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2 min Microsoft

Patch Tuesday - April 2013 Edition!

The April 2013 MS Tuesday advisories are is out and it forecasts an interesting patching session for Microsoft administrators.  There are 9 advisories, for 14 CVEs, affecting 16 distinct platforms in 5 categories of Microsoft products, including the not-often-seen patching of “Microsoft Office Web Apps” and “Microsoft Security Software”. Once again there is an IE patch (MS13-028) which is rated critical, but this one differs from last month's incarnation by applying to all supported versions

1 min

Video Tutorial: Installing Kali Linux on Virtual Box

Author: Jeremy Druin Video Release Announcements: Twitter @webpwnized Title: Installing Kali Linux on Virtual Box with Nessus and Metasploit Link: Installing Kali Linux on Virtual Box with Nessus and Metasploit - YouTube This video is from the April 2013 workshop of the KY ISSA covering the installation of Kali Linux 1.01 on Virtual Box . Please see notes below the video. Notes: 1. Kali version 1.01 64-bit was used in making the video but th

2 min

Metasploit Now Supports Plan 9, the Evolution of Unix

Unix, Evolved Today, we are delighted to announce the next phase of Metaploit's expanded support for more diverse host operating systems. On the heels of our integration work with Kali Linux, we've been heads-down on putting the finishing touches on our support for the future of Unix, Plan 9 from Bell Labs. This renewed commitment to Plan 9 will come as a welcome relief for those of you who have, until now, been stuck on hobby operating systems such as L

2 min

Weekly Update: Introducing Metasploit 4.5.3

Version bump to Metasploit 4.5.3 This week, we've incremented the Metasploit version number by one trivial point to 4.5.3 -- this was mainly done to ensure that new users get the fixes for the four most recent vulnerabilities

4 min

Internet Census 2012 - Thoughts

This week, an anonymous researcher published the results of an "Internet Census" - an internet-wide scan conducted using 420,000 insecure devices connected to the public internet and yielding data on used IP space, ports, device types, services and more. After scanning parts of the internet, the researcher found thousands of insecurely configured devices using insecure / default passwords on services and used this fact to make those devices into scanning nodes for his project. He logged into the

2 min Nexpose

Calculating Your Average Scan Time

If you are looking to balance out your scan schedule or add new scans to the mix, it can be helpful to get some direct insight into how much time a new scan is going to take. One way to estimate that is based upon how long your current scans are already taking. To that end, I threw together a script that looks at current scan history and calculates average scan time per asset. To keep some balance, I only look at Full audit scans and their live assets. I then calculate the average number of min

3 min

Patch Tuesday - March 2013 Edition!

Microsoft March 2013 security bulletins are bringing us a slightly lighter-than-usual patching load and, perhaps, a slightly muted patching urgency compared to recent months. There are seven advisories, though they cover 20 unique vulnerabilities. Four of the advisories are listed as “Critical”, but only the first one which applies to all supported versions of Internet Explorer (6-10) seems likely to be an immediate threat to the average user. The IE advisory (MS13-021) contains 9 distinct CV

2 min Metasploit

Metasploit Now Supports Kali Linux, the Evolution of BackTrack

Today, our friends at Offensive Security announced Kali Linux , which is based on the philosophy of an offensive approach to security. While defensive solutions are important to protect your network, it is critical to step into the shoes of an attacker to see if they're working. Kali Linux is a security auditing toolkit that enables you just that: test the security of your network defenses before others do. Kali is a free, open sour

4 min Exploits

Exploit for new Vulnerability on Honeywell EBI ActiveX (CVE-2013-0108)

Today, we present to you a new vulnerability, CVE-2013-0108 , discovered in Honeywell Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI) R310 - R410.2. This platform is used to integrate different systems and devices such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) controls; security; access control; life sa

4 min

New Heap Spray Technique for Metasploit Browser Exploitation

!(/content/images/post-images/14831/Screen shot 2013-03-01 at 10.33.14 AM.png#img-half-right) Browser vulnerabilities have always been serious threats in today's security trends.  It's almost becoming too common to see people dropping browser 0days to beef up botnets, or deploying them for "sophisticated" APT-level attacks, etc.  Although browser 0days surface more frequently than ever, some of the techniques don't seem to change much.  The most common trick you'll see is a heap spray

2 min Compliance

Malicious SSIDs And Web Apps

On February 13th 2013, Cisco released a security notice related to CVE-2013-1131 . According to Cisco, the vulnerability is due to improper validation of the Service Set Identifier (SSID) when performing a "site survey" to discover other wireless networks. On the face of it, this vulnerability seems to be low-risk. Indeed, site surveys are not often performed and an adversary would need to either be incredibly luc

1 min Nexpose

Making the Nexpose Gem Easier to Use

In an effort to make API access to Nexpose easier, some efforts are underway to make the Nexpose Gem easier to use. For those unfamiliar with the gem, it is a Ruby library that allows for easier scripting against a Nexpose security console. Changes to Site Making changes to a site configuration through the gem used to be a little complex. The attributes on the configuration were locked down from editing, and sometimes buried deep in structures that mirrored th

3 min Metasploit

Weekly Update: Splitting DNS Modules and a D-Link Auth Bypass

DNS Module Split up This week, we appear to have a whole bunch of new DNS-based enumeration and information gathering modules. In fact, this was actually more of a housekeeping chore, largely by longtime Metasploit contributor Carlos @darkoperator Perez. Darkoperator wrote most of the original enum_dns module as well. enum_dns became a bit of a junk drawer of DNS functionality -- it did a whole bunch of everything for DNS. So, instead of just tacking on more and more over time, it's been split

1 min IT Ops

Per-log retention period

Typically, you would like to keep logs from development environment (with all debugging messages enabled) for only a limited amount of time, while production logs far longer. Up to now you had to set the retention period for the whole account, keeping development logs longer than needed. We are happy to announce per-log retention configuration! It gives you the option to fine-tune your retention policy in a more fine-grained manner than with a default per-account setting. To set a new log retent

1 min

Vulnerability Correlation -- Enabled by Default

Vulnerability correlation is a feature of Nexpose where a vulnerable result from one vulnerability can be overridden by an invulnerable result from another.  As an example of how this works and why it is a useful option to have enabled, take CVE-2011-3192 , a fun DoS vulnerability that affected Apache HTTPD back in 2011.  Nexpose has one unauthenticated vulnerability check (lets call it V1) that will run against all discovered Apac