HITCON 2013 Overview

Cyber War

1. People's Republic of Cyber Warfare: Comparing China Iran & Russia Militarization of Cyberspace(駭客人民共和國: 中國伊朗跟俄羅斯網軍的分析與比較)
2. Global Cyber Espionage and Chinese Hacker Threats, Internet Survillance and PRISM(全球間諜：互聯網監控全球趨勢 棱鏡門與中國駭客威脅論)
3. APT1: Technical Backstage(APT1: 反攻網軍後台)
4. How South Korea Makes White-hat Hackers(南韓如何培養白帽駭客？)
5. How does Japan dea with Targeted Attack and SCADA Security(目標鎖定攻擊與工控系統安全：日本如何應對兩大趨勢)

Cyber War is the main topic of HITCON 2013. Hence many session about global cyber activity are included.
In first two presentation talk about national power of cyber war, include China, Iran and Russia. And also mention about chineese hacker and  Internet survillance of U.S.
Second, Paul Rascagneres from malware.lu share their experience to track APT1 hacker,which probable come from china.
Then, national strategy of Japan and Korean, which are two countries near TW, is mentioned. 

APT

1. APT defense from the view of security architecture(從系統設計建置面談 APT 防禦)
2. Visual Data Analytics - Graphing your Indicators(APT 特徵的視覺資料分析法)
3. Digital Eagle Eye System: Use Cyber Intelligence against APT Attacks(數位鷹眼系統: 以網路數位情資對抗 APT 攻擊)
4. APT Cyber Shuttle: From Automated Analysis to TTP Observation(APT網際飛梭：從自動化分析到拆解 APT 後台駭客活動)
5. Light & Shadow about Banking $ecurity @Japan(光與影 日本銀行業的資訊安全)

In HITCON 2013, APT is still one of hottest topic. In those session, management and strategy against APT is discussed. And some forensics technique are also proposed to face APT attack.
Notice that, the session "APT Cyber Shuttle: From Automated Analysis to TTP Observation" proposed by Xecure-Lab & Academia Sinica will give a session in Black Hat US 2013.

Malware

1. Building new weapons for malware analysts(建立惡意軟體分析的新武器)
2. Advance Malware Evasion and Hiding Techniques(惡意軟體的進階免殺技巧)
3. Static Analysis and Dynamic Instrumentation for Intelligent Exploit Analysis(靜態與動態智慧型漏洞文件分析系統)

Malware analysis is a old discussion problem. In this year, some session about malware are also included.

Mobile

1. Escaping Android Dynamic Analysis; Chinese New Year Train Ticket Ordering Day(逃離安卓動態檢測 & 訂票助手一日談)
2. Dex Education 201: Anti-Emulators(深入Dalvik Dex教學:反制模擬器)
3. Android Hooking Attack
4. Review of Security Vulnerabilities on the Android Platform(Android平臺安全性漏洞回顧)
5. GSM Security Research using Open Soruce Tools(以開源軟體進行GSM安全研究)

With exponent usage of mobile device, sessions about mobile are also increasing. The first two sessions mention about how malware evade security analysis mechanism. Then the following two sessions is about technique employed by malware. Especially, "Review of Security Vulnerabilities on the Android Platform" ,proposed by 肖梓航 Claud, which overview the android vulnerabilities in current year is worthy to read.

Exploit & Vulnerability

1. Life of Coder: The adventure through the landscape of bugs(程序員的蟲洞漂流)
2. Analysis on the EPATHOBJ Exploit(請謹慎編碼，哪怕它只是一句錯誤處理— 來自 win32k!EPATHOBJ::pprFlattenRec 漏洞的啟示)
3. Killing AV in x64(戳戳防毒軟體死穴)
4. 0-Day Easy Talk - Happy Fuzzing Internet Explorer(0-Day 輕鬆談 - Happy Fuzzing Internet Explorer)
5. How can i have 100 0day for just 1day(超級祕訣 - 一天擁有 100 個 0day!)
6. Exploiting JRE (JRE安全机制与漏洞挖掘研究)

Exploit and Vulnerability is an interesting topic this year. An 0 day sharing activity is also include in this year's HITCON.
In first three sessions, the authors analysis some known exploit and  share their implementation. The fourth session, the author demonstrate the 0-day he found and share his experience.
The fifth talk present an idea to fuzz numerous of application at once. The last one session conclude java vulnerabilities in current day and the direction to fuzz java platform.

