CNet reviewers gave HPPE four out of five stars!
They loved the useability of the product, the interface and the idea surrounding it.
You can read more about it here.
Apparently, it would have gotten 5 stars, but they did not like the fact that connections from 127.0.0.1 (localhost) are ignored and that this feature is not in the documentation. We will add it into the docs in the future, but 4 out 5 stars is a wonderful response. Thanks CNet!
One of the unexpected side effects of HoneyPoint deployments has been the discovery of misconfigured applications and hardware in the network. Many customers have identified several applications and devices that were either not configured properly or were acting in unexpected and undocumented ways. HoneyPoint clients have been giving us great feedback that this has helped them reign in this wrongful behavior and that they would likely have never known about it if they had not deployed HoneyPoint.
Some of the items they have discovered have included web-applications that open return sessions to port 80 or 443 on the host – often for no apparent reason, illicit web-requests to domain servers due to misconfigured SQL and LDAP controls and even a couple of applications that performed simplistic host port scans in odd attempts to identify the originating host or use as a “host fingerprint” – neither of which are effective mechanisms for access control.
Clients have also told us that HoneyPoint has helped them find hosts that are not obeying the standard rules of their environment. For example, one client moved their DNS server from the DNS location assigned by DHCP and then changed the DHCP server. A few days later, he stood up a port 53 HoneyPoint to capture hosts that had set their DNS as static instead of using the established DHCP method. Doing so helped him clean up some hosts that remained in older configurations and even identify a help desk technician that was not configuring systems accordance with their standards. They claim that HoneyPoint was an incredible tool in helping them find the hosts that were just not up to par.
As the product matures, we continually get more and more feedback from clients about innovative uses for the tools. If your organization has leveraged HoneyPoint in new ways, please let us know so we can share them with others who may be able to benefit from the idea. As always, thanks for the attention to the product, we truly love the feedback and the incredibly warm response it continues to receive from people and organizations around the world!
MicroSolved, Inc. is pleased to announce that its SecureAssure vulnerability assessment solution has successfully completed the PCI Scanning Vendor Compliance Testing. This process allows MicroSolved to serve as an ASV for organizations concerned with PCI compliance.
“More organizations can now benefit from working with MicroSolved as their information security partner. Companies with compliance needs centering on payment cards can now leverage our exceptional methodologies and world class reporting. In addition, our process of manual vulner- ability verification eliminates much of the overhead and complexity of compliance by removing false positives and keeping your resources focused on the real problems.” stated Brent Huston, CEO of MicroSolved.
For more information, or to schedule assessments of your organization, please contact your account executive via phone or click here for email.
MSI attended the latest CUISPA event in Boston last week and it was a fantastic show. Credit union security folks were in attendance from all around the US and the speakers did a fine job of knowledge transfer.
Many thanks to all who stopped by the booth and showed their appreciation for our State of the Threat updates to CUISPA members. We have made arrangements with CUISPA to keep them coming each quarter!
I am not allowed to “spill the beans”, but in appreciation of our warm reception, we will soon be making a very special offer to all CUISPA members. Stay tuned to both CUISPA and our site to learn about this special offer that just might make your future workload quite a bit lighter! 😉
Thanks again for the warm welcome in Boston. Special thanks to Kelly at CUISPA for the awesome event!
By: Pete Goodliffe
Publisher: No Starch Press
Price: $44.95
Rating (out of 5): *****
This is an excellent book about moving from average software development to professional-grade software development. The book basically covers the topics needed to teach developers how to make better software in a more effective manner than may be happening in many organizations today. Topics covered include: effective commenting and documentation, industry standards for software testing (including security), interface design standards, group development practices, mechanisms for spec development and code review and even insights into managing programmers more effectively.
If you are a developer or manage a group of developers, this book will teach you the softer skills to complement the technical skills you have already mastered. Given the complexity of today’s software, it is these softer skills that often make all the difference between career success and remaining “one of the code jockeys”.
My favorite thing about this book is the insightful tone it uses to get its point across. It truly reflects wisdom and experience from the author without getting the “preachy tone” some technical books seem to take on. Be prepared though, the book is big, some 500+ pages of actual content – so if you just finished that huge Harry Potter book everyone is reading, this may seem a little longer than you like for reading in your easy chair. But, unlike Harry Potter, this book’s payoff is long term career growth and skills improvement!
