The team over at Hacker House has recently released their first book, Hands on Hacking. The book is an incredibly accessible guide for learning pentesting and purple teaming and includes often-overlooked subjects like building a business case for hacking, ethical guidelines, and report writing.
Report writing, you say?
Needless to say, when authors Matthew Hickey and Jennifer Arcuri reached out to let us know they were featuring Dradis in the chapter on reporting, we were delighted. Since the book’s release, I’ve been able to chat with Matthew to ask about writing this book, his start in hacking and growing a career in the industry, and his favorite reads.
Hands on Hacking takes a holistic approach to hacking appropriate for those just getting started as well as for management and sysadmins wanting a deeper understanding of the attacks their organization and systems face.
Want to win a copy of Hands on Hacking?
The team over at Wiley sent us a few copies to giveaway. To enter, share your email address with us below. Winners will be selected at random on October 9, 2020 and contacted at the email address provided to collect shipping information.
Dradis Framework is a collaboration and reporting tool for information security teams to manage and deliver the results of security assessments, in less time and with less frustration than manual methods.
MS Word Filters – OR, NOT
Filtering content using OR and NOT hasn’t been possible until now! Now you can add OR and NOT operators to create a dizzying amount of control for your report output. As always, you can string together multiple filters to get the results you want to populate your report.
Imagine That!
We’ve added the ability to upload an image anywhere the editing toolbar appears. Dragging and dropping into the editing area works too, saving you a few steps to add images in your project to show evidence, support your statement, or even add a meme to your comment.
Even More Validation
Validating your project before generating it has long been available as a good step to preventing some of the most common report errors. Now, view additional validation in summary views and a panel to help avoid those errors as you are working with report content to catch problems early.
For an at-a-glance way to see what needs a bit more work, the issues and evidence tables include a column showing if that item contains the correct information.
Looks like something needs to be modified…
Issues, evidence, and content blocks now have a validation panel that will highlight problems as you work.
That missing vector could cause problems, glad we caught it now!
Release Notes
Add a validation panel for Issues, Evidence, and Content Blocks
Add a validation column for Issues and Evidence table
Auto upload attachments and screenshots without requiring the use of the staging area
Cards, Evidence, Issues, and Notes now have their own attachment support
Displays a notification badge in the browser tab when there are unread notifications
Editor: Allow drag & drop, copy & paste, and direct image uploading
Increase the node properties column size by changing it to LONGTEXT
Layout: Breadcrumbs have a fixed position
Upload Manager: better validation
Bugs fixed:
Live filtering of templates (methodologies, notes & projects) via sidebar
Use absolute send times in notification emails instead of relative
Reporting enhancements:
Excel: Fix report generation exceeding the maximum cell limit
Word: Add NOT and OR operation for filtering content control
Word: Allow non-English localization documents to be exported
Automated reports, generate the same reports your clients know and love in a fraction of the time.
Dradis Framework is a collaboration and reporting tool for information security teams to manage and deliver the results of security assessments, in less time and with less frustration than manual methods.
Formatting Toolbar
Formatting text is even easier now with the editor toolbar. The toolbar makes it simple to enter and format text in an issue, evidence, notes, comments, and methodologies without needing to use Textile markup. The live preview updates with your formatting changes as you work.
Form Editor
Manually create issues and evidence using the form view, rather than using Textile field names and details. Name the form field and add in details for each item and the live preview updates as you work on the side.
If your project has a predefined template, using that template will create those form fields ready to populate.
Prefer to work with Textile? The source view is still available so you have the best of both worlds.
Dots Menu
In order to make the most of the available screen space, some item options – including edit, delete, and subscribe – have been moved to a single “dots” menu. The dots menu is located to the top right of the item and includes the actions available for that item.
Methodology Improvements
Cards in methodologies no longer require a due date. This is helpful for cards that are templates or hold information that doesn’t need to be locked to a specific date.
If a card has moved from one list to another, the original card link will redirect you to the card at its current location. Previously the link to the card would be broken, leaving you to hunt around until you found it (or didn’t and gave up looking).
Making it easier to find the board you are looking for, you can click on a methodology in the project dashboard or the board name in the activity feed to go to that board.