Others

1. The undisclosed files of incidents by the data scientist(資料科學家未曾公開之資安研究事件簿)
2. OS X Rootkits Stuff(那些洞，我們一起追的 OS X Rootkits)
3. Spears and shields on online game(線上遊戲矛盾大對決)
4. Breaking image CAPTCHA for fun(CAPTCHA 好好玩)
5. Protocol and physical analysis of EMV POS devices.(EMV晶片卡POS裝置的實體與溝通協定分析)
6. Browser and Local Zone(瀏覽器和本地域)

The session "The undisclosed files of incidents by the data scientist" talk about some research topic of professor 陳昇瑋. Social network and malicious phone call are both special and interesting topic.

Also web security are widely discussed in Black Hat 2013, there are less topic about web security in this year's HITCON.  

Android Malware Zitmo Analysis

Zitmo

Zitmo is an android bot which aim to stole user's bank authentication tokens. It is interest that Zitmo's feature to beat two factor authentication. 

In order to prevent traditional banking trojan, online banking service employ transaction authentication numbers (TAN), which is a two factor authentication mechanism, to authorize user.  

Zitmo is the mobile version of Zeus bot, which give Zeus a chance to defeat two-factor authentication.

In two factor authentication, online bank will first request user's mobile number. After user first authentication with tradition password mechanism, the message contains secondary password will send to user's mobile. Only user with this two password can successful authentication and complete transaction.

Following figure describe how Zitmo work:

First, Zeus will infect user's computer. Once user connects to online back after infection, the connection will be hijacked. All the user's input will be sent to bot server including the phone number used to authenticate. Then the bot server will send a forge message to user's mobile to install an app, which is indeed Zitmo bot. Once user install this app, all the message will be hijacked too. Hence the secondary password will sent to bot server, thus attacker has ability to do some bank transaction.

Take a briefly look into Zitmo.

In manifest, we can observe following sections.

Zitmo requests permission to reseive and send message.

Zitmo also register a receiver triggered once mobile boot/reboot.

We can observe Zitmo register a receiver to intercept message with high priority(MAX INTEGER), so it can hijack user's incoming messages. 

The core part of Zitmo is in following figure. After massage coming, function onReceive() will called and snedSmsIfEnabled() will called to send Sms to attacker. 

Reference

http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792194/

Introduction Virtualization in ARM platform

With explosion growth of mobile device, profits by attack mobile device also increase in an incredible rate. In some aspect, mobile combine to user even more close. Due to those reason, mobile malware appear exponentially. Especially for android malware due to it's widely used and open architecture. Many recent report also show that android malware increase exponentially, like Dissecting Android Malware: Characterization and Evolution in S&P'12 and F-secure Mobile Threat Report.

To address rapidly raise of mobile , both static and dynamic approach have been proposed. However static analysis suffer from code obfuscation and packed. In additional, static analysis will fail to reveal dynamic behavior include dynamic loading. Therefore dynamic analysis become standard and future trend to analysis android malware.

Although dynamic analysis can overcome code obfuscation and dynamic loading, dynamic analysis also has some shortcoming, like code coverage. In android platform, it lacks robust emulator that can precisely emulate common device like GPS, SMS and phone call, Some of which are most interesting when analysis android malware. However directly use real device to analysis is unavailable due to damage of read device and hard to scale. One reasonable solution is to use virtualization technique, however there are no stable virtualiazation platform in arm due to property of ARM system which not support virtualization.

Following the trend of virtualization, Sangsong proposed XEN/ARM and Columbia University also proposed KVM/ARM in 2010. However both solution lack of hardware support and have appendant memory and CPU overhead. In SOSP'11, Columbia University Department of Computer Science announce Cells project, which is the very first work about OS virtualization in ARM. Cells can leverage device that already support by OS without port every device. In Taiwan , SS Lab in NTHU also research in virtualization in ARM.Those research expose a new possibility for android malware analysis which employs real device with virtualization, so that we can reuse and reconstruct clean environment for analysis.