vulnerability

EncryptedSharedPreferences is Dead: Here’s What You Should Use Instead

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Android application developers often store sensitive data to disk, relying on physical device security and process isolation to prevent attackers from obtaining that data. This goes against security best practices, and doesn’t take advantage of the latest tools made available by Google to mitigate the risk of locally-stored sensitive data. This post explores what those tools are, discusses previous (now deprecated) methods for securing data locally, and provides recommendations for what Android developers should do if storing sensitive data is unavoidable.

Web App Pentesting in the AI Era

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The IncludeSec team explores the practical considerations of AI-assisted source code analysis. Observing results produced with frontier vs locally-hosted models, various harness orchestration designs, and a list of different language frameworks provided us with meaningful insights into how the modern pentester should be using AI to produce higher quality results (but not necessarily in less time!)

Immutable Strings in Java – Are Your Secrets Still Safe?

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Java programmers might not be aware their secrets could be floating around in system memory long after it’s assumed those secrets have been removed. The problem is a combination of immutability and garbage collection in Java. Our most recent post explores the unpredictability of Java garbage collection and the implications that has for secrets in code. We developed a simple proof of concept designed to measured these “secret ghosts” and demonstrate how to avoid them.

Production Security, Not That Kind

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The Include Security team takes a foray into the world of audio production equipment in our latest blog post. We look under the hood of a professional-grade audio mixer to explore its security profile, consider how its functionality could be leveraged by an attacker in a real world setting, and develop a proof-of-concept exploit to demonstrate quick n’ easy privilege escalation.

Coverage Guided Fuzzing – Extending Instrumentation to Hunt Down Bugs Faster!

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In our latest blog post, we introduce coverage-guided fuzzing with a brief description of fundamentals and a demonstration of how modifying program instrumentation can be used to more easily track down the source of vulnerabilities and identify interesting fuzzing paths.