CHICAGO (July 21, 2009) - Three information security experts from Trustwave, the leading provider of on-demand data security and payment card industry compliance management solutions to businesses and organizations throughout the world, will deliver briefings at DEFCON 17 in Las Vegas, July 30 through August 2. The presentations will be delivered by members of SpiderLabs, the advanced security team at Trustwave responsible for incident response and forensics, ethical hacking and application security.
Nicholas J. Percoco and Jibran Ilyas will present, Malware Freak Show, which will review the intricate details of three very interesting types of malware found during real-life forensics investigations. Ranging from simple to very complex, the malware discovered during these investigations are advanced portions of software written by very skilled developers.
Trustwave's SpiderLabs has found that these skilled developers are shifting their attack vectors from broad attacks compromising as many targets as possible to targeted attacks against specific point-of-sale (POS) systems and specific environments. Despite the varying degrees of difficulty to implement the malware, the end result of each attack is the theft of confidential data leading to significant fraud and business loss for the organizations where it was found. These attack vectors are now categorized as cybercrime and the complexity in their propagation, control channels and data exporting properties will be discussed and demonstrated during the presentation.
Jon Rose, also with Trustwave's SpiderLabs, will present, Deblaze - A Remote Method Enumeration Tool for Flex Servers, which will examine Flex technology and its inherent security risks.
As the Web evolves, Flex technologies provide businesses with faster, better and sleeker Internet applications. Flex is being deployed with increasing regularity without proper understanding of the security risks involved during implementation. As these new types of Internet applications gain a larger base within businesses, attackers also shift their focus towards subverting these technologies for financial gain.
Trustwave's SpiderLabs, one of the few groups with working knowledge and experience testing Flex technologies, have developed a testing tool called Deblaze. Deblaze ensures that the proper controls are in place to prevent unauthorized access to application functionality and data. This talk demonstrates how to use Deblaze, discusses the emerging security risks posed to Flex servers, and covers mitigation techniques.
Jibran Ilyas will also present, Only the Ones Close to You Can Hurt You - How Computer Memory (RAM) Defies You, during DEFCON Skytalks. As a senior forensics investigator for Trustwave's SpiderLabs, Ilyas has seen first-hand a recent increase in memory attacks as hackers adapt their techniques to access more carefully protected data.
Security controls, such as data encryption, are being widely adopted, causing attackers to shift their focus on extracting data from memory, which holds unencrypted data. Computer memory can enable attackers to potentially steal sensitive information from a target network and steal users' identity without much effort.
With this technique, an attacker not only obtains the information keyed in at the victim computer, but also the information of the people with whom the victim interacts (e.g. a chat conversation can be recovered from the memory). Random Access Memory (RAM) dumps can also contain e-mails, contacts, browsed Web sites and other personally identifiable information. Ilyas will discuss the risks of unencrypted memory for businesses and regular users along with the available solutions.
"Through real-world experiences, our security experts will demonstrate serious security vulnerabilities that affect businesses each and every day," says Robert J. McCullen, chairman and CEO of Trustwave. "By sharing this information, our goal is to help encourage the adoption of more effective security strategies."
About Trustwave
Trustwave is a leading provider of on-demand and subscription-based information security and payment card industry compliance management solutions to businesses and government entities throughout the world. For organizations faced with today's challenging data security and compliance environment, Trustwave provides a unique approach with comprehensive solutions that include its flagship TrustKeeper® compliance management software and other proprietary security solutions including SIEM , WAF , EV SSL certificates and secure digital certificates . Trustwave has helped hundreds of thousands of organizations-ranging from Fortune 500 businesses and large financial institutions to small and medium-sized retailers-manage compliance and secure their network infrastructures, data communications and critical information assets. Trustwave is headquartered in Chicago with offices throughout North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. For more information, visit https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/.