NeoQUEST-2018: the long-awaited Cold Boot, science research and guests from Nizhny Novgorod

Summer is over. The study has begun. The work again delays in their deadly arms ... Depressed? Do not be sad! We moved the "confrontation" NeoQUEST-2018 in the fall, so the end of September will be hot!

September 26, 2018, we are waiting for everyone on the sixth (!) “Face-to-face” account, which will be held in St. Petersburg at the Parklane Resort and SPA hotel.

They are waiting for you:
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1. News about the most current cybersecurity world
We are sure that you regularly read “Habr”, “Hacker”, and in general, closely follow cyber-news. But at NeoQUEST, we will share with you information that is not on the Internet - because these are our own research and experiments!

2. Practical skills
The theory is good, but without practice anywhere! Workshops, contests, Twitter quiz and ... something new. Choose to your taste!

3. Cool prizes
To get prizes, it is not necessary for you to be able to flash the BIOS, guess by IP and find zero-days. Success depends only on your attentiveness and ingenuity. It may not be easy, but you will like it!

4. New friends and like-minded people.
Not so often, a large number of people who are “on the same wavelength” gather in one place, so NeoQUEST-2018 is a great chance to get to know representatives of the youth security crowd of St. Petersburg, make new acquaintances, and in general, have a great time!

In addition, this year NeoQUEST-2018 will be held along with the scientific and technical conference “Methods and technical means of information security” , and you will have the opportunity to visit the parallel sections of the conference and learn more about why science research is important and interesting! Read more - on our combined site .

Interesting? We drove under the cut - tell you more about what we have prepared for you!

Who comes to us at NeoQUEST, he acts wisely

For the sixth year, the company "NeoBIT" together with the department "Information Security of Computer Systems" of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University holds an event called NeoQUEST . It takes place in two stages:

1) hackquest - qualifying online stage of the competition, which is an individual CTF. During 10-11 days, registered participants pass tasks from different areas of information security, receiving points for them. After the end of the online-stage, we sum up, give the top three valuable prizes, and send to those who have completed at least one task pleasant souvenirs. Then we invite the best participants to the hackquest final within the confrontation.

2) "The confrontation" - a one-day St. Petersburg offline event, which includes:

- reports on the most relevant topics of cyber security;
- real-time attack demonstrations;
- workshops;
- contests for "hacking";
- Twitter-quiz "Exam on information security";
- hackquest final for the best participants in the qualifying online stage.

Anyone can visit the "confrontation" - admission is free! This year's "confrontation" will be held in St. Petersburg at the Parklane Resort and SPA , the beginning of the reports - at 11:00 am .

So, what have we prepared for you this year?

Yes, we love to talk: reports

NeoQUEST is a very versatile event, but perhaps most of all it looks like a conference. Therefore, the main part of the program will be reports - after all, we always have something to talk about:

1. Alexey Nikolsky: “Genesis: the first second of a computer’s life”

When it comes to the security of modern computers, they talk about antiviruses, firewalls. Those who want to know more mention hardware protection technologies and their role in the overall security of a computer - we talked about this in detail in past NeoQUEST. Some mention the BIOS and its role in security.

But many people forget that the security of the entire system is built on trust in the very first code in the system, which begins to work when you press the power button - after all, it determines the integrity of the entire system, and if it contains errors or its integrity can be violated, security system will be at risk. So how does it all start?

This report will cover:

• what makes a computer in the first second of life;
• where is the code from which the system starts and how it is protected;
• What security features work before the processor starts;
• What is common and what are the differences between different ways to start a computer: cold start, reboot, sleep, ...;
• what works when nothing works;
• in what spartan conditions does the processor start its life;
• why memory does not work, and the processor is already working;
• how to provide full protection for the BIOS and why no one does this (except for Intel X).

2. Ilya Petrov: “Do not trust anyone, even your antivirus”

In today's world, it is hard to find a person who has never heard of anti-virus protection designed to protect users and their devices. But what do antiviruses themselves know about us? The report will examine what information about devices and their users are collected by antiviruses, what methods they use and where our data is being dumped.

