Our Blog
Another time sink-hole..
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by Haroon Meer
on
29 December 2007
A while back some of us discovered and subsequently lost days to “The Python Challenge“. Well.. prepare to write off...
Amazon SimpleDB – Outsource your database??
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by Haroon Meer
on
23 December 2007
Amazon announced the beta of Amazon SimpleDB without that much fanfare, but it is an interesting trend to watch.. Essentially...
The coolest thing this weekend…
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by Haroon Meer
on
18 December 2007
Ok.. so being the cautious geek i am, i had bought a mac mini a while back before jumping into...
Rob Auger from OWASP/WASC/CGiSecurity on Timing..
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by Haroon Meer
on
11 December 2007
Rob had a rant on his site on the timing attack, with a CSRF twist.. We met him after our...
Casper and hidden IE windows..
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by Haroon Meer
on
06 December 2007
OK.. so it was a long time ago, and old code is supposed to embarrass you.. but i pulled casper.exe...
Dino Dai Zovi is such a Rock Star..
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by Haroon Meer
on
06 December 2007
Dino is the guy who added much shellcode coolness to MetaSploit, gave the world Karma, released the first virtualization rootkit...
The fine line between failure and success
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by nick
on
01 December 2007
So…because I don’t have a report to write this weekend I’ve had some time to ponder and reflect on stuff...
Google as an MD5 Cracker..
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by Haroon Meer
on
21 November 2007
Slashdot picked up on the blog post from Light Blue TouchPaper commenting on the fact that a researcher was suprised...
Follow-up (OS X BSOD Win32 Icons)
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by Haroon Meer
on
02 November 2007
Of course, Leopard’s new improved ™ finder includes an Itunes’esque “Cover Flow” view (which includes quick view thumbnailing quite impressively).....
Rational vs Emotional Commitment
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by nick
on
01 November 2007
I’ve spoken before on how I like some of Simon T Bailey’s stuff and his general leetnesses…he has some gems…...
i know this has been blogged all over the interwebs..
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by Haroon Meer
on
31 October 2007
but Leopards default icon for windows machines has to rank up there with dvwssr.dll (yeah.. thats a BSOD) /mh ok.....
Mind Control, Big Cats, Feynman && kiosks…
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by Haroon Meer
on
29 October 2007
Aka… A good weekend.. The weekend got off to a slow start, when Amazon claimed it would take a little...
PauldotCom Interview, Part I
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by Haroon Meer
on
25 October 2007
OK.. so part one of our pauldotcom interview has hit the interwebs.. it was fun and involved a power failure...
22:30 to 23:30: the quiet hour
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Posted
by marco
on
19 October 2007
while waiting around for the PSW guys last night, it seemed like a good time to test our mettle on...
9 days to leopard…
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by Haroon Meer
on
17 October 2007
You can almost taste the fanboy excitement.. but im guessing there will also be the mandatory rush for the first...
MSDN Mag – Security Edition is out..
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by Haroon Meer
on
16 October 2007
The November edition of MSDN magazine [is available] and is another security issue.. The articles look interesting, and if you...
Wikto Updates
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Posted
by Ian de Villiers
on
08 October 2007
A new version of Wikto is also available, which provides a more reliable web spider and also includes some minor...
Suru Version 2.0
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by Ian de Villiers
on
08 October 2007
We are pleased to announce the release of Suru version 2.0, our MITM proxy. Suru has now been rewritten to...
Piotr Bania Agrees.. Metal Gear Rocks.. (warning.. this post has 0 to do with infosec)
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by Haroon Meer
on
02 October 2007
Way back in 2000 i bought my kid sister a Sony PlayStation.. I have never been a big gamer (not...
The proof of the pudding ?
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Posted
by Haroon Meer
on
01 October 2007
Royal pingdom did a quick check on what was running at some of the more popular sites on the Internet...
The myth of the expert
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Posted
by nick
on
29 September 2007
Something we preach very strongly in our training is the importance of an understanding of the underlying technology / application...
Feedback on our courses in Switzerland
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Posted
by Charl van der Walt
on
27 September 2007
We just finished presenting an HBN Bootcamp and an HBN Combat Edition in Lausanne, Switzerland. A lot of people don’t...
reddit: exploit publisher?
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by marco
on
26 September 2007
saw this in my RSS reader, the null poison byte makes a comeback! Until it gets fixed, you can view...
Is that a robots.txt in your pocket or are you just ahppy to see me?
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by Haroon Meer
on
25 September 2007
This will probably get cleaned up soon, but thats a huuuuuuuge robots.txt [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt]
I have always tried to keep this blog politics-free
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Posted
by Haroon Meer
on
22 September 2007
but the last Scott Adams posting on the Iranian presidents US visit has to be the best piece i have...
BotNets not just for SPAM any more
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by Haroon Meer
on
21 September 2007
The Symantec Security blog has an article titled “Botnets: not just for spamming anymore“. Interestingly we are now starting to...
Introducing Hex-Rays…
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Posted
by Haroon Meer
on
13 September 2007
These days its almost impossible to read a book on security or vuln-dev without a gratuitous IDA-Pro screenshot. IDA has...