Release Notes
Add author to evidence and notes views
Add dynamic columns, sorting and filtering to Projects list
Add team name link to project navbar
Adjust Uploads layout to provide more visibility to the output console
Allow renaming and deleting boards through their dots menu
Avoid browser pre-populating password fields when editing users
Card improvements:
Not require a mandatory due date
Redirect to new url if the card has changed lists
Show board name and link in the Activity Feed
Card, Evidence, Issue, and Note form data will not be lost even if the form is not saved
Clear the form when the “Cancel” link is clicked
Remove prompt to restore data and instead persist and restore any changes seamlessly
Comments
Add Textile markup
Not lose changes even if the comment is not saved
Update comments feed to show author’s name instead of email
Display note and evidence titles in breadcrumbs
Display the Dots-menu in all views
Editor improvements:
Formatting toolbar to help with markup
New form-view to edit each field individually
Side-by-side editor preview that auto-updates
Generate consistent URLs in emails
Increase the size of output console
Let Admins be added or removed after a project is created
Link to Methodology from project summary chart
Move resource action links to dots-menu in breadcrumbs
Persist the state of the navigation sidebar in projects while navigating across different views
Remove tag color from issue titles in issue summary
Update code element style
Use shared noscript partial
Use user model reference for activities instead of user email
Upgraded gems: puma, rack, rails, sass-rails
Bugs fixed:
Allow Authors to set project permissions on project creation again
Fix Board partial broken structure
Fix ItemsTable extra whitespace causing unnecessary vertical scrolling
Fix Long items_table dropdown menus not scrollable
Fix Long project names interfering with search bar expansion
Fix breadcrumbs in cards under node boards
Fix textile preview not showing on issues with very long text
Prevent repetitive prompt when images are pasted after navigating multiple views.
Prevent report ‘Download’ button becoming a disabled ‘Processing…’ button once clicked
Render Textile preview of issues with very long text
Dradis Framework is a collaboration and reporting tool for information security teams to manage and deliver the results of security assessments, in less time and with less frustration than manual methods.
Hello, good looking.
Tylium is included with Dradis Pro v3.6 and CE 3.16
We’ve introduced a new project theme for Dradis. Tylium* is more than sprucing up the design with sleek lines and modern styles. It incorporates thoughtful details to improve your workflow and provides us greater flexibility to address your UI feedback moving forward.
This is a big visual change, but you won’t have to hunt for the Dradis items you rely on since they haven’t gone too far from the previous theme, Snowcrash. We’ve minimized the impact on your day-to-day use of Dradis by keeping the feel and flow of the app familiar.
Snowcrash vs Tylium
Tylium optimizes your workspace, keeping the purpose of each view in mind. It adds space where you need more real estate for updating findings and resizes or rearranges elements when you need to see the big picture. An example of this can be seen with the collapsible sidebar that adds roughly 20% more space and keeps all sections of the app quickly accessible, even adding a dashboard link to the project summary.
Now you see it, now you don’t!
As always, we’re eager to hear what you think. If you have feedback on Tylium drop a comment here, send it via email, or share it in Slack.
*It is SOP at Security Roots that we honor our nerdoms where we can. Snowcrash, the previous theme, is a nod to Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk novel of the same name. Our love of Battlestar Galactica continues on with the new theme, paying homage to the powerful fuel source used in the series – Tylium.
Report Generation Errors
Everyone knows that validating your report before generating it will save you a headache tracking down problems with the report later. Now, the validator is more helpful by providing additional context to help locate the problematic evidence. While we are preventing headaches if your report has errors that are detected during generation the option to download it won’t be displayed.
Oooh, there’s the problem!
Release Notes
Update app to new Tylium layout
Add the ability for kits to update an instance’s Plugin Manager templates
Add revision history for cards
Bugs fixed:
Updated support beacon. Legacy support was dropped for older versions
Fix errors on content overwrite flash messages
Fail and redirect to login instead of raising an error when attempting to log in as a user that has been removed
When a report export is invalid and errors we disable the download button to prevent further errors
Fix the mail initializer not finding existing configuration settings from the db
Fix Cancel link path for the Note Edit page
Fix services_extras not being excluded from Excel exports
Fix Rule checking for non-existent fields
Integration enhancements:
CVSSv3 calculator provides access to all Temporal/Environmental fields
Reporting enhancements:
Add support for ellipsis
Better Evidence references on failed validations
REST/JSON API enhancements:
Add team (team id, team name, team_since) in the teams API endpoint
Security Fixes:
High: Authenticated author can no longer continue to make project changes and will be logged out after being disabled by an admin
Medium: Prevent admins from updating other user’s comments
When the WPScan team approached us in late 2019 offering to create an integration for Dradis, we were excited to work together. What goes together better than a WordPress security scanning tool and an easy way to turn those findings into a customized report? Maybe chocolate and peanut butter, but the Dradis WPScan integration is much more likely to result in a more secure website.
