BSides Knoxville 2019

As the targets in many penetration tests and red team activities as well as being the focus of much of the active research being performed in the InfoSec arena, Windows takes center stage. However, we are not going to be talking about Windows; we are here to discuss Unix (and Unix like OSes). While these systems can and do contain some of the most critical information on many networks, we feel they do not get enough time in the spotlight. So, if you want to learn a bit more about Unix and what you can do to/with it as a pentester, then please stop by and have a listen.

Where is the line between misconfiguration and vulnerability? Red team attacks generally succeed by exploiting well-worn paths, as the resources required to discover new zero-days tend to be more fruitfully spent elsewhere. But does this mean that red team coders don't get to write any interesting new exploits? Far from it!

In this talk, we will walk you through the process of developing a novel file format exploit and using it to root a public cloud service during a 2018 red team. This research, which the authors first presented at Derbycon 8.0, will be accompanied for the first time by the release of a new open source tool.