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by Ian de Villiers
on
13 September 2007
’twas only a matter of time before various FaceBook developers started cashing in on the amount of personal info they...
Alas.. i could have made squillions (aka – Amazon MTURK)
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by Haroon Meer
on
12 September 2007
In early 2002 i suggested that we could solve some computer problems and south africas street-kid problem by setting up...
Defcon talks – Videos available online..
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by Haroon Meer
on
12 September 2007
A recent maillist thread shows that the DC15 videos are anow available online [here] Our video (although my voice sounded...
Heheh.. Elite! snakes on a #$#%@# plane!
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by Haroon Meer
on
10 September 2007
Courtesy of afx:
Awesome data visualization stuff…
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by Haroon Meer
on
04 September 2007
Steven Murdoch over at lightbluetouchpaper did an investigation into the Privila internship program.. What was also cool however was that...
Another attempt at you-tube science, aka how to save 36c when changing the batteries on your remote!
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by Haroon Meer
on
02 September 2007
ok.. so a long time ago we tried the you-tube mentos stuff and happily wasted time (and coke) in the...
Medical Doctors.. bah! hambug..
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by Haroon Meer
on
02 September 2007
I’ve ranted a few times about things i hate about the way we “do medicine”. (Doctors are not alone here.....
How Gentoo got hacked.. holy #@^%&!!
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by Haroon Meer
on
30 August 2007
If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then i dont want to know what this reads…
SensePost, now a company of SecureData…
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Posted
by Haroon Meer
on
27 August 2007
For those of you haven’t yet seen, the J.S.E listed SecureData bought 100% of the shares in SensePost late last...
Thunks from hacking games
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Posted
by Charl van der Walt
on
24 August 2007
In Vegas I bought Herman “Exploiting Online Games” by Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw. Being the saint that I am,...
It begs the question…
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Posted
by Haroon Meer
on
24 August 2007
I cant recall who said it in yesterdays meeting, but my response is simple: http://begthequestion.info/
MTBF and Light Bulbs..
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Posted
by Haroon Meer
on
23 August 2007
Some of you will know that i finally moved out of the shoe box i lived in for 6 years...
BMC Video on DTrace..
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by Haroon Meer
on
23 August 2007
BMC did his 90 minute engedu talk on DTrace at google to show some of its coolness (and from the...
Ok.. Now this is pretty cool…
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by Haroon Meer
on
22 August 2007
For all those guys who usually scoff at CSI / Police Movies where the detective shouts “enhance image” or remove...
2 Un-related thoughts.. on Echelon and the recent Skype Outage..
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by Haroon Meer
on
20 August 2007
I suspect somewhere there exist cardinal rules of blogging which would state that using a single post to make 2...
Core Release Pass the Hash Toolkit..
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by Haroon Meer
on
16 August 2007
Hernan Ochoa from Core has released the Pass the Hash Toolkit which is very cool.. It basically means that you...
We’re hiring
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Posted
by Charl van der Walt
on
15 August 2007
SensePost is an exciting & dynamic young company with strong values & a world vision. We specialize in high-end technical...
On hamsters, Escaping, Escaping of Hamsters and the Lack of escaping in Hamster…
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by Haroon Meer
on
15 August 2007
OK.. So as i mentioned before, I saw Robert Graham from Erratasec demo hamster live on stage and wondered if...
mh.blackhatFeedback(Side-jacking, Hamster)
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by Haroon Meer
on
14 August 2007
Ok.. so its a lot later than i promised, but i did mention that i would post some feedback on...
On hacking and politics
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by Charl van der Walt
on
11 August 2007
I meant to blog this whilst I was still in Vegas, but only got around to it now. Its arb,...
F(inally)ull Release of BlackHat-Defcon Timing Stuff..
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by Haroon Meer
on
10 August 2007
The slides | tool | paper from BlackHat07/DefCon07 have been posted online for your wget’ing pleasure. More details on squeeza...
Another blow for privacy? A small price for your 15 minutes of fame..
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by Haroon Meer
on
08 August 2007
Spock have just opened up beyond their private beta and promise to be the most comprehensive people search tool on...
BlackHat Roundup – Ajax and h.323 and iax
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by nick
on
07 August 2007
The bulk of security research pertaining to VoIP call control, setup and signaling protocols has focused on the Session Initiation...
Squeeza: The SQL Injection Future?
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by Haroon Meer
on
03 August 2007
During our talk we demo’d squeeza.. We will link to the slides and .ppt as soon as we can, but...
Late BlackHat Update..
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by Haroon Meer
on
03 August 2007
ok.. so im in my room finally catching up on sleep (or will be in a few minutes) while most...
BlackHat Progress Report
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Posted
by Haroon Meer
on
30 July 2007
(always wanted to say that!) 2 SensePost Training sessions are over, and as i type The weekday sessions are at...
BlackHat, DefCon, Las Vegas
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by Haroon Meer
on
27 July 2007
Ok.. so the 2nd plane with SensePost’ers has touched down in LasVegas and the first cheeze-pizza from the caesars food...
