We're excited to be presenting our Hacking By Numbers Combat course again at Black Hat USA this year. SensePost's resident German haxor dude Georg-Christian Pranschke will be presenting this year's course. Combat fits in right at the top of our course offerings. No messing about, this really is the course where your sole aim is to pwn as much of the infrastructure and applications as possible. It is for the security professional looking to hone their skill-set, or to think like those in Unit 61398. There are a few assumptions though:

• you have an excellent grounding in terms of infrastructure - and application assessments


• you aren't scared of tackling systems that aren't easily owned using Metasploit


• gaining root is an almost OCD-like obsession


• there are no basic introductions into linux, shells, pivoting etc.

As we've always said, it is quite literally an all-hack, no-talk course. We are not going to dictate what tools or technologies get used by students. We don't care if you use ruby or perl or python to break something (we do, actually - we don't like ruby), just as long as it gets broken. The Combat course itself is a series of between 12 and 15 (depending on time) capture the flag type exercises presented over a period of two days. The exercises include infrastructure, reverse engineering and crypto.

These targets come from real life assessments we've faced at SensePost, it's about as real as you can get without having to do the report at the end of it. How it works is that candidates are presented with a specific goal. If the presenter is feeling generous at the time, they may even get a description of the technology. After that, they'll have time to solve the puzzle. Afterwards, there will be a discussion about the failings, takeaways and alternate approaches adopted by the class. The latter is normally fascinating as (as anybody in the industry knows), there are virtually a limitless number of different ways to solve specific problems. This means that even the instructor gets to learn a couple of new tricks (we also have prizes for those who teach them enough new tricks).

In 2012, Combat underwent a massive rework and we presented a virtually new course which went down excellently. We're aiming to do the same this year, and to make it the best Combat course ever. So if you're interested in spending two days' worth of intense thinking solving some fairly unique puzzles and shelling boxen, join us for HBN Combat at BlackHat USA.

Have a keen interest on scanning over 12000 IP's a week for vulnerabilities? Excited about the thought of assessing over 100 web applications for common vulnerabilities? If so, an exciting, as well as demanding, position has become available within the Managed Vulnerability Scanning (MVS) team at SensePost.

Job Title: Vulnerability Management Analyst

Salary Range: Industry standard, commensurate with experience

Location: Johannesburg/Pretoria, South Africa

We are looking for a talented person to join our MVS team to help manage the technology that makes up our Broadview suite and, more importantly, finding vulnerabilities, interpreting the results and manually verifying them. We are after talented people with a broad skill set to join our growing team of consultants. Our BroadView suite of products consists of our extensive vulnerability scanning engine, which looks at both the network-layer and the application layer, as well as our extensive DNS footprinting technologies.

The role of the Vulnerability Management Analyst will possess the following skills:

• Be able to multitask and meet client deadlines. We want a person that thinks 'I can do that!'


• Possess excellent written and oral communication skills. Being able to understand a vulnerability and explain it to business leaders is a must.


• A working knowledge of enterprise vulnerability management products and remedial work flow


• A broad knowledge of most common enterprise technologies and operating systems


• A passion for security and technology

Some additional conditions:

• A post graduate degree or infosec certification would be beneficial, however, showing us you have the passion and skills also helps


• This job requires some after-hours and weekend commitments (we try to keep this to a minimum)


• Bonus points for knowledge of sed, awk and python, ok even ruby.


• PCI-QSA is desired but not required

Impress us with your skills by sending an email to jobs@sensepost.com and lets take it from there.

SensePost is an equal opportunity partner.

Today was our 13th birthday. In Internet years, that's a long time. Depending on your outlook, we're either almost a pensioner or just started our troublesome teens. We'd like to think it's somewhere in the middle. The Internet has changed lots from when SensePost was first started on the 14th February 2000. Our first year saw the infamous ILOVEYOU worm wreak havoc across the net, and we learned some, lessons on vulnerability disclosure, a year later we moved on to papers about "SQL insertion" and advanced trojans. And the research continues today.

We've published a few tools along the way, presented some (we think) cool ideas and were lucky enough to have spent the past decade training thousands of people in the art of hacking. Most importantly, we made some great friends in this community of ours. It has been a cool adventure, and indeed still very much is, for everyone who's has the pleasure of calling themselves a Plak'er. Ex-plakkers have gone on to do more great things and branch out into new spaces. Current Plakkers are still doing cool things too!

But reminiscing isn't complete without some pictures to remind you just how much hair some people had, and just how little some people's work habit's have changed. Not to mention the now questionable fashion.

Fast forward thirteen years, the offices are fancier and the plakkers have become easier on the eye, but the hacking is still as sweet.

