Tag Archives: hacking

interception Privacy security

Progress for GSM cracking in Freiburg university

23 February 2011 - 1:32 pm

The exciting world of mobile protocols (GSM, GSM-R, TETRA, UMTS, etc) hacking is getting official research activities from universities.

The investment to make opensource code releases of cracking software is giving the opportunity to students of university to work on it, improve it and do strong research.

The University of Freiburg just released the paper Practical exercise on the GSM Encryption A5/1 along with a gsmframencoder support tool to improve the sniffing, decoding and cracking process.

Opening hardware, opening software, opening protocol demonstrate the weakness of any kind of proprietary method or process to build-up communication and security technologies.

It should be the goal of any scientists to try to open-up and crack any kind of proprietary and closed technology to force the industry to goes on only with interoperable and open approach while designing telecommunication protocols.

Tags , , , , | Comment (0)
intelligence interception security

TETRA hacking is coming: OsmocomTETRA

23 January 2011 - 10:27 am

It’s very exciting to see the release of OsmocomTETRA, the first opensource SDR (Software Defined Radio) implementation of TETRA demodulator, PHY and lower MAC layers.

It’s the TETRA version of GSM airprobe that unlock access to the data and frame of TETRA communication protocol, thus giving great hacking opportunity!

Now that also TETRA technology has been opened we should expect, during this 2011, to see opensource TETRA sniffers and most probably also TEA encryption (the Tetra Encryption Algorithm) cracked!

TETRA is used by Police, Emergency Services and Militaries as an alternative mobile communication network that can works even without the availability of network coverage (only mobile-to-mobile without a base station) and provide some special high availability services.

I wrote about TETRA in my slide Major Voice Security Protocol Review .

In OsmocomBB mailing lists there was already discussion about some TETRA network status:

  • Belgium Police TETRA ASTRID network: unencrypted
  • German Police test TETRA network in Aachen: unencrypted
  • Some ex-jugoslawia TETRA network: unencrypted
  • Netherland C200 TETRA network: TEA2 encrypted with static keys
  • UK Airwave TETRA network: TEA2 encrypted with TEA2

It will be really fun to see that new Police and rescue service hacking coming back from old analog ages to the new digital radios :-)

Tags , , , | Comments (5)
security technology

ESSOR, European Secure Software Defined Radio (SDR)

25 September 2010 - 9:18 pm

I had a look at European Defense Agency website and found the ESSOR project, a working project funded for 106mln EUR to develop strategic defense communication products based on new Software Defined Radio approach.

SDR approach is a revolutionary system that’s completely changing the way scientist and industry is approach any kind of wireless technology.

Basically instead of burning hardware chip that implement most of the radio frequency protocols and techniques, they are pushed in “software” to specialized radio hardware that can work on a lot of different frequency, acting as radio interface for a lot of different radio protocols.

For example the USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) from Ettus Research that cost 1000-2000USD fully loaded, trough the opensource GnuRadio framework, have seen opensource implementation of:

And a lot more protocols and transmission technologies.

That kind of new approach to Radio Transmission System is destinated to change the way radio system are implemented, giving new capability such as to upgrade the “radio protocol itself” in software in order to provide “radio protocol” improvements.

In the short terms we have also seen very strong security research using SDR technologies such as the GSM cracking and the Bluetooth Sniffing.

We can expect that other technologies, weak by design but protected by the restriction to hardware devices to hack the low level protocols, will be soon get hacked. In the first list i would really like to see the hacking of TETRA, a technology born with closed mindset and secret encryption algorithms, something i really dislike ;-)

Tags , | Comment (0)
interception Privacy security

Remotely intercepting snom VoIP phones

10 September 2010 - 11:08 am

I suggest reading remotely tapping VoIp phones” on VoIP Security Alliance Blog by Shawn Merdinger .

A concrete example on how current telephony infrastructure are getting more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Tags , , | Comment (0)
Kudos security technology

27C3 - CCC Congress CFP: We come in peace

15 August 2010 - 8:39 am

We come in peace

189322778_8cb9af1365_m.jpg

We come in peace, said the conquerers of the New World.

We come in peace, says the government, when it comes to colonise, regulate, and militarise the new digital world.

We come in peace, say the nation-state sized companies that have set out to monetise the net and chain the users to their shiny new devices.

We come in peace, we say as hackers, geeks and nerds, when we set out towards the real world and try to change it, because it has intruded into our natural habitat, the cyberspace…

Call for paper for participation to 27C3 CCC congress is open, and i never saw a so exciting payoff :-)

See you on 30 December 2010 in Berlin!

Tags | Comment (0)
intelligence interception Privacy security technology

GSM cracking in penetration test methodologies (OSSTMM) ?