By: Chris Sanders
Publisher: No Starch Press
Price: $39.95
Rating (out of 5): ****
This book is an excellent introduction to the basics of packet analysis. It gives good introductions to the basics of protocols, use of Wireshark, sniffer deployment and the other skills needed to perform packet capture and inspection.
Packet analysis is a vital skill for network technicians and security folks. This book takes users through a variety of scenarios including wireless network sniffing, protocol debugging and even attack inspection. In addition to Wireshark, it also covers getting dumps from Cain and other common sources.
The book is easy to read, easy to follow and the graphics are very readable. The scenarios are very detailed and reality based. All in all, if you need to get the basics of packet analysis down pat, this is a very good place to start.
Scripting and an understanding of scripting languages are critical skills for infosec folks. Not only do they lend themselves to understanding threats and attacker tools, but in many cases they make it possible for automation to assist the infosec practitioner in performing many of their duties and can help them be more effective in environments where large quantities of data must be analyzed against common issues or have similar functions performed repeatedly.
In my opinion, here is a quick summary of the top 5 scripting skills infosec folks should have or pursue.
1. Shell scripting or batch file programming – These skills are essential for the day to day work of an infosec technician. Such programming often increases the effectiveness of work tasks and brings greater quality to things like data analysis, basic reporting and other essential functions.
2. PERL – Perl is just plain critical. It is THE language of performing complex analysis of data, automating many security focused tasks and even doing socket-based network and application work. Perl is easy to learn, simple enough to manage and powerful enough to automate complex tasks. If you need a swiss army knife programming language, Perl will rise to the challenge.
3. Javascript – This language is essential to understanding modern web mechanisms and attacks. Basic knowledge of Javascript will take practitioners far into the web-application realm and can be leveraged to gain knowledge of AJAX, SOAP and deeper web architectures. While it can also be used for some simple forms of web-based assistance or aggregation, it may not be an overwhelming aid to your productivity like other languages, but in order to have even basic web-application skills, it is simply a must.
4. Python – Python is the quick hack choice for doing network and socket-based tool prototyping. Its rich and simple socket controls make it a clear choice for pen-testers and other developers of “quick and dirty” code. It makes a fantastic alternate choice for Perl folks, and can be used to do some effective data parsing as well. The syntax seems to be even easier than Perl and many folks become proficient in it more quickly than Perl.
5. Ruby – Ruby is the Perl of the future. It is a fantastic prototyping language and of course, it powers Rails, which makes it a growing giant in Web 2.0. Ruby and Ruby on Rails (RoR) can be leveraged by security folks to quickly create demonstration sites, to establish honeypot sites and even to create web-based tools quickly to share with others in their organization. In addition, Ruby alone can be used to automate large amounts of data processing, create custom reports and can be just as useful and powerful as Perl. Depending on how the future of Ruby shakes out, it might even surpass Perl in the future as the critical language for doing real work, so it makes sense to add it to your repertoire.
There you have it. Take the time to learn the basics of these scripting languages and then look for places in your daily work to apply automation. As your skills grow, likely your capabilities to automate much of the manual work you do will grow as well. Who knows, you might just automate yourself back into having free time again. Not to worry though, that would just give you even more time to concentrate on your scripting skills!
Is this what it has come to in Homeland Security now?
Chertoff Claims “Gut Feeling” About Summer Attacks
I normally try and stay away from public commentary on DHS goings on, but this seems so devoid of reason that I just had to talk about it. So, here we go…
First off, I would like to see the true risk assessment behind the idea that terrorists prefer summer for attacks. I simply do not believe this and in my opinion, it smacks of a lack of reason. Do we really believe that if our enemies discovered a soft target that they could exploit that they would even consider waiting for a specific season to attack us? I mean, everything we know about terrorism shows patterns of exploiting identified weaknesses with haste. Even the attacks sited as references to the summer attack pattern talked about in the articles were performed with minimal planning and tactical processes. They certainly were not part of campaigns designed to be sustained over long periods like multiple seasons. What from these events and other recent attacks around the world do we leverage to gain the insight that terrorists attacks are more likely in the warm summer sun?
