The DMZ

forest

3:12 AM

@TomK. Well at least it wasn't kernel.org

forest

3:24 AM

5

Q: How to deal with responsible disclosure "catch and kill"

My coworkers and I discovered a significant security issue in a popular cybersecurity tool, which shall go unnamed here for reasons that will become obvious. We reported the issue to the tool's vendor through their bug bounty program on bugcrowd. They ranked it as a P2 issue and paid us $2,000 f...

This is interesting.

Tom K.

10:44 AM

I wonder if I should go on a doxing hunt and figure out what this product is

forest

11:00 AM

do it

@TomK. OP uses their real name (supposedly), has an existing account on SE.

Only two posts on SO though, and only one here.

First result when searching his name is linkedin.com/in/jonathankamens

If it's the same person, he's the chief security officer of quantopian.com/about.

Has a blog at blog.kamens.us, talks about various apps.

Might be worth a look.

He said the incident was ~6 months ago, so maybe something on twitter.com/jikamens from that time period could hint as to what it is.

Looking through his July tweets for any mentions of infosec tools.

(Assuming that all of that is him, but since it seems there's only one Jonathan Kamens on Google and he works in infosec, it's gotta be him)

Around 6 months ago, he's mentioned an issue with LastPass' website (not a security issue), and something about "boxcryptor".

Hey @boxcryptor, my company is thinking of signing up for your teams service, so we're evaluating your security. Has the architecture and implementation of your product been evaluated by an impartial third party? Are the results of that evaluation available to the public?

Tweeted by jikamens on April 23, 2018 at 8:09 PM

From April of this year.

Hard to wade through all his zonistic rants on twitter.

Might make it easy to determine if this is the same person though, by saying something bad about Israel and seeing how he reacts. Can't think of an easy way to do that without violating SE's CoC.

He runs an MX server for moderators.isc.org

Lives in Boston, MA.

@TomK. He says "my coworkers and I", and since he appears to work for Quantopian Inc as chief security officer, it might be useful to get info from those guys. Whatever it is is likely a tool used by Quantopian.

Ok now I'm bored.

Tom K.

12:17 PM

@forest LastPass pays out 2k$ for a P2 vuln

forest

Sounds like that's it then.

Tom K.

boxcryptor doesn't seem to have a bug bounty program

so LastPass seems like a good shot then

forest

And it is a popular "security tool".

Tom K.

also I did not find the term "P2 issue" on other bug bounty programs when loosely googling

forest

Then I wonder what kind of bug it is.

forest

12:49 PM

@TomK. I'm so tempted to comment and say "My crystal ball is telling me that LastPass has the vulnerability" and see how he reacts.

Tom K.

heh

forest

@JonathanKamens Is it a password manager, per chance? — forest 6 secs ago

Let's see

A little more deniability that way.

I mean that just goes to show why you don't use your real name online.

It opens up anything you want to keep secret.

Tom K.

well, s/he could be impersonating that other dude

forest

Well even if they are, your observation wrt $2k above is spot on.

Tom K.

I did find the "PX" terminology though for other products

forest

1:01 PM

Yeah I've heard that terminology too.

But $2k specifically for P2, and LastPass is a "security tool".

Once I convinced someone to hash their real name and give it to me.

Like they were all going how noone can dox them, and I convinced them to put a whirlpool hash of their 4 letter first name in the IRC channel topic. :D

Tom K.

:|

forest

It was hilarious because I first suggested to use MD5, then they said "isn't MD5 broken? You're trying to trick me" so I showed them that Whirlpool is not broken.

Tom K.

m(

forest

Kolby, I think it was. Or Koby. Guess the concept of keyspace eluded him. Funny thing is, shortly after doing that, some other guy figured out his Facebook (just by chance).

Tom K.

key space

<:

forest

1:08 PM

I don't feel bad about it though. The guy was a huge troll (well, shitposter).

Like everyone hated him. Massive shitposter on /a/ in like... 2015? or 16.