Time to update WordPress 😬
WordPress powers 35% of the Internet’s websites from hobby blogs to Fortune 50 companies. WordPress’ ease of use, well-established community, and extensive plugins offerings (55,457 as of this post) make it an attractive option for creating a presence online. Unfortunately, these same charms also make WordPress an easy and frequent target for attack.
In 2011, while investigating his own blog’s security, Ryan Dewhurst created a script that combined testing for WordPress’ vulnerabilities into a single tool. This script, now WPScan, enumerates usernames, plugins, and themes, performs brute force password attacks, and identifies the version of WordPress on a target.
WPScan contributors went on to create WPVulnDB to manage the ever-growing list of known WordPress vulnerabilities in an online database. When used together, WPScan and WPVulnDB API provide realtime detailed vulnerabilities and recommendations in your scan results.
This new Dradis WPScan integration makes it a snap for you to import the results of your WPScan directly to a Dradis Project. Each target maps to a node within your Dradis project, any vulnerabilities found in a plugin, theme, or setup become Dradis issues, and when evidence is available – like a list of enumerated usernames – it is pulled into Dradis as evidence.
Ready to get started with Dradis and WPScan?
The steps to add the Dradis WPScan integration to Dradis CE or Dradis Pro are similar for both editions.
Add or edit the Gemfile.plugins file. The file locations for each edition is listed below
Now you can have your notifications emailed to you when you aren’t working in a Dradis project. Each user can adjust their notification settings to receive them individually as they happen, in a daily digest, or not at all. Get started using email notifications by configuring the mail server on your Dradis Pro instance.
A few @mention enhancements are in this release, including loading an @mentioned user’s profile photo or gravatar so you quickly spot who is in the conversation.
Burp Suite Issue severity
The way that Burp Suite handles severity is different than other integrations. Burp assigns severity to each instance of an issue as evidence and doesn’t assign severity to the issue directly. As a result, this was leading to several pieces of evidence with different severity levels for an issue with no assigned severity in Dradis. Now, Dradis will assign the issue severity using the highest evidence severity level.
Table Sorting
Finding the information you are looking for in a long table is easier with table sorting. Tables in Dradis can be sorted by any column. Click on the column heading of your choice and presto, change-o the table is sorted.
Release Notes
Email notifications
Add notification settings to decide how often to get email notifications
Add a smtp.yml config file to handle the SMTP configuration
Preserve SMTP configuration on updates
Various mention related improvements:
Enhance the mentions box in comments to close when it is open and the page is scrolled.
Fix bug that prevents the mentions dialog from appearing after navigating through the app.
Fix elongated avatar images so they are round once again.
Added avatar images to mentions in comments.
Load Gravatars for users whose email has been set up with gravatar.
Add and update methodology download links to Dradis Portal
Enhancement when adding new nodes to copy node label data between the single and multiple node forms.
All tables can be sorted by column
Bugs fixed:
Fix handling of pipe character in node property tables
Fix projects count not updating in teams view
Fix error on team page when showing primary team
Fix overflow issue where the content would expand out of view
Fix page jump when issues list is collapsed
Fix conflicting version message when updating records with ajax
Fix hamburger dropdown menu functionality.
Fix node merging bug when `services_extras` properties are present
Fix cross-project info rendering
Prevent content block group names to be whitespaces only
Fix displaying of content blocks with no block groups
Limit project name length when viewing a project
Removed bullet style in node modals
Validate parent node project
Integration enhancements:
Burp: Make `issue.severity` available at the Issue level
Nessus: Fixed bullet points formatting to handle internal text column widths
Nexpose: Wrap ciphers in code blocks
Netsparker: Fix link parsing of issue.external_references
Jira: Loading custom (required) fields from JIRA by IssueType and Project
REST/JSON API enhancements:
Fix disappearing owner when assigning authors to a Project using the API
Set the “by” attribute for item revisions when using the API
Another Hacker Summer Camp is in the books. As always, there was a lot to see and do – more than any single human could hope to fit into a month, much less a week. Even so, I made it to Black Hat Tools Arsenal, BSides Las Vegas, DEF CON, and volunteered for the Diana Initiative. After a year and a half of working on the Security Roots team, I met Daniel in person and we promptly started talking shop in the middle of a Mandalay Bay hallway. I took a few hours to celebrate a milestone with a fantastic dinner and show. All of that in six days and though it was exhausting, I can’t wait to return.
Daniel and Tabatha snuck into this photo late. Photo credit to the Black Hat Tools Arsenal team.
