It would be interesting to read an ethical analysis of a tool like this.

Once you have the first 5 or 10 such tools, the consequences of the 11th are pretty minimal. And this is probably more like in the hundreds, not the 11th.

Plus, they're sort of inevitable anyhow. The technical difference between ansible/puppet/etc. and blackhat C&C servers isn't that great. Definitely non-zero, but not that huge.

well the evasion part is pretty huge diff.

If you're referring to what is mentioned in this post: https://medium.com/@Ne0nd0g/introducing-merlin-645da3c635a , I'm not sure "We use HTTP2 and TLS" is that significant of a difference. If there was some elaborate system in place for evasion, sure, but this is just "using a new, but standard, protocol before everybody else understands it yet". Heck, just the fact it's using TLS is about 90% of the evasion; HTTP2 is just icing on the cake.

A more significant difference I was thinking of is that ansible et al are more focused on getting the system into a certain state, whereas a C&C server is likely to be oriented around executing commands and keeping certain tasks running. However, since the way you get a system into a certain state is by executing commands, well, the technical differences aren't that significant. Most of that difference would be in organization of the "UI" layer, rather than under the hood.

My take is that HTTP/2 is more significant than you might expect, primarily because it is a full duplex protocol (unlike the typical request / response of HTTP/1). This makes it like a more efficient websocket, so the C2 bits can move faster than a polling based approach. That said, this makes it easier to detect.

They are looking at adding domain fronting :)

One point of view is it's a mafiosi tactic. Create the problem. Sell the security solution. Or, at best, it is irresponsible to enable attackers.

Another is that by disclosing security problems and the tools to test and research them, we enable defenders and we fix what might be kept confidential and exploited by attackers. The theory that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

It's not a magic and if detection tools don't support http/2, then it's their fault and quite frankly anybody could come up with this tool.

The "enabled" attackers surely are nothing when they couldn't have come up with anything better themselves.

It just made the discussion of such tools public.

As noted in the blog post linked from the readme, their red team is using it for internal testing.

Thats the funny thing sometimes people ignore alerts on tools that red teams normally use because they think it's their red team

If people are ignoring alerts because it might be the red team then surely when the red team breaks in... those people all look like idiots who can't keep their systems secure?

If this is happening, then either the red team needs to be disbanded as nobody cares enough to warrant their existence... or the engineers ignoring the alerts need to be educated on the value of a red team.

Very true I was not referring to SOC not reacting it's more things getting misinterpreted when things get escalated to higher ups if org is huge and structure is complex sometimes things get complicated. E.g. a company undergoing an external pen test and some real incident in the same time window using tools that a pen tester would use (e.g metasploit)

This is just another one, so there isn't anything really new to discuss ethically.

And so many systems still writen in C....

I know it's trendy to hate on C but most security bugs are not memory access related errors. Most are logic errors which any language is susceptible to.

Tell that to Google, which presented a report at Linux Kernel Summit 2018, where 68% from Linux kernel CVEs are caused by C's memory corruption features, and has been pushing for the Kernel Self Preservation Project on Linux.

The videos are freely available.

As for hating C's lack of safety features, it goes back to the earlier 80's from Algol/Pascal/Modula-2/Ada side.

So no, it isn't something new, just now the always on Internet and IoT adoption are making it relatively easier to prove our point.

I think KSP is Kernel Self Protection and Kees Cook has been pushing it since he was the kernel security guy @ Canonical many years ago:

https://kernsec.org/wiki/index.php/Kernel_Self_Protection_Pr...

Yeah I get it wrong all the time, thanks for the correction.

I only became aware of his work since Google.

All good! He was at Canonical for awhile actually, but did a lot on proactive security and I’ve followed him since. The “SE” in my username is a hat tip to SELinux, as I’ve always been a fan of the Flask Security Architecture.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KeesCook

In practice, the key to avoiding logic errors tends to be well-considered interface design.

Not all languages are necessarily equally susceptible to logic errors, though, and C is rather middling in that regard.

We can't stop it, but we can put it in a sandtrap and serialize its access to the outside world.

In what concerns UNIX clones, Oracle did it with Solaris and SPARC ADI, which doesn't have a bright future anyway.

It remains to be seen what ARM and Google will actually do with the new memory extensions.

It remains to be seen what will happen with Fuchsia.

Microsoft is pushing for a mix of .NET Native, modern C++ and Rust.

Apple is still pushing for Swift, although very incrementally.

The big question is how UNIX clones will actually tackle C's unsafety at large, if ever.

I don’t think the widespread availability of tools like this makes it any easier. This project doesn’t seem to be too active.

How availability of tools does not make it easier?

I’m not sure but I’m guessing his point is that black hats would more likely write their own software and script kiddies would rather not use abandoned software?

In any case, there wasn’t any shortage of tools even in the 90s. Nor places to research them either. Plus systems were less security conscious then too so the barrier for entry was a little lower.

Source: my own misspent youth.

This is not abandoned software there was an active discussion on adding domain fronting just a few weeks back.

I make most of my commits to the Dev branch and I am selective about pushing things to the Master branch. Check the releases page for a good indication of activity. I will also be pushing out an update in the next couple of days that adds the ability to execute shellcode using 4 different methods (Windows only).