23 July 2010 - 8:16 am

As most of this blog reader already know, in past years there was a lot of activities related to public research for GSM auditing and cracking.

However when there was huge media coverage to GSM cracking research results, the tools to make the cracking was really early stage and still very inefficient.

Now Frank Stevenson , norwegian cryptanalyst that already broke the Content Scrambling System of DVD video disc, participating to the A51 cracking project started by Karsten Nohl, released Kraken , a new improved version of the A51 cracking system.

It’s interesting to notice that WiFi cracking had a similar story, as the first WiFi wep cracking discovery was quite slow in earlier techniques but later Korek, an hacker working on cracking code, improve the attack system drammatically.

That’s the story of security research cooperation, you start a research, someone follow it and improve it, some other follow it and improved it and at the end you get the result.

Read more on the Kraken GSM Cracking software release.

And stay tuned as next week at Blackhat Conference Karsten Nohl will explain the details of the required hardware setup and detailed instructions on how to do it :-)

I would really like to see those tools incorporated into Penetration Testing Linux Distribution BackTrack with OSSTMM methodology enforcing the testing of GSM interception and man in the middle :-)

If things proceed that way and Ettus Research (The producer of USRP2 software radio used for low cost GSM signal receiving) will not be taken down, we can still see this.

Tags , , , | Comments (3)
intelligence Privacy security technology

Web2.0 privacy leak in Mobile apps

17 July 2010 - 9:02 am

You know that web2.0 world it’s plenty of leak of any kind (profiling, profiling, profiling) related to Privacy and users starts being concerned about it.

Users continuously download applications without knowing the details of what they do, for example iFart just because are cool, are fun and sometime are useful.

On mobile phones users install from 1000% up to 10.000% more applications than on a PC, and those apps may contain malware or other unexpected functionalities.

Recently infobyte analyzed ubertwitter client and discovered that the client was leaking and sending to their server many personal and sensitive data such as:

- Blackberry PIN

- Phone Number

- Email Address

- Geographic positioning information

Read about UbertTwitter ‘spyware’ features discovery here by infoByte .

It’s plenty of applications leaking private and sensitive information but just nobody have a look at it.

Should mandatory data retention and privacy policies became part of application development and submission guideline for mobile application?

Imho a users must not only be warned about the application capabilities and API usage but also what will do with which kind of information it’s going to handle inside the mobile phone.

Capabilities means authorizing the application to use a certain functionalities, for example to use GeoLocation API, but what the application will do and to who will provide such information once the user have authorized it?

That’s a security profiling level that mobile phone manufacturer does not provide and they should, because it focus on the information and not on the application authorization/permission respect to the usage of device capabilities.

p.s. yes! ok! I agree! This kind of post would require 3-4 pages long discussion as the topic is hot and quite articulated but it’s saturday morning and i gotta go!

Tags , , , | Comment (0)
business intelligence interception Privacy security technology

Blackberry Security and Encryption: Devil or Angel?

7 July 2010 - 10:39 pm

Blackberry have good and bad reputation regarding his security capability, depending from which angle you look at it.

This post it’s a summarized set of information to let the reader the get picture, without taking much a position as RIM and Blackberry can be considered, depending on the point of view, an extremely secure platform or an extremely dangerous one .

bblock.jpg

Let’s goes on.

On one side Blackberry it’s a platform plenty of encryption features, security features everywhere, device encrypted (with custom crypto), communication encrypted (with custom proprietary protocols such as IPPP), very good Advanced Security Settings, Encryption framework from Certicom (now owned by RIM).

On the other side they does not provide only a device but an overlay access network, called BIS (Blackberry Internet Service), that’s a global worldwide wide area network where your blackberry enter while you browse or checkmail using blackberry.net AP.

When you, or an application, use the blackberry.net APN you are not just connecting to the internet with the carrier internet connection, but you are entering inside the RIM network that will proxy and act as a gateway to reach the internet.

The very same happen when you have a corporate use: Both the BB device and the corporate BES connect to the RIM network that act as a sort of vpn concentration network.

So basically all the communications cross trough RIM service infrastructure in encrypted format with a set proprietary encryption and communication protocols.

Just as a notice, think that google to provide gtalk over blackberry.net APN, made an agreement in order to offer service inside the BB network to the BB users. When you install gtalk you get added 3 service books that point to GTALKNA01 that’s the name of GTALK gateway inside the RIM network to allow intra-BIS communication and act as a GTALK gateway to the internet.

The mobile operators usually are not even allowed to inspect the traffic between the Blackberry device and the Blackberry Network.

So RIM and Blackberry are somehow unique for their approach as they provide a platform, a network and a service all bundled together and you cannot just “get the device and the software” but the user and the corporate are always bound and connected to the service network.

