So here we are in 2016, yet still writing 2015 in our chequebooks (yah lolpls like anyone uses cheques any more). Following on from last year and our 2014 summary, here is our 2015 highlights post with interesting happenings over the past 12 months – including tools and news stories.
2015 News Stories
The theme for 2015 seemed to be LARGE SCALE OWNAGE, everything and everyone was getting hacked left right and center. Right at the start of the year we already had the GHOST vulnerability and a Flash zero day in the wild – which left us happy to say goodbye to Flash on Facebook towards the end of the year (After their record breaking patch which contained 78 CVE-classified Vulnerabilities).
One of the big dramas of the year was Hacking Team getting Hacked – oh the irony. Other notable stuff would be the vulnerabilities in Jeep cars, the WhatsApp Web vCard Vulnerability, and the Hilary Clinton e-mail leak.
It was also the year of mega DDoS attacks with Telegram suffering a HUGE 200GBps pounding mid-year, then the prolonged, sustained and rather sophisticated DDoS on the crypto-mail service ProtonMail and to finish the year (and the one that affected me) the multi-day mega DDoS Seige on Linode over xmas and new years (thanks for wrecking many people’s holidays).
Other interesting stuff would be the Dell backdoor root cert fiasco, the TalkTalk hack which they tried to initially downplay and cover up, Logjam (which was a very interesting attack vector based on the the forward secrecy implementation).
2015 Best Hacking Tools
There’s been some pretty neat stuff released this year, the below are tools that’s I’ve personally found interesting but haven’t been super high traffic:
- pwntools – CTF Framework & Exploit Development Library
- Gitrob – Scan Github For Sensitive Files
- EvilAP Defender – Detect Evil Twin Attacks
- Plecost – WordPress Fingerprinting Tool
- InstaRecon – Automated Subdomain Discovery Tool
- Just-Metadata – Gathers & Analyse IP Address Metadata
- Dharma – Generation-based Context-free Grammar Fuzzing Tool
- peinjector – MITM PE File Injector
- Scumblr by Netflix – Automatically Scan For Leaks
- Pupy – Open-Source Remote Administration Tool AKA RAT
You may have overlooked some of these, so do check them out if you did!
You’ve probably already seen those below in the most viewed list, but well if you haven’t check out the below for the hottest tools in 2015.
Bonus – Top 10 Most Viewed Posts From 2015
- Infernal Twin – Automatic Wifi Hacking Tool
- EvilFOCA – Network Attack Toolkit
- FruityWifi – Wireless Network Auditing Tool
- Windows Credentials Editor (WCE) – List, Add & Change Logon Sessions
- Hacking Team Hacked – What You Need To Know
- Gcat – Python Backdoor Using Gmail For Command & Control
- Zarp – Network Attack Tool
- ATM Hacked Using Samsung Galaxy S4 & USB Port
- Parrot Security OS – Debian Based Security Oriented Operating System
- WinRAR Vulnerability Is Complete Bullshit
Enjoy 2016!