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.
In this post, we discuss the creation of a novel software obfuscation toolkit, MAST, implemented in the LLVM compiler and suitable for denying program understanding to even the most well-resourced adversary. Our implementation is inspired by effective obfuscation techniques used by nation-state malware and techniques discussed in academic literature. MAST enables software developers to protect […]
We are proud to announce that McSema is now open source! McSema is a framework for analyzing and transforming machine-code programs to LLVM bitcode. It supports translation of x86 machine code, including integer, floating point, and SSE instructions. We previously covered some features of McSema in an earlier blog post and in our talk at ReCON 2014. Our […]
A 2-day conference exploring state-of-the-art advances in security automation. We would like to share the call for papers for THREADS 2014, a research and development conference that is part of NYU-Poly’s Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW). Trail of Bits is a founding sponsor of THREADS. The final deadline for submissions is October 6th, but you […]
We’re proud to be a sponsor of the first Build it Break it programming contest, run by the University of Maryland (UMD) and supported by one of our own employees and PhD student at the university, Andrew Ruef. Build it Break it is a “flipped CTF” where contestants both implement secure software and identify vulnerabilities in […]
At Trail of Bits we are proud of our roots in academia and research, and we believe it is important to promote cyber security education for students of every academic level. We recently sponsored a High School Capture the Flag (CTF) event, we released a CTF Field Guide, and we are a regular part of […]
New York, NY (July 15th, 2014)—Veteran computer security researcher Nicholas DePetrillo has joined Trail of Bits, the New York-based security company, as Principal Security Researcher. Trail of Bits Co-founder and CEO Dan Guido announced the hire today. DePetrillo brings the headcount of the firm, which was founded by a team of three in 2012, to […]
On June 28th Artem Dinaburg and Andrew Ruef will be speaking at REcon 2014 about a project named McSema. McSema is a framework for translating x86 binaries into LLVM bitcode. This translation is the opposite of what happens inside a compiler. A compiler translates LLVM bitcode to x86 machine code. McSema translates x86 machine code into LLVM […]
Trail of Bits headquarters has moved! Located in the heart of the financial district, our new office features a unique design, cool modern decor, and an open layout that makes us feel right at home. With fast internet, well-appointed conference rooms, and comfortable work stations, we feel that this is a great place to grow […]
We are proud to have one of the only seven accepted funded-track proposals to DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge. Computer security experts from academia, industry and the larger security community have organized themselves into more than 30 teams to compete in DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge —- a first-of-its-kind tournament designed to speed the development of automated security […]
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, […]
Background Friday night I sat down with a glass of Macallan 15 and decided to write a static checker that would find the Heartbleed bug. I decided that I would write it as an out-of-tree clang analyzer plugin and evaluate it on a few very small functions that had the spirit of the Heartbleed bug […]
Javelin shows you how modern attackers would approach and exploit your enterprise. By simulating real-time, real-world attack techniques, Javelin identifies which employees are most likely to be targets of spearphishing campaigns, uncovers security infrastructure weaknesses, and compares overall vulnerability against industry competitors. Javelin benchmarks the efficacy of defensive strategies, and provides customized recommendations for improving […]
Have you ever wanted to make a query into a native mode program asking about program locations that write a specific value to a register? Have you ever wanted to automatically deobfuscate obfuscated strings? Reverse engineering a native program involves understanding its semantics at a low level until a high level picture of functionality emerges. […]
