Vulnerability Development mailing list archives
RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery
From: "Pedro Hugo" <fractalg () highspeedweb net>
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 00:25:08 +0100
Well that could be done breakpointing system api's like strcpy etc etc etc or the equivalent in windows. But doing that without any reference would be a pain in the ass task. One of the tricks in reverse engineering is breakpointing the right place. After you get the right place things go a lot easier. One of the most used tricks in software protections is making it difficult to find the right places to breakpoint (much others exist of course, but these ones try to avoid easy dead listing approaches for example). Without the "entry point" it's much harder to go to the place you want. So you still have the usual problem about finding the place with problems. Being in assembler it makes things much harder to understand. Debugging and disassembling could be, in my opinion, more helpful to track more complex bugs and to help understanding foreign code, like trojans and backdoors. As in Phrack 58 article about runtime binary encryption: "Forensic work on binary executeables will become very difficult, and most of the people who do forensics nowadays will drop out of the field. Most likely some people from the reverse engineering 'scene' will convert more to network security and become forensics." I think this field is one of the possible futures in the security scene. Good tools are rare, and good people doing it not very common too. Encryption and packing is one of the biggest challenges in the reverse engineering field. Look at popular Windows shareware programs and you will understand.
Hi all (corrected for the lists..), How about applying reverse engineering techniques in order to discover potential security holes ? The most obvious example would be to try and find a buffer overflow in a windows application (these are mostly closed source.. heh). A good place to start would be a disassembly, looking for any kind of buffer assignments, or any type of function call that handles strings, etc.. If you find lots of them, in what appears to be code that handles input, that might be worth a deeper look. Of course, it's not always easy to tell what a certain piece of code does, or if it's even relevant to what you're trying to achieve (i.e: buffer overflow through some user input), but it might work out pretty well. Debuggers and disassemblers might prove really handy in situations like these (of course, other analysis tools might prove useful too, especially under windows). "LS" Eli
Current thread:
- Techniques for Vulneability discovery kaipower (Apr 04)
- RE: Techniques for Vulnerability discovery Oliver Petruzel (Apr 05)
- Re[2]: Techniques for Vulnerability discovery dullien (Apr 06)
- Re[2]: Techniques for Vulnerability discovery dullien (Apr 06)
- RE: Techniques for Vulnerability discovery Leon (Apr 08)
- Re: Techniques for Vulneability discovery Florian Hobelsberger / BlueScreen (Apr 05)
- Re: Techniques for Vulneability discovery Josha Bronson (Apr 05)
- Re: Techniques for Vulneability discovery LS (Apr 05)
- RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery Pedro Hugo (Apr 05)
- Re: RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery LS (Apr 08)
- RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery Pedro Hugo (Apr 05)
- RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery Marc Maiffret (Apr 05)
- Re: Techniques for Vulneability discovery NoCoNFLiC (Apr 05)
- Re: Techniques for Vulneability discovery 3APA3A (Apr 06)
- Re: Techniques for Vulneability discovery Rafael Anschau (Apr 09)
- Re: Techniques for Vulneability discovery GomoR (Apr 09)
- RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery David Hawley (Apr 10)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery Ed Moyle (Apr 05)
- RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery W. Lee Schexnaider (Apr 05)
- RE: Techniques for Vulneability discovery John Daniele (Apr 07)
(Thread continues...)
- RE: Techniques for Vulnerability discovery Oliver Petruzel (Apr 05)