Security BSides Athens 2020

Given the current situation with most conferences having been canceled in 2020, Security BSides Athens 2020 (www.bsidesath.gr) took the decision to convert this year's event into a virtual conference. Based on that decision, we seized the opportunity to reach out to more people around Greece, and of course, welcoming anyone who wanted to join us from around the world (see here).

A virtual event has many challenges, especially when having to make sure everything is 100% ready before you hit the "go live" button. For the past 5 year, this annual meetup of Security BSides in Athens brought people together from all over the world, both Greeks and non-Greeks. We all have busy lives and we wanted to give people to opportunity to keep in touch with friends & colleagues that we tend to see once a year. Hence, even though we do not want this virtual get-together to be the norm, at the same time, it allows us to stay in touch. In our case, we used this year’s virtual event as an opportunity to a) increase the number of people who can “attend”, b) invest to a bigger/better event in 2021. In other words, as we do this for the community despite how much more work it needed, we are very happy that we are now in a position to say: Security BSides Athens 2020, was not cancelled! ;) 

A big -Thank You- to the whole team for supporting the event and spending their time putting this year's virtual conference together. It goes without saying that we couldn't have done this without our sponsors and speaker, who decided to support this year's Security BSides Athens 2020. 

We have now archived the Security BSides Athens 2020 and you can find all the relevant information (speakers, sponsors, participation, youtube videos, etc.) here: 2020.bsidesath.gr 

New iOS text bug (aka text bomb) can crash your iPhone

A newly discovered bug is capable of crashing your Apple iPhone or iPad by simply receiving a text notification. The bug occurs when an iOS device user receives a text message or tries to read a tweet which is written using some Sindhi characters. 

This type of bug is known as a "text bomb", because a malicious individual can use it to prank, bully, cause Denial of Service (DoS), or even "troll" their targets by constantly forcing the receiver's app to crash. The original message sent had the Italian flag in it and it was using the hashtag: #CaptureTheFlag. 

It is being reported from different sources on social media that the text message other that your iPhone it also may crash your iPad, Apple Watch, and other Apple Gadgets.

The text bomb looks like any of the following group of Sindhi characters with any emoji in between: 

For obvious reasons I had to take a screenshot so not to be held responsible for propagating this. It was tested and it works. 

Text bombs aren’t something new. There have been numerous cases in the past few years where  random strings of text have caused mobile devices to behave in an unexpected way. However, this one is slightly different as it will crash the iPhone to crash if the phone received a message or notification in any social media chat applications. Unfortunately there is nothing much a user can do to avoid this other that wait to install the new update from Apple. The issue seems to be affecting  all Apple's mobile OS version from 13.3 onwards. 

Note: If you receive this type of message use alternative means, e.g. through your Mac laptop or Twitter app under Windows, to delete the received/posted message. This will allow your phone to be able to have access to the affected app without being forced to crash. If you phone hangs completely, you will need to keep pressing the power and volume up keys, until it reboots.

Security BSides Athens 2019

Security BSides Athens 2019 was the 4th Ethical Hacking / Information Security / Cybersecurity conference that took place in Athens, Greece. Once again we created a conference for the information security community, by the information security community, with a special thanks to all our volunteers. 

Due to the feedback we received we kept the same location again this year allowing more people to explore Athens Impact Hub. We try our best to make the event a unique experience each year and a day to look forward to. We have dedicated ourselves in having more quality in the event, rather that focus on quantity. 

Security BSides Athens 2019 (www.bsidesath.gr) took place at Impact Hub Athens (link). (All the information for our previous events is archived and can be found here: https://www.bsidesath.gr/index.php#Pevents)

This year we managed to reach 230 attendees throughout the day exceeding our expectation. 

We are the conference that introduced the "gamification" of the CTF, and we are very proud that we did that again this year! We tried to have a realistic CTF scenario with the help of our CTF partner Hack The Box, while demonstrating the ethical side of hacking. 

