From Dare to Discovery: How OSINT and Modern Recon Techniques Uncovered a Global VPN Infrastructure

What started as a weekend gaming session and a friendly dare evolved into discovering critical vulnerabilities affecting OpenVPN endpoints on a global scale.

This talk demonstrates a comprehensive reconnaissance methodology that combines traditional OSINT techniques with modern cloud-based intelligence gathering to map and exploit critical infrastructure at scale.

The presentation follows a complete attack chain that showcases advanced reconnaissance techniques:

Phase 1: Intelligence Discovery & Infrastructure Mapping

1. VirusTotal RetroHunt OSINT: Writing custom YARA signatures to discover 50+ vulnerable drivers across the internet, demonstrating how one vulnerability discovery can reveal widespread systemic issues

2. Supply Chain Intelligence: OSINT techniques to identify that OpenVPN (the world's most popular open-source VPN) was the common denominator, affecting thousands of companies and numerous endpoints

3. Target Profiling: Understanding OpenVPN's multi-process architecture, plugin mechanisms, and Windows internals through open-source research

Phase 2: Remote Reconnaissance & Credential Harvesting

1. Network Enumeration: SMB enumeration, null session exploitation, and remote named pipe discovery

2. Credential Intelligence: Capturing NTLMv2 hashes through network reconnaissance and social engineering techniques

3. Cloud-Powered Cracking: Leveraging cloud GPU infrastructure (VAST.AI + Hashcat) to crack enterprise credentials at scale, demonstrating how modern attackers use accessible cloud resources

Phase 3: Remote-to-Local Attack Chain

1. Remote Code Execution: Using UNC paths and OpenVPN's plugin mechanism to execute code remotely

2. Local Privilege Escalation: "Open Potato" attack - exploiting named pipe hijacking and Windows impersonation for LPE

3. Security Product Bypass: Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) techniques to achieve kernel code execution and bypass security solutions

Reconnaissance Applications:

The methodologies demonstrated can be repurposed for legitimate security activities:

1. Red Team Operations: Comprehensive target profiling and credential harvesting techniques

2. Bug Bounty Research: Systematic vulnerability discovery across software ecosystems

3. Threat Intelligence: Understanding how threat actors chain reconnaissance techniques

4. Infrastructure Assessment: Mapping organizational VPN deployments and security postures

The talk includes live demonstrations of:

- Custom YARA signature development for vulnerability hunting

- Cloud-based credential cracking workflows

- Remote service enumeration and exploitation

- Building comprehensive target profiles through passive reconnaissance

- Security product evasion techniques applicable to red team scenarios

Attendees will learn practical reconnaissance methodologies that can be immediately applied to their own security research, with emphasis on the intelligence gathering processes that enable sophisticated attack chains.