Tag Archives: hacking

Call for Presentations – ClubHack Security Conference – Dec 2011

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ClubHack is one of India’s foremost conferences on Security and is now in its 5th year. As usual, it will be on the first weekend of December (3rd & 4th) in Pune. Last year, [ClubHack ] had Security Guru Bruce Schneier as the keynote speaker.

The call for presentations is out, and if you’re working in the area of computer security, you should submit a presentation proposal.

Why should you submit?

Being a speaker at a conference gives you visibility and establishes you as an expert in your domain. Plus, as a part of the community, it is your duty to ensure that such events get the best quality of content. And in addition there are the material benefits:

  • 100% Travel reimbursement of economy return tickets for all Indian speakers
  • Accommodation for 2 in Pune
  • Complementary passes for event & party for 2
  • Gift hampers & freebies

Suggested topics are:

  • Cloud Application Security
  • Mobile Security (cellular technologies)
  • Mobile platform attacks (iOS, Android, BB, Win7, Symbian)
  • Cyber Intelligence
  • Cyber warfare
  • Hardware mods
  • Critical Infrastructure Attack & Protection
  • Protocol based vulnerability in networks and computers
  • Firewall Evasion techniques
  • Data Recovery and Incident Response
  • WLAN and Bluetooth Security
  • Cryptography and Cryptanalysis
  • Computer forensics
  • Open source hacking toolkit
  • Cyber Crime & law

But of course, you can submit proposals for talks in other related areas of security too.

See the CFP for more details, and specifics on how to submit a proposal.

NULL security forum meeting on “Malware Analysis” and “Bypassing Catpcha/Crpyto”

Events, , ,

What: Meeting of the NULL security usergroup featuring talks on Malware analysis and an Open mail relay bypassing captcha and crypto
When: Saturday, 31 Oct, 5pm
Where: SICSR, Model Colony
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required
Link: Null Blog

Click on the NULL logo to see all PuneTech articles about NULL
Click on the NULL logo to see all PuneTech articles about NULL

Introduction to Malware Analysis

By DaH4cker

A short presentation on the techniques & tools used for malware analysis followed by a live example. I will be showing behavioral analysis approach which includes setting up a inexpensive, flexible environment & tools required for understanding inner-workings of malware.

Automated open mail relay, bypassing Captcha and Crypto

By Aseem Jakhar

Case study of an ironic web implementation.

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A perspective on The Indian Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006

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Government of India - Lion Capital of IndiaOne of our favorite Pune Bloggers, Dhananjay Nene, has written a blog post analysing the the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006, that was passed by the Indian Parliament last month. He has described the important points of the bill like:

  • Wireless networks are now added to the defintion of computer networks
  • The “hacking a computer system” offense is expanded to include sending and forwarding of material that is offensive, intimidating, etc.
  • Definition of pornography is slightly expanded. (And transmission and publication is an offense, but as far as Dhananjay can make out, consumption of pornography is not an offense.)

But Dhananjay’s main reason for writing the post is the fact that this law is being widely misconstrued and/or misunderstood, and he wants to provide a contrarian view. He points out:

I wasn’t quite sure how to react to blog posts like “India Sleepwalks To Total Surveillance“. However I really can’t respect the way the bill has been represented. Some of the bold statements in the post say, “Thou shall not author a joke. Not even forward one”, “Thou shall not surf Bollywood news” and ” Thou shall not watch porn”. I really could not find any evidence to support such views whatsoever. The sad part is that such posts get picked up in articles like Blogger Writes from Inside the Newest Police State on the Planet, discussions such as slashdot – India Sleepwalks Into a Surveillance Society and tweets such as these. I have spent about 6 years in US, and the remainder in India. I have always been very happy with the freedoms I have received in India, even though I do know that very unfortunately a small proportion of the population does get victimised or harassed due to the stringent laws from time to time. I won’t be surprised if a substantial proportion of Indian Citizens actually support the clauses against pornography. And finally the draft bill has been under discussion since 2006 so I couldn’t understand how the world’s largest democracy sleepwalked into something (though I am certain this and another bill got completely fast tracked after the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks). The fact of the matter is that this has always been a state of stringent laws, with laws which don’t always agree fully with the western world. I think we should rate our laws based on our aspirations and desires. While I shudder at the privileges the government has in terms of eavesdropping, I am quite ambivalent on the strictures against pornography and greatly welcome the enhancements related to electronic signatures and increased accountability in terms of online communication and network security maintenance. Its really a mixed bag in my opinion. If at all India is to be considered a police state as in some opinions, in my opinion it is certainly not because of this bill.

Read his whole article to understand this important development in detail.

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Network Security Workshop by “Null” – Dec 21

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What: Workshop on Network Security by security awareness group “Null”
When: Sunday, 21st December, 10am to 1:30pm
Where: I2IT, Hinjewadi
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. No registration required.

Details:

Null, a Network Security
group, is organizing an event on the 21st of December, 2008 at
International Institute of Information Technology, Hinjewadi, Pune.