That’s good and that’s bad, because it means that RIM provide extremely good security features and capabilities to protect information, device and access to information at various level against third party.

But it’s always difficult to estimate the threat and risk related to RIM itself and who could make political pressure against RIM.

Please consider that i am not saying “RIM is looking at your data” but making an objective risk analysis: for how the platform is done RIM have authority on the device, on the information on-the-device and on the information that cross the network. (Read my Mobile Security Slides).

For example let’s consider the very same context for Nokia phones.

Once the Nokia device is sold, Nokia does not have authority on the device, nor on the information on-the-device nor on the information that cross the network. But it’s also true that Nokia just provide the device and does not provide the value added services such as the Enterprise integration (The RIM VPN tunnel), the BIS access network and all the local and remote security provisioned features that Blackberry provide.

So it’s a matter of considering the risk context in the proper way when choosing the platform, with an example very similar to choosing Microsoft Exchange Server (on your own service) or whether getting a SaaS service like Google Apps.

In both case you need to trust the provider, but in first example you need to trust Microsoft that does not put a backdoor on the software while in the 2nd example you need to trust Google, as a platform and service provider, that does not access your information.

So it’s a different paradigm to be evaluated depending on your threat model.

If your threat model let you consider RIM as a trusted third party service provider (much like google) than it’s ok. If you have a very high risk context, like top-secret one, then let’s consider and evaluate carefully whether it’s not better to keep the Blackberry services fully isolated from the device or use another system without interaction with manufacturer servers and services.

Now, let’s get back to some research and some facts about blackberry and blackberry security itself.

First of all several governments had to deal with RIM in order to force them to provide access to the information that cross their service networks while other decided to directly ban Blackberry usage for high officials because of servers located in UK and USA, while other decided to install their own backdoors.

There’s a lot of discussion when the topics are RIM Blackberry and Governments for various reasons.

Below a set of official Security related information on RIM blackberry platform:

And here a set of unofficial Security and Hacking related information on RIM Blackberry platform:

Because it’s 23.32 (GMT+1), i am tired, i think that this post will end up here.

I hope to have provided the reader a set of useful information and consideration to go more in depth in analyzing and considering the overall blackberry security (in the good and in the bad, it always depends on your threat model!).

Cheers

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)

p.s. i am managing security technology development (voice encryption tech) on Blackberry platform, and i can tell you that from the development point of view it’s absolutely better than Nokia in terms of compatibility and speed of development, but use only RIMOS 5.0+ !

Tags , , , , | Comments (3)
Kudos security

Celebrating “Hackers” after 25 years

1 July 2010 - 8:25 am

A cult book, ever green since 25 years.

201007010924.jpg

It’s been 25 years since “Hackers” was published. Author Steven Levy reflects on the book and the movement.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/hackers-at-25.html
Steven Levy wrote a book in the mid-1980s that introduced the term "hacker" -- the positive connotation -- to a wide audience. In the ensuing 25 years, that word and its accompanying community have gone through tremendous change. The book itself became a mainstay in tech libraries.
O'Reilly recently released an updated 25th anniversary edition of "Hackers," so I checked in with Levy to discuss the book's development, its influence, and the role hackers continue to play.
Tags | Comment (0)
security

IOScat - a Port of Netcat to Cisco IOS

13 June 2010 - 3:25 pm

A porting of famous netcat to Cisco IOS router operating system: IOSCat

The only main limit is that it does not support UDP, but that’s a very cool tool!

A very good txt to read is Netcat hacker Manual.

Tags | Comment (0)
business interception Privacy security technology

Mobile Security talk at WHYMCA conference

2 June 2010 - 7:56 pm

I want to share some slides i used to talk about mobile security at whymca mobile conference in Milan.

Read here my slides on mobile security .

The slides provide a wide an in-depth overview of mobile security related matters, i should be doing some slidecast about it putting also audio. Maybe will do, maybe not, it depends on time that’s always a insufficient resource.

Tags , , , , , , | Comment (0)
Privacy security technology

iPhone PIN: useless encryption

1 June 2010 - 2:53 pm

I recently switched one of my multiple mobile phones with which i go around to iPhone.

I am particularly concerned about data protection in case of theft and so started having a look around about the iPhone provided protection system.

There is an interesting set of iPhone Business Security Features that make me think that iPhone is moving in the right path for security protection of the phone, but still a lot of things has to be done, especially for serious Enterprise and Government users.

201006011551.jpg  

For example it turned out that the iPhone PIN protection is useless and it can be broken just plugging the iPhone to a Linux machine and accessing the device like a USB stick.