My introduction to the hacker community was at BSides Orlando a few years back. Initially, I admit that was a bit intimidated to attend a hacker conference. Portrayed in the media as egotistical superbrains or criminals hiding beneath black hoodies ready to drain your bank account, hackers aren’t presented as a welcoming bunch. While those elements exist, what I found there and continue to experience was a group of people eager to share their knowledge and answer my constant questions. The energy and collaborative spirit of the community had me hooked. I was hungry to learn more and later that same year, I volunteered at BSides Las Vegas.
BSides Las Vegas
This year I returned to BSides Las Vegas as a volunteer with the Diana Initiative. Thanks to the generosity of BSides we had an early check-in table for Diana attendees. Much of my day I spent sharing details on the Diana Initiative from how it began, where to find tickets, to how to get involved. The overwhelmingly positive feedback was supportive of the need to increase diversity in information security. I didn’t much chance to check out the talks but there are a few on my list to watch.
Black Hat Tools Arsenal
Daniel presenting at Black Hat Tools Arsenal 2019
Black Hat is the corporate side of the whole week and had a slightly different energy. I joined Daniel for the Dradis presentation at the Tools Arsenal. In my mind, I would show up in my Dradis shirt, hand out a few stickers, and take pictures of Daniel showcasing Dradis CE. Once there, I embraced the opportunity to chat with customers and talk with people about Dradis. I found myself repeating, “If it has been a while, give Dradis CE another look – so much has changed.”
DEF CON 27
Welcome to DEF CON 27
It can be challenging to make connections at a conference this size. Unlike other large events I’ve attended, smaller distinct groups within the con space allow you to focus your attention and find like-minded folks. No matter your interest, there is a group. There are villages, workshops, talks, meetups, parties, and one of my favorite spaces – hallcon. Finding someone to talk to is pretty easy since #badgelife has most attendees wearing roughly a pound of gear on a lanyard around Las Vegas. This year’s DEF CON badge game worked particularly well to strike up hallway conversations while asking to “boop” someone’s badge.
Tabatha’s badges. A small amount compared to some.
Our staff pirate Christoffer’s post piqued my interest in maritime security, so I made it a point to stop by the inaugural Hack the Sea village. There was a good bit of discussion about the security of our seas even in casual conversation outside of the village, ranging from ICS to the antiquated technologies observed or used onboard. I visited the IoT village long enough to swear off of my existing IoT devices (but not really). While I was there, I cheered on friends that were competing in the IoT CTF.
The evenings held additional opportunities to connect with other attendees, just as varied as the talk and villages. Who doesn’t love a blanket fort? Blanketfortcon has you covered (see what I did there?) with an adult size blanket fort and bounce pad. Hacker Jeopardy is always hilarious, but I laughed the hardest during “Whose Slide Is It Anyways” watching contestants present using a slide deck they had never seen. Parties ranged from bass-thumping events going long into the early morning to more subdued gatherings with board games and great conversation.
Diana Initiative
If I am up at 6 am in Las Vegas, it is for one of two reasons; I am still up from the night before or I am volunteering somewhere. These days it is 100% the latter option, and I was excited to join the Diana Initiate staff to run registration. It turns out I particularly enjoy running registration and check-in, which I can only attribute this to having a generally sunny disposition and a love of spreadsheets. After months of hard work with the rest of the team, it was a gift to greet attendees, speakers, and sponsors and to witness their excitement for the days ahead.
Lodrina Cherne and Tabatha with MaliciousLife swag for Diana Initiative. Photo credit Lodrina Cherne
Diana Initiative has grown from its initial years held in hotel suites and for the first time organized convention space at the Westin. This year Diana Initiative had 65 speakers across three tracks that covered both technical and non-technical skills, several villages, and a CTF. It was a nice break from the noise and crowds of the DEF CON and fostered a welcoming environment for attendees, many at Hacker Summer Camp for the first time. The quieter gathering, smaller size, and inclusivity made for an inviting atmosphere to new faces and established security professionals alike.
Do the thing.
Attending camp this year felt different than my last visit. There are noticeably more women in attendance, to the credit of organizations like WoSEC, WISP, Women’s Society of Cyberjustu, and Diana Initiative. There was plenty of evidence of the work that organizers and volunteers have put in to create an inclusive and safe week including the DEF CON support hotline and improved Code of Conduct. It was incredibly inspiring to connect with the many people that are elevating diversity and bringing change in this fantastic community.
Throughout the week, everyone I spoke with remarked that there is room for everyone in information security; quoting struggles finding qualified candidates and too-large workloads. Increasing the number of women not only brings more workers to the industry, but each person brings a unique lens to approach privacy and security challenges. No matter who you are or what your background, consider this your invitation. Show up, do the work, learn the things, and take your place. And then, share what you know. See you next year!
