CTF
Off the back of running the BSIDES Leeds CTF, I’m back in the lab trying to work out my arrangements for work and trying to recover from the con and I stumbled across this on twitter: Read more “Reviewing ‘Try Hack Me’ – Part 1 – A New Hacky Adventure by mRr3b00t”
CTF
2020 has only just started in action and already we have an update to Kali! The new build, 2020.1 brings in another big round of changes which include things like changing the username and password cobo and cool stuff like NOT running as root by default for all those who love a KALI daily driver! 😛
This post is aimed at beginners, if you’re an experienced user you probably have already installed by now, so go secure stuff by sending all the pews. For the rest of you, let’s get the ISO downloaded and get cracking (maybe literally!)
We’ve also made a video to accompany this post (the video is a gui encrypted LVM install): Watch it here!
You can get Kali through HTTP or using torrents from the following link:
https://www.kali.org/downloads/ Read more “Kali 2020.1 Update”
Company News
For BSIDES Leeds 2020 we’ve pulled out the stops and created a new CTF game which features both offensive and defensive challenges. The arena includes a number of servers, so you will need to get your pivot on if you are going to breach the crown jewels!
We’ve teamed up with Sky Betting Group to create a CTF which includes both old and new technologies for BSIDES. It features traditional CTF puzzles alongside a PwnDefend norm, an arena network featuring Windows targets!
The games start in line with BSIDES Leeds, at 0900 on the 24th January 2020 the following url will light up with flags across the virtual globe on the Facebook ctf platform.
https://ctf.bsidesleedsctf.com
The challenges are designed for a range of skill levels and all are welcome, if you can use a web browser and know what the magic F12 button does you are in with a chance of getting a flag or two!
I’ll also be presenting with my good friend Mathew Haines on the rookie track at 1400 where we are going to talk about CTF’s and how people can get started (they aren’t just for those who prefer a hoodie!)
I want to give a big thanks to everyone who has helped! From the team at BSIDES Leeds (and the man Large Cardinal himself) through to Sky Betting Group’s Glenn Pegden for hosting the games platform and making some awesome games through to community members, Ben Bidmead (pry0c) from Navisec and Daniel Ward (
@ghostinthecable) who made a community vm challenge!
I create PwnDefend games and content to benefit the community and to help people and organisation better defend themselves so it’s great not only to have community support but also to be able to give back, it’s even better to be able to team up with the team from SBG to bring this to the community!
See you on the cyber battlefields!
for more info on the CTF please visit:
Defense
In large organisations these are really common, but I’ve found that in alot of medium and small organisations standard documents are sometimes missing artifacs. These help guide and steer procurement and operations. They assist an organisation in efficiency and ensure hardware can meet security requirements.
This document is a quick fire template I put together as an example starting point.
https://www.pwndefend.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/PC-Device-Standards.docx
Defense
Internet facing exposed RDP services with a weak securiy configuraiton are never a good idea. In our latest video Matthew Haynes and Daniel Card take a look at the RDP threat lanscape and then following up with a lab demo of a simple RDP brute force attack.
You can see the video here on our youtube channel! Remember to like and subscribe! Stay safe!
Defense
Active directory sits at the heart of most organisations and would be considered a crown jewel information system. Here we take a whirlwind tour of deploying and running Ping Castle, an active directory auditing and assessment tool.
Read more “Security Awareness Week – AD Audits using Ping Castle”
Defense
When a post starts like this:
“On May 14, Microsoft released fixes for a critical Remote Code Execution vulnerability, CVE-2019-0708, in Remote Desktop Services – formerly known as Terminal Services – that affects some older versions of Windows. In our previous blog post on this topic we warned that the vulnerability is ‘wormable’, and that future malware that exploits this vulnerability could propagate from vulnerable computer to vulnerable computer in a similar way as the WannaCry malware spread across the globe in 2017.” – https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msrc/2019/05/30/a-reminder-to-update-your-systems-to-prevent-a-worm/
“Microsoft is confident that an exploit exists for this vulnerability” Read more “CVE-2019-0708 – BlueKeep”
Defense
‘Red Teaming’ the latest phrase in the cyber security world that brings a shudder down my spine! Now don’t get me wrong, adversary simulation is awesome, it’s a great tool and when wielded correctly brings massive value to enhancing your security posture… but alas, they aren’t always deployed in a business aligned and value driven position.
They sound ‘sexy’ and any pentester is going to jump at the chance to do one, let alone the sales and marketing teams will be grinning as they will come in with higher revenue but also will increase their case study portfolio for delivered red teams! (I’m not knocking this, it’s the reality of doing business).
Having witnessed a number of these take place against organizations who I don’t feel are ready for them, I thought I would write a piece on things I would recommend having in place before conducting a ‘red team’ assessment. Read more “Things to do before you conduct a ‘red team’ assessment”
Guides
Those who know me know that I not only practise offensive security techniques from a business perspective, I also play in a CTF team and build PwnDefend CTF challenges. I came up with the idea of doing a red and blue team CTF sometime in 2018 however this isn’t as easy to build and run as you would think. Anyway, I digress… as part of my research and personal development I like to test out other platforms and pwn a few things so I thought I’d do a quick write up of the Pentester Academy Attack Defense labs Web Application Broken Authentication challenge. Spoiler alert.. I spoil this one (but it’s easy so don’t cry too hard!) Read more “Pentester Academy Attack Defense Labs – Web Application: Broken Authentication”
Defense
So, you have deployed Office 365, you’ve setup multi-factor authentication and deployed password managers so that your users can safely use MFA where it is supported but fall back to app passwords where it’s not. Great stuff… except by default you aren’t quite as secure as you would think!
Default Office365/Exchange Online Config
Now this is great for HTTP based communication methods. but email isn’t restricted to HTTP only. When we investigate the default deployment configuration we see that IMAP and POP3 are both enabled. The below screenshot shows the default mailbox feature configuration:
Now as we know, both IMAP and POP3 do not support a second or multi-factor authentication by default, so in the GUI you should disable those (unless you have a really specific business reason that means you MUST use these) Read more “Defending Office 365 against MFA bypass using IMAP”