We look forward to seeing you at

Security BSides Athens 2020! 

Gulf Information Security Expo & Conference (GISEC 2019)

The Gulf Information Security Expo & Conference (GISEC) brings together over 6,000 top security professionals to discover cutting-edge solutions, share insights with industry experts and equip themselves with the right tools to protect their businesses from rapidly-evolving cyber attackers.

Supported by Smart Dubai, Dubai Police and the National Cyber Security Center KSA, GISEC is your opportunity to do business and share ideas with the world’s most important tech companies, government officials and private industries.

I was invited to go on stage and present at @GISECDUBAI at the #DarkStage, presenting on “CyberSecurity in Evolutionary Terms”.

#CyberDubai #GISEC #GISEC2019 #SmartDubai #SecurityMindset #ThoughtLeadership


See the GISEC 2019 - Post-show report can be found here

GISEC 2019 Speaker Profile: https://www.gisec.ae/conference-speakers/grigorios-fragkos

Security BSides Dublin 2019

I am very pleased to see Security BSides Dublin 2019 (www.bsidesdub.ie) @BSidesDublin becoming a reality and running for the first time this year. It was a very well organised event that brought together approximately 300 people from around the world in the beautiful city of Dublin. I have traveled numerous times in Dublin and have made many good friends there. This time however, it became a visit to remember!

Talk title: 
Cyber Security in evolutionary terms (food-for-thought), by Dr. Grigorios Fragkos

Abstract:
The Red Queen hypothesis, also referred to as the Red Queen effect, is an evolutionary hypothesis which proposes that organisms must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate not merely to gain a reproductive advantage, but also simply to survive while pitted against ever-evolving rival organisms in a continuously changing environment. 

Let's explore under a Cyber lens this evolutionary hypothesis in contrast to the evolving (cyber)threats and our adaptation (as professionals) to equally evolve our Cyber Resiliency capabilities (as an industry). This presentation is an opportunity to explore as professionals our security mindset and draw some personal conclusions on our Cyber Security culture in order to better ourselves.

From user awareness all the way to Cyber Resilience, from developing by writing secure code to the effort it takes in breaking it, from gaps in hiring talents to hiring for the right reasons, this brief session is intended to spark a personal "eureka" moment in the mindmap of each security professional inside and outside the room.

Looking forward to next year's event! 

International Defence Conference, IDEX2019

The International Defence Exhibition & Conference, or IDEX, is a biennial Arms and Defence technology sales exhibition. The exhibition is the largest defence exhibition and conference in the Middle East and takes place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

As Cyber space is officially the 5th domain of operations, Cyber Defense is in everyone's agenda. 

This week I was at IDEX 2019, presenting & sharing expertise on how to tackle the challenge of ‘Measuring Cyber Security Maturity’ especially when it comes to protection entities that have a key role in the Critical National Infrastructure. 

Driving groundbreaking innovation in CyberSecurity required to be able to protect and defend the emerging new technologies and smart cities from evolving Cyber threats. 
#CNI #SmartCity #SmartDubai #CyberRisk #CyberDefense #CyberResilience #MENA #IDEX2019 @IDEX_UAE, Cyber Risk Exposure, #CyberDefense, #CyberResilience, #IDEX

Guest Speaker at the University of South Wales

Invited by USW Cyber Security Society and Information Security Research Group in University of South Wales to present my talk "A holistic view on Cyber Security in evolutionary terms (food-for-thought)". This is also part of our OWASP (OWASP London Chapter) initiative to reach out to Universities and share expert knowledge in the security and cybersecurity space. 

"Thank you very much for all your sharing today at USW. Just wanted to say you are such an inspiration to me and many others" Maria Peng Wang

See Talk Details --->

Guest Speaker at Cardiff University

Invited by Complex Systems Research Group in University of Cardiff to present my talk "A holistic view on Cyber Security in evolutionary terms (food-for-thought)". This is also part of our OWASP (OWASP London Chapter) initiative to reach out to Universities and share expert knowledge in the security and cybersecurity space.

