Security News #0x3C

• When first learning offense, students have a tendency to try various tools found on the web, often without truly understanding what they do. MaXe has a post on Intern0t showing how many of the PHP shells available on Exploit-db have backdoors into the shell. Be sure to take the time to understand your own tools before deploying them on a network (even a test network), whether they are easy to read PHP shells or some complex piece of Russian malware you "found".
• We mentioned CVE 2013-1899 last week, a particularly worrying problem in PostgreSQL. I still have not seen remote code execution, but BlackwinHQ has a nice attack where they overwrite the PostgreSQL profile which could result in code execution. Nicely done.
• Do you think your home routers are secure? Are you sure? Phil Purviance (@superevr) has five new exploits for Linksys routers ( 4 for the EA 2700 and one for the venerable WRT54GL) on Superevr. Earlier in the year, Michael Messner announced vulnerabilities in the Linksys E1500 and E2500. To add to the fun, the Metasploit folks have a collection of modules for the Netgear DGN2200B, DGN1000B, and the D-Link DIR-615.
• Over on the SANS blog, Tim Medin has a nice demo some attacks through phpMyAdmin.
• Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) like ModSecurity can block simple attempts to perform SQL injection; they do this by matching some common attack patters with their signatures. Well Tom Van Goethem has a nice piece on how to use MySQL type conversion to bypass some of these rules.
• Mathy Venhoef has a nice piece on how they solved the nuclear plant challenge at the UCSB iCTF.
• Are you looking for vulnerable systems to practice your offensive skills? Try VulnHub.
• If you copy and paste material from the web into a command prompt, you should definitely read (and understand) this!.
• Do you scan QR codes with your phone? I refuse to do so.
• Do you want to build your own botnet? Ars Technica shows you how.
• I hadn’t seen this until recently, but boy is it helpful. How to set up "God Mode" on a Windows 7 system.
• Can you hack a plane with a mobile phone? Take a look at what Bruce Schneier thinks.