CERT/CC Blog

Hi folks, Allen Householder here. In addition to the recent introduction of our new Failure Observation Engine (FOE) fuzzing framework for Windows and Linux Triage Tools, we have updated the CERT Basic Fuzzing Framework (BFF) to version 2.5. This post highlights the significant changes.

As part of the vulnerability discovery work at CERT, we have developed a GNU Debugger (GDB) extension called "exploitable" that classifies Linux application bugs by severity. Version 1.0 of the extension is available for public download here. This blog post contains an overview of the extension and how it works.

Hello, this is David Warren from the CERT Vulnerability Analysis team. In May 2010, CERT released the Basic Fuzzing Framework, a Linux-based file fuzzer. We released BFF with the intent to increase awareness and adoption of automated, negative software testing. An often-requested feature is that BFF support the Microsoft Windows platform. To this end, we have worked to create a Windows analog to the BFF: the Failure Observation Engine (FOE). Through our internal testing, we've been able to help identify, coordinate, and fix exploitable vulnerabilities in Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Autonomy, and Apple software, as well as many others. Our office shootout post is a good example of this testing.

If you analyze, manage, publish, or otherwise work with software vulnerabilities, hopefully you've come across the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). I'm happy to announce that US-CERT Vulnerability Notes now provide CVSS metrics.

Hello this is Jonathan Spring. Recently, Leigh Metcalf and I uncovered some interesting results in our continuing work on properties of the Domain Name System (DNS). Our work involves an unconventional use of CNAME (canonical name) records.  Besides an IP address, CNAME records are the only other location a domain may have in the DNS. Instead of an IP address, a CNAME record is a redirection or alias service that points to another name. 

Recently George Jones, Jonathan Spring, and I attended USENIX Security '11. We hosted an evening Birds of a Feather (BoF) session where we asked a question of some significance to our CERT^® Network Situational Awareness (NetSA) group:

Is Large-Scale Network Security Monitoring Still Worth Effort?

A few years ago, I published a blog entry called Signed Java Applet Security: Worse than ActiveX? In that entry, I explained the problems that arise when a vulnerability is discovered in a signed Java applet. Let's see how the Cisco AnyConnect vulnerability is affected.

Microsoft recently released a component for Office called Office File Validation that is supposed to help protect against attacks using malformed files. Because I recently performed file fuzzing tests on Microsoft Office, I decided to test the effectiveness of Office File Validation.

Recently, Dan Kaminsky published a blog entry that compared the fuzzing resiliency of Microsoft Office and Oracle OpenOffice. This blog entry contains the results from a similar test that I performed in November 2010. Also included are some other aspects of the Office suites that can affect the software's security.

Version 2.0 of the CERT Basic Fuzzing Framework (BFF) made its debut on Valentine's Day at the 2011 CERT Vendor Meeting in San Francisco. This new edition has a lot of cool features that we'll be describing in more detail in future posts, but we wanted to let you know that it's available so that you can download and try it.