As 2009 comes to a close, we look back on the bugs of our days. The past few months have seen some interesting attacks. This talk takes a look at some of the most effective attack vectors of 2009. These, coupled with classic web hacking, social engineering and a bit of cleverness, increase the attack surface manifold. This year, my work goes beyond just browsers and looks at examples of mass ownage, new infection vectors, advanced client-side exploitation, malicious payloads, browser infection with toolbars and more. Everything is assembled before your very eyes! And as a bonus, I will demonstrate some of my own attempts at defeating Web Application Firewalls and Browser Firewalls.

About Saumil Shah

Saumil continues to lead the efforts in e-commerce security research and product development at Net-Square. His focus is on researching vulnerabilities with various e-commerce and web based application systems, system architecture for Net-Square’s tools and products, and developing short term training programmes. Saumil also provides information security consulting services to Net-Square clients, specializing in ethical hacking and security architecture. He holds a designation of Certified Information Systems Security Professional. Saumil has had more than nine years experience with system administration, network architecture, integrating heterogenous platforms, and information security and has perfomed numerous ethical hacking exercises for many significant companies in the IT area. Saumil is a regular speaker and trainer at security conferences such as BlackHat, RSA, etc.

Previously, Saumil was the Director of Indian operations for Foundstone Inc, where he was instrumental in developing their web application security assessment methodology, the web assessment component of FoundScan – Foundstone’s Managed Security Services software and was instrumental in pioneering Foundstone’s Ultimate Web Hacking training class.

Prior to joining Foundstone, Saumil was a senior consultant with Ernst & Young, where he was responsible for the company’s ethical hacking and security architecture solutions. Saumil has also worked at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, as a research assistant and is currently a visiting faculty member there.

Saumil graduated from Purdue University with a master’s degree in computer science and a strong research background in operating systems, networking, infomation security, and cryptography. At Purdue, he was a research assistant in the COAST (Computer Operations, Audit and Security Technology) laboratory. He got his undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Gujarat University, India. Saumil is a co-author of “Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense” (Addison Wesley, 2002) and is the author of “The Anti-Virus Book” (Tata McGraw-Hill, 1996)