- Apr 25, 2015
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Through the years, you may have known of our website as R4P3.NET - we oftentimes developed security-related PoC examples for TeamSpeak 3 to showcase weaknesses and simultaneously created our own patches for TeamSpeak's software before they sometimes did. It was great fun having the R4P3 security team walk circles around TeamSpeak to eventually have a TeamSpeak meeting with two of their CEOs (USA / Germany).
As our team slowly disassembled into the darkness as busy lives eventually do (work, school, family) and our contributions toward TeamSpeak began to dwindle, we realized a large amount of our abandonment was a result of the TeamSpeak software itself drowning in the overtaking of market share by their competitor, Discord. Our TeamSpeak security team days were joyful and we found a laundry list of security issues with a primary focus on ensuring the gamer community and all other TeamSpeak users stayed safe online.
Eventually, we wanted to drop the R4P3 name because it scares people. TeamSpeak themselves tried to write a contract with us for like $100 and at that moment, I realized two things. TeamSpeak sucks or they do not pay at all for security - likely also the name R4P3 does not look professional no matter how you spin it. You cannot convince people to draw up "rape" into a business document and expect to get paid fairly. Everyone knows for the work the R4P3 team was doing - we deserved $10,000+ easily.
For crying out loud, we found a highly wormable issue in both the TeamSpeak 3 client and TeamSpeak 3 server software, this would have resulted in a complete infection across all TS3 users. Thankfully we used our research for good and reported this intel immediately to the TeamSpeak developers with the "MOST FREAKING EVER HIGH CRITICAL LEVELS!! FIX TODAY, STAY UP ALL NIGHT" - that is basically what we screamed to their CEOs in email. They listened and if they did not, TeamSpeak may have hit news headlines for the scale of infection that was possible, we are talking about potential for 1 MILLION users added to a botnet within a week. Very easily, because the worm just spread without user interaction. Nothing to it. Go in any TeamSpeak 3 server? Infected. To reiterate, we stopped this attack before it was fully executed and also found it. This is a prime example of what ethical hackers do.
Once we dropped the R4P3 name, we chose Ciphers.Pw but as we all know there is simply never a TLD/gTLD that will ever reach the level of fame the "dotcom gold rush", a period of time around 1995-2000s where stocks soared for companies holding a ".com" registered domain. Put simply, if a company wants to be taken seriously - they really should have a .com domain registered and for the love of God, drop the "www." already, we are off dial-up. The answer is Noirth.com - a simple, elegant, and bold name.
Noir means dark while North means up; ascend. Dark north, dark ascent, and whatever else you can think of - that is us. Our new security team, our new community, our new entity to operate. From here on, Noirth is what we are - who we are! We stand for doing the right things online, putting in hard work, and making sure to stay humble while finding profitable niches to execute within. Expect more VIP content, trust Noirth to deliver. Bookmark https://noirth.com/ because our forum will be loading there this coming Friday.
Northward,
Asphyxia
As our team slowly disassembled into the darkness as busy lives eventually do (work, school, family) and our contributions toward TeamSpeak began to dwindle, we realized a large amount of our abandonment was a result of the TeamSpeak software itself drowning in the overtaking of market share by their competitor, Discord. Our TeamSpeak security team days were joyful and we found a laundry list of security issues with a primary focus on ensuring the gamer community and all other TeamSpeak users stayed safe online.
Eventually, we wanted to drop the R4P3 name because it scares people. TeamSpeak themselves tried to write a contract with us for like $100 and at that moment, I realized two things. TeamSpeak sucks or they do not pay at all for security - likely also the name R4P3 does not look professional no matter how you spin it. You cannot convince people to draw up "rape" into a business document and expect to get paid fairly. Everyone knows for the work the R4P3 team was doing - we deserved $10,000+ easily.
For crying out loud, we found a highly wormable issue in both the TeamSpeak 3 client and TeamSpeak 3 server software, this would have resulted in a complete infection across all TS3 users. Thankfully we used our research for good and reported this intel immediately to the TeamSpeak developers with the "MOST FREAKING EVER HIGH CRITICAL LEVELS!! FIX TODAY, STAY UP ALL NIGHT" - that is basically what we screamed to their CEOs in email. They listened and if they did not, TeamSpeak may have hit news headlines for the scale of infection that was possible, we are talking about potential for 1 MILLION users added to a botnet within a week. Very easily, because the worm just spread without user interaction. Nothing to it. Go in any TeamSpeak 3 server? Infected. To reiterate, we stopped this attack before it was fully executed and also found it. This is a prime example of what ethical hackers do.
Once we dropped the R4P3 name, we chose Ciphers.Pw but as we all know there is simply never a TLD/gTLD that will ever reach the level of fame the "dotcom gold rush", a period of time around 1995-2000s where stocks soared for companies holding a ".com" registered domain. Put simply, if a company wants to be taken seriously - they really should have a .com domain registered and for the love of God, drop the "www." already, we are off dial-up. The answer is Noirth.com - a simple, elegant, and bold name.
Noir means dark while North means up; ascend. Dark north, dark ascent, and whatever else you can think of - that is us. Our new security team, our new community, our new entity to operate. From here on, Noirth is what we are - who we are! We stand for doing the right things online, putting in hard work, and making sure to stay humble while finding profitable niches to execute within. Expect more VIP content, trust Noirth to deliver. Bookmark https://noirth.com/ because our forum will be loading there this coming Friday.
Northward,
Asphyxia
