Jamal B's Blog - Infosec Mindstorm

Social Networking Intel/ Footprint web search

2011-08-01T15:41:00.001-07:00

I've put together a custom google search for social networking related searches, it can be found here:

http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=013791148858571516042:ntbykhk-kus

This can provide an idea of what an individual's social networking footprint looks like.

Examples of the sites on the list include:

facebook.com
flickr.com
plus.google.com

I will be constantly updating the search engine.

Pastebin and collaborative tools intelligence web search

2011-07-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

I've put together a custom google search for Intelligence/ information posted to pastebin and other online collaborative service and information portals, it can be found here:

http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=013791148858571516042:gqsws13ehog&hl=en

Examples of the sites on the list include:

http://pastebin.ca/
http://nopaste.info/
http://paste.pocoo.org/

I will be adding more sources as I come across them.

Open Source Intelligence Deep Web Search- updates

2011-05-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

I have updated the OSINT custom google search.

http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=013791148858571516042:eygbr9xc-ys

The following sites have been added:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/
http://isnblog.ethz.ch/
http://theosintjournal.blogspot.com/
http://www.robtex.com
http://serversniff.net
http://www.peekyou.com
http://com.lullar.com/
http://www.checkusernames.com/
http://knowem.com
http://www.isearch.com
http://www.pipl.com
http://www.123people.com
http://www.spokeo.com
http://webmii.com/
http://www.zoominfo.com
http://samy.pl/androidmap
http://www.bing.com/maps/
http://twittermap.appspot.com/
http://tineye.com
http://youropenbook.org/
http://picfog.com
http://www.whitepages.com/find_neighbors
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
http://boardreader.com
http://omgili.com
http://www.onstrat.com/osint/
http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/
https://wits.nctc.gov/FederalDiscoverWITS/index.do?N=0
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

Open Source Intelligence Deep Web Search

2011-04-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

I've put together a custom google search for Open Source Intelligence related topics, it can be found here:

http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=013791148858571516042:eygbr9xc-ys

It currently searches the following sites:

http://www.turbo10.com/
http://www.deepdyve.com/
http://infomine.ucr.edu/
http://vlib.org/
http://www.intute.ac.uk/
http://aip.completeplanet.com/aip-engines/browse?thisPage=%2Fbrowse%2Fbrowse.jsp&successPage=%2Fbrowse%2Fbrowse.jsp&errorFlag=&errorMsg=&event=loadPageEvent&directPage=&directSection=4&treeQueryExpr=&treeQueryType=phrase&treeQueryTarget=tree
http://www.infoplease.com/index.html
http://www.deeppeep.org/
http://www.incywincy.com/
http://www.deepwebtech.com/
http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/
http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/index.html
http://www.osint.org.uk/
http://www.phibetaiota.net/
http://www.onstrat.com/osint/
http://extremesearcher.com/handbooklinks.html#chap1
http://rr.reuser.biz/
http://osintdaily.blogspot.com/
http://www.reversenumberdatabase.com/416-524

I will be adding more sources as I come across them.

A possible security bug in plenty of fish

2011-02-14T18:55:00.000-08:00

I think I may have found a security related bug in plenty of fish...

It looks like your session can remain active even if you have attempted to clear out your cookies and cache (provided you have multiple windows open).

Here is the scenario:

I was logged into plenty of fish, and had multiple (plenty of fish) windows open; I was looking at different profiles and am in a habit of opening new windows when browsing.

After surfing for a while I decided to clear out my cache; I was using the latest stable build of firefox and went to tools clear recent history (everything) and hit ok.

After clearing everything (which includes cookies and active sessions), I got the impression that this would mean my session would be killed and that if I attempted to click on a new profile or send a message I would be asked to re-authenticate. This is not the case.

After my session being "killed", I was still able to view new profiles and even email members I was interested in and was able to authenticate that these messages had successfully gone through.

What if you were on a public computer and thought that by clearing your cache and cookies, your session would be killed and that no one else would be able to use your profile?

Something to think about...

new security hole in facebook

2011-01-28T18:37:00.000-08:00

I was logged into facebook and just saw the craziest thing; you can have your apps activated and doing things while you aren't signed into facebook.

I am sure you must be thinking, that doesn't make any sense.

Let me describe my steps below:

I was logged into two sessions of facebook (two windows open) and they were both on my home page.

I was using firefox and on one of the sessions went into the mafia wars game application; I then clicked on the second session and signed out of facebook. One would think that by signing out of this session, it would have deactivated my other session as well; it did this to a certain extent. I carried out a few actions in my game, ie. deposited some money etc and was able to do this successfully. I then clicked on the home link and it asked me to sign into facebook.

When I saw this, I re-signed into facebook and re-entered my application and checked to make sure the applications I had carried out in my game had been successful; they had, I was able to recreate this scenario without any problems.

This is significant, if I can do this in mafiawars, can you picture the implications with other applications? What if other applications go further and connect to things like your location, or private pictures? What if you were logged into facebook, on a public computer like in the library?

Something to think about...

