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Analyzing Binaries For Security Problems
Matt writes "At the last talk at BlackHat in Las Vegas, Greg Hoglund demonstrated a product for sale by his new company that analyzes binaries for security vulnerabilities. He showed the analysis of several commercial products, the results of which were shockingly insecure. This product should help end the debate of closed source or open source applications being more or less secure."
Slashdot really needs an [Advertisements] section so I can disable it.
$ file /usr/lib/jed/bin/w32/w32shell.exe
/usr/lib/jed/bin/w32/w32shell.exe: MS Windows PE 32-bit Intel 80386 console executable not relocatable
And voila!
I just put my boss's Windows 2003 Server CD under a microscope to examine the binaries.. Started zooming in.. and then SNAP. The bitch cracked into 2. I'll put gentoo on the server now and just tell him that a security cracker broke his shit.
-B
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"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
A friend asked me to help her install an operating system on her brand spanking new PC. I have installed many operating systems - Debian, Slackware, Mandrake and Red Hat among them - and thought I knew a bit about the process. Boy was I in for a surprise!
..... 'cause that's exactly what Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds got famous for doing!
.rpm, .deb or .tar.gz files on the CD. I've analysed it thoroughly and I found no sign.
The OS she wanted me to install was Windows XP Home Edition. I have never bothered with Microsoft software in the past, not since Bill Gates got all pissy-arsey about people making copies of "his" BASIC interpreter at the Homebrew Computer Club. Grow up guys! You liken your ideas to your babies, but babies eventually grow up, leave home and learn to survive without you! Well, Gates was basically saying that if people didn't pay for their software, programmers would go out of business because nobody would want to create software unless they got paid for it. Right
So I have never bothered with MS stuff, never having felt the need. But I figured, it could not be too difficult to install it, could it?
Windows XP comes on just one CD. First installation attempt sort of worked, but it was a bit flakey and it was a bit slow. And the desktop is just downright annoying - both in terms of colour sceme and general UI. It's a bit like KDE, but not quite. Only one desktop, for crying out loud! And it's slow and crash-prone. Just like Mandrake where you get a really bloaty stock kernel {drivers for god knows what compiled into it just in case anybody ever needs them}. So I figured, first thing we should do was maybe recompile the kernel. Never recompiled a kernel in Windows, never even run the damn thing. Never even likely to now.
Could we find the Kernel Configurator? Could we hell! And the command prompt was useless. It seems to be based on the old DOS command line. And it doesn't understand make menuconfig.
The kernel configurator was not the only thing we could not find. There didn't seem to be any Packages either. You know, stuff like KWord, KSpread and Kate. MySQL, Apache and a scripting language like PHP, Perl or Python. And some simple games. Just the basics. There is something called Internet Explorer, which is a bit like a cut-down Konqueror, but it's nasty to use.
So I'm guessing that the missing configurator probably is part of a Kernel Source Devel package which is not installed by default. In fact, almost no packages seem to be installed by default. And there are no
In the end, I installed Slackware 9 and configured it to look as much like the Live CD as I could manage, but obviously not running everything as root. I can only suppose those missing packages are on another CD which we weren't sent for some reason or another. I mean, she has paid good money for the software, so she is entitled to get it! And the source code. Especially the source code! After all, if we can't check out that source, we have no way to be sure what we're running. It could be sending every keystroke to Microsoft, for all we know!
Anyway, my friend is well chuffed with Slack so I suggested to take the XP CD back to the shop and get a refund. But of course, that might be difficult seeing as she doesn't seem to have the full set. We'll keep you posted as this story develops.
I'd like to know exactly how it does this.
It searches for '(c) Copyright Microsoft Corporation'.
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i) Take an open source project
ii) build it
iii) run the tool against the binary
profit?
# bugscan bugscan
Segmentation Fault
Hehe
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
"Snake oil?" "Shenanagins", is more fun.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
A near as I could tell, for almost any executable you gave it, it reported there was a bug. The exception is that if you dropped its own executable on itself (even a renamed copy), it reported no bug. That seems pretty accurate to me.
Speaking as a programmer I can say this is a load of horse pucky. Firstly, if we wanted to use encryption, we would simply use encryption. Secondly, stenograhpy is deliberating hiding information within outher information, but that's not what compiled code is doing.
Speaking as a stenographer, I can say this is a load of horse pucky. Stenography is using shorthand to write/type things. You must be thinking of steganography, which is hiding information.