That’s something disturbing my paranoid mindset that make me think not to use sensitive data on my iPhone if i cannot protect my data.

Probably an iPhone independent disk encryption product would be very useful in order to let the market create protection schemas that fit the different risk contexts that different users may have.

Probably a general consumer is not worried about this PIN vulnerability but for me, working within highly confidential envirnonment such as intelligence, finance and military, it’s something that i cannot accept.

I need strong disk encryption on my mobile phone.

I do strong voice encryption for it, but it would be really nice to have also something to protect the whole iPhone data and not just phone calls.

Tags , , , , | Comment (0)
Kudos Privacy security technology

Exploit code against SecurStar DriveCrypt published

25 May 2010 - 5:00 pm

It seems that the hacking community somehow like to target securstar products, maybe because hacking community doesn’t like the often revealed unethical approach already previously described in this blog by articles and user’s comments.

In 2004 a lot of accusation against Hafner of SecurStar went out because of alleged intellectual property theft regarding opensource codes such as Encryption 4 the masses and legal advert also against the Free and opensource TrueCrypt project .

In 2008 there was a pre-boot authentication hacking against DriveCrypt Plus posted on Full-Disclosure.

Early 2010 it was the time of the fake infosecurity research secretly sponsored by securstar at http://infosecurityguard.com (that now they tried to remove from the web because of embarrassing situation, but backup of the story are available, hacking community still wait for apologies) .

Now, mid 2010, following a research published in December 2009 about Disk Encryption software vulnerabilities made by Neil Kettle (mu-b), Security researcher at digit-labs and Penetration tester at Convergent Network Solutions , DriveCrypt was found to be vulnerable and exploitable breaking on-device security of the system and exploit code has been just released.

Exploit code reported below (thanks Neil for the code release!):

  • Arbitrary kernel code execution security exploit of DriveCrypt: drivecrypt-dcr.c
  • Arbitrary file reading/writing security exploit via unchecked user-definable parameters to ZxCreateFile/ReadFile/WriteFile: drivecrypt-fopen.c

The exploit code has been tested against DriveCrypt 5.3, currently released DriveCrypt 5.4 is reported to be vulnerable too as it has just minor changes related to win7 compatibility. Can anyone make a double check and report a comment here?

Very good job Neil!

In the meantime the Free Truecrypt is probably the preferred choice for disk encryption, given the fact that it’s difficult to trust DriveCrypt, PGP has been acquired by Symantec and there are very bad rumors about the trust that people have in Symantec and there are not many widely available alternatives.

Rumors say that also PhoneCrypt binaries are getting analyzed and the proprietary encryption system could reveal something fun…

Tags , , , | Comment (0)
business interception Privacy technology

SecurStar GmbH Phonecrypt answers on the Infosecurityguard/Notrax case: absolutely unreasonable! :-)

1 February 2010 - 6:04 pm

UPDATE 20.04.2010: http://infosecurityguard.com has been disabled. Notrax identity became known to several guys in the voice security environments (cannot tell, but you can imagine, i was right!) and so our friends decided to trow away the website because of legal responsibility under UK and USA laws.

UPDATE: Nice summary of the whole story (i know, it’s long and complicated to read at 1st time) on SIPVicious VoIP security blog by Sandro Gauci.

Following my discoveries, Mr. Hafner, SecurStar chief exec, tried to ultimately defend their actions, citing absolutely unreasonable excuses to The Reg instead of publicly apologizing for what they have done: creating a fake independent security research to promote their PhoneCrypt product.

He tried to convince us that the person behind IP 217.7.213.59, used by the author of infosecurityguard.com and pointing to their office DSL line, was this hacker Notrax, using their anonymous surfing service and not one of their employees at their office:

“SecurStar chief exec Wilfried Hafner denied any contact with Notrax. Notrax, he said, must have been using his firm’s anonymous browsing service, SurfSolo, to produce the results reported by Pietrosanti”

Let’s reflect a moment on this sentence… Would really an hacker looking for anonymity spend 64 EUR to buy their anonymity surfing service called surfsolo instead of using the free and much more secure TOR (the onion router)?Then let’s reflect on this other piece of information:

