Posts tagged Research

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Exposure

The Remote Desktop Protocol, commonly referred to as RDP, is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft that is used to provide a graphical means of connecting to a network-connected computer. RDP client and server support has been present in varying capacities in most every Windows version since NT [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT]. Outside of Microsoft's offerings, there are RDP clients available for most other operating systems. If the nitty gritty of protocols is your thing, Wiki

5 min Public Policy

Copyright Office Calls For New Cybersecurity Researcher Protections

On Jun. 22, the US Copyright Office released [https://www.copyright.gov/policy/1201/section-1201-full-report.pdf] its long-awaited study on Sec. 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and it has important implications for independent cybersecurity researchers. Mostly the news is very positive. Rapid7 advocated extensively for researcher protections to be built into this report, submitting two sets of detailed comments—see here [/2016/03/15/rapid7-bugcrowd-and-hackerone-file-pro-res

4 min Public Policy

Rapid7 issues comments on NAFTA renegotiation

In April 2017, President Trump issued an executive order directing a review of all trade agreements. This process is now underway: The United States Trade Representative (USTR) – the nation's lead trade agreement negotiator – formally requested [https://www.regulations.gov/docket/USTR-2017-0006] public input on objectives for the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA is a trade agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico, that covers a huge range of topics, fr

3 min Project Sonar

Signal to Noise in Internet Scanning Research

We live in an interesting time for research related to Internet scanning. There is a wealth of data and services to aid in research. Scanning related initiatives like Rapid7's Project Sonar [https://sonar.labs.rapid7.com/], Censys [https://censys.io/], Shodan [https://www.shodan.io/], Shadowserver [https://www.shadowserver.org/] or any number of other public/semi-public projects have been around for years, collecting massive troves of data. The data and services built around it has been used f

6 min Research

The Data Science Process at Rapid7

Data Science is more than just math. A successful Data Science team and successful Data Science projects require relationships with outside teams, clear communication, as well as good decision making, problem solving and critical thinking abilities. Thus, when we talk about Data Science at Rapid7, we talk about the Data Science Process our teams use to take a Data Science project from inception to completion, where math and analysis are important, but not the only aspects of the project. What a

2 min IoT

Research Lead (IoT)

It has been an amazing journey serving as the Research Lead for the Internet of Things (IoT) at Rapid7 for past 10 months. I came into the role with more than a decade of experience as a security penetration tester and nearly 15 years of experience conducting security research across such areas as protocol based attacks, embedded device exploitation, and web vulnerabilities, so taking on the role, as Research Lead for IoT was the next obvious progression for me. Being able to focus on IoT specif

4 min Research

NCSAM: The Danger of Criminalizing Curiosity

This is a guest post from Kurt Opsahl [https://twitter.com/kurtopsahl], Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation [https://twitter.com/EFF]. October is National Cyber Security Awareness month and Rapid7 is taking this time to celebrate security research. This year, NCSAM coincides with new legal protections for security research under the DMCA [/2016/10/03/cybersecurity-awareness-month-2016-this-ones-for-the-researchers] and the 30th anniversary of the

4 min Research

NCSAM: Independent Research and IoT

October is National Cyber Security Awareness month and Rapid7 is taking this time to celebrate security research. This year, NCSAM coincides with new legal protections for security research under the DMCA and the 30th anniversary of the CFAA - a problematic law that hinders beneficial security research. Throughout the month, we will be sharing content that enhances understanding of what independent security research is, how it benefits the digital ecosystem, and the challenges that researchers f

6 min Project Sonar

Digging for Clam[AV]s with Project Sonar

A little over a week ago some keen-eyed folks discovered a feature/configuration weakness [http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2016/q2/198] in the popular ClamAV malware scanner that makes it possible to issue administrative commands such as SCAN or SHUTDOWN remotely—and without authentication—if the daemon happens to be running on an accessible TCP port. Shortly thereafter, Robert Graham unholstered his masscan [https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/masscan] tool and did a s ummary blog post [http://bl

7 min Verizon DBIR

The 2016 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) Summary - The Defender's Perspective

Verizon has released the report [https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/] of their annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). Their crack team of researchers have, once again, produced one of the most respected, data-driven reports in cyber security, sifting through submissions from 67 contributors and taking a deep dive into 64,000 incidents—and nearly 2,300 breaches—to help provide insight on what our adversaries are up to and how successful they've been. The DBIR is a

3 min Public Policy

Petition for Reform of the DMCA and CFAA

Here's the TL;DR: Software now runs everything and all software has flaws, which means that we, as consumers, are at risk. This includes YOU, and can impact your safety or quality of life. Sign this petition to protect your right to information on how you are exposed to risk: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/unlock-public-access-research-software -safety-through-dmca-and-cfaa-reform/DHzwhzLD The petition Last weekend a petition [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/unlock-public

1 min Research

A Pentester's Introduction to SAP & ABAP

If you're conducting security assessments on enterprise networks, chances are that you've run into SAP systems. In this blog post, I'd like to give you an introduction to SAP and ABAP to help you with your security audit. The full SAP solution (ERP or SAP Business Suite) consists of several components. However, to manage the different areas of a large enterprise, probably one of the better known components or features of the SAP solution is the development system based on ABAP [http://en.wikipe

3 min Metasploit

Learn to Pentest SAP with Metasploit As ERP Attacks Go Mainstream

This month, a security researcher disclosed that a version of the old banking Trojan “Trojan.ibank” has been modified to look for SAP GUI installations, a concerning sign that SAP system hacking has gone into mainstream cybercrime. Once a domain of a few isolated APT attacks, SAP appears to be in the cross hairs of hackers that know just how much sensitive data ERP systems house, including financial, customer, employee and production data. With more than 248,500 customers in 188 countries, SAP

13 min Malware

Analysis of the FinFisher Lawful Interception Malware

It's all over the news once again: lawful interception malware discovered in the wild being used by government organizations for intelligence and surveillance activities. We saw it last year when the Chaos Computer Club unveiled a trojan being used by the federal government in Germany, WikiLeaks released a collection of related documents in the Spy Files, we read about an alleged offer from Gamma Group to provide the toolkit FinFisher to the Egyptian government, and we are reading once again now