When I found out his name I kept replying to threads he made calling him Koby at every chance I could to let everyone know lol

He thought it was a bot doing it for the longest time.

Thankfully he left 4chan to play some video game and no longer bothers us.

Tom K.

speaking of key space

I was reading about 3DES the other day

and I was wondering - because it wasn't mentioned there - doesn't the key space problem that applies to DES also apply to 3DES?

forest

3DES takes 168 bits for keys, though a meet-in-the-middle attack brings it to 112.

Regular old DES only has 56 bits, so 3DES increases the effective keyspace.

Tom K.

yeah so.. 168 is just 3 * 56

forest

Yep, but meet-in-the-middle brings it to effectively 112 (which is still enough).

Tom K.

ah okay..

yeah.. it just clicked

Anonymous

1:12 PM

@TomK. youtube.com/watch?v=kPBJIhpcZgE

Anonymous

^ If you're really interested.

Anonymous

It's a 2 part lecture.

forest

Fun fact: XTS mode gives a keyspace of 512 and an effective keyspace of 384!

Anonymous

Whole course is on YT free.

Tom K.

can't watch yt right now

forest

1:12 PM

Practically for free perf-wise.

Anonymous

It's a long video anyway Tom :p

Anonymous

3 hours worth of DES nonsense :d

Tom K.

yeah.. DES is kinda nonsense :s

Anonymous

Haha :D

Tom K.

or well.. knowledge about DES

Anonymous

1:14 PM

I just find it fascinating to be honest

Anonymous

I will be going through these lectures fully once I pass my OSCP.

forest

AES is even weirder.

Ever seen the "stick figure guide to AES"?

@J.J I think you'd like it.

Anonymous

I started watching the lectures from CP on AES Forest.

Anonymous

And I was so confused in first 20 minutes.

Anonymous

I turned it off.

Anonymous

1:15 PM

I swear the only way to understand it is watching it high

Anonymous

/shrug

forest

Yeah AES is more complex when you get into how the S-boxes are created.

Polynomial multiplication over finite fields and blah blah.

@J.J moserware.com/2009/09/stick-figure-guide-to-advanced.html

It gets gradually more math-heavy, but is still very readable.

Anonymous

Already reading :p

forest

And you don't need to know math to get the first 3/4ths. :P

Anonymous

Reading this whilst listening to a nu-metal cover of Lana Del Ray's born to die.

Anonymous

1:18 PM

The Amity Affliction - Born to Die

►

Anonymous

When you listen to her version afterwards it's trippy as fuck.

Anonymous

So very different...

forest

@J.J Fun fact, Lucifer was called such because it was stored as a file called DEMONSTRATION, but the filesystem was so old it cut it off into DEMON.

So they called the demonstration cipher Lucifer! (the one that soon became DES)

Anonymous

Wow.

Anonymous

That's cool.

Anonymous

1:21 PM

This is amazing.

forest

The stick figure guide?

Anonymous

Yeah

forest

What part are you at? :p

Anonymous

Key Expansion P3

Anonymous

O.o

Anonymous

1:23 PM

Is there a paper on this shortcut over 6 rounds? :O

forest

Yup. It's very technical though.

Anonymous

Oh :(

forest

Where's it talk about the shortcut?

If you mean a 6 round attack.

Anonymous

Yeah :p

Anonymous

Their explanation is probably enough for my brain.

Anonymous

1:26 PM

To be honest where I get most confused in AES is when you use it inside a mode :p

Anonymous

I still don't really understand ECB or CBC.

Anonymous

But then again I never looked at any modes properly before

Anonymous

They just confused me.

forest

Modes are actually really easy to understand. ECB is just each AES invocation encrypts a separate 16 bytes with the same key. Naturally the same plaintext will turn into the same ciphertext, which is bad.

That's where modes like CBC come in.

ECB:

CBC:

CTR:

Anonymous

Forgive me for a retarded question.

forest

1:28 PM

There are also some really crazy ones like XTS:

Anonymous

But the "block cipher encryption" will be substituted with AES or another block cipher?

forest

@J.J AES. Any block cipher.