Secondly, the idea that we are now making public announcements about potential threats using the DHS leader’s “gut feelings” as a barometer makes me pretty crazy. Now, I understand that he might have intelligence that is not open to the public, or he may be privy to some other form of insight that can’t yet (or ever) be shared, but the idea that we as Americans should take any action based on his own described “gut feeling” is preposterous. With all of the money we are budgeting for DHS and the war on terror, is “gut feelings” seriously the best they can offer in terms of threat prediction? I mean, honestly, wouldn’t we all feel better if they even tried to make something sound more plausible – like increased chatter, new emerging patterns in a chaotic stream or even some super computer somewhere that raised the theoretical attack threshold versus the overall security against terror inverse logarithmic curve or something. Anything. What’s next, war strategies by crystals, cards and dice? We are supposedly the most advanced culture in the history of this planet, I really really want something more reasonable from someone who is in charge of protecting our way of life…
Again, sorry for the rant, but I just couldn’t let this one pass by without raising my hand and asking “Huh?”…
With more and more integration of the voice world into the network, companies are finally waking up to the idea that VoIP brings rewards, but also risk. When the network was down and voice lived in the analog world, you could still talk to your customers and let them know you were having a few problems, but likely could assist them fully very soon. Now days, with VoIP riding the same network as email and other applications, if the network is down – likely so are the phones.
That, in itself is a risk many organizations are not used to. They just seem to be coming to terms with the other issues that surround VoIP confidentiality, integrity and availability. For a long time, VoIP has been becoming “main stream”, but now security around VoIP seems to be on everyone’s mind too.
This is a good trend. VoIP is a very cool and rich technology, and one that levels the playing field for many organizations. It brings with it some exciting capabilities and powerful features. I think as organizations grow their understanding of VoIP risks, technical issues and security requirements – it can only help with better, safer, more effective VoIP adoption.
So, if you are considering a VoIP deployment, or you already have one – make sure you include steps for risk assessment, vulnerability testing and an in-depth review of the architecture, processes and procedures involved with both management and security. Taking the time to include security considerations into the decision and testing matrices will probably save you quite a bit of time, effort and money down the road – not to mention the savings of any incidents that you will prevent!
In response to a couple of emails I got from readers in regards to the post about HPSS detecting malicious activity earlier than most NIDS/NIPS I wanted to take a moment and clarify a couple of things.
First, HoneyPoint Security Server (HPSS) is not a panacea. It is one component of a network defense. MSI does not suggest you replace your existing defenses with HPSS, we suggest that you integrate HPSS into your existing environment and use it as a tool to identify malicious traffic in a new way. Quite frankly, using HPSS and a system & log monitoring tool like OSSEC, you can quickly, easily and cheaply create a pretty effective defensive posture for your internal systems and evolve to using NIDS/NIPS as forensic tools, where they are much more effective in terms of ROI.
HPSS is designed to integrate into existing security architectures. Our console can simply drop our security alerts to syslog/event logs and hand them off to any existing tools, aggregators or SIM products you may have in place. Our plugin interface allows you to use third party tools to do things like send SNMP alerts, communicate with other network devices and facilitate IPS-style responses such as quarantine, automated port shutdowns and the like.
By leveraging HPSS and the new capabilities it brings for detecting malicious behaviors, you can make your IDS/IPS postures that much more effective. In the port-scanning model from the previous post, our HoneyPoint detected a single connection. That connection, depending on your environment could be grounds enough to warrant IPS-style responses. So, HPSS could send an alert to your IPS or SIM that could then take the action you deem appropriate – whether that is an email alert to an admin or an automatic port shutdown by your IPS on the network switch of the offender. The point is, you make the decision, as always how to handle issues, but HPSS gives you a faster, more reliable way to identify the bad stuff and can communicate with whatever your existing security infrastructure is to facilitate the responses.
This is just another way that HPSS achieves such a high ROI. You gain new capabilities without throwing away the investments you have already made. Add to that the fact that HPSS runs on your existing hardware, lowers your false positive rate to near zero and helps you focus on the real security issues instead of chasing ghosts and you can pretty easily see why people get so excited about it.
I hope that answers the questions about HPSS integration and strategy. Feel free to email me or give me a call to discuss any other questions you may have!