Category Archives: security

Implementing EAP-SIM at Home

What is EAP-SIM?

EAP-SIM is one of the authentication methods that can be used in an 802.1x or WPA Enterprise network. Specifically, it relies on the user’s SIM card to process a presented challenge. This has been used by some telcos to provide WiFi service without having to maintain a separate set of credentials. However, not all phones support EAP-SIM.

Phone displaying EAP-SIM as a WiFi authentication method

Since I’m already using a RADIUS setup at home, the use of EAP-SIM will eliminate the need to install my CA certs onto each device. But of course, there is still a fair bit of work to do…

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Decoding BCARD Conference Badges

Last month, I had the opportunity to fly halfway around the world to attend RSA Conference 2013. Everyone was given a lanyard and badge which contains your information entered during registration. When you visit booths, they can then scan your badge to collect your information and follow up by sending you spam.

RSA conference pass

The scanner varies across different booths, but mostly it’s an Android device that ran a custom software. Since it had a large NXP logo, let’s try to read it with the NFC TagInfo app. Looks like the tag identifies itself as a NDEF message but the data is gibberish.

Data in the BCARD as decoded by TagInfo

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Fraudulent SSL Certs & Revocation

I just read news that fake SSL certificates were issued by Comodo CA, but more interestingly, browser updates were issued to blacklist the certificates. Why this was necessary since we already have a protocol for doing just that?

I found out from this post on the torproject blog that talks about how OCSP is not properly implemented in browsers:

The browsers treat revocation errors as soft errors and a MITM is deadly for revocation. The browsers believe they have to treat them as soft errors because the CAs are failing to do their job properly and are almost entirely unaccountable.

Here’s how some other browsers fare when OCSP fails.