Matthew Ruffell

Deploying a Ceph Cluster in Ubuntu 19.04

One of the major advancements in recent technology is the rise of cloud computing, and to be perfectly honest with you, I really don’t understand how the whole cloud thing works.

So, I’m going to start a series of blog posts where I will deploy some cloud services, and learn how they work.

Today we will learn how to deploy a Ceph cluster on Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo, so get ready, fire up some VMs with me and follow along.

We will cover what Ceph is, how to deploy it, and what it’s primary use cases are.

Let’s get started.

Crypto Deja vu in TimeLock 1.7 Vulnerability Writeup

Here we are, back for more TimeLock excitement. Let’s see what’s in store for this article, where we pull apart and attempt to find vulnerabilities in TimeLock 1.7.

A little while ago u/cryptocomicon posted a new announcement of TimeLock 1.7 to Reddit:

Looks like I’m getting some advertising of my blog =) Thanks u/cryptocomicon! Maybe it will introduce some people to reverse engineering.

Challenges are fun, so let’s jump into it.

Double Trouble With Symmetric Encryption in TimeLock 1.5 Vulnerability Writeup

All right, I hope you liked the previous articles on TimeLock, because here is another one! This will be my fourth bug bounty now. As always, interesting reverse engineering followed by an awesome Bitcoin reward awaits!

A little while ago u/cryptocomicon posted a new announcement of TimeLock 1.5 to Reddit:

I can’t turn down a good challenge, so lets get started!

Beginning Kernel Crash Debugging on Ubuntu 18.10

If you have been reading this blog, you have probably noticed how all the debugging and analysis of applications have been on Windows executables, and although I did create my own Linux distribution, Dapper Linux, I haven’t written much about debugging on Linux.

Time to change that. Today, we are going to look into how debugging Linux kernel crash dumps works on Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish. Fire up a virtual machine, and follow along.

We will cover how to install and configure crash and kdump, a little on how each tool works, and finding the root cause of a basic panic.

Let’s get started.

Unleashing a Sybil Attack Against TimeLock 1.3 Vulnerability Writeup

Here we are, back again for my third bug bounty! It really is a good time trying to break an applications security, and especially so when there is some Bitcoin waiting as a reward.

As always, I was on Reddit and saw that u/cryptocomicon has made some changes to TimeLock, and is ready for them to be tested again.

u/cryptocomicon has acknowledged that writing secure software is extremely hard, and is absolutely correct in that statement. We also see that a new challenge is issued:

Designing an un-hackable TimeLock is challenging. This is my third version and the third challenge, with a 0.02 BTC reward.

Please give it a try.

Will do. Challenge accepted.