Feedback:
"The talk was one of the most useful I have attended during my PhD because it is unusual to speak to someone who can relate between research and industry in cyber security. It was really encouraging and made me look forward to working in the space after my PhD" Matilda Rhode 

"Very Inspiring and a Great Talk" Irene Anthi

See Talk Details --->

OWASP Cambridge at Anglia Ruskin

I was invited by OWASP Cambridge and Adrian Winckles to present my talk "A holistic view on Cyber Security in evolutionary terms" hosted by the Cyber Security Networking & Big Data Research Group, Anglia Ruskin University. 

This evening is part of a series of evening events on raising awareness for local businesses & organisations on the issues of cyber security and cybercrime, what regulations and legislation do organisations need to be aware to protect themselves and what is considered best practice in these challenging times. read more

“Greg is an extremely motivational speaker in the cyber security sector who speaks with a passion accentuating the key messages and issues that the community needs to hear and understand” Adrian Winckles

Adrian Winckles
MSc BEng CEng CITP MBCS
Cyber Lead & Director of Cyber Security & Networking Research Group
(OWASP Cambridge Chapter Leader)
(UK Cyber Security Forum - Cambridge Cluster Chair)
(BCS Cybercrime Forensics Vice Chair)
Anglia Ruskin University
Twitter:  @botflowking

See Talk Details --->

OWASP London at JP Morgan (NCSAM 2018)

Due to the fact October is considered National Cyber Security Awareness Month (aka NCSAM) we were planing an OWASP London Chapter meetup. The meetup was hosted by JP Morgan at Canary Wharf, and it was an opportunity to deliver a talk around Cyber Security and how (cyber)threats have been evolving over the years. 

This time our lineup of talk included:

• "If You Liked It, You Should Have Put Security On It" - Zoë Rose (@5683Monkey)
• "Lessons From The Legion (The OWASP London Remix)" - Nick Drage (@SonOfSunTzu)
• "A holistic view on Cyber Security in evolutionary terms (food-for-thought)" - Dr. Grigorios Fragkos (@drgfragkos)

Cyber Security Awareness Month 2018

October is known as Cyber Security Awareness Month and in the US it is commonly referred as National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). This is a global initiative to raise awareness on emerging Cyber threats and best practices to defend against them, while educating the public and the private sector, on how to tackle cyber security challenges in a fast-evolving digital ecosystem.

‘Security’ is the enabler for evolving and scaling up in a secure manner, while minimising the risk of being affected at an irrecoverable level.

Cyber Security is promoted at an impressive rate during this month, with several awareness campaigns taking place. Typically, these campaigns focus on giving advice around having best-in-class practices when it comes to Cyber Security, sharing thoughts around exposure to unnecessary risk and try to communicate the benefits from having a Cyber Resilience strategy in place, while discussions around defence-in-depth tend to spawn recommendations around different products and services that might help an organisation’s security practice. 

To achieve this, during October several events take place to engage and educate the information security community, while focusing on sharing knowledge, lessons learned, and forward-looking ideas.

Boardroom Briefing on Cyber Risk Exposure, in M&A and deal-flow scenarios

To understand and simplify the current Cyber Risk exposure in Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), this article focuses on explaining the inner workings and what is currently the state of affairs in the Cyber front, from a deal-flow perspective, while being structured as an informative boardroom briefing. 

"Understanding the Cyber related risks in M&A in this digital era, is an 'investment metric' for a successful decision-making process"

Before jumping into specifics, and to put things in the right context, consider for a moment that every business entity is more or less similar to an alive ecosystem; that is composed of people, services, synergies, cooperation, products, ideas, technologies, dependencies, and advances on different fronts. Effectively, as business entities evolve, by adapting the digital model of operations, the nature of their risk exposure equally evolves due to the numerous emerging Cyber-threats. 

