It targets to inspire CS fellows as they may not realize why algorithms, theories and skills are critical, I will brief about hacking and security, correlate their learnt skills and knowledge domain, hopefully, it helps them to find out their research interest in security area.

1. Computer Science,
Hacking and Research:
For fun and profit
@CompSci Festival, HKUST
Anthony LAI
Valkyrie-X Security Research Group
VXRL

2. Welcome, who am I?
Computer Science graduate in 1998.
Not in {Dean List, First Honor}
Currently work on security research, penetration
test, attack analysis and incident response
Speaking at DEFCON, HITCON, Blackhat...etc.
Found VXRL, which is a non-profit making
security research organization; Invited by OGCIO
to be a member of information Security advisory
member.

3. Why do I set up this talk?
With the past 15 years after graduation, I wanna:

Inspire you guys

Clear your misunderstanding over Computer
Science

Convey ideas that faculty and your fellows
cannot give you
Basically, I believe it is my duty to do it.

4. Agenda
Computer Science
- Important and Useful Algorithm
- Other “kungfu”?
Computer Security and Hacking
- Fun? Profit?
Security Research
- Why is it critical and interesting?

5. Part 1: Computer Science
(10 minutes)

6. Computer Science
Why do we need computer science?
Computer science teaches you programming
only?
Why do we need algorithm?
Why do you need to learn about it?
Top useful algorithm:
http://www.quora.com/Computer-Science/What-are-some-of-the-most-ingenious-algorithms-in-computer-science

7. Most Important Algorithm:
http://www.koutschan.de/misc/algorithms.php

10. From MSR

13. Other Kungfu?
Protocols
Programming
Database
Operating System Fundamental
Networking
Software Engineering and Design
Cryptography
Pattern Recognition
Data mining
Discrete Maths
Statistics

14. Once you learn them all
What are their usage in security?
For example,
Pattern recognition
Data mining
Search algorithm

15. Security Area
For example
1. Encryption
2. Server Logs and Network Packets
- Identify threats and attack
- Identify network attack
3. Malicious Code and Executable (Malware)

16. Part 2: Hacking
(30 minutes)

17. Security and Hacking
You need to understand various technical
disciplines:

Operating System

Networking

Cryptography

Memory

Binary structure

Protocols
Be ethical, don't make offense

18. 18
CTF (Capture The Flag for
Fun and Profit)

19. 19
What is CTF game?
You need to get the key for points
Challenges include crypto, network, forensics,
binary/reverse engineering/exploitation, web
hack and miscellaneous.
Top teams could enter final round of contest
DEFCON, Plaid CTF, Codegate, Secuinside
are famous CTFs in the planet and we join
every year.

20. 20
Why do we enjoy to play?
Challenges are practical
Need your knowledge
Need your skills
Understanding vulnerabilities
Thinking like an attacker
Train you up to manipulate proper tools

21. 21
HITCON CTF 2013

22. 22
Our rank? Any rewards?
4th
prize in HITCON CTF 2013 (19-20 July,
Taipei)

23. 23
Our world ranking

24. 24
Sample Question (1)
Please read the following code, how can you
solve it?

25. 25
Sample Question (1)
Please read the following code, how can you
solve it?

26. 26
Question 1
There are a couple of things to note:
We must do the operations in reverse order
since this is the inverse function.
The hex2bin function is only available in PHP >=
5.4.0. Had to resort to the documentation to
find the alternative: pack ("H*", $str)

27. 27
Okay, let us do some hack (10-15
minutes :)

www.overthewire.org

Please click “Natas”

It is a module to practice your Web hack.

You could do it in group, I got prize for top 3
fellows.

However, you need to understand:
− HTTP protocol
− Web Application
− Common vulnerabilities of Web Application (Please
refer to OWASP Top 10 from www.owasp.org)

28. 29
Pickle object serialization

29. 30
Serialization

30. 31
A Vulnerable Django
https://github.com/OrangeTW/Vulnerable-Django/

31. 32
If the key leaks
We could generate our own cookie and sign it
over.

32. 33
We even could include command execution
1. Generate and sign the new cookie
with command execution
2. Replace the original cookie with our
generated one.

33. 34
Pwned :)
(Simply input Guest, type in some
text in box and submit)

34. 35
More than that, we could get the
key from the server to change our
command to read file instead ...

35. 36
CTF fun and profit
The fun is to practice our security and “kungfu”
The profit is to earning knowledge, building trust
and friendship.
Sometimes, we could get reward :)

36. Part 3: Research
(10 minutes)

37. Research
Research is not limited to academia only
As UG, or even you don't enroll PhD program at
this moment, you could even start it.
Someone do the research for career, some may
do the research for “homework”, but I do it for
“passion” and community.

38. My Research
http://scholar.google.com.hk/citations?
user=YcjzoFkAAAAJ&hl=en

39. Research
Objectives:

Current problem

Issue/Industry driven

Practical

Impact and Improvement

Novelty or/and incremental efforts

40. Security and Hacking Conference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_security_conference

Realize the problems in both academia and
industry.

Top Academic security conference (focus on
practicality)
− Usenix (https://www.usenix.org/)

Reviewers and panelists come from both academic and
industry sectors.

41. Security and Hacking Conference

Industry Conference
− DEFCON (www.defcon.org)
− Blackhat (www.blackhat.com)
− AVTokyo (www.avtokyo.org)
− Hack In Taiwan (www.hitcon.org)
− POC (http://www.powerofcommunity.net/)
− XCON (xcon.xfocus.net)

42. Cheer up!

I try to correlate computer science,
security/hacking and research together in the
past 50 minutes.

Remember to position yourself as a scientist.

Reading others' paper (for example: Usenix)

Pick your strength and favorite.

Research could internationalize your capability
and talents.

Enjoy computer science, hacking and research.
:-)

43. Our VX Research

Malware and Target Attack

Web Hacking

Forensics

Cryptography and Password

Reverse Engineering, Exploitation and
Software Security

Secret mission and operation :-)

44. Attack Map

45. Thank you for your listening

https://www.facebook.com/darkfloyd2

darkfloyd[at]vxrl.org