An accessible overview of Meltdown and Spectre, Part 2This is the second half of our blog post on the Meltdown an Spectre vulnerabilities, describing Spectre Variant 1 (V1) and Spectre Variant 2 (V2). If you have not done so already, please review the first blog post for an accessible review of computer architecture fundamentals. This blog post will start by covering the technical […]
"AMD Flaws" Technical SummaryTwo weeks ago, we were engaged by CTS Labs as independent consultants at our standard consulting rates to review and confirm the technical accuracy of their preliminary findings. We participated neither in their research nor in their subsequent disclosure process. Our recommendation to CTS was to disclose the vulnerabilities through a CERT. Our review of […]
Echidna, a smart fuzzer for EthereumToday we released Echidna, our next-generation EVM smart fuzzer at EthCC. It’s the first-ever fuzzer to target smart contracts, and has powerful features like abstract state-machine modeling and automatic minimal test case generation. We’ve been working on it for quite some time, and are thrilled to finally share it with the world. Different interfaces for […]
2017 in reviewWhat a roller coaster of a year! Well, outside of our office. Inside, 2017 was excellent. We published novel research that advanced – among others – the practices of automated bug discovery, symbolic execution, and binary translation. In the process, we improved many foundational tools that an increasing number of security researchers will come to […]
Parity Technologies engages Trail of BitsWe’re helping Parity Technologies secure their Ethereum client. We’ll begin by auditing their codebase, and look forward to publishing results and the knowledge we gained in the future. Parity Technologies combines cryptography, cellular systems, peer-to-peer technology and decentralized consensus to solve the problems that have gone unaddressed by conventional server-client architecture. Their Ethereum client is designed for […]
An accessible overview of Meltdown and Spectre, Part 1In the past few weeks the details of two critical design flaws in modern processors were finally revealed to the public. Much has been written about the impact of Meltdown and Spectre, but there is scant detail about what these attacks are and how they work. We are going to try our best to fix […]
Heavy lifting with McSema 2.0Four years ago, we released McSema, our x86 to LLVM bitcode binary translator. Since then, it has stretched and flexed; we added x86-64 support, put it on a performance-focused diet, and improved its usability and documentation. McSema wasn’t the only thing improving these past years, though. At the same time, programs were increasingly adopting modern […]
Videos from Ethereum-focused Empire HackingOn December 12, over 150 attendees learned how to write and hack secure smart contracts at the final Empire Hacking meetup of 2017. Thank you to everyone who came, to our superb speakers, and to Datadog for hosting this meetup at their office. Watch the presentations again We believe strongly that the community should share […]
What are the current pain points of osquery?You’re reading the second post in our four-part series about osquery. Read post number one for a snapshot of the tool’s current use, the reasons for its growing popularity among enterprise security teams, and how it stacks up against commercial alternatives. osquery shows considerable potential to revolutionize the endpoint monitoring market. (For example, it greatly […]
Announcing the Trail of Bits osquery extension repositoryToday, we are releasing access to our maintained repository of osquery extensions. Our first extension takes advantage of the Duo Labs EFIgy API to determine if the EFI firmware on your Mac fleet is up to date. There are very few examples of publicly released osquery extensions. Very little documentation exists on the topic. This […]
Securing Ethereum at Empire HackingIf you’re building real applications with blockchain technology and are worried about security, consider this meetup essential. Join us on December 12th for a special edition of Empire Hacking focused entirely on the security of Ethereum. Why attend? Four blockchain security experts will be sharing how to write secure smart contracts, and hack them. Two […]
How are teams currently using osquery?In the year since we ported osquery to Windows, the operating system instrumentation and endpoint monitoring agent has attracted a great deal of attention in the open-source community and beyond. In fact, it recently received the 2017 O’Reilly Defender Award for best project. Many large and leading tech firms have deployed osquery to do totally […]
