PoisonTap, The Ransacker
via Ars Technica's Security Editor Dan Goodin, comes proof that MITM exploits cost-to-deploy ratios are dropping into pocket-change territory; and, as in most commodity-based attacks, the cost to deploy and implement such devices will continue to fall, especially due to the lack of attention to detail in the physical security realm.
Information Warfare - Entertainment Industry Targeted →
Apparently, The Peoples Republic of China's wealthiest individual is attempting to crack the 'Hollywood Code' via acquisition... Read Judicial Watch's take.
'A one-time commander in China’s Communist Red Army has launched information warfare with an aggressive plan to invest billions in all six major Hollywood studios, a show business trade publication reports, describing the foreign deal as an unprecedented push into the U.S. entertainment sector. The former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) regimental commander, Wang Jianlin, is China’s richest man and he’s aggressively pursuing a big chunk of one of the world’s most influential industries.' - via Judicial Watch's post 'Information Warfare: Communist Takeover of U.S. Entertainment Industry'.
POC PwnFest - Safari Compromised →
News from the Past (the recent past, that is) - Apple Inc. (NasdaqGS: AAPL) Safari drops the drawbridge, and is summarily PWND at POC PwnFest 2016. The exploit took twenty seconds to work its magic... Cruft, the gift that keeps on giving; hearty congratulations to PANGU for their outstanding effort.
Chronicles of the Deeply Flawed - OAuth 2.0 →
A team from highly respected The Chinese University of Hong Kong, comprised of Ronghai Yang [PhD Candidate, Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong], Wing Cheong Lau [Associate Professor, Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong], and Tianyu Liu have discovered a highly exploitable flaw in OAuth 2.0. Read the document here: Blackhat EU 2016's 'Signing into One Billion Mobile App Accounts Effortlessly with OAuth2.0'. HatTip!
"OAuth2.0 protocol has been widely adopted by mainstream Identity Providers (IdPs) to support Single-Sign-On service. Since this protocol was originally de- signed to serve the authorization need for 3rd party websites, different pitfalls have been uncovered when adapting OAuth to support mobile app authentication. To the best of our knowledge, all the attacks discovered so far, including BlackHat USA’16 [3], CCS’14 [2] and ACSAC’15 [5], require to interact with the victim, for example via malicious apps or network eavesdropping, etc. On the contrary, we have discovered a new type of widespread but incorrect usages of OAuth by 3rd party mobile app developers, which can be exploited remotely and solely by the attacker to sign into a victim’s mobile app account without any involvement/ awareness of the victim. To demonstrate the prevalence and severe impact of this vulnerability, we have developed an exploit to examine the implementations of 600 top-ranked US and Chinese Android Apps which use the OAuth2.0-based authen- tication service provided by three top-tier IdPs, namely Facebook, Google or Sina. Our empirical results are alarming: on average, 41.21% of these apps are vulner- able to this new attack. We have reported our findings to the affected IdPs, and received their acknowledgements/ rewards in various ways." - via Blackhat EU 2016's publication 'Signing into One Billion Mobile App Accounts Effortlessly with OAuth2.0'
Web of Trust, Not So Trustworthy After All →
Apparently, WOT is now a three letter acronym for Feet of Clay...
Apple Failing to Police App Store →
According to New York Times reporter Vindu Goel, Apple Inc. (NasdaqGS: AAPL) has apparently lost a certain measure of control within it's App Store ecosystem, as hundreds of fake retail targeted applications manage to slither past Apple Inc.'s various App Store security system gatekeepers. On the other hand, they did manage to ban one of the most expensive apps within the confines of Apple's retail marketplace...
"We’re seeing a barrage of fake apps,” said Chris Mason, chief executive of Branding Brand, a Pittsburgh company that helps retailers build and maintain apps. He said his company constantly tracks new shopping apps, and this was the first time it had seen so many counterfeit iPhone apps emerge in a short period of time." - via New York Times reporter Vindu Goel
Soghoian, Your Smartphone is a Civil Rights Issue →
Dr. Soghoian's Take...
Tip O' The Hat to Firewall Consultants!