YouTube’s Policy on Hacking Tutorials is Problematic
Recently YouTube changed its policy on “hacking” tutorials to an essential blanket ban. In the past, such content was occasionally removed under YouTube’s broad “Harmful and Dangerous Content” clause, which prohibited videos “encouraging illegal activity”. An updated policy now specifically targets instructional hacking videos. One major problem here is that …
Analysis of CVE-2019-0708 (BlueKeep)
I held back this write-up until a proof of concept (PoC) was publicly available, as not to cause any harm. Now that there are multiple denial-of-service PoC on github, I’m posting my analysis. Binary Diffing As always, I started with a BinDiff of the binaries modified by the patch (in …
Analysis of a VB Script Heap Overflow (CVE-2019-0666)
Anyone who uses RegEx knows how easy it is to shoot yourself in the foot; but, is it possible to write RegEx so badly that it can lead to RCE? With VB Script, the answer is yes! In this article I’ll be writing about what I assume to be CVE-2019-0666. …
Video: First Look at Ghidra (NSA Reverse Engineering Tool)
Today during RSA Conference, the National Security Agency release their much hyped Ghidra reverse engineering toolkit. Described as “A software reverse engineering (SRE) suite of tools”, Ghidra sounded like some kind of disassembler framework.Prior to release, my expectation was something more than Binary Ninja, but lacking debugger integration. I figured …
Analyzing a Windows DHCP Server Bug (CVE-2019-0626)
Today I’ll be doing an in-depth write up on CVE-2019-0626, and how to find it. Due to the fact this bug only exists on Windows Server, I’ll be using a Server 2016 VM (corresponding patch is KB4487026). Note: this bug was not found by me, I reverse engineered it from …
Tracking the Hide and Seek Botnet
Hide and Seek (HNS) is a malicious worm which mainly infects Linux based IoT devices and routers. The malware spreads via bruteforcing SSH/Telnet credentials, as well as some old CVEs. What makes HNS unique is there’s no command and control server; instead, it receives updates using a custom peer-to-peer network …
Best Languages to Learn for Malware Analysis
One of the most common questions I’m asked is “what programming language(s) should I learn to get into malware analysis/reverse engineering”, to answer this question I’m going to write about the top 3 languages which I’ve personally found most useful. I’ll focus on native malware (malware which does not require …
Investigating Command and Control Infrastructure (Emotet)
Although the majority of botnets still use a basic client-server model, with most relying on HTTP servers to receive commands, many prominent threats now use more advanced infrastructure to evade endpoint blacklisting and be resilient to take-down. In this article I will go through and explain my process of identifying …
Creating a Simple Free Malware Analysis Environment
Computer Requirements: A CPU with AMD-V or Intel VT-x support (pretty much any modern CPU). 4 GB RAM (more is better). Make sure Virtualization (AMD-V or Intel VT-x) is enabled in the BIOS. To do this, you’ll need to google “enable virtualization” along with your bios or motherboard version, then …
Petya Ransomware Attack – What’s Known
Petya The jury is still out on whether the malware is Petya or something that just looks like it (it messes with the Master Boot Record in a way which is very similar to Petya and not commonly used in other ransomware). Hasherzade who is a researcher well known for …