Anonymous

That is the most retarded question I've ever asked.

forest

Nah it's just a question of terminology.

Anonymous

But these diagrams are so unclear sometimes.

Anonymous

1:28 PM

:p

forest

For AES-CBC, it's AES. For Blowfish-CBC, it's Blowfish.

Anonymous

This is amazing.

Anonymous

:D

M'vy

Then for fun, you can go read about S-boxes

Anonymous

Wow.

forest

1:30 PM

@J.J It's really cool huh. Block ciphers can be so flexible with a mode.

Anonymous

That book is $76.

Anonymous

$76!

Anonymous

Jesus.

forest

Which one?

Anonymous

The Design of Rijndael

forest

1:31 PM

Ah yeah. Well you can download it for free from like, anywhere.

It's pretty technical itself though (but it is useful for understanding it).

Anonymous

Yeah but I am a weirdo, I need hard cover books.

Anonymous

Else I struggle to read a little :p

M'vy

Then read a lot

forest

Fair enough. :P

Anonymous

I mean, not quite literally but I don't like it without the book in front of me.

M'vy

1:32 PM

XD

Anonymous

:p

Anonymous

TO be fair Forest, this is what I will spend my cert break doing.

Anonymous

I've got a list of Crypto books and lectures hah

forest

Crypto is really fascinating huh. Even the basics like modes of operation, stream vs block ciphers, etc are so neat. And they have practical applications in infosec too!

Anonymous

I don't even care if I never use it.

Anonymous

1:33 PM

Just so fascinating I could read about it all day.

Anonymous

Even when I don't understand what the fuck is happening I still continue to read lmao

Anonymous

I just replace all the maths with the words "black magic"

Anonymous

:p

forest

A lot of the math is in why crypto is the way it is. Like an S-box is easy to understand without math, but understanding why an S-box was made the way it was requires a much deeper understanding. So I'm generally satisfied with knowing the contents of the S-box and not just knowing that experts created it.

@J.J Once you get modes, and stream vs block ciphers down, you should look into the different types of block ciphers. Substitution permutation networks, Fiestel networks, and ARX. Just the idea that so many ciphers fit in those categories is awesome.

Anonymous

I think Cristofs course covers a lot of this stuff.

Anonymous

1:37 PM

And he starts from the basics and goes up, only thing is he has an expectation you understand some maths already.

forest

Haven't read that course.

Anonymous

But I have a book for that.

Anonymous

"An Introduction to Cryptographic Mathematics" or something along those lines.

forest

Do you understand the level of math he uses?

Anonymous

Good book so far although I've not read much because been saving it for after OSCP.

Anonymous

1:38 PM

Ah, this is the one amazon.co.uk/…

forest

BTW this might be the 6-round attack you mentioned: pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e6e5/…

It's actually a really short paper.

Anonymous

Yeah I might be able to get my head round this.

Anonymous

Only 5 pages.

Anonymous

But if it's 5 pages with crazy math content I will be dead.

Anonymous

youtube.com/watch?v=XBNR6VwKIDk <- reading song :p hah

Anonymous

1:47 PM

Anonymous

Hah.

forest

That kind of stuff makes no sense to me lol

Cool visuals though.

Anonymous

IKR.

forest

Did you get the math parts of the stick figure guide?

Anonymous

Mostly I think I understood.

Anonymous

1:49 PM

I'll probably forget in a few hours though.

Anonymous

And then need to read it again lmao.

forest

See, crypto math isn't so hard!

Anonymous

I think hard is wrong.

Anonymous

Intimidating is more correct.

Anonymous

It's very, very intimidating.

forest

1:50 PM

Well you don't need to remember all the math, just the general idea for AES: key expansion then a series of AddRoundKey->SubBytes->ShiftRows->MixColumns.

