Top all-time · #621
NCC Group
Company blog · research.nccgroup.comsecurityprogramming
NCC Group is the company blog at research.nccgroup.com, writing about security and programming. Since 2019, 99 different Hacker News readers have linked it 135 times, most often “VPN by Google One: Technical Security and Privacy Assessment”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Cutting-edge cyber security research from NCC Group. Find public reports, technical advisories, analyses, & other novel insights from our global experts.
Most-linked posts?
- VPN by Google One: Technical Security and Privacy Assessment5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-04-08
- Exploring Prompt Injection Attacks4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-01-10
- An Illustrated Guide to Elliptic Curve Cryptography Validation4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-11-30
- There’s a Hole in Your SoC: Glitching the MediaTek BootROM4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-10-16
- Rustproofing Linux (Part 1/4 Leaking Addresses) (2023)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-02-08
- A Survey of Istio's Network Security Features4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-03-04
- Real-world stories of how we’ve compromised CI/CD pipelines3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-01-14
- Writing FreeBSD Kernel Modules in Rust3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-08-31
- A Jq255 Elliptic Curve Specification, and a Retrospective (2022)2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-11-21
- State of DNS Rebinding in 20232 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-05-01
What Hacker News says?
Can't find it, however you might be interested in this article from HN earlier in the year. Written/done by an intern. https://research.nccgroup.com/2020/10/15/theres-a-hole-in-yo...
Comment linking /2020/10/15/theres-a-hole-in-your-soc-glitching-the-mediatek-bootrom/
on “Full key extraction of Nvidia TSEC”Submitted Real-world stories of how we’ve compromised CI/CD pipelines as a story · 265 points
HN discussionThis is what I found at the top of an internet search: Under voltage fault injection - "In general, single instruction skips are easily achievable, though skips of multiple nearby instructions are more difficult to induce and control." https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/07/07/an-introduction-to-...
Comment linking /2021/07/07/an-introduction-to-fault-injection-part-1-3/
on “The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun”Submitted Bluetooth relay attacks allow Tesla Model 3 / Y to be unlocked and driven away as a story · 233 points
HN discussionDecompilation. Reverse engineering. Network monitoring. Third-party attestations like https://research.nccgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/NCC... . The lack of whistleblowers from within Meta itself. There are are hundreds of employees working on this product.
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/NCC_Group_WhatsApp_E001000M_Report_2021-10-27_v1.2.pdf
on “Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?”Submitted WhatsApp end-to-end encrypted backups security assessment as a story · 220 points
HN discussionYou are probably talking about this: https://research.nccgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ncc... In short - not a fundamental limitation - just that kernels (even if they are small) have a ton of work that goes into them. Nanos for instance has page protections, ASLR, virtio-rng (if on GCP), etc.
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ncc_group-assessing_unikernel_security.pdf
on “My VM is lighter (and safer) than your container (2017)”Submitted An Illustrated Guide to Elliptic Curve Cryptography Validation as a story · 177 points
HN discussionThat this happens right after Thomas Pornin ridiculing the blocking pool ( https://research.nccgroup.com/2019/12/19/on-linuxs-random-nu... , HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21843081 ) is obviously purely coincidental, right? Especially as it was read and commented upon by Theodore Tso that at last changed his mind...
Comment linking /2019/12/19/on-linuxs-random-number-generation/
on “Removing the Linux /dev/random blocking pool”Submitted On Linux's Random Number Generation as a story · 176 points
HN discussionYou could use a network traffic analyzer, Frida, or trust third party security audits that WhatsApp publishes like https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/10/27/public-report-whats...
Comment linking /2021/10/27/public-report-whatsapp-end-to-end-encrypted-backups-security-assessment/
on “Telegram has released user data to German Feds in multiple cases”Submitted Cracking Random Number Generators Using Machine Learning as a story · 169 points
HN discussionHere’s a good way to learn more about cryptography: https://cryptopals.com/ https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/12/10/announcing-ncc-grou...
Comment linking /2021/12/10/announcing-ncc-groups-cryptopals-guided-tour/
on “Implementing RSA in Python from Scratch”Submitted Software Verification and Analysis Using Z3 as a story · 143 points
HN discussionSpeaking of curves, they have their weird gotchas as well which tend to get glossed over in simplified examples. A recent discussion: * https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/11/18/an-illustrated-guid...
