Often, I hear arguments that go like this: real hackers write code and exploits; everyone else is a script-kiddie.
That is a dumb argument from all sorts of levels. For starters, those who make this observation are usually those who can write code. Therefore, everyone who can’t meet their personal standards/abilities as a coder are “skiddies” who demean the profession.
I find it intriguing that everyone defines the basis for a good pentester by their own capabilities. Clearly you think that you are good and it’s normal to think that everyone will want to be good just like you. Consequently, they should all do as you do, right? Wrong. We need diversity of backgrounds, skills, and opinions. It’s healthy not to inbreed (intellectually or otherwise).
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Weaponizing dnscat with shellcode and Metasploit
Hey all,
I’ve been letting other projects slip these last couple weeks because I was excited about converting dnscat into shellcode (or “weaponizing dnscat”, as I enjoy saying). Even though I got into the security field with reverse engineering and writing hacks for games, I have never written more than a couple lines of x86 at a time, nor have I ever written shellcode, so this was an awesome learning experience. Most people start by writing shellcode that spawns a local shell; I decided to start with shellcode that implements a dnscat client in under 1024 bytes (for both Linux and Windows). Like I always say, go big or go home!
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robots.txt: important if you’re hosting passwords
This is going to be a fun post that’s related to some of my password work. Some of the text may not be PG13, so parental discretion is advised.
As most of you know, I’ve been collecting password lists. In addition to normal password lists that are useful in bruteforcing, I have a (so far) lame collection of non-hacking dictionaries. Things like cities, English words, etc.
There was a time when the biggest dictionary I had, weighing in at 6.4mb, was a German wordlist. 6.4mb doesn’t sound like much, but at the time I was on a DSL connection; with about 400kbit upstream (on a good day), I could feel every download.
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The ultimate faceoff between password lists
Yes, I’m still working on making the ultimate password list. And I don’t mean the 16gb one I made by taking pretty much every word or word-looking string on the Internet when I was a kid; that was called ultimater dictionary. No; I mean one that is streamlined, sorted, and will make Nmap the bruteforce tool of the future!
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Trusting the Browser (a ckeditor short story)
My name is Matt Gardenghi. Ron seems to think it important that this post be clearly attributed to someone else (this fact might worry me). I’m an occasional contributor here (see: Bypassing AV). I handle security at Bob Jones University and also perform pentests on the side. (So if you need someone to do work, here’s my shameless plug.) I have acquired the oddly despised CISSP and the more respectable GCFA, GPEN, and GWAPT.
I know a company that purchased some Web 2.0 services. We’ll leave it at that, to protect the guilty. :-p
So, one day a bored user decided that the editor used on the site was annoying. He used GreaseMonkey to replace the editor with his preferred editor. This was “Clue #1” that a problem existed with the Web 2.0 service.
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Using Nmap to detect the Arucer (ie, Energizer) Trojan
Hey,
I don’t usually write two posts in one day, but today is a special occasion! I was reading my news feeds (well, my co-op student (ie, intern) was – I was doing paperwork), and noticed a story about a remote backdoor being included with the Energizer UsbCharger software</a>. Too funny!
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Hard evidence that people suck at passwords
Hey everybody!
As you probably know, I’ve been working hard on generating and evaluating passwords. My last post was all about Rockyou.com’s passwords; next post will (probably) be about different groups of passwords from my just updated password dictionaries page. This will be a little different, though.
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How big is the ideal dick…tionary?
Hey all,
As some of you know, I’ve been working on collecting leaked passwords/other dictionaries. I spent some time this week updating my wiki’s password page. Check it out and let me know what I’m missing, and I’ll go ahead and mirror it.
I’ve had a couple new developments in my password list, though. Besides having an entirely new layout, I’ve added some really cool data!
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DNS Backdoors with dnscat
Hey all,
I’m really excited to announce the first release of a tool I’ve put a lot of hard work into: dnscat.
It’s being released, along with a bunch of other tools that I’ll be blogging about, as part of nbtool 0.04.
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