MattJay Security

I’ve been messing around a bit with some purposefully vulnerable web applications and beating them up as best I can. My problem for a while was my inexperience with Linux and the lack of documentation for some of the applications I was using.

So instead of spending a lot of time learning to hack and defend I was spending a lot of time getting my java set up correctly and editing some of the shell scripts so they would stop complaining.

I figured I can’t be the only one who has these kinds of troubles so I started a fresh install of Ubuntu updated it, and i got a number of the web apps I was having trouble with up and running properly and decided I would distribute it to save some people who just want to get to the hacking all ready some time and headaches in installing all of these things.

Like I said, this is my first write up on this sort of stuff so be gentle but here is some of the guidance I can give you in getting these apps up and hackable.

First of all you can download the .ova file HERE for now. It is pretty big I apologize maybe on my next release I’ll try to use Debian or something so the lack of GUI will get it under a gig.

Use whichever VM software you prefer I know VMware accepts .ova files but if you’re using Fusion you might have to create a .vmx file for it.

It should log you in automatically but the info is
UN: hacker
PW: p@ssword
(please change the credentials ASAP!)

First you’re going to have to start apache-tomcat

$ cd Desktop/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/bin
$ sh startup.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE: /home/hacker/Desktop/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
Using CATALINA_HOME: /home/hacker/Desktop/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /home/hacker/Desktop/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/temp
Using JRE_HOME: /usr
$

You should be good, but to check open firefox and go to http://localhost:8080 and you should see the tomcat intro page.

Once tomcat is up and running you can start up WebGoat (and the fun begins!)

Navigate back to /Desktop

$ cd WebGoat-5.2/
$ sudo sh webgoat.sh start8080
(reminder: the sudo password for the default account is p@ssword which I hope you will change!)
note: sometimes after you start tomcat the first time starting WebGoat will get stuck at this:
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:409)

If this happens just restart the VM and start WebGoat again it should go all the way through to here:
INFO: Severver startup in XXXX ms
where the X’s are numbers.

Now you can open Firefox again and navigate to http://localhost:8080/WebGoat/attack/

It will ask you for a username and password which are both “guest”

Click the “Start WebGoat” button and go nuts. (I am aiming to do some write-ups on how to get through some of the lessons soon).

In order to start up the burp proxy that allows you to complete some of the WebGoat lessons just navigate back to the Destop and:

$ cd burpsuite_v1.2.01/
$ java -jar burpsuite_v1.2.01.jar

Easy enough.

The rest of the web apps are much easier and less buggy but also less step by step educational. These are just kind of put up and have fun in whichever way you want, the developers suggest looking at the OWASP Top Ten picking one and trying it out.

The rest just require you to start up some LAMPP

$ sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

Check if it started up by going to http://localhost/ and seeing the XAMPP page.

Now the other vulnerable web apps are preloaded so all you have to do is navigate to them:

http://localhost/mutillidae

http://localhost/DVWA

Here are some other resources to look at to play with if you are interested in this area:

Moth – a VMware image with a set of vulnerable Web Applications and scripts. I haven’t gotten a chance to sit down and play with this one but it has come highly recommended

Samurai WTF – The Samurai Web Testing Framework is a live linux environment that has been pre-configured to function as a web pen-testing environment. Consider it the BackTrack of web apps.

That is all I’ve got for now, hopefully I’ll sit down and make some instructional screen cap videos in the near future.

Special thanks to Port Swigger, Damn Vulnerable Web App, OWASP WebGoat, and Iron Geek for giving me permission to distribute your applications. I appreciate it and I hope you guys keep up the amazing work.

Again download the VM: HERE

Hope you enjoy and please let me know any ways you’d like me to make this better and re-release.