And the idea that SubBytes is key-dependent (what it substitutes depends on the contents of the state, which itself depends on the result of XORing the round key into it), whereas MixColumns is just deterministic, doing nothing more than scrambling it reversibly to make it ready for more key-depending scrambling in the next round.

(The stick figure explains it better than I can lol)

Anonymous

:D

Anonymous

That stick figure comic thingy is really great.

Anonymous

I really loved that.

forest

It's probably the best explanation of AES I've ever read.

I wish that guy did explanations for other ciphers.

Like something to make Twofish make a little more sense ^

I mean I guess I get the basics.

But a stick figure guide would be more fun. :D

Anonymous

What

Anonymous

2:00 PM

Is that

Anonymous

I need that legend to be 40x bigger

forest

It's a single Twofish round.

Anonymous

With a lot more detail.

forest

Well you can click on it to see it

Anonymous

That's too much for my emo brain >.<

forest

2:02 PM

It's a feistel network!

(Left is feistel, like Twofish, right is substitution permutation, like AES)

Anonymous

sighs

Anonymous

:p

forest

:p

Anonymous

I'm just trying to enjoy some screaming Forest why you gotta' fry my CPU :p

forest

Now if you really want wacky...

Anonymous

2:04 PM

Your diagrams are flooding my head with electricity.

Anonymous

:p

forest

heh

Anonymous

Speaking of showing people things, I showed my dad this song the other day - youtube.com/watch?v=vu3xGr-lNVI he disowned me :p lmao.

Anonymous

I am really excited for after the OSCP though.

Anonymous

It will be so amazing to sit down and learn all this stuff.

forest

2:05 PM

Yeah it's really fascinating.

Anonymous

I think I can learn a nice amount in three or six months.

Anonymous

With any luck I might be able to make some contributions on Crypto.Se

forest

Oh for sure. I've only been into crypto for probably six months (knew the basics before that, only started learning on Crypto.SE recently). And I suck at math!

Anonymous

Although most likely it will just be me asking questions :p

Anonymous

I like to think I ask okay questions on there though.

forest

2:06 PM

Certainly

Nothing wrong with questions!

Anonymous

Oh Forest!

Anonymous

I have a funny story for you.

forest

oh?

Anonymous

About Crypto... So, a colleague of mine was looking at someones VPN configuration and saw PFS was enabled.

Anonymous

And I swear his exact words were "who the fuck uses pfs?"...

Anonymous

2:08 PM

I was speechless. Yes, PFS as in Perfect Forward Secrecy.

forest

O_o

Did... did he know what PFS means?

Anonymous

He then proceeded to argue with me about it.

Anonymous

And I asked him do you actually know what PFS does?

Anonymous

The scary thing is, he did.

Anonymous

But he still said you should not use it on a VPN ever.

forest

2:08 PM

Did he say why?

Anonymous

I was so completely speechless.

Anonymous

Some BS about making it slow and PFS isn't as good as people think it is.

forest

Making it slow? ECDHE is fast as hell!

Anonymous

I know.

forest

And it only affects connections. I mean it might make it slightly slower if you have hundreds of new connections per second... But once you connect, it doesn't matter.

Anonymous

2:09 PM

Moron... As I said, I didn't know what to say.

Anonymous

I was just angry.

Anonymous

I didn't even have the patience to argue with him.

Anonymous

I mean, even if I were to argue with him I didn't know where to begin.

Anonymous

All I could think is "oh look, another idiot who read about DES being insecure and thinks he's a crypto expert"

Anonymous

And ignored him.

forest

2:11 PM

Good for you. He sounds like an imbecile.

Anonymous

Well, not quite as dumb as that other idiot who was fired.

Anonymous

But still dumb.

Anonymous

That other idiot didn't know anything about anything though.

Anonymous

At least this idiot knows how to configure a VPN.

Anonymous

My work seems to attract/employ a lot of imbeciles and I have no idea why.

forest

2:13 PM

heh

Anonymous

But, my opinion of these idiots means nothing because I'm young so my observations must be clouded/incorrect.

Anonymous

/shrug

forest

The fact that you're younger and still know more than them is telling.

