Information technology constantly changes and advances. IRM is dedicated to keeping pace with new technology and continuing to innovate in the field of information security. This research website provides an opportunity for IRM's Research Working Group (RWG) to publish information on new and ongoing research programmes within IRM. Here you will find white papers, tools, security advisories and news on past and upcoming conferences and seminars at which IRM presents its research.
Senior Consultants Gyan Chawdhary and Varun Uppal will be presenting their research on Cisco IOS Shellcode in Black Hat Las Vegas, August 6 2008.
A copy of the presentation is available here (226k), with a video showing the bind shell here (6.6M WMV format).
The three shellcodes discussed in the presentation are available here:
The presentation covers significant advances in IOS shell code development and looks at its subsequent impact on modern day routing infrastructure. IOS specific payloads including bind shell, reverse shell, 2 byte shell codes and bypassing the check heaps process in IOS 12.4 are covered from both a practical and theoretical standpoint as well as a detailed overview of IRM's techniques used to develop these payloads. Furthermore, building a complete IOS debugging environment and identifying new attack vectors is also covered in the presentation, allowing researchers to establish a fully working environment to develop IOS specific code, execution payloads, memory resident backdoors and to conduct vulnerability research on Cisco embedded devices.
Importantly, the presentation also includes mitigating factors to the issues identified during this Cisco IOS research programme.