Now that the world's basically one giant network, it's kind of mind-blowing to look back at computers from the days before they were so intimately intertwined. But the ubiquity of networking is also our Achilles' heel, which today's trio of Black Hat Briefings amply illustrate with their focus on Internet-based attacks.
Consumer Premise Equipment (CPE) like routers is nearly ubiquitous these days, but abuse of such devices is inordinately problematic given the owner's subsequent difficulty in interfacing with the device to fix it, as well as the long-rotted, vulnerable code that exists in almost all such equipment. The result is an Internet-scale problem, almost like a public health crisis. Abuse of CPE Devices and Recommended Fixes will attempt to quantify the risk at work here -- think of all those mid-scale DSL connections just waiting to be harnessed for a DDoS -- and offer some recommendations on quelling this epidemic before it strikes.
RIPE NCC allocated its last IPv4 address space quite some time ago, so IPv6 is here, whether you decide to acknowledge it or not. Perhaps your ears will perk up when you come to Evasion of High-End IPS Devices in the Age of IPv6, in which Antonios Atlasis and Enno Rey will debut three novel techniques that allow attackers to exploit IPv6 and blind high-end commercial security devices. With these tricks bad guys can launch any kind of attack, but the presenters will suggest potential mitigating measures, both short-term and long.
MultiPath TCP (MPTCP) is an extension to TCP that enables sessions to use multiple network endpoints and multiple network paths at the same time, and to change addresses in the middle of a connection. While MPTCP works transparently over most existing network infrastructure, very few security and network management tools can correctly interpret MPTCP streams. Network security is changed: How do you secure traffic when you can't see it all and when the endpoint addresses change in the middle of a connection? Come to Multipath TCP: Breaking Today's Networks with Tomorrow's Protocols for a primer on MPTCP's assumption breaking, as well as tools and strategies for mitigating the risks of MPTCP-capable devices.
Regular registration ends on July 26, which is really soon! Please visit Black Hat USA 2014's registration page to get started.