OWASP London Chapter at 44CON

Yes, we are here once again this year, leading the #CyberLondon scene. Information Security, Application Security, Cyber Security, Cyber Defence at #44CON with #OWASP and global Security BSides (London, Athens, Manchester, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Lisbon, Cape Town).
#respect #collaboration #inclusion #community #InfoSec #AppSec #CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #CyberRisk #ThoughtLeadership #CyberSecurityAwareness

@44CON is a well-established security conference in London, with hackers coming to attend and present from all over the world.

The OWASP London Chapter was there.

If you didn't know, there is a whole bus in the venue, that serves drinks. The happy hour is when it is #Gin o’clock at @44CON! View from the top of the bus!

OWASP London Chapter at Facebook

Yes, this whole surface is a screen at the headquarters of Facebook in London. We have been invited by Facebook to host the OWASP London Chapter meet-up at this amazing space. 

T1: "Bug Hunting Beyond facebook.com" - Jack Whitton
Facebook's Whitehat bug bounty program receives 1000's of security bug reports annually, covering a wide range of issues and products. Come listen to some of the interesting bugs Facebook's Whitehat program team handled over the past year, and some pro-tips when looking for bugs outside of "facebook.com".

L1: "Open Source for Young Coders" - Hackerfemo
Inspirational 12 year old Hackerfemo will tell us all about how open source helps him run coding and robot workshops for 10-16 year olds throughout the world.

T2: "Reviewing and Securing React Applications" - Amanvir Sangha
As developers start using front-end frameworks such as React they must be made aware of any related security issues. Whilst React provides developers with proactive measures such as output encoding, there still exist edge cases which can lead to cross-site scripting issues. This talk explores common security issues in the framework and how to defend against them

L2: - "Introducing OWASP Amass Project" - Jeff Foley (remote)
Jeff will introduce the OWASP Amass project - a tool which obtains subdomain names by scraping data sources, recursive brute forcing, crawling web archives, permuting/altering names and reverse DNS sweeping. All the information is then used to build maps of the target networks.

The video recordings of the OWASP London Chapter talks: 
OWASP London Chapter Youtube channel

More Information, presentations, and upcoming events: 
OWASP London Chapter wiki

OWASP London Chapter at Microsoft Reactor

We had the pleasure of having one of our OWASP London Chapter events hosted by Microsoft, at its community space called Reactor London. 

T1: "From zero to hero: building security from scratch" - Anthi Gilligan

Breaches mean financial, regulatory, legal, and above all reputational repercussions. Organisations are quick to react, however with security professionals in high demand and low supply, there has been an increase in individuals jumping on the “cybersecurity” bandwagon. In this talk, we discuss the pitfalls of the inadequately qualified “cybersecurity expert”, and examine the building blocks of a solid information security management system

T2: "Smart Contract Security" - Evangelos Deirmentzoglou 

Dapps and many Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) run on smart contracts and tend to process a substantial amount of funds. This makes them a target, and therefore they often undergo attacks. Combined with the blockchain immutability, vulnerabilities undiscovered during development will exist forever in the blockchain. This talk will dive into the most common smart contract security vulnerabilities and provide in-depth knowledge on how these issues occur and their mitigation. Real world examples will be discussed and vulnerabilities like re-entrancy, overflows, gas limit attacks etc. will be demonstrated

L1: "Driving OWASP ZAP using Selenium" - Mark Torrens 

OWASP ZAP is great tool but it's not magic! When used in a CI/CD pipeline, ZAP needs some help to discover the routes through a web application. Basic authentication, user logins and form validation can all stop ZAP in its tracks. I show how to drive ZAP using Selenium scripts and increase the security coverage of a web application.

The video recording of the talks from this event: 
OWASP London Chapter Youtube channel

More Information, presentations, and upcoming events: 
OWASP London Chapter wiki

Global OWASP AppSec EU 2018

The OWASP Global Application Security Conference took place this week in the heart of London. see: OWASP AppSecEU 2018

The QEII conference centre, just across the Westminster Abbey was packed with brilliant minds from all over the world, dedicated in advancing security across all technologies. 

