Ok, second day not quite down, but wanted to get this out before the evening festivities begin. So many great talks and too little time… A few of the highlights:
– Tactical Post Exploitation with Carlos Perez (darkoperator). This is is a topic that I’d like to see gather some really good steam. This was a great subject to go over as many of the talks focus on the post exploitation pieces of pentesting. It’s always great to show how you got in, but for me the meat and potatoes is showing what you got and could do with it. As management and many Information Security Officers become more complacent with their networks becoming more secure through penetration testing and vulnerability scanning, they’ll become even more lax with the data security pieces. As we all know they like a good show and tell because they tend not to believe what their security team has been telling them for years. Oh, and because firewalls make an impenetrable wall of steel to keep out the huns, H4x0rs, and baddies. After the talk it further enamored me with the idea of becoming a modern day James Bond and getting the goods, the girl, and the getaway all with a smile and a martini; shaken, not stirred. This talk just solidifies my thought of all of the standard OS tools that we tend to ignore as security/pentest professionals to get more information on the target outside of what is normally presented (e.g. IP addresses, database names….).
– The Dirty Little Secrets They Didn’t Teach You in Pentesting Class with Chris Gates and Rob Fuller (carnal0wnage, mubix). Both of these guys were awesome and covered quite a bit of material in a very short amount of time. Again this talk had a bit more focus on the post exploitation aspect of the test rather than on how to exploit. The fact that they did talk about the extension of the current toolset within Meterpreter and some of the other tools and techniques that they use was extremely valuable. Again, the extensibility of the tools to provide additional information on the targets versus just obtaining the information of what was compromised and how is going to become more important to prove out that the soft chewy center needs to be hardened just as much as the perimeter. It’s like that old Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop commercial with the owl:
Boy: Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop?
Owl: I’m not sure, let find out… A one, A two, A three, crrruuuunch! A three.
Boy: *Scowls*
Now put management into the role of the boy and security as the owl. Hmmmm….. eerily it fits all to well. Okay enough on that tangent.
– I spent sometime in the Lock Picking Village and Hardware hacking room as well. The 3D printer was incredible and so was the robotic pony!!! It’s amazing to see what happens with art meets technology. I spent the majority of my time learning how to pick locks. All I can say is that the movies make it all to easy. I spent a fair amount of time trying to unlock some of the locks at the table in the middle of the room. After reading the directions selecting my lock, positioning the tensioner and inserting the rake, I went to work. Applying that tension ever so slightly and operating the rake so that the pins would align and lock in the down position was a bit difficult at first but the more I jiggled and moved the rake back and forth the pins started to fall. Alas, the final pin the back was not complying! I kept at it for quite a while before moving onto a much easier set of locks to gain some confidence back that I could to it. Once I did those I went back to the original lock that I started with, the same one that many others had even said was tough. Just like the beginning of that song “Rock and Roll Fantasy”… I feel the pins drop, one, two three… and that’s where the song ends. While I did keep at it for quite a while I still couldn’t “pop the lock”. With head held high and with what pride I had left, I told everyone good bye and promptly sought out a barley pop.
With day two coming to a close, I”m going to attend a few more talks for the day and then head out for dinner. If you didn’t make it out for DerbyCon all I’ve got to say, “you missed out sucka!”.
M, I’m coming in. Have Q get the Astin Martin ready for the evening operation. Thanks, J.
Bond Must Die!! 