Defense

Cyber Security Tips – Keeping your digital self, safe!

Not even most of my digital life is in the enterprise security space, whilst this is great if you have access to technology budgets, security specialists and modern business class solutions, this doesn’t really fit into the general populations landscape of technology. I thought I’d take a high-level exploration of what digital security looks for people who aren’t security nerds! This is a bit of an experiment for me as it’s a journey into a world where although some things apply to me (obviously I’m human), some of this from a thinking/blogging point of view aren’t my comfort space. So, let’s see what a world outside of being a nerd look like!

Commons Risks

I’m thinking the risk landscape is still broad however when we think about risks, I reckon a general view model may look at some of the following scenarios:

  • Fraud/Scams
  • Sextortion
  • Phishing
  • Social Media Account Takeover
  • Device Theft
  • Device Loss
  • Equipment Failure/Data Loss
  • Threat from known individuals with physical access
  • Human Error

Read more “Cyber Security Tips – Keeping your digital self, safe!” →

Defense

Exposed VMWARE vCenter Servers around the world (CVE-2021-22005)

There’s a new CVE in town but don’t think it’s the only problem you get when you expose administrative interfaces to the wild west of the internet (yeeha or something). Let’s go on a quick exploration of what the world looks like with the help of our friends at Shodan and then let’s see the ramblings of Dan when looking at how benign enumeration and exploration of services can work. Let’s get started looking at the world, a quick face analysis on Shodan with vmware as a product shows a hit or two, what we are going to focus on is vCenter but you know.. you might want to review your attack surfaces so any exposed services (damn people expose some risky stuff!) Read more “Exposed VMWARE vCenter Servers around the world (CVE-2021-22005)” →

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated with medium confidence Threat Intel

CVE-2021-38647 – Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) RCE – Linux…

Situation

Ok so the situation is as per usual a bit fluid, when this first dropped I was looking at this with a “azure” lense, however as time goes on it appears this likely also covers any Linux distro with the Azure/SCOM/OMS agents installed. This may change the profile of risk considerable, not only from a public facing attack surafce but highly likely from a lateral movement persspective. I’m going to keep updating this as more intel comes in. (sorry I’d be clearer if I had a clearer picture myself)

This week 4 vulnerabilities were disclosed which affect Azure virtual machines running the Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) agent (think PowerShell remoting). As above the scope seems to be slightly wider with regard to SCOM/AZURE and OMS/Sentinel etc. agents for Linux (I want to confirm all of this but for now it seems this is the position)

Essentially these vulnerabilities allow for both network-based remove code execution (RCE) and local privilege escalation (LPE).

  • There is evidence of exploitation in honeypots.
  • There is a public proof of concept available for the RCE.
  • The internet facing attack surface from a global perspective seems low based on the data in Shodan and Censys however I’m not convinced this is currently giving a clear picture.
    • So, check your azure networks, Vms and firewalls would be a sensible idea

Read more “CVE-2021-38647 – Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) RCE – Linux hosts” →

Defense

Post Compromise Active Directory Checklist

Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure!

Ok, in an ideal world you can re-deploy your entire environment from scratch, but back in the most people’s real world’s that’s not that simple. So, what do we do if we can’t nuke from orbit in a post compromise situation? Well, we need to clean up! This isn’t an exhaustive list, not a total guide. it’s a quick list to make you think about some key common areas and actions that might need to be taken! after all if someone got r00t, who knows what they did! (trust me, most orgs monitoring is a bit naff!)

Read more “Post Compromise Active Directory Checklist” →
Defense

Vulnerability Management – Actually doing it!

Vulnerability Management, Assessments and Vulnerability scanning is sometimes treated a with distain in the Offensive security community, I personally don’t understand that. Vulnerability management is key to inputting into security strategy, architecture, and operations. It’s coupled heavily to many other processes such as:

  • Asset Management
  • Risk Management
  • Patch Management
  • Change & Release Management
  • Security Testing
  • Security Monitoring

Before we start deploying let’s think about some areas for consideration when performing vulnerability scans:

  • Scope
    • Asset/Hosts
      • IP Ranges
      • Hostnames
    • Connectivity
      • VPNs
      • LAN/WAN
    • Device Types and Configuration
      • Domain
      • Workgroup
      • Appliance
      • ICS
      • Printers
      • Network Equipment
    • Unauthenticated View
    • Authenticated View
      • Auth Types
      • Protocols
    • Scheduling
    • Authority to execute
  • Impact
    • Performance
    • Availability
    • Confidentiality
  • Objectives and Outcomes
  • Reporting
    • Information Flow
    • Report Storage and Confidentiality

Read more “Vulnerability Management – Actually doing it!” →

CTF

How to Identify Hashes

Some hashes are obvious but even then, it’s a good job to check. There are a few ways to check a hash outside of manual validation.

Using the Hashcat example list:

https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=example_hashes

Graphical user interface, text, application, email Description automatically generated

Using hash-identifier:

https://github.com/blackploit/hash-identifier

Using cyberchef Analyse hash:

https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/#recipe=Analyse_hash()

Background pattern Description automatically generated with low confidence

Using hash-id:

https://github.com/psypanda/hashID

Using HashTag:

https://github.com/SmeegeSec/HashTag

As you can see there are range of tools available to you, and remember if you want to keep the hashes to yourself you can download Cyberchef and run it locally!

Image Defense

Infection Monkey Overview

Have you ever wanted to see what would occur in an environment if a worm was a make its way in? I often work with customers to show them about lateral movement from a human operated perspective however sometimes it’s useful for people to visualise this better and to demonstrate what could occur if a worm was set loose. A great tool to help with this is Infection Monkey from Guardicore (https://www.guardicore.com/

High Level View

The process steps are as follows:

  • Scope Exercise
  • Prepare Environment
  • Deploy Infection Monkey Server (Monkey Island)
    • Configure Server Credentials
  • Monkey Configuration
  • Release Monkey/s
  • Review
  • Report

Read more “Infection Monkey Overview” →

Defense

Windows 11 Privilege Escalation via UAC Bypass (GUI based)

Introduction

Ok these are a really simple UAC bypass from a userland GUI perspective. This is about increasing process integrity levels – it’s not about performing LPE from low integrity to high/SYSTEM with no interaction. These clearly work in older version of Windows as well but since Windows 11 will be the current version in the near future I thought it was fun to re-visit these!

And just to be clear, a medium integrity process as an administrator user will have the following privileges:

Text Description automatically generated

What we are talking about here is to move to a high integrity process without knowing credentials or having the secure desktop launch. Read more “Windows 11 Privilege Escalation via UAC Bypass (GUI based)” →

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