Detecting Conficker: run this check now!

If you’re reading this blog I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what MS08-67 or Conficker is about (despite the fact we keep seeing many unpatched machines, but that’s a different story).

Besides that, there are plenty of rumours about a possible Conficker attack on 1st April. I know you may think it’s all hype or scaremongering, and it might well be. But, if you run a large corporate network I’m sure you don’t want to sit down and wait until 1st April to find out.

If that’s the case, you have to know that the Honeynet Project has been working on a way to detect Conficker-infected machines and that they have just released a scanner for this task. The scanner is available as a python script and as a windows .exe executable, and can be used to scan a single host or a whole network range.

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Cracking into embedded devices and beyond!

As promised in my previous post, I have  just uploaded Cracking into embedded devices and beyond, Adrian Pastor’s presentation at ‘Hack in The Box’ Dubai 2008.

Thanks Adrian for your promptly response when asked for the slides and congratulations for your excellent contribution to the security community. Hope we can share a pint next time I’m in London. Un abrazo!

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Cerrudo’s talk prompts Microsoft to admit serious flaw on Windows

Hack in the Box???It’s Sunday evening and I have spent the last hour going through the slides of Cesar Cerrudo’s talk at HiTBSecConf 2008 that took place this week in Dubai. I know it’s sad, but the title of this blog is “passionate about information security”, isn’t it?

Let me give you a bit of background before going further. It’s been almost a month since Cesar Cerrudo, security researcher and CEO of Argeniss publicly warned that the latest Microsoft operating system, Windows Server 2008, might not be as secure as it seems. On an advisory released on March 24, he stated:

“The problem discovered by Argeniss results from design issues that were not identified by Microsoft engineers during the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), and allows accounts commonly used by Windows services (NETWORK SERVICE and LOCAL SERVICE) to bypass new Windows services protection mechanisms and elevate privileges to achieve complete control over the operating system.”

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