Anonymous

If it's one thing I thought I would never experience in IT it was ageism.

Anonymous

But apparently, even in IT it's prevalent.

forest

2:15 PM

Oh well everyone knows the dinosaurs are always right!

Anonymous

^ hah

forest

And yeah it's a huge thing in IT. Have you ever read The Story of Mel?

Anonymous

I had a lovely conversation with someone yesterday.

Anonymous

He told me that I shouldn't have the right to vote.

forest

O_o

Anonymous

2:15 PM

He said only 25 - 45 should have the right lmao.

forest

dafuq

Anonymous

Moron.

Anonymous

Yeah apparently anyone below 25 is too stupid to make an informed decision.

Anonymous

And anyone above 45 is too archaic to be taken seriously.

Anonymous

Another blithering moron was probably an ANTIFA supporter.

forest

2:16 PM

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Anonymous

And no I have not read that story.

Anonymous

Do you have a link?

forest

catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

Famous story from when FORTRAN was new and shiny.

Of an old programmer grumbling about how assembly is too high level and for noobs. It's actually one of the most remarkable stories I've read.

> A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming
made the bald and unvarnished statement:

Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.

Maybe they do now,
in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators, and “user-friendly” software
but back in the Good Old Days,
when the term “software” sounded funny
and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not FORTRAN. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.

:P

Anonymous

LMAO

forest

The story itself is incredible. Do read it. It's short.

Anonymous

2:19 PM

Is this a true story?

Anonymous

Or just satire?

forest

Yep.

100% true. Mel is a real guy and people found out his full name.

> “You never know where it's going to put things”,
he explained, “so you'd have to use separate constants”.

It was a long time before I understood that remark.
Since Mel knew the numerical value
of every operation code,
and assigned his own drum addresses,
every instruction he wrote could also be considered
a numerical constant.
He could pick up an earlier “add” instruction, say,
and multiply by it,
if it had the right numeric value.
His code was not easy for someone else to modify.

This just blows me away. Re-using an instruction as a constant...

Anonymous

Wow.

Anonymous

He still alive?

forest

I don't know.

Anonymous

2:23 PM

That is crazy.

forest

Finished reading it? :P

Anonymous

Yeah.

Anonymous

Man... I would be so content if I died being considered a genius by just one person :p

forest

The Story of Mel

The Story of Mel is an archetypical piece of computer programming folklore. Its subject, Mel Kaye, is an exemplary Real Programmer whose subtle techniques fascinate his colleagues. == Story == Ed Nather’s The Story of Mel details the extraordinary programming prowess of a former colleague of his, "Mel", at Royal McBee Computer Corporation. Although originally written in prose, Nather’s story was modified by someone into a "free verse" form which has become widespread.Little is known about Mel Kaye, beyond the fact that he was credited with doing the "bulk of the programming" on the 1959 A...

Gives a summary of him and the story.

It really is a wonderful story. The Story of Mel is famous.

Anonymous

Kinda' strange how he can be so famous but upon Googling him you get nothing but that picture you just linked.

forest

2:26 PM

He was famous through that story.

I don't know if he ever knew something was written about him.

Back then, the only programmers really knew their shit, and there were very few programmers at that. That's why the opening of that story seems so foreign.

Nowadays, programs are so massive that you kind of need to make programs simple so the next guy can understand the code, even at the expense of optimization.

But back then, when machines were so slow, it was up to the programmer to find the most brilliant, most convoluted optimizations known to man. I mean today, we don't think anything of a couple extra million instructions doing nothing of value in a loop. Back then, every instruction was precious.

And no, I'm not quite old enough to consider myself a programmer of that era. :P

Anonymous

That's really crazy when you think about it like that.

Anonymous

And you might not be Forest, but Rory is ;)

forest

:p

Anonymous

One day he will give me a Scottish slap for saying that too much.

forest

I'm not much of a programmer myself (I hack together things when I need), but I still have mad respect for the pioneers of a new era of technology.

