Passing The GSEC Exam

Passing The GSEC Exam

So, I’ve officially nailed down another Information Security certificate. And, this time a certificate from the SANS Institute with their GIAC- GSEC certificate. I thought I’d make a post for other people that plan to challenge the exam, and share my own personal experience through it all.

Is it Right For Me ?

The big question would be why are you thinking of obtaining this certificate? Does your work require it? Are you new to the information security field and want a better foothold into the industry? Do you wish to gain more knowledge and/or a higher quality of training? If it’s any of those reasons apply to you, then I would definitely point you towards getting your GSEC certificate.

Preparing For The Exam

So some may ask how they can best prepare for the exam? (more…)

Finding a Drupal Vulnerability

Finding a Drupal Vulnerability

So, I found my first official Drupal Vulnerability with Drupal Core. You can read more about it officially on Drupal’s website here –> https://www.drupal.org/SA-CORE-2016-001

For those that don’t know much about Drupal it is a Content Management System similar to WordPress and Joomla.

During my time conducting a security assessment and audit on Drupal, I found an issue. This particular vulnerability was found many months back. I had decided to hold off on publishing anything about it so it would give many Drupal users time to mitigate the issue.

What is the Vulnerability?

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Vulnerable JavaScript Illegally Mining User Machines

Vulnerable JavaScript Illegally Mining User Machines

So a few days ago, I was browsing Cnet.com to view some on-line tools. I noticed an odd alert triggered by my Anti-Virus scanner. My scanner detected it as HKTL_COINMINE with my URL Filtering option enabled on my scanner. I decided to investigate it further to see what this was all about. What I slowly started to uncover was that something was using my machine to mine. This at first didn’t make sense, as no new applications or files were downloaded.

Then, I noticed an increase in CPU, and I have a normal baseline where my CPU levels normally reside at for the most part. After looking into some network connections I realized there was a connection made out to a server in Ukraine. And, that isn’t typical behavior of my network to be connecting to a machine in Ukraine. The realization after some further investigation that it was the CNET JavaScript file that had been compromised externally on another server . And, this led me to my next blog post!

How Do They Exploit JavaScript?

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Network Security for IP Camera’s

Network Security for IP Camera’s & Video Surveillance Systems

These days many devices have some form of interaction with our networking devices and the internet itself! What people forget is much like our desktops, laptops and mobile devices. All of these other types of devices need to be secured. The average person is going to assume no security is needed and that the product itself is already fairly secure by default. In my personally opinion, I’d say the default security settings are usually not sufficient enough to keep the device and your network safe.

I’ve created a guide below of procedures that can be followed to enhance the security measures for your IP Camera’s and systems.

IP Camera Hardening Guide

I’ve created a hardening guide below that will look at a few key components that administrators will want to make use of in their network.

• Passwords
• LDAP/AD Authentication
• VLAN’s
• 802.1X Authentication
• Disabling Network Ports
• Disabling Unused Services
• MAC Address Filtering
• Physical Access Control

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BurpSuite & ZAP Bypass Proxy

BurpSuite & ZAP Bypass Proxy

I wanted to make this tutorial for users that might get stuck in a similar situation.

I was security testing a website using Burpsuite and would end up with SSL Handshake failures. And, it really made no sense at first since Burpsuite uses Java. And, I had the latest version of Java installed on my machine. Burpsuite was giving me SSL Handshake failure alerts and was asking me to install JCE Strong Cipher policies. Turns out the website was using VERY strong ciphers (which is a very good thing). And, they were using no medium or outdated ciphers.

Now, these ciphers are so strong that even the latest Java package does not contain them….yet.

So that meant I had to find another way to use Burpsuite, but still have the ability to make a proper SSL handshake using the strong ciphers. I then turned to another similar product called OWASP ZAP. This is a great product and I have used it back when I didn’t quite have the funds to purchase Burpsuite. What I realized was that I could use Burpsuite and have ZAP filter my traffic for me. For some reason ZAP has all of the strong ciphers and did not fail the SSL handshake, which meant I could transfer traffic as:

 Browser -> Burpsuite -> ZAP -> Webserver

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