grapescheeseeon Hacker News • Recommends
On “FBI sounds alarm as QR code usage soars”
Richard Henderson had a talk at the last Defcon about QR codes. I'd recommended checking it out. Video - link to this video PDF of slides - link
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DEF CON 29 - Richard Henderson - Old MacDonald Had a Barcode, E I E I CAR
DEFCONConference
419K subscribers • 61 videos on Hallway • Conference channel
- Recommended by 4 people: 4 on Hacker News.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2022 to 2026.
- Presented by Richard Henderson
Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.
18K views5 years ago4 recommendations
SecurityWeb and application securityExploits and vulnerabilities
Richard Henderson demonstrates how encoding the EICAR antivirus test string into QR codes and barcodes can cause scanning systems to crash.
For decades, the EICAR test string has been used by antivirus and security vendors to safely test their detection engines without having to use live virulent samples which could cause harm. What would happen if you took that string, encoded it into a machine readable format like a QR code and started scanning various devices with the QR code? This talk shows how there are a lot of systems out there that aren't expecting an input string like EICAR and how many of them just collapse when shown the code. We will also discuss the types of systems you can target and how you may be able to extend this to more than a nuisance attack. REFERENCES: EICAR test string: eicar.org/?page_id=3950 EICAR wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file QR codes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code Risks surrounding QR codes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#RisksWhy it's here
4 people recommend thisWhat people say. Recommended for its entertaining and practical demonstration of how legacy antivirus scanning logic fails when triggered via physical barcodes.
jrockwayon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Horrible edge cases to consider when dealing with music (2022)”
…ur filenames and database so that the OS can't pry into the details. Since you hopefully didn't write your music player in C, there should be no way that a virus can affect your music player. (While I was researching this post, I found an interesting Defcon talk about what happens when you turn the EICAR virus signature into a QR code and scan it. link to this video A lot of stuff breaks! I almost got forced into adding similar breakage. At work we make what is essentially a database, and we got acquired by A Large Company, which had to do a security audit of our software. One of the "security vulnerabilities" in our product was that we don't scan the data in the database for viruses. We pushed back to…
Full_Clarkon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)”
There's a good DEFCON 29 presentation on this topic. link to this video If you skip forward to 16m 33s you'll be treated to a lively streak of invective from the passenger of a car whose driver has just confirmed that feeding EICAR to a parking system prevents it from letting any vehicle past the barrier.
tethaon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Claude system prompt bug wastes user money and bricks managed agents”
Do have way too much fun with EICAR: link to this video This guy put the EICAR test string into a barcode and started to scan it on various systems, with rather funny effects.
dogleashon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship”
>innocuous QR code might automatically download an image Just a few days ago at DEF CON some presenter had been going around with the EICAR test string in a QR code and having fun with all the forced AV hits that can cause. link to this video link
fortran77on Hacker News • Mentions
On “Gas pumps happen to be about as insecure as your typical router”
You can shut down all sorts of things with the EICAR string encoded as a QR code. See: link and this video link to this video where all the gates at a parking garage are rendered inoperable because someone scanned a QR code that encoded EICAR