Matt

For the past few months I’ve received tons of advice from a lot of established Information Security professionals on how I could get my foot in the door and start on my career path. I thought it would be useful to compile a list of links from all the different sources I’ve been sent to for such advice. I think you’ll see a few motifs throughout

One of the very firsts I read on this and I think me badgering him for help inspired him to write it comes from Kees Leune:
Tips for getting started

From here on out I’m just going to post as I think of them so this is no particular chronological order.
James Arlen (myrcurial) has also been of more help to me than I can emphasize and his talk at Last Hope was one of the earlier proverbial fires under my ass. Here is a link to his follow up to that talk at Notacon 6: BlackHat to BlackSuit – Econopocalypse Now:
Vimeo – BlackHat to BlackSuit

A more recent post was by a security professional named Bill Pennington over at the Security Catalyst blog. A two part post directly from a hiring manager is invaluable advice:

Career Advice part 1
Career Advice part 2

An absolutely awesome resource that is very young but is unbelievable for the community is DojoSec. Marcus J Carey has set up monthly briefings in the DC area that are for all intensive purposes mini-cons. If your not from the area make sure you pay attention to when they are because there are some live streams on their website where you can watch all of these amazing presentations free of charge.
I’m bringing this up mostly because of a presentation a month of so ago by Rob Fuller (mubix) titled How to go from the couch to a job in 80 hours. I was lucky enough to catch this streaming online and even got to ask Rob a question via Twitter at the end of the preso:
Vimeo – Mubix

Update:Another great listen is a recent Exotic Liability podcast that talks about a ton of great advice about starting on different paths while talking on the phone with a college student who called in:
Exotic Liability Podcast – Advice
(Thanks for the reminder Chris!)

Another recent post comes from Paul at Pauldotcom and does a really good job at summing up some of the key topics and common themes through out all of these posts:
Getting started in Information Security

Some other interesting links you might be interested in checking out would be anything in the area of expanding your knowledge. Here in no particular order are some links that I have used to help polish up my skill set and soak up other useful information along the way.

This post was floating around recently and is 100 different open courses useful in information security. I’m going to go ahead and equate it to the 77 books in the personal MBA list but for Information Security professionals:
100 open courses

These next group are just tips on free online college level education courses that we all can find use out of:
LifeHacker – Get a free college education
TeachMate
Academic Earth

I’m going to finish up with some advice of my own. Even though I’m still very young and just starting on this long and glorious path I know that I would be miles behind where I am now without following all of the advice I have been given. I’m not somebody who “settles” for whatever falls in my lap and if that is what you are then stick to the job boards.

The most important piece of advice I can offer is to be involved in the community as much as you can. There are a ton of people in the community who are very passionate about it and are more than willing to help in whatever ways they can. The easiest ways to get to know all of them is through Twitter and going to cons. Security Twits list is the one of the most valuable resources on the net for infosec people and I don’t know where I’d be without the friends that I’ve made through it.

Update:I know I’m forgetting resources, these are just the ones that stuck out off the top of my head so please feel free to leave any additional resources as comments.

My latest post over at LiquidMatrix Security Digest.

Ran across a new breach story this weekend that almost slipped under my radar from the San Francisco Chronicle. Reportedly some “overseas” hackers broke into UC Berkeley computer systems and accessed a proverbial “shit ton” of confidential information.

The databases contained 97,000 Social Security numbers, health insurance information and nontreatment medical information, such as immunization records, names of doctors whom people may have seen and dates of medical visits, said Shelton Waggener, UC Berkeley’s associate vice chancellor for information technology and its chief information officer.

Supposedly though, the large number of Social Security numbers were contained on a separate database than the names and medical histories that coincided with them. However, they are unclear if the “oversea” hackers were able to access both sets of information to be able to match them up and assemble a complete identity.

The hackers, primarily from China and elsewhere in Asia, had access to the information for six months before they were discovered. The breach exposed the records of 160,000 people, of whom 97,000 had Social Security numbers included in the database, officials said.

This is where most of these breach articles lose me. If the people providing the data for this news article honestly aren’t sure about something like the hackers forming a complete identity, how can their IP tracking technology be so rock solid that they are sure that the hackers are legitimately from Asia. Just as Asian as 1,000 email accounts “from Asia” costing a kid in New Jersey a few dollars?

Further evidence of the crack security team’s vast knowledge of this incident is evident here:

The hackers broke into the computer system Oct. 9 and were not discovered until April 9, when administrators performing routine maintenance came across an “anomaly” in the system and found taunting messages that had been posted three days earlier, UC said.

I’d prefer not to touch this part because it seems wrong and easy but what kind of IDS do they have or some seriously huge log files to know how this attack happened 6 months later. OK that is all I’m saying about that.

There are some other people that agree with my line of thought quoted at the end of the article if you’re interested.