  • The IP 217.7.213.59 is SecurStar GmbH’s office DSL line
  • On 217.7.213.59 they have installed their VoIP/Asterisk PBX and internet gateway
  • They promote their anonymous proxy service for “Anonymous p2p use” (http://www.securstar.com/products_ssolo.php). Who would let users do p2p from the office dsl line where they have installed their corporate VoIP PBX ? If you do VoIP you can’t let third party flood your line w/ p2p traffic, your phone calls would became obviously unreliable (yes, yes, you can do QoS, but you would not place an anonymous navigation proxy on your company office DSL line…).
  • Which company providing an anonymous navigation service would ever use their own office IP address? Just think how many times you would have the police knocking at your door and your employees as the prime suspects. (In past i used to run a TOR node, i know the risks…). Also think how many times you would find yourself blacklisted on google as a spyware bot.
  • Mr. Hafner also says “We have two million people using this product. Or he may have been an old customer of ours”. 2M users on a DSL line, really?
  • I don’t use Surfsolo service, however their proxies are probably these ones:

surfsolo.securstar.net - 67.225.141.74

surfsolo.securstar.com - 69.16.211.133

Frankly speaking I can easily understand that Mr. Hafner is going do whatever he can to protect his company from the scandal, but the “anonymous proxy” excuse is at the very least suspicious.

How does the fact that the “independent research” was semantically a product review of PhoneCrypt, along with the discovery that the author come from the SecurStar GmbH IP address offices, along with the anonymity of this Notrax guy (SecurStar calls him a “well known it security professional” in their press release..) sound to you?

It’s possible that earth will get an attack from outer space that’s going to destroy our life?

Statistically extremely difficult, but yes, possible. More or less like the “anonymous proxy” story told by Mr. Hafner to cover the fact that they are the ones behind the infosecurityguard.com fake “independent security review”.

Hey, I don’t need anything else to convince myself or to let the smart person have his own thoughts on this.

I just think that the best way for SecurStar to get out of this mess would probably be to provide public excuses to the hacking community for abusing the name and reputation of real independent security researches, for the sake of a marketing stunt.

Regards,

Fabio Pietrosanti

p.s. I am currently waiting for some other infos that will more precisely confirm that what Mr. Hafner is saying is not properly true. Stay tuned.

Tags , , , , , | Comment (0)
business interception Privacy security

Evidence that infosecurityguard.com/notrax is SecurStar GmbH Phonecrypt - A fake independent research on voice crypto

1 February 2010 - 12:32 am

Below evidence that the security review made by an anonymous hacker on http://infosecurityguard.com is in facts a dishonest marketing plan by the SecurStar GmbH to promote their voice crypto product.

I already wrote about that voice crypto analysis that appeared to me very suspicious.

Now it’s confirmed, it’s a fake independent hacker security research by SecurStar GmbH, its just a marketing trick!

How do we know that Infosecurityguard.com, the fake independent security research, is a marketing trick from SecurStar GmbH?

1) I posted on http://infosecurityguard.com a comments to a post with a link to my blog to that article on israelian ministry of defense certification

2) The author of http://infosecurityguard.com went to approve the comment and read the link on my own blog http://infosecurity.ch

3) Reaching my blog he leaked the IP address from which he was coming 217.7.213.59 (where i just clicked on from wordpress statistic interface)

4) On http://217.7.213.59/panel there is the IP PBX interface of the SecurStar GmbH corporate PBX (openly reachable trough the internet!)

5) The names of the internal PBX confirm 100% that it’s the SecurStar GmbH:

6) There is 100% evidence that the anonymous hacker of http://infosecurityguard.com is from SecurStar GmbH

Below the data and reference that let us discover that it’s all but a dishonest marketing tips and not an independent security research.

Kudos to Matteo Flora for it’s support and for his article in Debunking Infosecurityguard identity !

The http referral tricks

When you read a link going from a website to another one there is an HTTP protocol header, the “Referral”, that tell you from which page someone is going to another webpage.

The referral demonstrated that the authors of http://infosecurityguard.com read my post, because it was coming from http://infosecurityguard.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php that’s the webpage you use as a wordpress author/editor to approve/refuse comments. And here there was the link.

That’s the log entry:

217.7.213.59 - - [30/Jan/2010:02:56:37 -0700] “GET /20100129/licensed-by-israel-ministry-of-defense-how-things-really-works/ HTTP/1.0″ 200 5795 “http://infosecurityguard.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”

The PBX open on the internet tell us that’s SecurStar GmbH

The SecurStar GmbH PBX is open on the internet, it contains all the names of their employee and confirm us that the author of http:/infosecurityguard.com is that company and is the anonymous hacker called Notrax.

Here there is their forum post where the SecurStar GmbH guys are debugging IPCOPfirewall & Asterisk together (so we see also details of what they use) where there is the ip 217.7.213.59 .

SecurStarproof.png

That’s also really fun!