Hands on the Ethernaut CTFLast week Zeppelin released their Ethereum CTF, Ethernaut. This CTF is a good introduction to discover how to interact with a blockchain and learn the basics of the smart contract vulnerabilities. The CTF is hosted on the ropsten blockchain, and you can receive free ethers for it. The browser developer console is used to interact […]
Trail of Bits joins the Enterprise Ethereum AllianceWe’re proud to announce that Trail of Bits has joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the world’s largest open source blockchain initiative. As the first information security company to join, and currently one of the industry’s top smart contract auditors, we’re excited to contribute our unparalleled expertise to the EEA. As companies begin to re-architect […]
Our team is growingWe’ve added five more to our ranks in the last two months, bringing our total size to 32 employees. Their resumes feature words and acronyms like ‘CTO,’ ‘Co-founder’ and ‘Editor.’ You might recognize their names from publications and presentations that advance the field. We’re excited to offer them a place where they can dig deeper […]
iOS jailbreak detection toolkit now availableWe now offer a library for developers to check if their apps are running on jailbroken phones. It includes the most comprehensive checks in the industry and it is App Store compatible. Contact us now to license the iVerify security library for your app. Jailbreaks threaten your work Users like to install jailbreaks on their […]
Tracking a stolen code-signing certificate with osqueryRecently, 2.27 million computers running Windows were infected with malware signed with a stolen certificate from the creators of a popular app called CCleaner, and inserted into its software update mechanism. Fortunately, signed malware is now simple to detect with osquery thanks to a pull request submitted by our colleague Alessandro Gario that adds Windows […]
Microsoft didn’t sandbox Windows Defender, so I didMicrosoft exposed their users to a lot of risks when they released Windows Defender without a sandbox. This surprised me. Sandboxing is one of the most effective security-hardening techniques. Why did Microsoft sandbox other high-value attack surfaces such as the JIT code in Microsoft Edge, but leave Windows Defender undefended? As a proof of concept, […]
An extra bit of analysis for ClemencyThis year’s DEF CON CTF used a unique hardware architecture, cLEMENCy, and only released a specification and reference tooling for it 24 hours before the final event began. cLEMENCy was purposefully designed to break existing tools and make writing new ones harder. This presented a formidable challenge given the timeboxed competition occurs over a single […]
Magic with ManticoreManticore is a next-generation binary analysis tool with a simple yet powerful API for symbolic execution, taint analysis, and instrumentation. Using Manticore one can identify ‘interesting’ code locations and deduce inputs that reach them. This can generate inputs for improved test coverage, or quickly lead execution to a vulnerability. I used Manticore’s power to solve Magic, a challenge […]
Manticore: Symbolic execution for humansManticore helps us quickly take advantage of symbolic execution, taint analysis, and instrumentation to analyze binaries.
A walk down memory laneAdmit it. Every now and then someone does something, and you think: “I also had that idea!” You feel validated — a kindred spirit has had the same intuitions, the same insights, and even drawn the same conclusions. I was reminded of this feeling recently when I came across a paper describing how to use […]
April means InfiltrateBreak out your guayabera, it’s time for Infiltrate. Trail of Bits has attended every Infiltrate and has been a sponsor since 2015. The majority of the company will be in attendance this year (18 people!) and we’ll be swapping shirts and swag again. We’re looking forward to catching up with the latest research presented there […]
McSema: I’m liftin’ itMcSema, our x86 machine code to LLVM bitcode binary translator, just got a fresh coat of paint. Last week we held a successful hackathon that produced substantial improvements to McSema’s usability, documentation, and code quality. It’s now easier than ever to use McSema to analyze and reverse-engineer binaries. Growth stage We use McSema on a […]
The Challenges of Deploying Security MitigationsThis blog has promoted control flow integrity (CFI) as a game changing security mitigation and encouraged its use. We wanted to take our own security advice and start securing software we use. To that end, we decided to apply CFI to facebook’s osquery, a cross-platform codebase with which we are deeply familiar. Using osquery, we […]