Comment linking /2021/11/18/an-illustrated-guide-to-elliptic-curve-cryptography-validation/
on “Implementing RSA in Python from Scratch”Submitted Rustproofing Linux (Part 1/4 Leaking Addresses) (2023) as a story · 96 points
HN discussionHere is a nice discussion of what happens when you don't validate your elliptic curve parameters properly: * https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/11/18/an-illustrated-guid... The highlight here is that in some cases, failure to properly validate gets an attacker the secret key material. Note all the conditional bits. Different curves have different properties and different issues. There are a bunch of different curves…
Comment linking /2021/11/18/an-illustrated-guide-to-elliptic-curve-cryptography-validation/
on “Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)”Submitted A Tour of Curve25519 in Erlang [pdf] as a story · 86 points
HN discussionGet your AuthZ design right early on, or you’ll forever be plagued with APIs that fail open or aren’t protected, and it’s so very hard to change later on. The best advice I’ve seen on this: https://research.nccgroup.com/2020/04/21/code-patterns-for-a...
Comment linking /2020/04/21/code-patterns-for-api-authorization-designing-for-security/
on “Probably Are Gonna Need It: Application Security Edition”Submitted NCC Group’s Cryptopals Guided Tour as a story · 77 points
HN discussionRandomness from a CSPRNG (cryptographically-secure random number generator) never really gets "depleted," since as long as the seed contains enough entropy and isn't compromised, then it's computationally infeasible to learn anything about the internal state of the CSPRNG from it's outputs. See https://research.nccgroup.com/2019/12/19/on-linuxs-random-nu... for a nice overview. The Linux random number generator did…
Comment linking /2019/12/19/on-linuxs-random-number-generation
on “Harnessing chaos in Cloudflare offices”Submitted NSA and CISA Kubernetes Security Guidance – A Critical Review as a story · 44 points
HN discussionAllocator efficiency was the primary concern in the past (both speed and packing), which is why there are several things in malloc which is obviously bad for allocation safety. The allocators in the past have tried to use the space it is not currently using for user code for its own book-keeping, which is very efficient when it comes to usage of space. So the free-lists are interleaved with the actual allocations to…
Comment linking /2015/08/11/libtalloc-a-gdb-plugin-for-analysing-the-talloc-heap/
on “Slitter: A slab allocator that trusts, but verifies”Submitted There’s a Hole in Your SoC: Glitching the MediaTek BootROM as a story · 43 points
HN discussionAnd in case anybody is interested in the gory technical details, Google let a third party review their implementation of encrypted backups that included visiting their data center because it used their custom Titan hardware. Fascinating read https://research.nccgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/NCC...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2022/04/NCC_Group_Google_EncryptedBackup_2018-10-10_v1.0.pdf
on “Apple advances user security with powerful new data protections”Submitted NCC Group security audit for Google's One VPN service as a story · 22 points
HN discussionDo you mean Ethernet over HDMI? Even though there was a standard and special HDMI cables that claimed compatibility, I don’t think any devices actually implemented it. Well perhaps one device according to this security paper[1] which basically means it’s useless. I control access by connecting a Samsung TV to my Ethernet network but keep it configured to use WiFi most of the time. I’ve never entered a WiFi password…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2020/07/44con_hdmi_ethernet_channel_andy_davis_ncc_group_slides.pdf
on “Ask HN: Has anyone seen smart TVs connect to unsecured WiFi without permission?”Submitted Writing FreeBSD Kernel Modules in Rust as a story · 12 points
HN discussionhttps://research.nccgroup.com/2020/08/24/whitepaper-explorin...
Comment linking /2020/08/24/whitepaper-exploring-the-security-of-kaios-mobile-applications/
on “My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver”Submitted A Survey of Istio's Network Security Features as a story · 10 points
HN discussion
Linked by the same people?
- EEducated Guessworkeducatedguesswork.org
- D
Doyensec's Blogblog.doyensec.com - C
Cisco Talos Blogblog.talosintelligence.com - O
:: Orange Cyberdefensesensepost.com - HHAProxy Technologieshaproxy.com
- P
Pen Test Partnerspentestpartners.com - R
Rhino Security Labsrhinosecuritylabs.com - L
Little Man In My Headlittlemaninmyhead.wordpress.com