Group Instant Messaging: Why Blaming Developers Is Not Fair But Enhancing The Protocols Would Be Appropriate

After presenting our work at Real World Crypto 2018 [1] and seeing the enormous press coverage, we want to get two things straight: 1. Most described weaknesses are only exploitable by the malicious server or by knowing a large secret number and thereby the protocols are still very secure (what we wrote in the paper but some newspapers did not adopt) and 2. we see ways to enhance the WhatsApp protocol without breaking its features.


We are of course very happy that our research reached so many people and even though IT security and cryptography are often hard to understand for outsiders, Andy Greenberg [2], Patrick Beuth [3] and other journalists [4,5,6,7,8] wrote articles that were understandable on the one hand and very accurate and precise on the other hand. In contrast to this, we also saw some inaccurate articles [9,10] that fanned fear and greatly diverged in their description from what we wrote in our paper. We expected this from the boulevard press in Germany and therefore asked them to stick to the facts when they were contacting us. But none of the worst two articles' [9,10] authors contacted us in advance. Since our aim was never to blame any application or protocol but rather we wanted to encourage the developers to enhance the protocols, it contradicts our aim that WhatsApp and Signal are partially declared attackable by "anyone" "easily" [9,10].

Against this background, we understand Moxie's vexation about certain headlines that were on the Internet in the last days [11]. However, we believe that the ones who understand the weaknesses, comprehend that only the malicious server can detectably make use of them (in WhatsApp) or the secret group ID needs to be obtained from a member (in Signal). As such, we want to make clear that our paper does not primarily focus on the description of weaknesses but presents a new approach for analyzing and evaluating the security of group instant messaging protocols. Further we propose measures to enhance the analyzed protocols. The description of the protocols' weaknesses is only one part of the evaluation of our analysis approach and thereby of the investigation of real world protocols. This is the scientific contribution of our paper. The practical contribution of the analyzed messengers, which is the communication confidentiality for billion users (in most cases), is great and should be noted. Therefore we believe that being Signal, WhatsApp, or Threema by applying encryption to all messages and consequently risking research with negative results is much better than being a messenger that does not encrypt group messages end-to-end at all. We do not want to blame messengers that are far less secure (read Moxie's post [11] if you are interested).

Finally we want note that applying security measures according to the ticket approach (as we call it in the paper [12]) to the invitation links would solve the issues that Facebook's security head mentioned in his reply [13] on our findings. To our knowledge, adding authenticity to group update messages would not affect invitation links: If no invitation link was generated for a group, group members should only accept joining users if they were added by an authentic group update message. As soon as a group invitation link was generated, all joining users would need to be accepted as new group members with the current design. However there are plenty ways how WhatsApp could use invitation links without endowing the server with the power to manage groups without the group admins' permission:
One approach would be generating the invitation links secretly and sharing them without the knowledge of the server. An invitation link could then contain a secret ticket for the group and the ID of the group. As soon as a user, who received the link, wants to join the group, she can request the server with the group ID to obtain all current group members. The secret ticket can now be sent to all existing group members encrypted such that the legitimate join can be verified.

Of course this would require engineering but the capability of WhatsApp, shipping drastic protocol updates, can be assumed since they applied end-to-end encryption in the first place.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5i38WlHfds
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-security-flaws-encryption-group-chats/
[3] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/apps/whatsapp-gruppenchats-schwachstelle-im-verschluesselungs-protokoll-a-1187338.html
[4] http://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/it-sicherheit-wie-fremde-sich-in-whatsapp-gruppenchats-einladen-koennen-1.3821656
[5] https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/10/security-researchers-flag-invite-bug-in-whatsapp-group-chats/
[6] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/01/10/whatsapp-bug-raises-questions-group-message-privacy/
[7] http://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/it-internet/verschluesselung-umgangen-forscher-finden-sicherheitsluecke-bei-whatsapp/20836518.html
[8] https://www.heise.de/security/meldung/WhatsApp-und-Signal-Forscher-beschreiben-Schwaechen-verschluesselter-Gruppenchats-3942046.html
[9] https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3024215/whatsapp-bug-lets-anyone-easily-infiltrate-private-group-chats
[10] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5257713/WhatsApp-security-flaw-lets-spy-private-chats.html
[11] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16117487
[12] https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/713.pdf
[13] https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/951169036947107840

Further articles:
- Matthew Green's blog post: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/01/10/attack-of-the-week-group-messaging-in-whatsapp-and-signal/
- Schneier on Security: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/01/whatsapp_vulner.html
- Bild: http://www.bild.de/digital/smartphone-und-tablet/whatsapp/whatsapp-sicherheitsluecke-in-gruppenchats-54452080.bild.html
- Sun: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/5316110/new-whatsapp-bug-how-to-stay-safe/

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Top 10 Most Popular Ethical Hacking Tools (2019 Ranking)

     Top 10 powerful Hacking  Tools in 2019.       