3. Anna Shtyrkina, Anastasia Yarmak (aka Cryptogirls): “Digital Signatures and Where They Live”

RSA, AES, SHA, bitcoin ... And what associations do you have, username , with the word "Cryptography"?

Everyone knows that one of the most important primitives in cryptography is a digital signature, which each of us faces, going every day to the Internet. However, not everyone knows that digital signatures are not limited to traditional schemes (RSA, GOST, Schnorr signature), but also include representatives with very “exotic” properties. From the report you will learn about what types of digital signatures exist, and which of them we can meet in real life.

4. Fedotov Yevgeny, Babak Yevgeny: “The hawk was shot down. Explore the safety of drones "

Scopes of drones are limited only by imagination. Here and help in fire fighting, and mail delivery, and even the implementation of military missions!

There is a huge number of drones - from toys to professional ones, which attracts the attention of various audiences, including an unfair one. How not to give your favorite toy in the hands of an insidious attacker? We will try to answer this question, as well as take a look inside the drones, talk about current vulnerabilities and demonstrate how an attacker can affect a flying drone using the example of a DJI Spark quadrocopter.

5. Roman Shcherbakov: “Shove in the unshackled. The Problem of Embedding Custom Code in Proprietary OS "

We will discuss in detail how to embed custom code in various proprietary operating systems, operating systems based on Linux, as well as firmware devices. Let's make a brief overview of such OS and consider the general principles of building firmware. In addition, we analyze the main problems that inevitably arise when writing, assembling and embedding custom code. And finally, we will show ways to solve these problems!

6. Vadim Shmatov: “Deep learning in steganography: we need to go deeper”

For what only do not use neural networks! With their help, they look for anomalies in traffic, translate texts, play chess ... And one of the most interesting applications of neural networks is the creation of random texts, images, music and entire films.

Let's talk about how you can manipulate randomness to hide secret data in the generated content. Using music as an example, let's look at the process of embedding data, and also think about who can use this technique and why. Or ... already use?

7. Andrey Chernov: “Ghostbusters: Specter & Meltdown”

All have long been accustomed to the fact that the software contains bugs and vulnerabilities, but the beginning of 2–18 reminded us that problems can arise not only in software components. What if your processor carries ghosts? “Who are you gonna call?”

In the report we will try to figure out what are the hardware vulnerabilities like Specter and Meltdown? Let's talk about the computing pipeline, carefully look at the various implementations of these vulnerabilities and think about how to protect against them.

For those who like to sleep in lectures: FastTrack section

So that you do not get bored on long reports, we have prepared a series of fast tracks - short reports with a twinkle! This year, "in a hurry," let's talk about the following:

1. Natasha Zaitseva: “Ok Google”

Modern search engines are fast and convenient services that make it easy to find all the necessary information. However, hackers have come up with a way to replenish their tools with search engines. In the report we will consider search engines, the existence of which many did not guess, and we will discuss how the ownership of powerful operators helps in finding vulnerable systems. Let us show why the search bots also need to "defend".

2. Again Natasha Zaitseva: “Sorry, we do not serve robots”

How to find a common language with search engines, if you need to send requests often and much? Let us examine the limitations at the stage of automation of search queries and possible ways to circumvent them.

3. Andrei Dakhnovich: “ What does Facebook know about us? What do we know about Facebook?

Facebook has paranoia. After the election history, users are blocked right and left. What to do, what to do to not fall under the distribution?

4. And again Vadim Shmatov: “The non-obvious application of verifiable calculations”

Is it possible to create a feedback system for products or services in which, on the one hand, reviews will be completely anonymous, and on the other, one user will be able to leave only one review for one product? At first glance - no, because the conditions contradict each other. But it turns out that the protocol of verifiable calculations zk-SNARK allows to solve this problem, and the report will tell you how.

5. Ivan Kvasenkov: “Absolute Power: Controlling the Processor via USB”

Crawled in the BIOS and accidentally noticed the setting “DCI Enabled” set to “Yes”? Well, I have bad news for you. The Direct Connect Interface (DCI) technology, implemented by Intel along with Skylake processors, provides access to hardware debugging via USB 3.0 ports. Why you should not keep it turned on on your work computer? We'll figure out.