As we move into our teenage years (or statesman ship depending on your view), we aren't standing still or slowing down. The team has grown; we now have ten different nationalities in the team, are capable of having a conversation in over 15 languages, and have developed incredible foos ball skills.

This week, we marked another special occasion for us at SensePost: the opening of our first London office in the trendy Hackney area (it has "hack" in it, and is down the road from Google, fancy eh?). We've been operating in the UK for some time, but decided to put down some roots with our growing clan this side of the pond.

And we still love our clients, they made us who we are, and still do. Last month alone, the team was in eight different countries doing what they do best.

But with all the change we are still the same SensePost at heart. Thank you for reminiscing with us on our birthday. Here's to another thirteen years of hacking stuff, having fun and making friends.

When performing spear phishing attacks, the more information you have at your disposal, the better. One tactic we thought useful was this Skype security flaw disclosed in the early days of 2012 (discovered by one of the Skype engineers much earlier).

For those who haven't heard of it - this vulnerability allows an attacker to passively disclose victims external, as well as internal, IP addresses in a matter of seconds, by viewing the victims VCard through an 'Add Contact' form.

Why is this useful?

1. Verifying the identity and the location of the target contact. Great when performing geo-targeted phishing attacks.

2. Checking whether your Skype account has not been used elsewhere :)

3. Spear phishing enumeration while Pen Testing.

4. Just out of plain curiosity.

To get this working, following these basic steps:

1. Download and install the patched version of Skype 5.5 from here (the patch enables the Skype client to save the logs in non obfuscated form)

2. Save the lines below as a Skype_log_patch.reg reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Skype\Phone\UI\General]

"LastLanguage"="en"

"Logging"="SkypeDebug2003"

"Logging2"="on"

Once saved, run it to enable the Skype Debug Log File.

4. Start Skype.

5. Search for any Skype contact and click on the 'Add a Skype Contact' button, but do not send the request, rather click on the user to view their VCard.

4. Open the log file (it should appear in the same folder as Skype executable e.g. debug-20121003-0150)

5. Look for the PresenceManager line - you should see something similar to this - >

In the above image you can spot my Skype name, external as well as internal IP addresses.

The log will include similar credentilas for everyone listed as a "contact" under your Skype account, as well as many other fresh, genuine and useful information received directly from your local Skype tracker.

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Like many businesses we at SensePost are aware of how fortunate we are and and of the many around us who struggle to make ends meet day to day. We have a heart for our community and regularly supported charities and causes that touch us.

In South Africa its not hard to find causes to support, but one that's particularly close to my heart is the Little Lambs Christian Daycare in a township in Cape Town called 'Imizamo Yethu' (The People Have Gathered).

The Little Lambs Daycare provides Early Childhood Development services and care to the poor in the community of Imizamo Yethu. The daycare operates 5 days per week and 12 Staff members — also from the community — cater and provide a safe learning space for 200 children aged 1 to 6 while their parents can seek work in the nearby town. I've been involved with the daycare for many years now and so I use every opportunity to raise awareness and support for the important work its doing. One way to do that is through a hobby ... endurance running.

Over the last 4 years I've run across the hottest, driest and harshest deserts in the world, over 250km at a time and completely self-supported, as a competitor in the 4 Deserts rough-country endurance footrace series. A unique collection of world-class events that take place over 7 days and 250 kilometers in the largest and most forbidding deserts on the planet. In line with the competition's ethos I've tried to use the interest the races generate to help raise awareness and support for Little Lambs.

This year I face my greatest challenge - a 6 day, 250km self-supported foot race in Antartica. Sixty individuals representing nearly thirty countries are expected to compete in over terrain that will be largely snow (from a few centimeters to a meter deep) with temperatutes as low as -20 °C.

I'm hoping to raise R 200 (about $ 20) for every kilometer I run - raising R 50,000 in total for this beautiful and important project.

So here's my shameless plug: If any of the grabs your attention, please consider helping out by learning more, spreading the word or making a donation.

I can't vouch for the security of the donations site. But if you're not comfortable to leave your CC details in there, please contact me and I'll give you details for a direct transfer. Please don't hack them though ... that's not what Jonny meant with 'I Hack Charities'.

Here are all the links:

1. Little Lambs - http://www.littlelambs.org.za/

2. The 'Help Lambs Run' Facebook page, where I post news and updates - http://www.facebook.com/HelpLambsRun

3. Racing the Planet - http://www.4deserts.com/thelastdesert/

4. Donations site (for donating, not hacking) - http://www.doit4charity.org.za/fundraising/Charl.van.der.Walt