Attacks

A trail of flipping bits

Joop van de Pol
Trusted execution environments (TEE) such as secure enclaves are becoming more popular to secure assets in the cloud. Their promise is enticing because when enclaves are properly used, even the operator of the enclave or the cloud service should not be able to access those assets. However, this leads to […]

Security flaws in an SSO plugin for Caddy

David Pokora, Maciej Domanski, Travis Peters,
We identified 10 security vulnerabilities within the caddy-security plugin for the Caddy web server that could enable a variety of high-severity attacks in web applications, including client-side code execution, OAuth replay attacks, and unauthorized access to resources. During our evaluation, Caddy was deployed as a reverse proxy […]

Readline crime: exploiting a SUID logic bug

roddux // Rory M
I discovered a logic bug in the readline dependency that partially reveals file information when parsing the file specified in the INPUTRC environment variable. This could allow attackers to move laterally on a box where sshd is running, a given user is able to login, and the user’s private key […]

Stranger Strings: An exploitable flaw in SQLite

Andreas Kellas
Trail of Bits is publicly disclosing CVE-2022-35737, which affects applications that use the SQLite library API. CVE-2022-35737 was introduced in SQLite version 1.0.12 (released on October 17, 2000) and fixed in release 3.39.2 (released on July 21, 2022). CVE-2022-35737 is exploitable on 64-bit systems, and exploitability depends on how the program is […]

Towards Practical Security Optimizations for Binaries

Michael D. Brown, Senior Security Engineer
To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus. (Macbeth: 3.1) It’s not enough that compilers generate efficient code, they must also generate safe code. Despite the extensive testing and correctness certification that goes into developing compilers and their optimization passes, they may inadvertently introduce information leaks […]

Using osquery for remote forensics

Mike Myers
System administrators use osquery for endpoint telemetry and daily monitoring. Security threat hunters use it to find indicators of compromise on their systems. Now another audience is discovering osquery: forensic analysts. While osquery core is great for querying various system-level data remotely, forensics extensions will give it the ability to inspect to deeper-level data structures […]

Contract upgrade anti-patterns

Josselin Feist
A popular trend in smart contract design is to promote the development of upgradable contracts. At Trail of Bits, we have reviewed many upgradable contracts and believe that this trend is going in the wrong direction. Existing techniques to upgrade contracts have flaws, increase the complexity of the contract significantly, and ultimately introduce bugs. To […]

You could have invented that Bluetooth attack

Trail of Bits
A serious bluetooth bug has received quite a bit of attention lately. It’s a great find by Biham and Newman. Given BLE’s popularity in the patch-averse IoT world, the bug has serious implications. And yet, it’s remarkably clean and simple. Unlike many elliptic curve bugs, an average human can totally understand the bug and how […]

The DBIR’s ‘Forest’ of Exploit Signatures

Dan Guido
If you follow the recommendations in the 2016 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), you will expose your organization to more risk, not less. The report’s most glaring flaw is the assertion that the TLS FREAK vulnerability is among the ‘Top 10’ most exploited on the Internet. No experienced security practitioner believes that FREAK is […]

Writing Exploits with the Elderwood Kit (Part 2)

Dan Guido
In the final part of our three-part series, we investigate the how the toolkit user gained control of program flow and what their strategy means for the reliability of their exploit. Elderwood and the Department of Labor Hack Writing Exploits with the Elderwood Kit (Part 1) Writing Exploits with the Elderwood Kit (Part 2) Last time, […]

Writing Exploits with the Elderwood Kit (Part 1)

Dan Guido
In the second part of our three-part series, we investigate the tools provided by the Elderwood kit for developing exploits from discovered vulnerabilities. Elderwood and the Department of Labor Hack Writing Exploits with the Elderwood Kit (Part 1) Writing Exploits with the Elderwood Kit (Part 2) Several mitigations must be avoided or bypassed in order […]

Elderwood and the Department of Labor Hack

Dan Guido
Recently, the Department of Labor (DoL) and several other websites were compromised to host a new zero-day exploit in Internet Explorer 8 (CVE-2013-1347). Researchers noted similarities between this attack and earlier ones attributed to Elderwood, a distinct set of tools used to develop several past strategic website compromises. We have not, however, identified any evidence […]