They sell secure telephony but their company telephony system is openly vulnerable on the internet. :-)

I was thinking to call the CEO, Hafner, via SIP on his internal desktop PBX to announce we discovered him tricks.. :->

They measured their marketing activity

Looking at the logs of my website i found that they was sensing the google distribution of information for the following keywords, in order to understand how effectively they was able to attack competing products. It’s reasonable, if you invest money in a marketing campaign you want to see the results :-)

They reached my blog and i logged their search:

infosecurityguard+cryptophone

infosecurityguard+gold-lock

217.7.213.59 - - [30/Jan/2010:02:22:42 -0700] “GET / HTTP/1.0″ 200 31057 “http://www.google.de/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SKPB_enDE350DE350&q=infosecurityguard+cryptophone” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”

217.7.213.59 - - [30/Jan/2010:04:15:07 -0700] “GET /20100130/about-the-voice-encryption-analysis-phonecrypt-can-be-intercepted-serious-security-evaluation-criteria/ HTTP/1.0″ 200 15774 “http://www.google.de/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SKPB_enDE350DE350&q=gold-lock+infosecurityguard” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”


The domain registration data
The domain have been registered on 1st December 2009, just two months to start preparing the dishonest marketing campaign:  

Domain Name: INFOSECURITYGUARD.COM

Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.   

Updated Date: 01-dec-2009

Creation Date: 01-dec-2009

The domain is anonymously privacy protected trough a whois privacy service:

Administrative Contact: Private, Registration INFOSECURITYGUARD.COM@domainsbyproxy.com , Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com

Notrax hacker does not exist on google
As you know any hacker that get public usually have presence of it’s activity on google, attending mailinglists, forum, homepage, past research, participation to conferences, etc, etc.
The fake hacker that they wanted us to to think was writing an independent blog does NOT have any trace on google. Only some hit about an anonymous browser called Notrax but nothing about that hacker.
Maybe when SecurStar provided the anonymity tool to their marketing agency, to help them protecting anonymity for the fake research, their provided them the anonymous browser notrax.So the marketing guy thinking about the nickname of this fake hackers used what? Notrax! :-)

The “independent review”completely oriented in publicizing PhoneCrypt

Of the various review don the phonecrypt review is only positive and amazing good feedback, while the other are only bad feedback and no single good point.

As you can imagine, in any kind of independent product evaluation, for all products there are goods and bad points. No. In this one there are only product that are good and product that are bad.

They missed to consider the security of the technology used by the products

They completely avoided to speak about cryptography and security of the products.

They do not evaluated basic security features that must be in that kind of products.That’s in order not to let anyone see that they did not followed basic security rules in building up their PhoneCrypt.
The technology is closed source, no transparency on algorithms and protocols, no peer review.Read my new comparison (from the basic cryptographic requirement point of view) About the voice encryption analysis (criteria, errors and different results) .
The results are somehow different than their one .

UPDATE: Who’s Wilfried Hafner (SecurStar founder) ?

I got a notice from a reader regarding Wilfred Hafner, SecurStar founder, CEO and security expert.

He was arrested in 1997 for telephony related fraud (check 2nd article on Phrack) earning from telephony fraud 254.000 USD causing damages to local telcos trough blueboxing for 1.15 Million USD.

He was not doing “Blueboxing” for the pleasure of phreaking and connecting with other hackers, but to earn money.

Hacking for profit (and not for fun) in 1997… brrr…. No hacker’s ethic at all!

All in all, is that lawful?

Badmouthing a competitor amounts to an unfair competition practice in most jurisdictions, so it is arguable (to say the least) that SecurStar is right on a legally sound ground here.
Moreover, there are some specific statutes in certain jurisdictions which provide for a straightforward ban on the practice we are talking about. For example in the UK the British Institute of Practitioners in Advertising  - in compliance with the Consumer protection from Unfair Trading regulation - ruled that:

”falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for the purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer” is a criminal offense.

We have no doubt that PRPR  (which is the UK-based *PR company for SecurStar GmbH, led by Peter Rennison and Allie Andrews as stated in SecurStar Press Release) did provide their client with this information. Heck, they *are* in the UK, they simply cannot ignore that!

IANAL, but I would not be surpised if someone filed a criminal complaint or start civil litigation for unfair competition against SecurStar GmbH.
Whether this is going to be a matter for criminal and/or civil Courts or not is not that important. However, it is clear enough that SecurStar GmbH appears to be at least ethically questionable and not really worth of trust.

Nice try, gentlemen… however, next time just do it right (whether “right” for them means “in a honest manner” or “in a fashion not to be caught” I will let them choose)”

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)

Tags , , , , , | Comments (7)
business interception Privacy security

Dishonest security: The SecurStart GmbH Phonecrypt case

1 February 2010 - 12:30 am

I would like to provide considerations on the concept of ethics that a security company should have respect to the users, the media and the security environment.

SecurStar GmbH made very bad things making that infosecuriguard.com fake independent research.

It’s unfair approach respect to hacking community.

It’s unfair marketing to end user. They should not be tricking by creating fake independent review.