QoW 1 answered; Qow 2 released
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by marco
on
24 July 2007
A little while back we published our first public QoW for your abuse and enjoyment, and the time to close...
-sigh- little things, little minds…
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by Haroon Meer
on
22 July 2007
Deels stumbled on www.simpsonizeme.com to give me mh, the springfield edition.. Combine with your intranet mug-shots, and it could give...
Google Cookies.. Finally a saner expiry date…
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by Haroon Meer
on
16 July 2007
Google have finally revised their cookie expiration policy, which will have user cookies expiring after 2 years. (For those of...
Adam Shostack on Biometrics..
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by Haroon Meer
on
16 July 2007
hmmm… i have heard this somewhere before…. ” However, in cases where your finger is used to identify or authenticate...
VMWare Fusion, i love you not, i love you…
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by Haroon Meer
on
12 July 2007
ok.. some of you in the office would have heard me whine when vmware fusion recently started taking my whole...
Have a (one) care sir….
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by Haroon Meer
on
11 July 2007
Someone in the office was discussing Microsoft’s recent horrible foray into the anti-virus market. Apparently an online source held one-care...
Probably the best book dedication i have ever seen….
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by Haroon Meer
on
07 July 2007
Richard Bejtlich didnt give the pre-release a glowing review but i know at least a few people waiting eagerly to...
In Defense of Testing Pens… (aka how to keep your soul while being a pen-tester)
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by Haroon Meer
on
04 July 2007
A short while back, a discussion broke out on a mailing list about the nature of being a pen-tester. The...
SensePost Training at Black Hat Las Vegas
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by Charl van der Walt
on
03 July 2007
The Black Hat Briefings is arguably the most significant technical security conference in the world. It takes every year in...
On vulnerability, root cause, white-listing and compliance
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by Charl van der Walt
on
01 July 2007
Many years ago, when we first released ‘Setiri’ one of the controls that we preached was website white-listing. As talk-back...
and then there was one….
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by Haroon Meer
on
19 June 2007
First IBM announced their interest in Watchfire, and now HP announces their interest in SPI Dynamics. “Consolidation in the industry”...
Shuttleworth comments on Microsoft/Ubuntu deal rumours
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by Haroon Meer
on
16 June 2007
Mark Shuttleworth on his blog makes it clear -snip- “We have declined to discuss any agreement with Microsoft under the...
Viva Las Vegas!
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by Haroon Meer
on
13 June 2007
BlackHat Vegas is almost on us again, and this will be the 6th year running that we present there.. This...
CSI Corporate Threat Modeling Talk
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by Charl van der Walt
on
12 June 2007
Whew. After much last-minute war with PPT C# and ORM our slides and Beta 1.0 of our tool are available...
Safari on Win32, and browser choices in general..
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by Haroon Meer
on
12 June 2007
Gareth linked to David Maynor’s blog where he documents the results of some simple fuzzing against the new Win32 port...
More Pentagon data leakage through Office files..
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by Haroon Meer
on
10 June 2007
R J Hillhouse (who has a fascinating background) found that when she double clicked a graph on a slide deck...
Threat Modelling Talk at CSI Phoenix
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by Charl van der Walt
on
09 June 2007
After a six hour delay due to technical problems *before* my journey even started I’m finally on the plane and...
VMware for OSX (Fusion) – Beta 4
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by Haroon Meer
on
09 June 2007
VMware have just released beta4 of its Fusion product for OSX. The initial beta was hard to justify and a...
Right escalation via services or scheduled tasks in Windows
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by craig
on
06 June 2007
Scheduled tasks and services are often run as accounts with excessive privileges (HP Insight, backups etc) instead of limited service...
Hotel Hacking
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by Charl van der Walt
on
05 June 2007
Check out http://hongkong.langhamplacehotels.com/accom/technology.htm in Hong Kong. They provide Cisco IP phones in the rooms, but with a difference. According to...
Re: Jeremiah Grossmans “How to find your websites”
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by Haroon Meer
on
05 June 2007
Jeremiah from WhiteHatSec has just written a quick piece on how to find your websites. Now Footprinting is obviously dear...
Second Life land grab case moves into U.S federal courts..
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by Haroon Meer
on
04 June 2007
Ars Technica is reporting on the law suit filed in 2006 by Martin Bragg who accused Linden labs of wrongfully...
Web Mashups point and click style (open invite for Sammy v2.0) ?
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by Haroon Meer
on
03 June 2007
[Yahoo pipes] looks like an awesome way for even non-programmers to create web mashups trivially. Aside from the fact that...
Windows filesharing on OSX still vulnerable…
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by Haroon Meer
on
02 June 2007
Aaron Adams over at SYMANTEC, did a quick check on the version of Samba running on currently up to date...
Adventures while moving… (Part II)
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by Haroon Meer
on
30 May 2007
Ok.. so we have an outside gate type thing that leads to our garden. Since we would probably get to...
Do you group your passwords?
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by Haroon Meer
on
30 May 2007
This has probably been pondered, but something occurred to me whilst entering my new home.. The guard house grants access...