Why has Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) become so pivotal for endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions in Windows 10 and 11? The answer lies in the value of the intelligence it provides to security tools through secure ETW channels, which are now also a target for offensive researchers looking to bypass […]
eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) has emerged as the de facto Linux standard for security monitoring and endpoint observability. It is used by technologies such as BPFTrace, Cilium, Pixie, Sysdig, and Falco due to its low overhead and its versatility. There is, however, a dark (but open) secret: eBPF was never intended […]
One of the biggest challenges for blockchain developers is objectively assessing their security posture and measuring how it progresses. To address this issue, a working group of Web3 security experts, led by Trail of Bits CEO Dan Guido, met earlier this year to create a simple test for profiling the security of blockchain teams. We […]
As smart contract security constantly evolves, property-based fuzzing has become a go-to technique for developers and security engineers. This technique relies on the creation of code properties – often called invariants – which describe what the code is supposed to do. To help the community define properties, we are releasing a set of 168 pre-built […]
Trail of Bits recently completed a security review of cURL, which is an amazing and ubiquitous tool for transferring data. We were really thrilled to see cURL founder and lead developer Daniel Stenberg write a blog post about the engagement and the report, and wanted to highlight some important things he pointed […]
Over the years, we’ve built many high-impact tools that we use for security reviews. You might know some of them, like Slither, Echidna, Amarna, Tealer, and test-fuzz. All of our tools are open source, and we love seeing the community benefit from them. But mastering our tools takes time and practice, and it’s easier if […]
It is a truism in modern software development that a robust continuous integration (CI) system is necessary. But many projects suffer from CI that feels brittle, frustrates developers, and actively impedes development velocity. Why is this? What can you do to avoid the common CI pitfalls? Continuous Integration Needs a Purpose CI […]
“If privacy matters, it should matter to the phone your life is on.” So says Apple in their recent ads about Privacy on the iPhone and controlling the data you share—but many of the security features they highlight are opt-in, and users often don’t know when or how to activate them. But hey… we got […]
Earlier this year, the Web3 Foundation (W3F) commissioned Trail of Bits for a security review and assessment of the risks in storing cryptocurrency. Everyone who owns cryptocurrency — from large institutions to individual enthusiasts — shares the W3F’s concerns. In service to the broader community, the W3F encouraged us to publish our recommendations for the […]
Of the nearly 200 papers on software fuzzing that have been published in the last three years, most of them—even some from high-impact conferences—are academic clamor. Fuzzing research suffers from inconsistent and subjective benchmarks, which keeps this potent field in a state of arrested development. We’d like to help explain why this has happened and […]
You’ve just approved a security review of your codebase. Do you: Send a copy of the repository and wait for the report, or Take the extra effort to set the project up for success? By the end of the review, the difference between these answers will lead to profoundly disparate results. In the former case, […]
Never let a good incident go to waste. Today, we’re using the OPM incident as an excuse to share with you our top recommendations for shoring up the security of your Google Apps for Work account. More than 5 million companies rely on Google Apps to run their critical business functions, like email, document storage, calendaring, and […]
Vulnerabilities have been discovered in Ruby applications with the potential to affect vast swathes of the Internet and attract attackers to lucrative targets online. These vulnerabilities take advantage of features and common idioms such as serialization and deserialization of data in the YAML format. Nearly all large, tested and trusted open-source Ruby projects contain some of […]
In light of the recent compromises, you’re probably wondering what could have been done to prevent such attacks. According to some unverified articles it would appear that flaws in Apple’s services allowed an attacker to brute force passwords without any rate limiting or account lockout. While its not publicly known if the attacks were accomplished via brute force password guessing, there has been a lot of talk about enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) across services that offer it. The two most popular services being discussed are iCloud and DropBox. While setting up 2FA on these services is not as easy as it should be, this guide will step you through enabling 2FA on Google, Apple ID and DropBox accounts. It’s a free way of adding an extra layer of security on top of these services which handle potentially sensitive information.
What is Two-Factor Authentication?
Username and password authentication uses a single factor to verify identity: something the user knows. Two-Factor authentication adds an extra layer of security on top of a username and password. Normally, the second factor is something only the real user has. This is typically a temporary passcode generated by a piece of hardware such as an RSA token, a passcode sent as an SMS to the user’s cell phone, or a mobile application that accomplishes the same function.
With two-factor authentication, stealing a username and password won’t be enough to log in — the second factor is also required. This multi-factor authentication means an attacker will be required to compromise a user above and beyond password guessing or stealing a credentials database. An attacker would have to gain access to the source of the extra, unique and usually temporary information that makes up the 2FA.
Free Online Coursework Allows Students, Professionals to Build Essential Offensive Security Skills New York, NY (May 20, 2014)–Security researchers at Trail of Bits today introduced the CTF Field Guide (Capture the Flag), a freely available, self-guided online course designed to help university and high school students hone the skills needed to succeed in the fast-paced, […]
