IE zero-day flaw leaks out; Exploit code published
Using obvious clues from a McAfee blog post, an Israeli hacker was able to pinpoint the latest Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability and create working exploit code. The exploit code, which provides a clear roadmap to launch drive-by download attacks against IE 6 and IE 7 users, is being fitted into the Metasploit point-and-click tool.
Another case that shows how difficult it is for reasonable and informative disclosure, yet not giving away the attack like this.
On a side note, am looking forward to trying this out from Metasploit... 
[via ZDNet]
Useful Firefox Plugins
Sharing my list of favourite Firefox plugins. Some are used more for only when doing web application penetration testing, whereas some are useful for everyday awareness/protection when surfing around the interwebs. Do leave comments if this helps, or you have any complaints/suggestions to help improve the list 
- Adblock Plus: you know what this is for... Remember to disable when performing penetration testing.
- CacheViewer: Allows for viewing and sorting of cache files. Seldom used, but a great tool nonetheless when the need comes for it.
- Domain Details: Displays plenty of information about the server (type, headers, IP, location) that you're accessing. Good for basic information awareness during normal surfing.
- Download Statusbar: View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar.
- DownThemAll: For fast grabbing of files from a directory.
- Firebug: Powerful tool for web developers that allows you to freely manipulate/view the loaded objects for a page. I haven't really figured out how to use this for penetration testing yet though.
- Greasemonkey: Could come in very handy if you want to do some mods to a site's page automatically, remember to enable/disable the scripts that aren't needed when on a penetration testing job.
- IE Tab: Don't really use this, unless I get a site that's coded to work only with "browsers like IE".
- iMacros for Firefox: Another powerful macro editing/playback tool, I don't use this though
- JavaScript Debugger: JS debugger and profiler, more useful for web developers I think.
- Live HTTP headers: Great for showing basic information about the HTTP headers being exchanged.
- NoScript: A MUST-HAVE for Forefox. Whitelists the scripts and objects that are allowed to load for a domain, amongst other protection features against other nasties out there. Remember to disable for penetration testing engagements.
- People Search and Public Record Toolbar: Great tool for information gathering, pity I never had the chance to really use it
- ScrapBook: Aids in archiving and organizing pages. I use it to profile a site's workflow.
- SwitchProxy / FoxyProxy: A must-have for changing between the many proxy tools that I use.
- Tamper Data: I use this to grab extra timeline information about the loading of pages. Also allows you to do request/response editing.
- User Agent Switcher: Self explanatory. Useful for certain situations only.
- View Dependencies: A must-have for organizing image/JavaScript/CSS resources for a page in a tidy manner.
- View formatted source: Formats HTML source neatly for viewing.
- View Source Chart: Formats final document DOM (after all the loading/JavaScript events have finished firing) for easy viewing. Also for when View formatted source isn't available for the version of Firefox that you're using.
- Web Developer: Great for manipulating the forms/cookies/JavaScript/whatnot on a page. A definite must-have for penetration testing.
DNS rebinding defense with Nginx
DNS rebinding's a particularly nasty attack, having similar characteristics as CSRF attacks where the user's browser can be used to access/attack sites on behalf of the attacker.
I'm not going to describe how it works here, there's plenty of literature out there that talks about it. And if that's not enough, Google Is Your Friend.
One of the simpler ways to defend against it is to have the server only serve requests with legit Host headers, which is what Wikipedia says anyway. (No I didn't edit that portion myself) This can be simply done with virtual hosts (HTTP/1.1), and can work for servers serving one domain, or two, or three, or many many many.
For nginx, a default catchall virtual host might look like this:
server {
listen 80 default;
server_name can-be-anything-not-served;
access_log /path/to/log/weird/access.log;
error_log /path/to/log/weird/error.log;
root /path/with/only/an/empty/index/html/file;
index index.html;
}
Note that this is configured to be the default listener on port 80 for this virtual host. Make sure your actual virtual host(s) configuration does not have the 'default' option.
The server_name can be anything other than the actual virtual host(s) that the server is serving on port 80.
I usually put nothing (only empty index.html files) in that root folder for this catchall virtual host,but you're free to put other files to serve indicators to your users, or just to taunt them when they get subjected to DNS rebinding attacks unknowingly. Just kidding about the taunting.
With this default catchall virtual host in place, you have a simple yet effective defense against DNS rebinding attacks! Now watch the attacks get thwarted like eggs against a steel wall.
Note that this is helpful in situations where you don't expect HTTP/1.0 requests, which is usually the case in today's world. If you have a case where you have work with HTTP/1.0 requests, then you really shouldn't use this defense method in the exact same manner.