Breaking Bitlocker

It was only a matter of time before someone did this. Bitlocker is Microsoft’s technique for encrypting a desktop, laptop, or other MS Windows device. We encrypt the device to protect the ...
Professionally Evil Fundamentals: Introduction

Linux X86 Assembly – How To Test Custom Shellcode Using a C Payload Tester

Overview In the last blog post in this series, we created a tool to make it easy to build our custom payloads and extract them.  However, what if we want to test ...
Professionally Evil Fundamentals: Introduction

Linux X86 Assembly – How to Make Our Hello World Usable as an Exploit Payload

Overview In the last two tutorials, we built a Hello World program in NASM and GAS for x86 assembly.  While this can help us learn x86 assembly, it isn’t viable as a ...
Professionally Evil Fundamentals: Introduction

Linux X86 Assembly – How to Build a Hello World Program in NASM

Overview A processor understands bytecode instructions specific to that architecture.  We as humans use mnemonics to make building these instructions easier than remembering a bunch of binary codes.  These mnemonics are known ...
Professionally Evil Fundamentals: Introduction

A Hacker’s Tour of the X86 CPU Architecture

Overview The Intel x86 CPU architecture is one of the most prolific CPU architectures for desktops, laptops, and servers.  While other architectures exist and are even taking some market share with mobile ...
BlindSide

BlindSide: Intel/AMD Speculation Bugs Under Microscope Again

Researchers have published frightening details on what they’re calling BlindSide, which relies on co-opting our old friend speculative execution ...
Security Boulevard
Protecting against SWAPGS Attack via Hypervisor Introspection

Bypassing KPTI Using the Speculative Behavior of the SWAPGS Instruction

Bitdefender senior researchers Dan Horea Luțaș and Andrei Vlad Luțaș recently uncovered a new speculative-execution vulnerability and demonstrated how it can be exploited via a side-channel style attack, dubbed SWAPGS Attack. The ...
Yet Another Meltdown – A Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling Vulnerability (CVE-2018-12130)

Yet Another Meltdown – A Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling Vulnerability (CVE-2018-12130)

More than one year ago, security researchers at Google Project Zero have disclosed a series of hardware vulnerabilities affecting Intel® x86 microprocessors. Leveraging a feature of modern processors called speculative execution, as ...
Scientists claim to have invented the unhackable processor

Scientists claim to have invented the unhackable processor

An intriguing paper published by researchers at the University of Michigan describes a new processor architecture capable of self-encryption that can fend off any hacks. A DARPA-supported project, the new chip design ...