Dradis Framework is a collaboration and reporting tool for information security teams to manage and deliver the results of security assessments, in less time and with less frustration than manual methods.
Node Methodology
Add a methodology to a node containing the details appropriate for that node type. Create and apply methodology templates to ensure everyone on the team knows the next steps for that node. Project methodologies are still available; these new methodologies bring the same consistency to nodes.
Merging Nodes
If you have ended up duplicate nodes in your project, you can now merge them and preserve any findings related to that node. The new node merge action moves all associated Notes, Evidence, Attachment, and Activities from the source node into the target node.
Highlight Inside Code Blocks
Call attention to the most important details within a code block. Wrap the section with $${{ }}$$ to highlight it in yellow. The highlights transfer to your final report using styling updated in your report template.
Collapsable Sidebars
If your project has a long list of issues or attachments, it can be unwieldy to quickly access the import fields at the bottom to add more. The sidebars are now collapsable using the chevron at the top of the list and are expanded by default. Issues, Report content, and Nodes received this UI update to help you move through a cleaner interface.
Release Notes
Allow nodes to have an associated methodology
Highlight code snippets.
Better new board form empty name handling
Fix migration paths during database setup
Collapsable sidebar in issues
Collapsable sidebar in report content
Better placeholder syntax in Issuelib
Contributor dashboard redesign
Fix screenshot validator when Textile screenshot links have captions
Add Node merging feature
REST/JSON API:
New coverage: Tester users
Word reports:
Add CodeHighlight style support
Add-on enhancements:
Nexpose: Add risk-score attribute to nodes
Nmap: Add port.service.tunnel field to the port template
Remediation tracker: tickets can be assigned to testers and contributors, and contributors can see their tickets too.
Dradis Professional Edition is a collaboration and reporting tool for information security teams that will help you deliver the results of security assessments, in a fraction of the time without the time-wasting frustration of creating manual reports.
What’s new in Dradis Pro v3.3
Auto-Save
There are few things more frustrating than losing work in progress when your connection drops, browser crashes, or you close the wrong tab. Dradis now automatically saves your changes every few seconds to help avoid this problem. When you return to work, and auto-saved data is available, restore your work from the browser’s cached version.
Configuration Kits
Get started with Dradis Pro with a click of a button using kits. Use a Dradis kit to set up an instance tailored to your needs just by uploading a single file. A single kit zip file can quickly import and configure a project, report, issue, and evidence templates and properties, Rules Engine rules, methodologies, and sample projects. Admins can still tweak and configure Dradis manually; kits offer a simple way to jumpstart setup.
Azure DevOps / VSTS
Send any issue from a Dradis project to Azure DevOps (formerly Visual Studio Team Services / Team Foundation Server) to create a Work Item. Once sent, the Issue in Dradis displays the state of Work Item so you can keep track of remediation activities without leaving Dradis.
Dradis Professional Edition is a collaboration and reporting tool for information security teams that will help you deliver the results of security assessments, in a fraction of the time without the time-wasting frustration of creating manual reports.
What’s new in Dradis Pro v3.2
Here is Rachael with a quick video summary of what’s new in this release:
Integrated CVSSv3 Calculator
Quickly generate a CVSSv3 Risk score for an individual issue directly in Dradis. The CVSSv3 score calculator is now included as a tab on each issue for handy access. Edit the values on the calculator to populate the issue’s CVSSv3 details, including a valid vector string, with no need to copy and paste!
IssueLibrary ships with Dradis Pro⛵
Ever wish that the IssueLibrary wasn’t a separate installation and upgrade process from Dradis Pro? Wish no more! IssueLibrary is now bundled with Dradis Pro.
If you haven’t been using IssueLibrary, now is your pain-free opportunity to give it a spin. Cultivate a collection of your finest vulnerability descriptions to reuse across your Dradis Pro projects.
Already have vulnerability descriptions in another format outside of Dradis? Reach out to our support team and they can set you up to easily migrate them into IssueLibrary.
Upgrading from an earlier version of the IssueLibrary? You must first remove IssueLibrary before applying the DUP by deleting the IssueLibrary line from /opt/dradispro/dradispro/current/Gemfile.plugins.
IssueLibrary API endpoints
The IssueLibrary is the newest API endpoint to be added to Dradis Pro. Use this new endpoint to create, update, retrieve and delete IssueLibrary entries. Check out the IssueLibrary API guide for examples to get started.
