Archive for Mai, 2007

Podcast on database forensics

Dienstag, Mai 29th, 2007

The following link contains a podcast where David talks about database forensics.

David Litchfield starts research for Oracle Forensics Tool (FEDS)

Dienstag, Mai 29th, 2007

On the AusCERT2007 conference David Litchfield said that he start the research on a new project called FEDS (Forensic Examiners‘ Database Scalpel).

More information here

Mary Ann Davidson: Applications will have to defend themselves from attacks

Dienstag, Mai 29th, 2007

Mary Ann Davidson gave one of their famous talks on the AusCERT 2007. („Every Marine fights… which means they know how to defend themselves“).

According to Mary Ann Davidson (Oracle CSO), applications will have to defend themselves from attack in the future.

How can a software defend from attacks? Every Marine has a weapon (M16) so probably attacking attackers is the best approach. This means we need also weapons for the database… After 3 invalid login attempts Oracle could ban the IP or start a denial of service (d.o.s.) attack against the bad ip address/address range. This could be a nice talk for one of the next security conferences.
I think this is the wrong approach. I agree with Mary Ann that developers (even Oracle developers) should develop good and secure code.

Oracle Security Riddle

Montag, Mai 28th, 2007

During Oracle security audits we find from time to time the following (unsecure) code. Do you see the vulnerability and do you know how to exploit it?

Solution coming soon…
———-Code without exception handling—

FUNCTION CHGPWD (
P_USER VARCHAR2,
P_PWD VARCHAR2)
RETURN BOOLEAN IS

L_STMT VARCHAR2(255);

BEGIN

L_STMT:= ‚ALTER USER „‚ || P_USER || ‚“ IDENTIFIED BY „‚ || P_PWD||'“‚;

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE L_STMT;

RETURN TRUE;

END;

Aaron Newman criticize Oracle patch policies

Donnerstag, Mai 24th, 2007

The interview „Security guru blasts Oracle’s patching policies“ with Aaron Newman from Application Security Inc. descibes the problems with patching Oracle databases (long time to patch, backports, …).