Subgraph at Hackfest
The third edition of the new Hackfest occurred over this past November 4th and 5th.
Hackfest is a security conference held annually in Québec City (Ste-Foy, to be precise). The Subgraph crew has been fortunate enough to have been there for all of the past three events. What makes Hackfest special is the close connection to Université Laval and the well put-together hacking games – specifically the main CTF. This year the CTF was packed – at least one group that wanted to register at the last minute was denied due to a lack of space.
Félicitations to this year’s CTF winner, AmishSecurity (Montrealers, friends, and MTLSEC regulars). They had some good competition.
This year there were many familiar faces, and many more unfamiliar. What was most exciting for us was seeing the beta version of Vega being used by competitors in both hacking competitions. Just walking around the room we saw both the scanner and the proxy in action, for example:
1. During the first challenge, which involved each team maintaining operation of several network services and attacking the services of the opposing team, a player ran a Vega scan and found that one of the webservers permitted HTTP PUTs to /. This was then exploited to fill the partition and knock out the www service.
2. During the CTF, a directory traversal/file include vulnerability detected by a Vega module was confirmed as exploitable using the request replay feature and then used to access one of the flags on the webserver.
At one point, we were asked by a player if we’d put Vega content on a webserver during the first challenge. It wasn’t us, and we still don’t know who this was, but it made our evening – so thanks.
Finally, we had a chance to hand out plenty of Vega stickers. With the beta out, we’re now hard at work on the next version of Vega. I’ll be presenting some of the new features at PHP Quebec on Dec 1. More on this soon.
Much thanks to the organizers. We had fun, and we’ll be back for Hackfest 2012.
Subgraph at OSCON 2011: Kerckhoffs’ Legacy
Subgraph was at OSCON 2011. The organizers of OSCON did an excellent job, and Portland is a beautiful city with very friendly people and great public transportation.
The conference was an opportunity to meet some amazing people. We had discussions with over 100 developers of web applications and all of them clearly expressed a need for a tool like Vega.
I spoke on open source and security during the IT Leader’s Summit.
It was almost an anthropological talk, making a case that open source and security have always fit naturally together. This is an idea that some people find counter-intuitive, so I began the story with Auguste Kerckhoffs and his important realization: security through obscurity is a bad assumption. The story continued with the modern-day necessity of sustained public scrutiny in the world of cryptography, and how this idea could, and should, be extended to software, especially security software.
The talk also covered the lesser-known history of the security research community, including anecdotes from my time running Bugtraq, the largest forum of security researchers on the Internet (50,000 members during its peak). This community, which has always been very open and collaborative, has produced much innovation that we rely on every day. Innovation that has made its way into commercial solutions. With Kerckhoffs’ principle as a unifying theme, this is a story that is interesting for anyone, and I look forward to further sharing it.
The slides are available here:
http://www.subgraph.com/downloads/Subgraph-Kerckhoffs_Legacy-OSCON2011.pdf
We’ll definitely be back next year.
Vega Beta Release
Ola from Porto Alegre, Brazil. I’m here speaking at FISL 12 on open source and security. We’re also launching our beta.
So we’re pleased to officially announce the public release of the Vega platform 1.0. Vega is a GUI-based, open source platform for testing the security of web applications. It runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. The core of Vega functionality is in its automated scanner and intercepting proxy.
Vega is written in Java and based on the Eclipse RCP framework. We’ve built-in the Mozilla Rhino Javascript interpreter. It is open source software (licensed under the EPL version 1.0).
Automated Scanner
The automated scanner crawls a web application, analyzing pages, looking for interesting content and injection points. Vega runs modules on the web application that test for vulnerabilities or analyze content. These modules are written in Javascript and are entirely customizable. Vega modules can generate alerts to make users aware of the findings.
Intercepting Proxy
Vega also includes an intercepting proxy. The proxy is situated between a browser and the target application, intercepting all requests and responses between them. Users can view the interaction of the client with the website, intercepting and modifying requests and responses to probe and verify possible vulnerabilities. The proxy is also capable of intercepting HTTPS communications with dynamically generated man-in-the-middle certificates.
Extensibility
Vega is much more than a simple web scanner and proxy. Vega is a platform on which many future web security testing methods can be implemented. In 1.0 beta it is possible for users to write their own modules for the scanner in a language they already know, Javascript, using an intuitive and powerful API. Alerts are XML-based and easy to customize. We’ll be writing blog posts with tutorials on developing custom Vega modules.
Get Vega
Download the Vega Platform 1.0 beta and let us know what you think. Documentation is available online here.
Finally, join us on Freenode, channel #subgraph.
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- Alert generated by Vega.
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- Content analysis in the message viewer.
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- Request editor.
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- Setting intercept breakpoints.
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- Proxy intercept queue.
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- Scanner and response processing modules written in Javascript.
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- New scan wizard.
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- Running an automated scan with Vega.
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- Vega splash screen.
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- SSL MITM
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- XML-based alert templates.
Vega goes beta May 1, more information coming soon
Vega is about to be released publicly. Beta is May 1. We will be demonstrating Vega at OWASP Ottawa on May 12.
Additional details and screenshots coming soon, prior to the beta. Follow us on Twitter to be informed right away.
We are holding a training class on penetration testing web apps this summer (July 6-7) in Montreal, and attendees get a free copy of the commercial version of Vega, Vega pro. Click here for more details.
A First Look
Subgraph is building a software application called Vega. It crawls websites and analyzes the pages, looking for vulnerabilities and sensitive information. Concerned about the security of your website or some application you’re deploying? The automated scanning mode can be used by a variety of users, including the web developers themselves, as a phase in web application QA or deployment. Vega will also have features for more tactical penetration testing, intended for use by skilled security testers. Below are some screenshots of the work we’ve done so far. There are three: the scan information interface, an alert and the proxy.
The scan information interface displays a summary of an active or completed scan, and any alerts that were generated. The user can select a specific alert for more information.
Each alert explains the identified issue in summary and in detail, ranks it by severity, and offers remediation instructions, if possible.
Vega is fully extensible: the modules that run and generate the alerts can be created by users. Existing modules that ship with Vega are easily modifiable. The modules are written in Javascript and can be added or removed from Vega by simply moving them in or out of the right directory.
The alerts generated by the modules are rendered using XML template files that are also created by users. Vega will ship with a vanilla suite of as many modules and pre-made alert templates as make sense. The API is very easy to learn, intentionally designed to facilitate community participation. Would-be contributors can expect at least one pleasant surprise.
The proxy is meant for instrumentation of the web application during focused penetration testing. Skilled users will be able to isolate and intercept requests and responses. They’ll be able to modify them by hand before releasing them, replay them, etc.
Vega itself is written in Java and runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms.
More later, thanks.
Welcome to keystream, the Subgraph Blog
Welcome to keystream, the Subgraph blog.
Subgraph is an information security startup based in Montreal founded by veterans of the security industry. Subgraph was incorporated in February 2010. We’ve been flying low.
So what have we been up to? We have spent the last couple of months designing and building our first product. Vega is an open source vulnerability scanner for web applications. You point it at your website and it tries to find vulnerabilities, including well-known classes of bugs such as cross-site scripting and SQL injection. Vega also includes a proxy mode that can be used during penetration tests. The first version of Vega is coming soon: we’ll be releasing it to the public at the beginning of 2011. It will be free for anyone to use.
On keystream we’ll talk about the things we find interesting in security, including new research and interesting web vulnerabilities. We’ll also make company and product announcements.
Thanks, and stay tuned.