If hacking is performed to identify the potential threats to a computer or network then it will be an ethical hacking.

Ethical hacking is also called penetration testing, intrusion testing, and red teaming.

Hacking is the process of gaining access to a computer system with the intention of fraud, data stealing, and privacy invasion etc., by identifying its weaknesses.

Ethical Hackers:

A person who performs the hacking activities is called a hacker.

There are six types of hackers:

• The Ethical Hacker (White hat)
• Cracker
• Grey hat
• Script kiddies
• Hacktivist
• Phreaker

A security professional who uses his/her hacking skills for defensive purposes is called an ethical hacker. To strengthen the security, ethical hackers use their skills to find vulnerabilities, document them, and suggest the ways to rectify them.

Companies that provide online services or those which are connected to the internet, must perform penetration testing by ethical hackers. Penetration testing is another name of ethical hacking. It can be performed manually or through an automation tool.

Ethical hackers work as an information security expert. They try to break the security of a computer system, network, or applications. They identify the weak points and based on that, they give advice or suggestions to strengthen the security.

Programming languages that are used for hacking include PHP, SQL, Python, Ruby, Bash, Perl, C, C++, Java, VBScript, Visual Basic, C Sharp, JavaScript, and HTML.

Few Hacking Certifications include:

1. CEH
2. GIAC
3. OSCP
4. CREST

Let's Explore!!

#1) Nmap

Price: Free

Description:

Nmap is a security scanner, port scanner, as well as a network exploration tool. It is an open source software and is available for free.

It supports cross-platform. It can be used for network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and for monitoring host & service uptime. It can work for a single host as well as large networks. It provides binary packages for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Features: 

• Nmap suite has:
  • Data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool(Ncat),
  • Scan results comparing utility(Ndiff),
  • Packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping),
  • GUI and Results viewer (Nping)
• Using raw IP packets it can determine:
  • The available hosts on the network.
  • Their services offered by these available hosts.
  • Their OS.
  • Packet filters they are using.
  • And many other characteristics.

Best for: Nmap is best for scanning network. It is easy to use and fast as well.

Website: Nmap

******************

#2) Netsparker

Netsparker is a dead accurate ethical hacking tool, that mimics a hacker's moves to identify vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting in web applications and web APIs. 

 

Netsparker uniquely verifies the identified vulnerabilities proving they are real and not false positives, so you do not need to waste hours manually verifying the identified vulnerabilities once a scan is finished.

 

It is available as a Windows software and an online service.

=> Visit Netsparker Website Here

******************

#3) Acunetix 

Acunetix is a fully automated ethical hacking tool that detects and reports on over 4500 web application vulnerabilities including all variants of SQL Injection and XSS.

The Acunetix crawler fully supports HTML5 and JavaScript and Single-page applications, allowing auditing of complex, authenticated applications.

It bakes in advanced Vulnerability Management features right-into its core, prioritizing risks based on data through a single, consolidated view, and integrating the scanner's results into other tools and platforms.

=> Visit Acunetix Official Website

******************

#4) Metasploit

Price: Metasploit Framework is an open source tool and it can be downloaded for free. Metasploit Pro is a commercial product. Its free trial is available for 14 days. Contact the company to know more about its pricing details.

Description:

It is the software for penetration testing. Using Metasploit Framework, you can develop and execute exploit code against a remote machine. It supports cross-platform.

Features: 

• It is useful for knowing about security vulnerabilities.
• Helps in penetration testing.
• Helps in IDS signature development.
• You can create security testing tools.

Best For Building anti-forensic and evasion tools.

Website: Metasploit

#5) Aircrack-Ng

Price: Free

Description:

Aircrack-ng provides different tools for evaluating Wi-Fi network security.

