No one is responsible for your OWN Cyber Defences…

Introduction

I talk to hundreds or maybe even thousands of people online. I work in the Cyber security industry, I worked previously with central government, local authorities, finance, third sector, healthcare, defence and well most verticals of business. I often see people comment online about how “GCHQ has failed” or some other silly nonsense when it comes to an organisation (not GCHQ) being victim to a cyber incident.

I fear the world has watched a few too many Bond and Bourne films and let’s their imaginations run wild! The true reality of defending cyberspace is frankly vastly different to what I think people believe it is.

Hacking

The Manual Version 2.0

Working in Cyber security can expose you to all kinds of information. I’m an offensive and defensive security architect and occasional (haha that’s daily right!) pew pew slinger (pentester) and I am also a threat intelligence practioner (CTI) (we need The Many Hats Club back!). Which is why sometimes when things appear on the internet I think I decide to take a look.

Education

Cyber Security for PC Gamers

Introduction

The other day there was a lot of focus on “ATLASOS” a rather oddly branded project, just to be clear:

ATLASOS is NOT AN Operating System (OS) (despite it’s name!)

ATLASOS (at the time of writing) disables basically the majority of Windows Security features including:

Defender
Smart Screen
Windows Update
Spectre/Meltdown Mitigations

Basically, if you can think of “nightmare” in the cyber world, ATLASOS’s security posture is basically that (in my opinion)! That said, it’s cool from a nerd Windows customization/build pov, however based on my initial investigations I would strong recommend NOT using it on a “PRODUCTION” system (or anything that’s connected to the internet!).

Education

Active Directory Attacks – “It’s cold out here”

Scenario

In this scenario it is assumed you do not have credentials, but you do have either adjacent or routable access to an Active Directory Domain Controller and can access common ports/services such as: LDAP, LDAPS, SMB, NETBIOS, KERBEROS, DNS

Education

Port Forwarding with WSL2

have you ever wanted to port forward from a Windows Host to a WSl2 KALI VM when you are using a NAT’d virtual switch configuraiton with WSL2?

Hacking

Stealthy Active Directory Username Enumeration with LDAPNomNom

My friend Lars and I were just talking about some of the research areas we are working on and randomly the conversation turned into “what shall we call it?” and then LDAPNomNom came up! So I whilst laughing (coz the name is lulz) with my buddy I downloaded and ran LDAPNomNom against a lab vm quickly! (Lars also fixed an error with readme.md that I pointed out coz my debug skillz ROCK! 😛 )

So here we have me doing username enumeration via LDAP Ping using LDAPNOMNOM!

Vulnerabilities

Microsoft Outlook Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397)

Regarding: CVE-2023-23397

This is a fast publish, use at own risk.

See guidance from Microsoft: CVE-2023-23397 – Security Update Guide – Microsoft – Microsoft Outlook Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

If you need to mitigate the latest Outlook vulnerability which abuses an SMB/WebDav call using the Calendar invite feature you can consider the following:

Education

The Long Game: Persistent Hash Theft

CVE-2023-23397 enables a threat actor to send a calendar invite whereby the properties of the msg file can include a path for the reminder sound file. This is achieved by setting:

Fiction

The Hacker on a Train

It was a crowded train ride during rush hour, and everyone was packed in like sardines. The train was slowly making its way through the city, and people were trying to kill time with their phones or laptops.

At one end of the train, there was a young man, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, typing away furiously on his laptop. He had a serious look on his face, and his eyes were focused on the screen.

Leadership

Adopting an Attacker Mindset to Defend Healthcare

This post started as a reply to a great topic on LinkedIn, but I hit the character limit so now it’s a blog post!

Years ago I simulated attacks (authorized obviously for the people that have wild imaginations) on a customer which included a physical attack where I walked into a healthcare organization, armed with a suit a smile (and a USB key) I needed to gain access and attempt to move laterally and escalate privileges.