Publications

Magento for Security Audit

06/09/2023 Magento, also known as Adobe Commerce since it was bought by Adobe in 2018, is a popular CMS for e-commerce web applications, powering 2.3% of them as of 2021 (according to Statista). This article provides an overview of its inner workings from a security point of view as well as some key points to keep in mind when auditing Magento-based applications.

Web Architect - An Introduction

06/09/2023 This article is the first of a series detailing various security aspects of the most common technologies one can encounter on the web, starting with CMSs. As of today, most of the Content Management Systems (CMS) market shares are detained by PHP based solutions (WordPress accounting for most of it, admittedly). Thus, they are really common to find during web pentest engagements. This article and the following ones will tell you everything you need to know to get started when facing one of them, by studying two of the most common ones...

GPOddity: exploiting Active Directory GPOs through NTLM relaying, and more!

04/09/2023 During the pentest of an Active Directory environment, we recently came across a situation in which we were able to relay the authentication data of a user having write permissions on a sensitive Group Policy Object (GPO). Due to the peculiarities of GPOs’ implementation in Active Directory, existing tools do not allow their exploitation in NTLM relaying contexts. We however devised a new versatile exploitation vector that can be implemented through relaying, as well as a tool automating the attack, GPOddity, available on Synacktiv...

Old bug, shallow bug: Exploiting Ubuntu at Pwn2Own Vancouver 2023

01/09/2023 At this year Pwn2Own Vancouver we demonstrated Local Escalation of Privilege (LPE) exploits for the three desktop operating systems present at the competition: Windows, MacOS and Linux (Ubuntu). This blogpost explores the Ubuntu entry exploiting CVE-2023-35001, a 9 year old vulnerability in the Linux Kernel.

Forensic Aspects of Microsoft Remote Access VPN

28/08/2023 As remote work surges, VPNs gain significance. With employees using their devices in uncontrolled networks, VPNs are certainly now a serious option for attackers to gain an initial foothold on the corporate network. Microsoft offers a VPN solution called Remote Access Service. This article sheds light on Microsoft VPN service's inner workings, and provides forensic aspects to improve incident response and the monitoring of this service.

Exploring Android Heap allocations in jemalloc 'new'

30/05/2023 When writing an exploit for a memory corruption vulnerability, knowing the heap allocator internals is often required to shape the heap as desired. This article will dive into one of Android libc allocators: jemalloc 'new' (jemalloc version 5 and superior). Whereas scudo is the latest allocator introduced in the platform, jemalloc 'new' is still very used today but not well documented.

The printer goes brrrrr, again!

12/05/2023 For the second time at Pwn2Own competition, network printers have been featured in Toronto 2022. The same brands were included this year as in Austin 2021: HP, Lexmark and Canon with equivalent model. Unlike the previous event, we only targeted the Lexmark and Canon but nevertheless manage to compromise both. Sadly, the bug we exploited for the Canon printer was previously used by another team in the competition. Anyway, this is how we achieved code execution on the Canon printer.

Credential Stuffing: Speeding up massive leaks databases

05/05/2023 Despite the increasing usage of cross-origin authentication, password-based authentication is still massively used by people having to log into an account. With a minimal length, upper letters, digits, special characters or any constraints, people tend to reuse old passwords with little improvements. But when a website or any service is breached, then it is possible to use those for credentials replaying, password spraying or cracking attacks. In order to achieve these kinds of attacks, we have to store and query a huge ...

Windows secrets extraction: a summary

20/04/2023 Post-exploitation in Windows environments often implies secrets collection. The collected secrets can be reused for lateral or vertical movement, making them high value assets. Most people already know the LSASS process, but other secrets such as LSA secrets and DPAPI ones could also allow privilege escalation or access to sensitive resources. This article will describe the different types of secrets that can be found within a Windows machine, and public tools that can be used to retrieve them.

I hack, U-Boot

17/04/2023 During hardware assessments, it is common to come across devices implementing U-Boot. This article aims to describe what it is, why it could be interesting from an offensive perspective, and the attack surface associated with this popular bootloader.