All are command line tools. For Wi-Fi security, it focuses on monitoring, attacking, testing, and cracking. It supports Linux, Windows, OS X, Free BSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and eComStation 2.

Features:

• Aircrack-ng can focus on Replay attacks, de-authentication, fake access points, and others.
• It supports exporting data to text files.
• It can check Wi-Fi cards and driver capabilities.
• It can crack WEP keys and for that, it makes use of FMS attack, PTW attack, and dictionary attacks.
• It can crack WPA2-PSK and for that, it makes use of dictionary attacks.

Best For: Supports any wireless network interface controller.

Website: Aircrack-Ng

#6) Wireshark

Price: Free

Description:

Wireshark is a packet analyzer and can perform deep inspection of many protocols.

It supports cross-platform. It allows you to export the output to different file formats like XML, PostScript, CSV, and Plaintext. It provides the facility to apply coloring rules to packet list so that analysis will be easier and quicker. The above image will show the capturing of packets.

Features:

• It can decompress the gzip files on the fly.
• It can decrypt many protocols like IPsec, ISAKMP, and SSL/TLS etc.
• It can perform live capture and offline analysis.
• It allows you to browse the captured network data using GUI or TTY-mode TShark utility.

Best For: Analyzing data packets.

Website: Wireshark

#7) Ettercap

Price: Free.

Description:

Ettercap supports cross-platform. Using Ettercap's API, you can create custom plugins. Even with the proxy connection, it can do sniffing of HTTP SSL secured data.

Features:

• Sniffing of live connections.
• Content filtering.
• Active and passive dissection of many protocols.
• Network and host analysis.

Best For: It allows you to create custom plugins.

Website: Ettercap

#8) Maltego

Price: The Community version, Maltego CE is available for free. Price for Maltego Classic is $999. Price for Maltego XL is $1999. These two products are for the desktop. Price for the server products like CTAS, ITDS, and Comms starts at $40000, which includes training as well.

Description:

Maltego is a tool for link analysis and data mining. It supports Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

For the discovery of data from open sources and visualizing the information in graphical format, it provides the library of transforms. It performs real-time data-mining and information gathering.

Features:

• Represents the data on node-based graph patterns.
• Maltego XL can work with large graphs.
• It will provide you the graphical picture, thereby telling you about the weak points and abnormalities of the network.

Best For: It can work with very large graphs.

Website: Maltego

#9) Nikto

Price: Free

Description:

Nikto is an open source tool for scanning the web server.

It scans the web server for dangerous files, outdated versions, and particular version related problems. It saves the report in a text file, XML, HTML, NBE, and CSV file formats. Nikto can be used on the system which supports basic Perl installation. It can be used on Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX systems.

Features:

• It can check web servers for over 6700 potentially dangerous files.
• It has full HTTP proxy support.
• Using Headers, favicons, and files, it can identify the installed software.
• It can scan the server for outdated server components.

Best For: As a Penetration Testing tool.

Website: Nikto

#10) Burp Suite

Price: It has three pricing plans. Community edition can be downloaded for free. Pricing for Enterprise edition starts at $3999 per year. Price of the Professional edition starts at $399 per user per year.

Description:

Burp Suite has a web vulnerability scanner and has advanced and essential manual tools.

It provides many features for web application security. It has three editions, community, enterprise, and professional. With community editions, it provides essential manual tools. With the paid versions it provides more features like Web vulnerabilities scanner.

Features:

• It allows you to schedule and repeats the scan.
• It scans for 100 generic vulnerabilities.
• It uses out-of-band techniques (OAST).
• It provides detailed custom advisory for the reported vulnerabilities.
• It provides CI Integration.

Best For: Security testing.

Website: Burp Suite

#11) John The Ripper

Price: Free

Description:

John the Ripper is a tool for password cracking. It can be used on Windows, DOS, and Open VMS. It is an open source tool. It is created for detecting weak UNIX passwords.

Features:

• John the Ripper can be used to test various encrypted passwords.
• It performs dictionary attacks.
• It provides various password crackers in one package.
• It provides a customizable cracker.

Best For: It is fast in password cracking.

Website:  John the Ripper

#12) Angry IP Scanner

Price: Free

Description:

Angry IP Scanner is a tool for scanning the IP addresses and ports. It can scan both on local network and Internet. It supports Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.

Features:

• It can export the result in many formats.
• It is a command-line interface tool.
• It is extensible with many data fetchers.