It’s unfair competition in the security market.

Let’s make some more important consideration on this.

Must be serious on cryptographic products. They are not toys

When you do cryptographic tools you should be really aware of what you are doing, you must be really serious.

If you do bad crypto people could die.

If you don’t follow basic security rules for transparency and security for cryptography you are putting people life at risk.

You are taking the responsibility of this. (I want to sleep at night, don’t think SecurStar CEO/CTO care about this…)

Security research need reference and transparency

Security research have to be public, well done, always subject to public discussion and cooperation.
Security research should not be instrumentally used for marketing purpose.Security research should be done for awareness and grow of the knowledge of the worldwide security environment.

Hacking environment is neutral, should not be used instrumentally

Hackers are considered neutral, nerds, doing what they do for their pleasure and passion.

If you work in the security market you work with hackers.

If you use hackers and hacking environment for your own marketing purposes you are making something very nasty.

Hackers give you the technology and knowledge and you use them for your own commercial purpose.

Consideration on the authority of the information online

That’s something that pose serious consideration on the authority of information online.An anonymous hacker, with no reference online, made a product security review that appear like an independent one. I have to say that the fake review was very well prepared, it always posed good/bad things in an indirect way. It did not appeared to me at 1st time like a fake. But going deeply i found what’s going on.

However Journalists, news media and blogger went to the TRAP and reviewed their fake research. TheRegister, NetworkWorld and a lot of blogs reported it. Even if the author was completely anonymous.

What they have done is already illegal in UK

SecurStar GmbH is lucky that they are not in the UK, where doing this kind of things is illegal.

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)

Tags , , , , | Comment (0)
cyberwarfare intelligence interception Privacy security

Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense? How things really works!

29 January 2010 - 10:12 am

You should know that Israel is a country where if a company need to develop encryption product they must be authorized by the government.

The government don’t want that companies doing cryptography can do anything bad to them and what they can do of good for the government, so they have to first be authorized.

Companies providing interception and encryption must apply to a license because Israel law on this is so restrictive to be similar to china law.

That’s because those kind of technologies are considered fundamental for the intelligence and espionage capabilities of Israel country.

To give some example of “Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense” companies:

GSM encryption products “Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense” - Gold-lock

Interception of communication products “Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense” - Verint

HF encrypted Radio “Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense” - Kavit

Surveillance services and equipment “Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense” - Multi Tier Solutions

For example how to apply for a “License by Israel Ministry of Defense” if you do encryption technologies in Israel?

Be sure to be an israeli company, click here and fill the forms.

Someone will contact you from encryption-control@mod.gov.il and will discuss with you whether to give you or not the license to sell.

What does the department of defense will require from an israeli company in order to provide them the authorization to make and sell interception and encryption products?

Well, what they want and what they really ask nobody knows.

It’s a secret dealing of Israel Ministry of Defense with each “licensed” company.

What we know for sure is that Verint, a “Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense”, placed a backdoor to intercept companies and governments in the US and Netherland into the interception systems they was selling.

Verint, a Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense Company, provided to Israel government eavesdropped communications of private and government users in the United States and in the Netherland .

CIA officier reported that Israel Ministry of Defense was known to pay Verint a reimbursement of 50% of their costs in order to have from Verint espionage services trough their commercial activity on selling “backdoored” interception equipment to spy foreign users.


It can be a legitimate doubt that the cooperation within the Israeli Ministry of Defense may be problematic for an Israeli company that want to sell interception and encryption product abroad.

Those companies may be forced to make the interests of Israel Ministry of Defense and not the interests of the customers (like Verint scandal is a real-world example).

So, how would a “Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense” be a good things to promote?

It represent the risk that the “Israel Ministry of Defense”, like is publicly known that it has already have done with Verint, will interfere with what the company do.

It represent the risk that the “Israel Ministry of Defense” may reasonably provide “reimbursement” of costs paying the company and get what they would likely would like to get.

So, what does really “Israel Ministry of Defense” want from Israel companies doing encryption and interception technologies?

Should we ask ourself whether Israeli companies doing encryption and interception businesses are more interested to do business or to do “outsourced espionage services” for their always paying customer, the “Israel Ministry of Defense”.

For sure, in the age of financial crisis, the Israel Ministry of Defense is a paying customer that does not have budget problem…

Strict control, strict rules, strong government strategic and military cooperation.

Be careful.

If you want to read more about this matters, about how technologies from certain countries is usually polluted with their governments military and secret services strategies stay tuned as i am preparing a post about this .

You will much better understand about that subjects on the “Licensed by Israel Ministry of Defense”.

