Fostering knowledge exchange among different generations of security researchers is maybe one of the best traits of a good security conference. Judging by its attendance, NoSuchCon can easily claim to be one of these. It's rare to see such a mix of young researchers and old gurus exchanging ideas and getting to know each other. Organized this year in Paris, NoSuchCon takes place in the premises of the Espace Oscar Niemeyer; admittedly, indeed a nice move putting a security conference within an art exposition center (congrats to the organizers :)) .

The Counter eCrime Operations Summit VII (CeCOS VII) engages questions of operational challenges and the development of common resources for the first responders and forensic professionals who protect consumers and enterprises from the electronic-crime threat every day.

The annual event, organized by the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is this time held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Today is the second and last day of Infiltrate 2013 which is taking place in Miami Beach. It's my first time at Infiltrate and so far I've been really impressed with the quality of the conference.

The opening keynote by Chris Eagle definitely set the tone for the rest of the con, with a very clear focus on offense. Chris shared his own view on various issues concerning how the US Armed Forces - and the Navy in particular - deal with educating people on cyber.

One of the bits I found particularly interesting was the Title 10 issue. Many of the experts creating cyber-tools, which would make them best equipped to handle them, are civilians. However under Title 10, only military personnel can actually 'pull the trigger'. You can see how this can be problematic.

Is it a Skype day? Or maybe a Bitcoin one? Or maybe just both-

I say this because right after I published my previous post about malware ongoing campaign on Skype, a mate from Venezuela sent me a screenshot of her Skype client with a similar campaign in terms of propagation but different in terms of origins and purposes. Here is the original screenshot:

(Translation from Spanish: ?this is my favorite picture of you�)

Some of you may remember the virus wallpaper calendars that we published in previous years, listing a selection of significant events in the history of the IT security industry.

Well, we're posting new versions for 2013.

April's wallpaper is here.

clickable!

But be sure to check our calendar page each month as we'll be adding new wallpapers as we go through the year.

We hope they'll be an interesting background for your desktop, as well as highlighting key security events from the past.

Every year as Europe wakes up from the cold winter to the warm days of spring, BlackHat traditionally descends to Amsterdam. This year�s conference is taking place on March 14-15 at the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, right Dam Square, the heart of Amsterdam. As spring doesn�t necessarily equal warm days here in Europe right now, the 500 or so BlackHat participants hit the conference rooms to attend quite a few interesting talks. Here�s a summary of the best talks at BlackHat Europe 2013.

The last week of 2012 marked the 29th installment of the Chaos Communication Congress. Organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), the congress is an annual conference on technology and its impact on society. Although the scope may look quite loose, both lectures and workshops typically revolve around privacy, freedom of information, data security and other hacking issues. Needless to say, it has always been a great success; huge, considering that black-hat sized events here in Europe are not that common. Take, for instance, the fact that this year the congress had to be held in Hamburg, as Berlin could not offer a congress center fit enough to host more than 6000 attendees. Trust me, this number was not an exaggeration at all!

I admit my expectations were quite high: after four long years of scientific symposia going back to more technical venues was indeed putting my brain in hunger-mode. However, having experienced what it means organizing events for medium sized scientific conferences, I was honestly puzzled about turning a huge building such as the Congress Center of Hamburg in a functional place ready to host lectures, workshops, and hack spaces. Boy I was wrong to be worried about it. The event lasted 4 whole days (from the 27th to the 30th) with an impeccable organization: not only were all lectures and workshops flawlessly organized, streamed, and chaired; but also all open spaces were collectivized and used for all kind of hacking purposes, from playing CTF to entry-level courses on the Arduino platform.

The speakers on the other hand could take advantage of extremely well-sized rooms, with the most important talks having available an auditorium able to host more than 2000 people. Nevertheless, I have to say I was forced to learn one thing pretty fast: if you are interested in a topic, and that topic happens to be quite a hot one, well, be ready to get to the room at least 15 minutes before show-time; seriously, being on time never worked; any room, regardless of the capacity, was liable to get full. Believe me, I was really thankful for the flawless streaming infrastructure (watching a talk on my laptop that was taking place just few meters away was indeed paradoxical :) ).

The first day's line up was respectable. The keynote was given by Jacob Appelbaum, known for his contributions to "The Tor Project", and also former spokesperson for WikiLeaks. After the usual introductions, he explained the reasons of this year's congress' zeitgeist "Not My Department". We all have heard this sentence at least once in our lives; usually uttered to belittle other people's arguments, it has always been used as an example of a closed mindset at work. Jacob's point was that this attitude is even more detrimental in an inter-connected world. What is the use of a privacy-preserving bill if our data flows through the routers of oppressive governments potentially assembling huge data sets about our lives? A new level of awareness is therefore suggested.

