Malicious SYLK Files with MS Excel 4.0 Macros

Since about a week, we are seeing an increase of SYLK files submitted to VirusTotal. A SYLK file (SYmbolic LinK) is a pure text file format used to store Excel spreadsheets with extension .slk. Although SYLK files can't contain VBA macros, they can still contain executable code, for example DDE commands or MS Excel 4.0 … Continue reading Malicious SYLK Files with MS Excel 4.0 Macros →

Solving a CTF challenge: Exploiting a Buffer Overflow (video)

Capture The Flag (CTF) competitions are an entertaining way to practice and/or improve your skills. NVISO staff regularly participates in CTF competitions, in particular when the competition focuses on IT security. We produced a video with step-by-step analysis of a CTF executable containing a buffer overflow. This executable is running on a server, and by … Continue reading Solving a CTF challenge: Exploiting a Buffer Overflow (video) →

Detecting and Analyzing Microsoft Office Online Video

A while ago, a new technique was developed to execute arbitrary code via a Word document: an online video is embedded and the HTML code for the embedded video is modified with JavaScript that launches a Windows executable. This technique does not rely on VBA macros and requires the use of the .docx format (for … Continue reading Detecting and Analyzing Microsoft Office Online Video →

Differential Malware Analysis: An Example

There are many ways to analyze malware. In this blog post, we illustrate a typical analysis method: comparing an unknown sample with a known sample, to determine if the unknown sample is malicious or not. During one of our engagements, we came across a PDF document that triggered our anti-virus. What intrigued us, was that … Continue reading Differential Malware Analysis: An Example →

OpenSSH User Enumeration Vulnerability: a Close Look

Intro An OpenSSH user enumeration vulnerability (CVE-2018-15473) became public via a GitHub commit. This vulnerability does not produce a list of valid usernames, but it does allow guessing of usernames. In this blog post, we take a closer look at this vulnerability and propose mitigation and monitoring actions. Technical details This vulnerability manifests itself in … Continue reading OpenSSH User Enumeration Vulnerability: a Close Look →

Compiling Our Python Decompiler

Following the feedback we get for our py2exe decompiler (a decompiler for Windows executables created by py2exe1), we noticed that there is a community need for this tool. Most of the feedback comments are requests for help related to missing dependencies and similar problems. However, a couple of months ago, there had been an API-breaking release … Continue reading Compiling Our Python Decompiler →