Software Exploit Development – Fuzzing with AFL

It’s quite impressive to look back in the past to the early days of software vulnerabilities and observe the ongoing dance between new mitigation and new exploitation techniques. Powerful fuzzing tools are now commonplace and operated on a daily basis by IT corporations and security labs; either to find crashes in their software or others’ […]

Firefox Javascript Vulnerability

Once again, Javascript is the source of a new exploit that has been recently discovered on Firefox1. The vulnerability can be exploited by crafting malicious Javascript code on a Firefox 3.5 browser and leads to the execution of arbitrary code on the user’s machine. This is due to a vulnerability in the JIT engine of […]

A Quick Amex XSS

Here is a quick description of a cross-site script exploit that was fixed today on the American Express website. The vulnerability was in the search engine of the site, which didn’t sanitized the input keywords. Therefore anyone could insert JavaScript into the search and use this to trick people into sending their cookies to the […]

Microsoft’s Security Hole Framework

Since a few days, news about the Internet Explorer exploit has been sweeping the Internet (see previous post Internet Explorer 7 Attack in the Wild). It has not been confirmed that Internet Explorer 5, 6 and 7 are affected and the problem reside in the data binding of objects. Basically, the array containing objects in […]

Internet Explorer 7 Attack in the Wild

Bits of information about the new 0-day exploit are surfacing on the web. This exploit provokes a heap overflow in the XML parser of Internet Explorer 7. The exploit works with the fully patched version of Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1[1]. The Infection The exploit is initiated by a JavaScript file […]

New Kid on the Block: Downadup

Many reports on the last few days mention a new worm growing on the back of the Windows’ MS08-067 vulnerability. The worm named Downadup, also being dubbed Conficker.A by Microsoft, as now spread to alarming levels: “We think 500,000 is a ball park figure” said Ivan Macalintal, a senior research engineer with Trend Micro Inc[1]. […]

Attacking the Vista Kernel

CNet reported not long ago about a new vulnerability found in the kernel of Vista[1]. The attack is a buffer overflow which corrupts the memory, and thus could be use for denial of service attacks. The report from Phion, the security company that reported the vulnerability, also states that the attack could be used to […]

Hacking Passwords from Google Mail Account Holders

Update: Apparently, the users whom domain were hijacked were hit by phishing attacks instead if using the vulnerability described below. Google deny this vulnerability, and are saying this bug was fixed last year. I was, however, still able to create the filter by forming the URL described when I didn’t sign off correctly. (by clicking […]

First Internet Worm is 20 years old Sunday

In 1988, the computer world faced a new cyber menace that is still very well alive today. The first computer worm, written by a student called Robert Tappan Morris. From Wikipedia: “The original intent, according to him, was to gauge the size of the Internet. He released the worm from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology […]