tests in order of priority where appropriate to prove or disprove the hypothetical risks;
5. Remediate, mitigate, insure or inform as appropriate;
6. Rinse and repeat.

This approach provides a reasonable balance between solid theoretical risk management and aggressive technical testing that addresses all the concerns raised in the talk about the way penetration testing is done today. It also provides the customer with a concrete register of tested risks that can easily be updated from time-to-time and makes sense to both technical and business leaders.

Threat Modeling makes our testing smarter, broader, more efficient and more relevant and as such is a vital improvement to our risk assessment methodology.

Solving the security problem in total is sadly still going to take a whole lot more work...

Pretoria South Africa -- SensePost, a leader in penetration testing and information security services, announced today that Pfortner had called on their expertise to validate their encryption services in South Africa. With the financial services sector in South Africa being deeply competitive, Pfortner needed to provide a high-level of assurance for their clients as to the security of their encryption service. As a standard requirement Pfortner clients have to be totally confident in the security of their service before any further engagement.

Aubrey Swanepoel, Managing Director of Pfortner says, “The Pfortner brand depends on the absolute integrity and security of the services we offer. We needed much more than a tick in the box audit exercise. We needed total confidence that our services would meet the highest security standards as our financial services clients launched our encryption service.”

SensePost tested the service over a number of weeks and used a combination of manual and automated tests with proven, structured methodologies. Testing combined both structured and intuitive testing patterns to ensure a thorough investigation of the environment.

Swanepoel, comments, “SensePost took the time to explain the risks and mitigations to our development and IT teams, and debunked the myth of the super hacker not being able to help mere mortals.” When asked about the greatest benefit, he declared, “The greatest benefit to our business from using SensePost is to our business brand and reputation. The association aligns Pfortner with the market leader and strengthens our value proposition as a company focused on IT Security. There was an immediate response to this program's completion with long waiting orders closing instantly and an additional 35% direct increase in business.”

Charl van der Walt, Managing Director for SensePost said, “I am delighted by the result of this assessment particularly the tangible results that can be seen from it. IT Security is so often viewed as a business expense, whereas here, through effective monitoring and analysis, it is clearly positioned as a business enabler. Not only is this a win for Pfortner, but it is also a win for many IT Security budget holders who regularly struggle to get buy in from their Board.”

While I was evaluating a research idea about a SCADA network router during the past week, I used available tools and resources on the Internet to unpack the device firmware and search for interesting components. During security assessments, you may find interesting embedded devices available on the network. Whilst many don't look at the feasibility of doing firmware analysis, I decided to document the steps I took to analysis my target firmware, so you can take the similar approach in the case of assessing such devices. This could also be a good indication on the feasibility of automating this process (An unfinished project was launched in 2007: http://www.uberwall.org/bin/project/display/85/UWfirmforce).

The following process would be easy for most of you who use *nix systems on a daily bases:

Step 1) Scanning the firmware image

The BinWalk tool is useful for scanning firmware image files to identify embedded file systems and compressed streams inside. It can detect common bootloaders, file systems and compressed archives inside a given firmware image file. Since it works by scanning for signature and magic values, it usually has false positives and the results need to be verified manually.

U-Boot bootloader (yes, it's German :-)) signature was identified at offset 262144 and the uImage header information, such as creation date, CPU type, etc appears to be valid. This bootloader was followed by a gzip compressed stream, which probably is the zImage kernel and a squashfs file system at offset 1522004. We will attempt to extract this file system in the next step. The following are common bootloaders that are used in embedded devices with ARM CPU:

Blob bootloader Bootldr Redboot U-Boot ABLE bootloader

The bootloader's task is to load the kernel image at the correct address and pass initial parameters to it. So in most cases we are not interested in analysing the bootloader itself, but in the root file system.

Step 2) Extracting file systems

First, I extracted the uImage content at offset 262144 by using dd command and then used uboot-mkimage (packages.debian.org/uboot-mkimage) to test if it's a valid uImage file and to discover more information about it:

The image format was valid and it contained two other file system images with 1MB and 2MB sizes, which probably are kernel zImage and root file systems (RAMdisk). If you check the uImage file format, you will notice a 64 bytes long header. There is a “multi-file” image list that contains each image size in bytes and this list is terminated by a 32bit zero. So, I would need to skip 64+2*4+4=76 bytes from start of the uImage file to get to the first Image content that would be kernel zImage:

The file command could not detect kernel image or squshfs in the extracted file systems; this might be due to lack of squashfs (with LZMA compression) in my Ubuntu kernel. I proceed by using Firmware Mod Kit which contains a set of programs to decompress various file system images including squashfs-LZMA. After trying the various unsquashfs version 3.x scripts, I was able extract the rootfs image files successfully:

Step 3) Searching the root file system

Once the root file system files were extracted, we can file and strings search tools to look for interesting files and patterns such as RSA private key files, password and configuration files, SQL database files, SQL query string and etc. In my case, I was looking for RSA certificate or private key files and found the following: (a database of private keys in embedded devices was published in 2011 but it's not actively maintained, you can access it at http://code.google.com/p/littleblackbox/)

One can write shell scripts to automate the file system search process.

Step 4) Running and debugging the Executables

The Qemu emulator supports multiple CPU architectures including ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, etc and can be used to run and debug the interesting executable extracted from the firmware image on your system for dynamic analysis purposes. You would need to build the Qemu with —static and —enable-debug options. The following figure demonstrates how to run the web server (httpd) that was extracted from my target firmware using chroot and Qemu:

As you can see from the above screenshot, the web server was working fine, but was not able to display the bootloader version, because it couldn't read this value from the NVRAM (not volatile RAM) normally mounted by the kernel in a real device (there is an interesting post here about resolving the NVRAM access errors while emulating embedded device executables). Some of the executables, like the remote management agent example below, could have more severe problems running under emulator.

For troubleshooting such cases, or monitoring an emulated process while fuzzing it, we would need to attach a debugger to it. This can be achieved by using —g switch in Qemu and using a debugger out of the emulator process or even on a remote windows machine. I used IDA pro remote GDB debugging tool as shown in the figures below:

Once successfully attached to the remote emulated process, IDA pro can be used to simply trace the execution of the process, placing breakpoints or running IDA scripts.

Often overlooked during assessments, firmware analysis of devices can yield results and often do when we target them at SensePost. Our methodology includes the above steps and we recommend yours does too.