Tags , , , , | Comment (0)
security

Recuva: Nice windows data recovery tool

12 November 2009 - 1:10 pm

Not a professional tool but an easy, quick and free one.

If you just accidently deleted some files on windows or your employee leave the company deleting all his data, well that you get out from trouble quickly.

It also came out in a ‘portable’ version to be loaded from an usb stick drive.

Check Recuva recovery tool

Tags | Comment (0)
business security technology

Iphone jailbreaking crashing towers? FUD!

30 July 2009 - 9:14 am

It’s interesting to read a news about an anti-jailbreaking statement by apple that say that with jailbreaked phones it may be possible to crash mobile operator’s towers:

By tinkering with this code, “a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data,”

So fun, as the Baseband Processor interface of iPhone is precisely the same of Google android and all Windows Mobile powered devices:

Basically the operating system use AT commands (do you remember old hayes modem commands?) with additional parameters documented and standardized by 3GPP that let more deep (but not that much deep) interaction with the mobile networks.

Please note that those AT commands are standard and widely available on all phones and are the interface to the Baseband Processor.

On iPhone that’s the list of commands that an from apple point of view could let “a international hacker to crash the tower software” :

Undocumented commands on iPhone

Damn, those European anarchist of Nokia are providing publicly also their AT command sets, and are AVAILABLE TO ANYONE:

Nokia AT Commands

Oh jesus! Also the terrorist oriented Microsoft corporation let third party to use AT commands:

Windows Mobile AT Commands

It’s absolutely unacceptable that also RIM, canadian funky against USA, provide access to AT commands:

Blackberry AT commands

And it’s unbelivable to see that Google Android also document how the system speak to the Baseband Processor and find on forums that it’s ease to access it:

Google Android Basedband Processor

Not to speak to ALL other mobile manufactuer that use the very same approach and let any party to speak via AT commands to the baseband processor of the phone.

Is the baseband processor of iphone buggy and the AT&T tower software buggy so that it’s dangerous to let the user make experiment with it?

Probably yes, and so those are only excuse because the software involved are not robust enough.

Apple, be careful, you have the trust of your users because you are apple you always have done things for the user advantages.

Users does like telephone companies that are huge lobbies that try to restrict and control users as much as possible.

If you, Apple, start behaving like a phone company users will not trust you anymore.

Be careful with FUD statements.

Tags , , | Comment (0)
Uncategorized

Letter from a suicide hackers

27 July 2009 - 9:51 pm

The concept of freedom of an hacker, killing himself not to loose the most important value of his life.

Read there

Tags , | Comment (0)
cyberwarfare intelligence interception Privacy security

UAE government placing backdoors into Blackberry devices

21 July 2009 - 2:25 pm

Nice attempt to place backdoors inside Blackberry devices.

It seems that UAE government wanted to do something nasty placing backdoors trough software upgrades in Etilsat (local mobile operator) blackberry devices, obviously with the cooperation of the mobile operator itself.

Fortunately, the power of the security community discovered and unveiled the facts. Check it out.

Etisat patch designed for surveillance

Wired magazine: Blackberry spies

Security exists only with transparency.

Tags , , , | Comment (0)
security technology

Mobile platform hacking: worms and botnet from phones?

7 July 2009 - 8:33 am

The hacking community is finally starting seriously auditing and hacking Symbian OS, even if it’s difficult, hard to work on, unpleasant to debug it .

There are so many mobile operating systems (Symbian OS, Nokia S40, Windows Mobile, RIM OS, Mac OS X, Android/Linux, Brew) that a worm/virus being able to leverage a cross-platform vulnerability it’s just a theory.

Trusted computing platforms, security model of J2ME Java only phones (like RIM and S40), digital signature everywhere are all tools that make massive hacking on mobile platform really difficult.

It’s difficult and costly to develop on mobile platforms, it’s difficult and costly too doing hacking on that platforms.

Still look at a very nice achievement of paper from SEC Consult called Pwning Nokia phones (and other Symbian based smartphones) .

Can we expect future worms or botnet on mobile? I don’t expect so, too many different OS with hard-to-beat security model.

And even if a worm would be able to penetrate a single mobile paltform bugs, mobile operators would be able to block it very quickly (compare how many GSM/UMTS operator exists compared to Internet Service Provider?).

Tags , | Comment (0)
cybercrime cyberwarfare intelligence

Hackers hired from UK Office of Cyber Security

6 July 2009 - 10:25 pm

It seems that in UK the management became illuminated, they discovered that the most efficient way to fight a cyber war is to hire soldier that play in the battlefield everyday, only for passion.

U.K. Employs ‘Naughty Boys’ to Battle Other Hackers U.K. Employs ‘Naughty Boys’ to Battle Other Hackers

Tags , , , | Comment (0)