Defcon 16
It was a pleasure seeing several of you at Defcon this year. I ran into Steven Adair from Shadowserver and Brian Krebs from Washington Post. They get honorable mention because both promised me a beer, and never paid up - guess I'll have to collect next year with interest. :) In all seriousness, it was great to see old friends and make new ones.
I'd like to extend a special thanks to StillSecure and IOActive for hosting a wonderful party on Saturday Night.
A few new tools were released at Defcon this year. Among my favorites are Grendel Scan and The Middler.
Grendel-Scan is an open-source web application security testing tool. It has automated testing module for detecting common web application vulnerabilities, and features geared at aiding manual penetration tests.
Grendel was written by a fellow penetration tester, David Byrne. David's skills are exceptional and he claims to use this tool during the initial phases of a penetration test. I was granted an early release of this tool, which I used on several recent vulnerability assessments, and I was thrilled with the results. While its not yet perfect, it certainly makes my job much easier, and identifies points of weakness that I can focus my attacks on. Since the scans can be throttled, the tool is perfect for use in production and development environments alike.
The Middler was written by Jay Beale with help from his friends at Intelguardians. The Middler allows an attacker with no web application hacking experience to launch attacks that previously required substantial time and skill. The Middler is still pending official release, but Jay promised in his talk to release it as soon as he fixed one critical bug.
These two tools serve very different purposes. Jay's tool is focused more on exploitation and attacks. David's tool is a weakness identification aid, and does not make any attempt to compromise a host. Both tools look promising and should be added to your toolbox.
This is my fourth Defcon. I'd like to challenge the presenters to step it up a notch. Several presentations this year were recycled from previous years.
I'd like to extend a special thanks to StillSecure and IOActive for hosting a wonderful party on Saturday Night.
A few new tools were released at Defcon this year. Among my favorites are Grendel Scan and The Middler.
Grendel-Scan is an open-source web application security testing tool. It has automated testing module for detecting common web application vulnerabilities, and features geared at aiding manual penetration tests.
Grendel was written by a fellow penetration tester, David Byrne. David's skills are exceptional and he claims to use this tool during the initial phases of a penetration test. I was granted an early release of this tool, which I used on several recent vulnerability assessments, and I was thrilled with the results. While its not yet perfect, it certainly makes my job much easier, and identifies points of weakness that I can focus my attacks on. Since the scans can be throttled, the tool is perfect for use in production and development environments alike.
The Middler was written by Jay Beale with help from his friends at Intelguardians. The Middler allows an attacker with no web application hacking experience to launch attacks that previously required substantial time and skill. The Middler is still pending official release, but Jay promised in his talk to release it as soon as he fixed one critical bug.
These two tools serve very different purposes. Jay's tool is focused more on exploitation and attacks. David's tool is a weakness identification aid, and does not make any attempt to compromise a host. Both tools look promising and should be added to your toolbox.
This is my fourth Defcon. I'd like to challenge the presenters to step it up a notch. Several presentations this year were recycled from previous years.
Labels: Defcon, MITM, Penetration Testing, Shadowserver
posted by Nicholas at
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