Some thoughts on malware analysis and vmware

2011-01-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

There are a number of different ways to examine malware, from using automated sites like threatexpert and virustotal to running your own sandbox locally (either on a physical machine or by using virtualization software like vmware). There are some in the malware analysis community who advocate using real hardware, as some pieces of malware have virtualization detection mechanisms built into them. Others point out that virtualization provides a greater level of flexibility and you can actually put measures in place for dealing with malware that tries to behave differently in a virtualized environment. I recently began to think a lot about this, since many companies are now using virtualization to a greater extent internally on things like webservers, as this can lead to lower costs and flexibility. It makes one wonder, does this mean that we are going to see a new trend in malware that ignores whether a machine is virtualized or not and just behaves the same anyway? If this does not appear to be the case, then does it mean that increased virtualization of both servers and desktops can actually reduce the likelihood of an organization being as heavily impacted by malware?

Interesting information leak from facebook

2011-01-06T20:23:00.000-08:00

The other day I signed into facebook and came across something very interesting. I noticed an update on my newsfeed from someone I had sent a friend request to. Having seen this I was under the impression that they had accepted my friend request, consequently I clicked on their profile and saw that it said awaiting friend confirmation. This is significant and may have some forensic/ investigative value because it seems to tell us that depending on what privacy settings a person has, if they don't act on a friend request, you can still get regular updates on some of their information on your newsfeed. This could potentially be used to track when a person changes, or updates their pictures, posts status updates or other information, without actually having to go to their profile page on a regular basis and without being part of their friendship group on facebook.

Guessing ATM PIN's using publically available information via social media

2010-10-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

I was looking at the information a lot of us have publicly available and began to think about ATM PIN security.

The ATM's I am familiar with have a 4 digit (all numerals) pin code, this suggests that your pin is probably going to be a year. If you look at facebook, linkedin, myspace, flickr and any number of other sources you can build a profile of a person which can greatly help to reduce the number of possible ATM pin combinations they are likely to be using. Once you have a profile of your target, asking the right questions can reduce the ATM pin possibilities to a substantially more manageable number.

As an example:

If you are looking at a single guy, building a profile can determine the questions you need to answer for this person:

If this is a young unmarried single guy, you should find out:

Year of his birth
Does he have a new job?
Did he get a promotion recently?
Does he have his own car?
What year model is his car?
What year did he buy his car?
Does he have his own place?
What year did he buy his own place?
Does he have a dog?
What year did he get his dog?
Does he have any hobbies he is extremely passionate about?
Do any of them have specific years tied to them?
For instance maybe he likes guitars; maybe he has a favorite guitar. Is that a vintage 1965 Fender Strat?

This means you are looking at 6-9 likely possibilities for his ATM pin, given that you usually get about 3 attempts before being locked out the odds of getting the right combination are fairly high.

If the individual is married and has kids, you may need to add a few more questions

What year did he have his first kid?
What year did he get married?
The Date of Birth of his wife or significant other?

The more complex the profile, the more you need to fine tune your questions. While we might recommend that people create a number only they know and that sort of thing, a lot of us are more likely to go with something that we are familiar with and likely to easily remember. I am just scratching the surface here, the better you build the profile the better you get to know the person and this improves the likelihood of you getting back improved information.

Blackberries being viewed as a Security threat by various Middle Eastern governments

2010-07-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

The Toronto Star had an interesting article on how Blackberries are seen as a potential security threat by various countries in the Middle East and Asia.

http://www.thestar.com/business/companies/rim/article/840150#article

From the article:
The UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said Sunday that as a result of how BlackBerry data is managed and stored that “certain Blackberry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions.”

This is certainly interesting information and raises the question of what specific applications are of concern to the government. I can imagine Blackberry messenger being one of the applications that causes some concerns from a privacy perspective but I am curious as to what some of the other applications of concern might be.

Just thinking of some possibilities:
Youtube
Twitter
Facebook
Worldmate Live
Maximizer
Cellcrypt - possibly determining who is using this
various news portal applications
viigo
Wi-Fi Proxy FTP HTTP Servers (app)
SSH apps (PaderSyncSSH and Rove Mobile SSH) - possibly determining which non corporate individuals are using apps of this nature?

Russian Spies and infosec some thoughts

2010-06-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

As most people are aware, several individuals were recently arrested and accused of being deep cover agents spying on the USA on behalf of Russia. There are some interesting details emerging on how these individuals were tracked, with some news papers/ sites stating that these individuals had been under surveillance for quite some time.

One thing I found really fascinating about this whole event is why the individuals under surveillance did not change their MAC addresses; perhaps they simply did not see it as a major risk in being used to identify them given all the other layers of security they had in place, ie some level of stenography (there are mixed reports as to whether cryptography was involved as well), and the fact that they were using ad-hoc wireless networks. I think there is also a possibility that given that they were using ad-hoc networks the mac addresses may have been what the agents used to identify each other and determine whether they were in the appropriate network.

Reports, postings and other Media on this story:
The SANS storm centre has a diary entry which looks at some of the technical issues raised in this case
http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=9094
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/829914--u-s-says-alleged-russian-spies-posed-as-canadians
http://www.dailytech.com/Russian+Femme+Fatale+Spy+10+Others+Busted+by+FBI/article18898c.htm