Hypn.za.net | @hypn

Twitter Avatar Image Hackery

Twitter does something I consider to be poor security-wise… not renaming, or removing EXIF information from, uploaded avatar images. There are a few potential security issues around this, all of which I’ve personally come across:

1. The image might be named with the person’s first and last name – potentially disclosing more information than they intended to in their Twitter profile
2. Many people download their Facebook Profile picture to use on Twitter  – Facebook renames uploaded files to include the Facebook user ID, allowing you to easily find their Facebook profile (as opposed to trying to search on their first and last name)
3. If the original filename is unique enough you can often find other related pictures just by Goolging
4. You can use something like Jeffrey’s Exif viewer to extract EXIF information from the image – often telling you what type of camera/phone the user has

Sure, they’re small things, but for anyone wanting to Social Engineer the target it could certainly help. The frustrating part: it would take only few lines of code for Twitter to prevent this, and it really is (in my opinion) a “best practice” they’re simply not bothering to follow.

SQLite mischief (password stealing) via custom DLL

There’s a (Windows) program I use that stores it’s data in SQLite files… password protected SQLite files… and I’d really like to take a look inside of them. I’ve tried looking for the password as an embedded text string, I’ve tried decompiling the .Net code (with Reflector – but it’s obfuscated), and I’ve tried attaching a debugger and stepping through tons of ASM code, but still haven’t been able to find the password.

During a mild case of insomnia I had another thought on cracking/bypassing SQLite password protection: what if (in the case where the app uses a .dll file, rather than statically linking the library) I just downloaded the SQLite source code, added “logging” of sorts to each of the main functions (“login”, executing queries, etc), compiled it, and replaced the application’s version with mine – the DLL would basically just output the database’s password for me, in plain text, perfect for opening it with something like SQLiteSpy :D

SanDisk 2-in-1 memory card and USB

I might be a bit late to the party, but I’ve just found out about SanDisk’s “2-in1″ memory cards, which I think are awesome. They look and work just like a regular SD card (think digital cameras, etc) but fold half of it down and it reveals a USB adapter, ready to be plugged straight in to your computer:

What’s so great about this, you ask? Well, I’d imagine it’s far easier to keep one of these in your wallet than to carry a flash drive around with you everywhere (and I prefer to keep my keyring as small as possible so I’m not fond of attaching a flash drive to it). It also has a hardware “read only” lock (at least judging by the pictures), so no more “autorun” viruses when plugging in to infected machines, and you could boot an OS off of it and not worry about becoming infected or backdoor’ed (at least not past a reboot) when visting places like Defcon ;)

Selling for $13 from Amazon (for the 2GB), I definitely think I’m going to get myself one!

FaceWound hacks

There’s a game called “FaceWound“, a (self-titled) “Zombie Murder Simulator“, which the author of Garry’s Mod has been working on for a few years. He recently released the latest version for free, though he says “it’s totally unfinished, unpolished and should be treated with the same attitude you’d treat a leaked alpha with” – despite this it’s suprisingly bug-free, and fully playable (not to mention lots of fun).

So far the only thing people seem to be moaning about is that you don’t get extra lives or health during the game, making it rather difficult to finish. There have also been requests for “Infinite Lives” and “Infinite Ammo” cheats for it – so I decided to make some hacks ;)