Respect 🫡

#opensource #vlc

In combination with the research published yesterday by ETHZ into IBPB implementation vulnerabilities on some Intel and AMD CPUs (https://comsec.ethz.ch/research/microarch/breaking-the-barrier/), Johannes Wikner has published a detailed walkthrough of the first cross-process Spectre exploit against a real target, an attack he developed in part during his internship with us last year.

Check it out here: https://grsecurity.net/cross_process_spectre_exploitation

so, it turns out I created a method of producing fully self-contained portable distributions of Python that support arbitrary native modules and don't require recompiling anything https://github.com/whitequark/superlinker?tab=readme-ov-file#python

I accidentally

The first ever end-to-end cross-process Spectre exploit? I worked on this during an internship with @grsecurity! An in-depth write-up here:
https://grsecurity.net/cross_process_spectre_exploitation

We're excited to announce dtrace.conf(24), the premier unconference for all things DTrace! 🎉
📅 Date: December 11th, 2024
📍 Location: Emeryville, CA

As an unconference, the agenda is driven by attendees. Come ready to actively participate!

https://dtraceconf24.eventbrite.com

Free System/36 in SoCal. Today only. Please repost. #retrocomputing

🚨 We're hiring! 🚨
HackSys Inc. is looking for a full-time Vulnerability Researcher (Windows/Android/Browser) based in India! 🛡️

🔍 Skills:
- Vulnerability classes, C/C++/ASM
- Exploited n-day on Windows/Android/Browser
- Reverse Engineering (WinDbg, IDA, Ghidra)
- Passionate about VR 🔥

Interested? DM @hacksysteam on Discord or Twitter for more details! #Hiring #VulnerabilityResearch #CyberSecurity

As much as I've been inconvenienced by the Internet Archive being offline this long, I'm proud of them for making up their minds to just keep it down for as long as it takes to make sure everything's fixed and safe before exposing it again. I hope everyone involved is putting in reasonable hours and getting enough sleep.

I joined @durumcrustulum and @tqbf on the Security Cryptography Whatever podcast to talk about our latest blogpost:

https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/10/15/a-little-bit-of-rust-goes-a-long-way/
https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html

Something that Thomas said in the podcast really stood out to me. He said “the blog post undersells it. …. This is a lot more interesting than it looks like on the tin.”

I agree with this. It feels like we discovered a game-changer not just in memory safety, but in security more generally - that doing something very practical results in major security improvements for non-obvious reasons. Focusing on new code is disproportionately effective, exponentially.

Thomas also said “And that observation about the half life of vulnerabilities, if that’s true, says something pretty profound about what the work looks like to shift to a memory safe future.”

Or as Deidre said: “You can get really big bang for your buck, which is if you have something new, just write it in the Rust or another memory safe language and make it interop with the rest of your project and you will in fact, get really good returns on mitigating your memory safe vulnerabilities, which is the majority of your vulnerabilities, period.”

Agreed. We’re already prioritizing differently based on this data. It was a fun conversation, and we believe that it applies to a lot more than just memory safety.

@jeffvanderstoep @durumcrustulum @tqbf

I.e., don't focus on making the attacker's life harder by constraining yourself to their playing field, but rather focus on making the defender's life easier by focusing on the things that we control

Great point, and our industry misses opportunities for this all the time. When we were looking to make PowerShell less attractive to attackers, attempting only to remove its power would have been a fool's errand.

By focusing on making it the noisiest possible tool to use, we made far more progress: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/powershell-the-blue-team/

CISA is looking for feedback on its "Secure by design" initiative draft doc.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cisa-product-security-flaws/

#cisa #appsec

I'm talking at a conference later this year (on UX+AI).

I just saw an ad for the conference with my photo and was like, wait, that doesn't look right.

Is my bra showing in my profile pic and I've never noticed...? That's weird.

I open my original photo.
No bra showing.

I put the two photos side by side and I'm like WTF...

Someone edited my photo to unbutton my blouse and reveal a made-up hint of a bra or something else underneath. 🤨

Immediately, I email the conference host.
(FYI he is a great, respectable guy with 5 kids at home.)

He is super apologetic and immediately looks into the issue.

He quickly reports back that the woman running their social media used a cropped square image from their website.

She needed it to be more vertical, so she used an AI expand image tool to make the photo taller.

AI invented the bottom part of the image (in which it believed that women's shirts should be unbuttoned further, with some tension around the buttons, and revealing a little hint of something underneath). 🤯

—

FYI the conference organizers were super apologetic and took down all of the content with that photo.

UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer’s unexpected behavior

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/10/17/undefinedbehaviorsanitizers-unexpected-behavior/