More business, less words

Want more movement? Tired of listening to reports all day? Welcome to our workshops! This year we will show at practical workshops:

1. Workshop "OS? No, have not heard"

In this workshop, participants will complete a legendary task that none of the participants in Hackquest could solve for 2017 and 2016. You will learn how to create bootable flash drives without OS on your code, use the keyboard and display data on the screen, configure IDT and work with I / O ports.

2. Workshop “Sewing with Ali. Review and application of Chinese programmers »

The workshop will be devoted to a brief overview of the programmers in general and Chinese devices in particular. Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of various devices, analyze the scope of application of Chinese devices. Let us demonstrate the nuances of working with similar devices and rewrite the BIOS of motherboards.

3. Workshop " Epic Ethical pentest sites!"

Today, when the Internet is used everywhere, attackers open many opportunities to implement their evil plans and obtain benefits. They can steal valuable data, disrupt the business process of an objectionable company, create a botnet, spread false information, etc.

Often, attackers achieve this by attacking web applications. These can be sites of shops, banks, popular blogs, news feeds. How to protect yourself? Search for vulnerabilities and close them as early as possible! Here our participants will take Pentest, and as “victims” we have already prepared a special site for them!

The workshop is focused on gaining basic knowledge of pentest and exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications. Let's see who obey all vulnerabilities!

Attention - we have guests!

This year we decided to expand our (and your) circle of cyber dating and invited the DEF CON team from Nizhny Novgorod to NeoQUEST-2018 (also known as DC7831). If someone is not familiar with them, then NeoQUEST-2018 is a great chance to meet you!

The guys hold online competitions on information security in Nizhny Novgorod, this year they did a quest for PHDays 2018 , and now they will conduct a separate test for the guests of NeoQUEST - “Grape Joe, or How a sysadmin Grape turned out to be not so elusive” .

The quest presents a virtual world of dystopia, in which you have to travel, performing various tasks. Unraveling cases in the role of a “white” hacker will lead you to a meeting with interesting opponents - you will meet with the bright representatives of the groups in the “gray” and “black” hats.

If you want to test yourself or pass the time waiting for the desired report - welcome! You can participate both alone and in a team. The complexity of most tasks is easy or medium, they are quite capable of any administrator, programmer, tester, and, especially, pentester. In addition, the DEF CON guys will be around all day, ready to give hints and direct your thoughts in the right direction. Come test your strength!

You've been waiting for this: the return of the Cold Boot show!

At NeoQUEST-2014, we demonstrated the Cold Boot attack, in which, to gain access to the data of the RAM, it was frozen to a temperature of -197 degrees, and then transferred to another computer, where the memory is read.

This year we decided to repeat such a spectacular and vibrant show, with one important change: this time we will not get the encryption keys, as we did before. Instead, let's restore the virtual machine screen from the computer's memory!

Or maybe go to science?

This year, NeoQUEST-2018 is held together with the scientific and technical conference "Methods and technical means of ensuring information security." If you are a graduate student preparing for a thesis or a young scientist, you have the opportunity not only to “run away” from the NeoQUEST-2018 reports to the parallel scientific section, but also to have time to make a report!

Participate in the competition of reports, because the author of the best report will receive the opportunity to participate in all conference events for free and to publish an article on the report in the journal AUTOMATIC CONTROL AND COMPUTER SCIENCES of Allerton Press , which is indexed by SCOPUS . Send abstracts for participation in the competition of reports of the youth section to the mail mitsobi@neobit.ru, marked “Competition of reports”.

What are you waiting for? Register and come!

This is not the whole program NeoQUEST-2018! Follow the updates on the NeoQUEST website, on the combined NeoConf website and in our VKontakte group !

Do you doubt whether to come or not? Think a couple of days, and then register and come!

In addition, this year we are cooperating with Medovarus , so guests can enjoy delicious biolimonads and make their stay at NeoQUEST even more enjoyable!

We are waiting for you on September 26 at 11:00 at the address: ul. Ryukhina, d. 9a, Parklane Resort and SPA (metro station Krestovsky Island). Be sure to take a laptop with you to get the maximum benefit, prizes, fame and everything else, and more - friends and good mood!

See you at NeoQUEST-2018!