Anonymous

2:31 PM

I am still sad I did not meet him at Blackhat EU :(

forest

I think I met him at DC without even knowing.

Anonymous

Really? :O

forest

Since he's a goon and I must have come across him since he was in the same place at the same time as I was (last DC there was a bit of a mess when the closing ceremony room was too full and not everyone could get in).

Anonymous

Hah.

Anonymous

Next time I will meet him!

Anonymous

2:32 PM

I am sad I am not going to OffCon to meet @TomK.

forest

OffCon is sponsored by some assholes like Zerodium.

I don't support that con. I won't be going there myself.

Anonymous

None of you want to meet me anyway, I am such a little hobbit :p

forest

:p

Anonymous

That's the only word I can use to describe myself.

Anonymous

I met a few friends at BHEU and none of them expected me to be such a little nerd lmao

forest

2:35 PM

heh

Tom K.

ah well.. the company pays for it

forest

Well it's good to get into this early!

Anonymous

I can't afford it anyway Forest.

Tom K.

and HamZa will be there as well I think

Anonymous

:(

Anonymous

2:37 PM

I will be in Germany that week as well

Anonymous

Just 6 hours away, hah.

Tom K.

@forest which assholes do you mean?

oh

zerodium

well.. nevermind

Anonymous

I think I found some of Forests victims.

forest

lols

Anonymous

I just remember a comment about your location so that video made me laugh.

Tom K.

2:40 PM

whoa.. my graphic card driver just .. crashed O.o

when I visited the zero day initiative's website

forest

ZDI is hacking you!!!1one

Tom K.

!

forest

Quick, post a question about how you must be infected with BadBIOS!

Tom K.

+ rubberducky

Anonymous

^ they are fun

Tom K.

2:43 PM

and/or badusb

Anonymous

(Yes im a script kiddie don't @ me)

Anonymous

Hah they are fun though :D

forest

I find BadBIOS so funny. I mean it's just so... stupid.

Like of all things, why is that what got people's attention?

Same with BadUSB really. I mean we knew about it for ages.

It's like if the whole world freaked out because they found out that keyloggers exist.

Tom K.

because it's so much easier to grasp for people than... any RCE

people put bad stuff into my USB port = boom

forest

Or real scary shit like Spectre.

I've always said that the x86 core scared me more than the ME.

Especially since so many people believe in ME conspiracy theories.

Like a 2G chip in the CPU... what nonsense.

The USBKiller thing is hilarious too.

Like no shit you can fry a computer with an overvoltage.

Tom K.

2:50 PM

have not heard of that yet

or do not remember at least

welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/…

that looks like fun

forest

It's a gimmicky device that you plug into a USB port which charges a capacitor from the USB port then discharges it to fry the motherboard.

Tom K.

and btw, one of the bears answered my Q on crypto @forest

forest

His answers are always excellent.

(Both bears are the same person!)

Tom K.

hm, yeah, sounds doable

(I know)

Anonymous

I didn't know that till a few months ago @forest ;p

forest

2:52 PM

@J.J He's also the creator of BearSSL and is in the NIST PQC competition.

For some post-quantum signature scheme. FALCON, I think?

Anonymous

I have seen BearSSL.

Anonymous

He's written a book too.

forest

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864085

lol

Anonymous

LMAO

forest

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864152

Oh wow, this is cool.

> Also, when I say that BearSSL is written in C, it is partly a lie: some of it (especially X.509 certificate decoding, and handling of handshake messages) is done in T0, a new Forth-like language that I invented for the task (compiler is provided, and produces C code), specifically to have coroutines (incidentally, it means that most of that code read things byte by byte, with relatively few accesses to buffers, thus less potential buffer overflows).

Reading byte by byte reminds me a bit of the technique for Google's XSecureLock.

Tom K.

4:26 PM

<3 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem <3

> In October 2004, it was reported that the Horniman Museum in London was failing to receive some of its e-mail because filters mistakenly treated its name as a version of the words horny man.

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