2012 was a year full of major security incidents: Flame, Shamoon, Flashback, Wiper, Gauss, and so on. As we are about to turn the page, many unsolved mysteries remain still. Perhaps the most interesting unsolved mysteries are related to the Gauss Trojan: the Palida Narrow font and the unknown encrypted payload.

Previously, we�ve published a blogpost about the encrypted payload hoping that the crypto community will take on the challenge and break the encryption scheme to reveal the true purpose of the mysterious malware.

The folks at the Microsoft Security Response Center are winding down 2012 with another full release of seven Security Bulletins containing fixes for memory corruption on application, server, and system code along with a Certificate Bypass problem and set of fixes for Oracle Outside In software components. Within the seven Bulletins, they are patching at least 11 vulnerabilities, accurately described in the Advanced notification for this month. The MSRC recommends that their Internet Explorer (MS12-077) and Microsoft Word (MS12-079) updates are addressed asap.

The December 2012 Microsoft Security Bulletin Release fixes a varying array of versions of software and platforms per Bulletin. For consumers, that mostly means ensuring that the Microsoft Update software is enabled, run, and selected patches applied. For the vast majority of Windows customers, this month's release also requires that customers reboot their systems following the updates - the Internet Explorer, the kernel level font parsing updates and the file handling updates all require a reboot and hotpatching is not supported. The lack of hotpatch support means that the fix is not enabled on the system until it is rebooted. For IT folks in large and small organizations, this month's Release also requires some time set aside to understand whether or not your organization is running the versions of software requiring patches and accordingly address your environment.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer code maintains three different use-after-free vulnerabilities that are being patched this month. This "use-after-free" category of bugs is continuing to prove very difficult to stamp out, even in meaty, prevalent attack vectors like Internet Explorer. It was this sort of vulnerability that was abused in the 2010 Aurora cyber-espionage attacks on Google, Adobe, and the long list of other international corporate names that continue to maintain their incidents undisclosed and in the dark. At least one of these Internet Explorer vulnerabilities is likely to have exploit code developed against it.

As a vector of delivery for spearphish attacks, Microsoft Office seems to me to be the most popular target in the second half of the year. CVE-2012-0158 and CVE-2010-3333 continue to be identified in malicious attachments (both malicious Word and Excel files) in targeted attacks across the globe, while Adobe Reader and Flash, which were heavily abused, almost have fallen off the map. I don't know if this coincides with the release and distribution of the newly armored Adobe Reader X software and more sandboxing for Flash, or simply that offensive security investment in late summer had been directed toward producing toolkits that pump out the Office exploits we are seeing now. Either way, be sure to patch this Word flaw CVE-2012-2539 asap.

Unfortunately, we have seen kernel level exploits bundled into mass-exploitation kits like Blackhole. The Duqu exploit, previously used in very targeted attacks throughout the middle east, is being re-used in this manner. And MS12-078 this month patches kernel mode RCE for OpenType and TrueType font parsing flaws. The recent mass-exploitation activity increases and interest in kernel level font parsing vulnerabilities coincides with the open source github release of Microsoft font fuzzing tools and projects.

More of the Oracle Outside In code is being updated this month with a pile of publicly known critical vulnerabilities being patched much like in August of this year. Critical and Important Microsoft Exchange, DirectPlay, and IPHTTPS components are also being patched this month.

Also following up the annnouncement of the Microsoft software update release, Microsoft announced the availability of security updates for Adobe Flash that effect Internet Explorer users, among others. The flaws include a RCE buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2012-5676), RCE integer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2012-5677), and memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2012-5678). For my production workstations and mobile devices, I've got multiple web browsers, and each one uses a different implementation of Flash. In my case, on my production systems, I visit this page with each browser to determine whether or not I have the lastest version of Flash. Android systems are effected too, and you can find more information at Adobe's APSB12-27. Perhaps we will see a resurgence of Flash exploitation over the next few weeks and into the New Year.

These days Passwords^12 is taking place in Oslo - a conference only dedicated to passwords and pin codes. With temperatures around -15 degrees (Celsius) outside, in the conference rooms of the University in Oslo, Department of Informatics, talks by well known security experts are given.

Every day you use passwords. While logging on to your computer, smartphone or tablet, accessing your emails or your social network site and also for online banking and online shopping. Recent database breaches of user logins show that there is a high demand for more security in this area. During these days talks and discussions only care about this.