The premier application security conference for European developers and security experts. AppSec EU provides attendees with insight into leading speakers for application security and cyber security, training sessions on various applications, networking, connections and exposure to the best practices in cybersecurity.

As an OWASP London Chapter leader, (@OWASPLondon) it was an honor to be part of the team that delivered this amazing 1 week event. 

The OWASP foundation staff and board did an amazing job and we all enjoyed working together. We reached out to all OWASP chapters across the globe and we are dedicating ourselves in amazing things to come. 

ISSA UK meet on board the HQS Wellington

This week we had an amazing event with @issauk. The meet took place on-board the @HQSWellington #HQSWellington #InfoSec #CyberSecurity #CyberDefense #CyberDecence 

ISSA-UK, isthe UK Chapter of the ISSA. With active participation from individuals and chapters all over the world, the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) is the largest international, not-for-profit association specifically for information security professionals. Having welcomed over 1,800 members since our beginnings in 2003, the ISSA-UK Chapter is the world’s most successful chapter. 

Security BSides Athens 2018

Security BSides Athens 2018 was the 3rd Ethical Hacking conference that took place in Athens, Greece. Once again we created a conference for the information security community, by the information security community, with a special thanks to all our volunteers. 

We love moving the venue to different locations each year to ensure the participants get to "rediscover" the event. One of the main reasons why we love scouting for a new location each year, is because we adapt the conference to the venue's attributes, whichever these are. This is what makes the event unique each year and a lovely memorable experience, while trying to bring more quality, rather that focus on quantity. 

Security BSides Athens 2018 (www.bsidesath.gr) took place at Impact Hub Athens (link) which allowed us to bring a different look and feel to the whole event. (All the information for our previous events is archived and can be found here: https://www.bsidesath.gr/index.php#Pevents)

Security BSides London 2018 - Thank you!

It was an amazing feeling seeing my logo all over the place at Security BSides London this year. In case you missed it, this blog post will bring you up to speed. 

> @BSidesLDN #BSidesLDN #BSidesLDN2018 

> #LogoWinner #BreachDayClock #2minutesToMidnight #Breach #BreachDay #DataBreach #InfoSec #CyberSecurity #BinaryClock #CyberTheme

> @OWASP #AppSec @AppSecEU @OWASPLondon

> #AfterParty @mwrinfosecurity #RansomWear

See you in Security BSides London 2019! ;)

Cyber Europe 2018 by ENISA (EU Agency for Network and Information Security)

The EU Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) manages the programme of pan-European exercises known as Cyber Europe #CE2018. 

The Cyber Europe exercises are simulations of large-scale cybersecurity incidents that escalate to become Cyber crises. 

I am part of ENISA's approved NIS Experts*, where I have both designed and reviewed different Cyber incidents/exercises for the pan-European Cyber Europe exercise, I wanted to share with you the opportunity to get to know more about this very important bi-annual European initiative. This year is the 5th pan European Cyber crisis exercise.

The scenario

• Cyber Europe 2018 planners developed a scenario revolving around Aviation which can include, Civil Aviation Authorities, Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), Airport Companies, Air Carriers, with potential impacts in other sector.
• The scenario will contain real life inspired technical incidents to analyse, from forensic and malware analysis, open source intelligence, and of course non-technical incidents.
• The incidents will build up into a crisis at all levels: local, organization, national, European. Business continuity plans and Crisis management procedures will be put at test

The exercise is organised for IT security, business continuity and crisis management teams coming from EU and EFTA Member States only.


More: https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/cyber-exercises/cyber-europe-programme 

*NOTE: The CEI List of Experts is a tool used solely for the purposes of assessing and identifying suitable external experts for a potential future contractual working relationship with ENISA. It is emphasised that inclusion in the list does NOT mean that you are considered to be an official representative of ENISA or in any way entitled to represent the Agency.