The seminars which would be held are as below:

Time

                  Workshops                 

Speaker

10 AM – 10:30 AM

Introduction to Null
and Network Security

Mr. Aseem Jakhar

10:30 AM – 11:30 PM

Wireless Security

Mr. Rohit

11:30 PM – 12:30 PM

Application Security

Mr. Ajit Hatti

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

TCP/IP and NMAP

Mr. Murtuja

Null is a Network Security community for ethical hackers, security
professionals and security enthusiasts, born out of the need for a centralized
knowledge base in security and the fact that security is treated as an add-on
and ignored many a times. It is a step to move towards immunity from security.

Apart from having fun, we also:

–          Share security related knowledge

–          Create a disclosure platform

–          Design/Develop innovative ideas to combat current threats

–          Define a “Must-Have” security knowledge-base for different roles (programmers, QA, admin, end user)

–          Spread security awareness

–          Organize Meetings/Conferences/Training

For further information:

–          Contact: Mr. Aseem Jakhar ( giimale@gmail.com )

–          Visit the website: http://null.co.in

Speakers

1. Aseem Jakhar (Founder: NULL security community)
A network security and open source enthusiast (and a system programmer
for living). He has contributed to the development of various security products
and networking/security modules including:

– Firewall
– Regex filters.
– Baysian filters.
– Heuristic filters.
– Genetic Algorithm based score generator for heuristic filters.
– Advanced attachment filters.
– Multicast packet-reflection daemon.
– SMTP engine.
– DNSBL engine.

Aseem is an active speaker at security/open source conferences like Blackhat
Europe 2008, ClubHack 2008, Gnunify 2007. He was also invited to speak at
Inbox/Outbox UK 2008. He is a C|EH from Ec-Council and is actively involved in security research. He has also given security advisories
to various organizations including banks.

2. Murtuja Bharmal (Co-founder – NULL)
Murtuja is a Linux Kernel and Network Security
maniac. Earning livelihood by working as a System Programmer. He has been
contributing in development of various Network Security
products like Firewall, VPN, Application Proxies, and Authentication
Modules for the past 5 years. Murtuja is a C|EH from EC-Council, is
actively involved in Security practices, development, consultancy, with
prestigious organizations. He has single handedly developed firewall product
and got it compliant with ICSA-Labs and also has expertise in
customization, security patching and integration of open
source products like SQUID, IPTables,
VRRP, and OpenSwan.

3. Rohit Srivastwa (Member – NULL)
Founder of ClubHack, has several years experience in providing consultancy and
training in the fields of Information security, Cyber Crime Investigation and Penetration Testing. He
is actively involved advising and teaching several military agencies, law enforcement
personnel, Corporates and Government bodies in these fields

4. Ajit Hatti (Member – NULL)

Ajit Hatti is a “Software Architect &

System Programmer” by profession and “Network Security, Linux Enthusiast”. From last 4 years he has been
contributing in research & development of security products like
IPS/UTM/Mail Security & Network Scanners with various renowned
Organizations. Ajit is also actively contributing in vulnerability research of
various protocol implementations and has been researching on modern techniques
of Fingerprinting & Application/OS detection. Ajit is also associated with
PLUG, CSI, and Ubuntu’s development and testing.

81% of Pune’s Wi-Fi Networks are insecure – ClubHack report

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Wi-Fi Security in Pune. Only the WEP encrypted access points (cream colored pie) are secure. Everything else is unsecure.
Wi-Fi Security in Pune. Only the WPA encrypted access points (cream colored pie) are secure. Everything else is insecure.

ClubHack, the group hell-bent on hammering some sense of security hygiene into the heads of an ignorant and careless public, went around Pune making a note of how secure or insecure various Wi-Fi hotspots in the city were, and found that a full 50% were not protected at all, and another 31% were only weakly protected. That just leaves 19% adequately protected.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, here is a little bit of explanation. More and more users are now using wireless networking cards to get their internet access. In such a setup, there is a Wi-Fi card that goes into your desktop/laptop (most modern laptops have this built-in), and to complete the connection there is a device that needs to be plugged into your internet connection (i.e. your broadband cable, or telephone line). This device is called an access point (AP), and is typically a wireless router. The computer then communicates wirelessly with your wi-fi router to connect to the internet.

The above report points out that in 50% of all wi-fi access points installed in Pune, there is no protection against random third-party computers from connecting to the AP. That’s like leaving your front door open. Not only can they access the internet using your AP, but more importantly, it is very likely that they can access the other computers on your network, and can tap into the network traffic going back and forth between those computers and the internet. If you are unlucky, they can get access to sensitive data, like passwords to your email account, or worse, bank account. Or, if, like our government, you want to focus on the wrong thing, you can worry that THE TERRORISTS CAN USE YOUR NETWORK TO SEND BOMB THREATS!!! (and we dutifully reported that in PuneTech.)

