Google was offering hackers money to throw every trick of their trade against Chrome web browser to prove a point that Chrome isn’t hackable. Unfortunately, just recently VUPEN Security company who provides defensive and offensive computer securities to governments and Fortune 500 companies had successfully hacked Chrome browser on Windows 7. The company was able to come up with a zero day exploit that is not yet in the wild, I hope, to exploit Chrome browser and launch a calculator on Windows 7. I’m not sure this same trick can be done on Mac OS X or not. Anyhow, check out the video right after the break on this.
I haven’t touched my PS3 for ages, because I was so occupied with books, movies, Starcraft 2, writing articles, writing my books, and so on. This is why the news of PS3 gamers could not connect to Sony’s Playstation Network has not affected me much. Nonetheless, it’s a very big deal for many PS3 gamers, because they cannot play multiplayer online games with each other. Luckily, watching Netflix using PS3 is probably still working, because Netflix app on PS3 probably isn’t tied to Sony’s Playstation Network.
Sony has decided to take down Playstation Network to rebuild its network so hackers won’t be able to hack it so easily the next time around. Unknown hacker (or hackers) was successfully penetrated Playstation Network. Sony says it isn’t sure yet what confidential information were compromised. On various threads, the Xbox fans are making fun at the PS3 fans, and PS3 fans are fighting back with more strong words. Since Sony took down its Playstation Network, words have had gotten nastier.
Agreeing with a commenter who has a comment under Yahoo’s article here — personally, I don’t care, because all gaming consoles have their own advantages and disadvantages. Certain exclusive games are can only be played on certain console games exclusively, and this is why some people prefer to have more than one gaming console. Let just hope that Playstation Network will get back online, because we know Sony is working hard to build a new version of Playstation Network and rebuilding its network structure. For now, I may do some real physical exercise with my personal trainer on my Xbox 360/Kinect.
I notice some people complain that they cannot get Armitage running on BackTrack for various reasons. Here are few short tips that may help you get your Armitage running smoothly. Starting with the first tip, you may want to change into directory of Metasploit which can be found in directory /opt, but if your is different, you can do [updatedb] and [whereis metasploit] or [whereis msfrpcd]. Change into the directory which holds metasploit’s exploit modules, I forgot the name of that directory but I give it a try, it called msf3, I think. In there you do [svn update .] or [svn up .]. The reason being is that you need the latest Metasploit or else Armitage may not work; Armitage is only supporting the latest Metasploit.
Second tip is that your Java installation could be of the older version. Do [java -version] to see if you have the latest. How you know which Java version is the latest? Don’t check the BackTrack’s repositories, because these may contain the older version of Java. I prefer to go to java.com. At java.com, download the latest version, and if your machine is 64 bit, make sure you download the 64 bit java package. Usually the package you download can be self extracted. Installing self extracted Java package requires you to [chmod +x java-package-version], replace the java-package version with the Java package you’ve downloaded. The final step of installing self extracted Java package would be [./java-package-version], replace java-package-version with the Java package you’ve downloaded and make sure you are in the same directory as the downloaded java-package-version. Sometimes it’s necessary for you to do [update-java-alternatives -s your-java-version], replace your-java-version with the Java version you want your system to use. Do [java -version] again to see if you got the latest Java now. Armitage depends on Java to work correctly, and having the latest Java would help.
Behind a router which has a strong firewall? Then you don’t need to install a firewall onto BackTrack so it won’t conflict with Metasploit and Armitage. Feeling insecure still? Go ahead and install a firewall on BackTrack, but only block incoming connection and allow outgoing connection for all. Antivirus such as ClamAV should be fine, because it’s not actively scanned files. Even if you have scheduled ClamAV to run at specific time through a cron job, I still think it won’t conflict with Metasploit and Armitage. Too strict of a firewall’s settings may prevent Metasploit to contact MySQL or other databases which in turn preventing Armitage to function correctly.
In case you forgot to do apt-get update or aptitude update and aptitude safe-upgrade, you need to do so. This way you update all installed packages on your BackTrack system. Latest packages on your system may fix old bugs, therefore your Armitage will less likely to be hiccuped.
Armitage’s author has few demo videos that are very interesting. These videos are proofs of when a system is not up-to-date, a tool such as Armitage/Metasploit could take control of it anytime. Check the demo videos out after the break.
I also have tested out that if your Windows 7 is fully patched, Metasploit and Armitage won’t be able to exploit the machine. The same thing goes for all Linux flavors. It seems that these two tools, Metasploit and Armitage, cannot do zero day attack. What is zero day attack? According to Wikipedia, and so I quote:
A zero-day (or zero-hour or day zero) attack or threat is a computer threat that tries to exploit computer application vulnerabilities that are unknown to others or undisclosed to the software developer. Zero-day exploits (actual software that uses a security hole to carry out an attack) are used or shared by attackers before the developer of the target software knows about the vulnerability.
The term derives from the age of the exploit. A “zero day” attack occurs on or before the first or “zeroth” day of developer awareness, meaning the developer has not had any opportunity to distribute a security fix to users of the software.
The only thing you should worry for your ultra patched network would be a zero day attack. The other stuffs pretty much have gotten taken care of, that’s if you are doing penetration tests against your network with tools such as Armitage.
Note: When executing the command lines I’ve mentioned above, make sure you are doing them as root!
Vinh Nguyen