Website:  Angry IP Scanner

Conclusion

As explained here, Nmap is used for computer security and network management. It is good for scanning the network. Metasploit is also for security and is good for building anti-forensic and evasion tools.

Aircrack-Ng is a free packet sniffer & injector and supports cross-platform. Wireshark is a packet analyzer and is good in analyzing data packets. As per the reviews available online, people recommend using Nmap instead of Angry IP scanner as Angry IP Scanner comes with unwanted applications.

John the Ripper is fast in password cracking. Nikto is a good open source tool for penetration testing. Maltego presents the data in a graphical form and will give you information about weak points and abnormalities.

This was all about the ethical hacking and the top ethical hacking tools. Hope you will find this article to be much useful!!

@EVERYTHING NT

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DirBuster: Brute Force Web Directories

"DirBuster is a multi threaded java application designed to brute force directories and files names on web/application servers. Often is the case now of what looks like a web server in a state of default installation is actually not, and has pages and applications hidden within. DirBuster attempts to find these. However tools of this nature are often as only good as the directory and file list they come with. A different approach was taken to generating this. The list was generated from scratch, by crawling the Internet and collecting the directory and files that are actually used by developers! DirBuster comes a total of 9 different lists (Further information can be found below), this makes DirBuster extremely effective at finding those hidden files and directories. And if that was not enough DirBuster also has the option to perform a pure brute force, which leaves the hidden directories and files nowhere to hide! If you have the time ;) " read more...

Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/dirbuster

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Networking | Routing And Switching | Tutorial 2 | 2018

Welcome to my 2nd tutorial of the series of networking. In this video I've briefly described peer to peer network (P2P). Moreover, you'll see how to make a peer to peer network? How it's working? How we can intercept traffic over the network by using Wireshark? and many more. Wireshark tool is integrated with eNSP so it'll be installed automatically when you install the eNSP. On the other hand, you can install the Wireshark for your personal use from its website.

What is Peer to Peer (P2P) network? 

As when devices are connected with each other for the sake of communication that'll be known as a Network. Now what is peer to peer network? In P2P network each and every device is behaving like a server and a client as well. Moreover They are directly connected with each other in such a way that they can send and received data to other devices at the same time and there is no need of any central server in between them.

There is a question that mostly comes up into our minds that  Is it possible to capture data from the network? So the answer is yes. We can easily captured data from the network with the help of tools that have been created for network troubleshooting, so whenever there will be some issues happening to the network so we fixed that issues with the help of tools. Most usable tool for data capturing that every network analyst used named Wireshark but there are so many other tools available over the internet like SmartSniff, Ethereal, Colasoft Capsa Network Analyze, URL Helper, SoftX HTTP Debugger and many more.

What is Wireshark?

Wireshark is an open source network analyzer or sniffer used to capture packets from the network and tries to display the brief information about the packets. It is also used for software and communication protocol development. Moreover, Wireshark is the best tool to intercept the traffic over the network.

$$$ Bug Bounty $$$

What is Bug Bounty ?

A bug bounty program, also called a vulnerability rewards program (VRP), is a crowdsourcing initiative that rewards individuals for discovering and reporting software bugs. Bug bounty programs are often initiated to supplement internal code audits and penetration tests as part of an organization's vulnerability management strategy.




Many software vendors and websites run bug bounty programs, paying out cash rewards to software security researchers and white hat hackers who report software vulnerabilities that have the potential to be exploited. Bug reports must document enough information for for the organization offering the bounty to be able to reproduce the vulnerability. Typically, payment amounts are commensurate with the size of the organization, the difficulty in hacking the system and how much impact on users a bug might have.


Mozilla paid out a $3,000 flat rate bounty for bugs that fit its criteria, while Facebook has given out as much as $20,000 for a single bug report. Google paid Chrome operating system bug reporters a combined $700,000 in 2012 and Microsoft paid UK researcher James Forshaw $100,000 for an attack vulnerability in Windows 8.1.  In 2016, Apple announced rewards that max out at $200,000 for a flaw in the iOS secure boot firmware components and up to $50,000 for execution of arbitrary code with kernel privileges or unauthorized iCloud access.


While the use of ethical hackers to find bugs can be very effective, such programs can also be controversial. To limit potential risk, some organizations are offering closed bug bounty programs that require an invitation. Apple, for example, has limited bug bounty participation to few dozen researchers.

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