Of the remaining, 31% think that they have protected their AP using encryption, but the encryption scheme they are using (WEP) is known to be very weak, and can be broken in a matter of minutes. Which means that a hacker (cracker actually) sitting in a car outside your building can easily break into the network without anybody realizing it.

How did ClubHack find out? This is what they did:

On 10th November 2008, ClubHack created a setup in a car which included laptops & GPS enabled devices for the exercise. The car was driven in all the popular areas which included IT parks, multiplexes, residential areas, markets, busy streets etc. While the car was driving at a normal speed, the GPS and wireless enabled devices sensed the availability of wireless signals on the road. These signals were then recorded with details like MAC address of the access point, name of the network, security used, longitude and latitude of the location where the signal of a particular network was highest.

And just in case anybody amongst you is thinking that what they did was illegal and actionable, don’t worry! They took permission of Pune Police to undertake this mission, and Pune Police actually sent an officer to accompany them. For some more details of their project and findings, you can check out the short report, or the full report (PDF).

What should you do? If you are reading PuneTech, then no doubt you are one of the smart ones who are in the 19% that use WPA based encryption. But just in case someone slipped through, what you need to do is educate yourself about wi-fi security issues, and ensure that you change the settings on your wi-fi access point to use one of the WPA based encryption schemes. (There are 6 or 7 variants like WPA-PSK, WPA2-Personal, etc. Any one of them will do.) And please change the default administrator password for your AP. And if you have no clue what I am talking about, get a friend who understands to help you. Or pony up the Rs. 1000 for the wi-fi security workshop that ClubHack is going to conduct next month, or the Rs. 8000 for the wi-fi security training that AirTight networks is going to conduct later this month. This last one is certainly recommended if you are the network admin for one of the IT companies that ClubHack managed to snag during their wardrive.

And just in case the remaining 19% are feeling very pleased with yourself, I should also point out that security guru Bruce Schneier keeps his own wi-fi network open. It is a fascinating, and insightful, and a different take on this issue that you should read. But inspite of Bruce’s sage advice, I keep my router protected with WPA. Because Bruce’s advice amounts to saying that I should leave my door open, but keep all my drawers, and cupboards, and closets and bedroom door locked, and the fridge and TV chained to the wall. I’m not a security guru, and I am sure I’ll leave some door open. Don’t want to take that chance.

Pune company watch: Companies that are doing work related to this area in Pune: Airtight Networks, Symantec, QuickHeal.

Stop terrorists from hacking into your company computers with AirTight networks?

Overviews, , ,

AirTight Logo

In a report titled “Wi-Fi networks extremely vulnerable to terror attacks,” the Economic Times points out that:

 

The recent incident involving US national Kenneth Haywood, whose Internet Protocol (IP) address was allegedly used to send the terror e-mail prior to the Ahmedabad serial blasts, should be regarded as a wake up call. While this incident of wireless hacking took security agencies by surprise, lakhs of individuals and companies are actually exposed to a similar risk. Incidents of such hacking are common, but go unreported since they may not have such grave implications.

The police version of the Haywood incident, as reported in the newspapers, is that suspected criminals allegedly hacked into the Wi-Fi network of his laptop and used it to send the terror e-mail. Prior to this hacking, Mr Haywood is said to have complained of high browsing bills. If this is to be believed, then one possibility is that Haywoood may have left his access point open. The suspected terrorist could then have hooked on to this access point and sent the email, which then showed Haywood’s IP address as the originator. This is regarded, in hacking terminology, as stealing of bandwidth while impersonating Haywood.

Wi-Fi hacking is an even bigger a problem for companies that have many employees who take their laptops all over the place and might come back infected, or who have a number of access points that can be easy targets if not secured properly. This is the market that Pune-based AirTight Networks is going after:

Hemant Chaskar, Airtight’s technology director, explained: “Companies earlier used firewalls, which prevented or regulated data access between internal systems and the external world. With the adoption of wireless, firewalls can be bypassed, exposing internal systems to free external access. External devices can access internal enterprise networks, while internal devices can also connect to networks outside the company’s premises in the absence of adequate security measures.

There are a few different capabilities that a company needs to be able to tackle this threat. First, being able to detect that wireless intrusion is happening. Second, being able to phyisically (i.e. goegraphically) locate exactly where the threat is coming from. Third, being able to do something about it. And finally, for the sake of compliance with government laws, being able to generate appropriate reports proving that you took all the appropriate steps to keep your company’s data secure from hackers. This last one is required whether you are worried about hackers or not, and is a huge pain.

AirTight provides all these facilities and then goes one step further, which makes it unique. At $20000 a pop, most small companies would balk at the price of all the infrastructure required for achieving all this. So AirTight provides WiFi security as an online service – you simply install a few sensors in your company. Everything else is on AirTight’s servers. So you just have to pay a small monthly fee, as low as $60 per month. And you get full security from wi-fi hacking, and you keep the government happy with nice compliance reports.

For a more details of AirTight’s products, see the PuneTech wiki profile of AirTight.

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