QNX: 99 Problems but a Microkernel ain't one!

March 16, 2016 (at 1:30 p.m.) in Attack & Research

Cars, Turbines, Safety Critical Systems and consumer devices (phones) all run QNX, however, very little security research has been performed in this area. This talk will provide an overview of QNX security architecture with Blackberry 10 used as the primary target. We will discuss research on a locked down highly secured OS, the OS attack surface and our method for identifying weaknesses within the QNX OS. We will cover our methods of identifying vulnerabilities from both a reverse engineering perspective and automated fuzzing. This talk will provide a good overview of how the subsystems on QNX communication and how an attacker would attempt to elevate their privileges. We will also talk about some of the weaknesses identified with this on-going research and the challenges faced with exploit development on the platform.

The whitepaper can be found at: https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/assets/BlogFiles/mwri-qnx-security-whitepaper-2016-03-14.pdf

Georgi Geshev

Georgi is a security researcher for MWR InfoSecurity in the UK. Born in the Eastern Bloc, a true wannabe Aussie now, he appreciates roo steaks and golden ales. His main areas of interest include bug hunting, reverse engineering and network protocols. It is a well-known fact that Georgi only knows about MQ technology.

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Alex Plaskett

Alex is currently Head of Technical Research at MWR InfoSecurity in the UK. Alex is best known for Windows Phone security and identifying a large number of OEM introduced weaknesses on the platform. Alex has previously presented at Deepsec, BlueHat, T2.Fi, 44con, and SyScan.

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