Author Archives: Lisa Wallace

About Lisa Wallace

Lisa Wallace joined MSI in 2015 as a security focal and project manager, and became Technical Director in 2017. She is involved in internal and external penetration testing application assessments digital forensics threat intelligence incident response eDiscovery efforts She is responsible for scoping our efforts across all workstreams, as well as project and staff coordination and management. She has worked in a variety of fields, including utilities, financial services, telecommunications, and consulting in a number of ancillary industries.

How to Respond – BEC Series #5

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A few weeks ago, we published the Business Email Compromise (BEC) Checklist. The question arose – what if you’re new to security, or your security program isn’t very mature?

Since the checklist is based on the NIST model, there’s a lot of information here to help your security program mature, as well as to help you mature as a security practitioner. MSI’s engineers have discussed a few ways to leverage the checklist as a growth mechanism.

Part 1 and Part 2 covered the first checkpoint in the list – Identify. Part 3 covered the next checkpoint – Protect. Part 4 continued the series – Detect.

Now we’ll move along to one of the most important parts of the checklist – Respond.

Continue reading →

Get your magnifying glass – time to detect! BEC Series #4

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A few weeks ago, we published the Business Email Compromise (BEC) Checklist. The question arose – what if you’re new to security, or your security program isn’t very mature?

Since the checklist is based on the NIST model, there’s a lot of information here to help your security program mature, as well as to help you mature as a security practitioner. MSI’s engineers have discussed a few ways to leverage the checklist as a growth mechanism.

Part 1 and Part 2 covered the first checkpoint in the list – Discover. Part 3 covered the next checkpoint – Protect. Now we’re going to move on to the next point – Detect.

Continue reading →

Time to protect – BEC Series #3

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A few weeks ago, we published the Business Email Compromise (BEC) Checklist. The question arose – what if you’re new to security, or your security program isn’t very mature?

Since the checklist is based on the NIST model, there’s a lot of information here to help your security program mature, as well as to help you mature as a security practitioner. MSI’s engineers have discussed a few ways to leverage the checklist as a growth mechanism.

Part 1 and Part 2 covered the first checkpoint in the list – Identify.

Continue reading →

How do you “identify”…BEC #2

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A few weeks ago, we published the Business Email Compromise (BEC) Checklist. The question arose – what if you’re new to security, or your security program isn’t very mature?

Since the checklist is based on the NIST model, there’s a lot of information here to help your security program mature, as well as to help you mature as a security practitioner. MSI’s engineers have discussed a few ways to leverage the checklist as a growth mechanism.

Continue reading →

How do you Identify? Business Email Compromise #1

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Business Email Compromise

business email compromise

Recently, we posted the Business Email Compromise (BEC) checklist. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on the checklist…as well as a few questions. What if you’re new to security? What if your organization’s security program is newer, and still maturing? How can you leverage this list?

Since the checklist is based on the NIST model, there’s a lot of information here to help your security program mature, as well as to help you mature as a security practitioner. MSI’s engineers have discussed a few ways to leverage the checklist as a growth mechanism.

Continue reading →

The Magic of Hash

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Hi, all –

Time for a bedtime story? A little light reading? Something to listen to on the treadmill?

Come listen to our CEO, Brent Huston, riff on blockchain, trust models, and ancillary bits.

The audio is HERE. And the accompanying slides are HERE.

Until next time, stay safe out there…take care of earth, it’s the only planet with chocolate!

If you would like to know more about MicroSolved or its services please send an e-mail to info@microsolved.com or visit microsolved.com.

It’s Dev, not Diva – Don’t set the “stage” for failure

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Development: the act, process, or result of developing, the development of new ideas. This is one of the Merriam-Webster definitions of development.

It doesn’t really matter what you call it…dev, development, stage, test. Software applications tend to be in flux, and the developers, programmers, testers, and ancillary staff need a place to work on them.

Should that place be out on the internet? Let’s think about that for a minute. By their very nature, dev environments aren’t complete. Do you want a work in progress, with unknown holes, to be externally facing? This doesn’t strike me as the best idea.

But, security peeps, we HAVE to have it facing the internet – because REASONS! (Development types…tell me what your valid reasons are?)

And it will be fine – no one will find it, we won’t give it a domain name!

Security through obscurity will not be your friend here…with the advent of Shodan, Censys.io, and other venues…they WILL find it. Ideally, you should only allow access via VPN or other secure connection.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, here’s a short list of SOME of the things that MSI has found or used to compromise a system, from an internet facing development server:

  • A test.txt file with sensitive information about the application, configuration, and credentials.
  • Log files with similar sensitive information.
  • .git directories that exposed keys, passwords, and other key development information.
  • A development application that had weak credentials was compromised – the compromise allowed inspection of the application, and revealed an access control issue. This issue was also present in the production application, and allowed the team to compromise the production environment.
  • An unprotected directory that contained a number of files including a network config file. The plain text credentials in the file allowed the team to compromise the internet facing network devices.

And the list keeps going.

But, security peeps – our developers are better than that. This won’t happen to us!

The HealthCare.Gov breach https://www.csoonline.com/article/2602964/data-protection/configuration-errors-lead-to-healthcare-gov-breach.html in 2014 was the result of a development server that was improperly connected to the internet. “Exact details on how the breach occurred were not shared with the public, but sources close to the investigation said that the development server was poorly configured and used default credentials.”

Another notable breach occurred in 2016 – an outsourcing company named Capgemini https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv7qp8/open-database-exposes-millions-of-job-seekers-personal-information exposed the personal information of millions of job seekers when their IT provider connected a development server to the internet.

The State of Vermont also saw their health care exchange – Vermont Connected – compromised in 2014 https://www.databreachtoday.asia/hackers-are-targeting-health-data-a-7024 when a development server was accessed. The state indicates this was not a breach, because the development server didn’t contain any production data.

So, the case is pretty strongly on the side of – internet facing development servers is a bad idea.

Questions? Comments? What’s your take from the development side? I’d love to hear from you – lwallace@microsolved.com, or @TheTokenFemale on Twitter!

If you would like to know more about MicroSolved or its services please send an e-mail to info@microsolved.com or visit microsolved.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lighting up BEC, not Bic – Business Email Compromise…

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What’s a bit of spam and a bit of phishing, right? It’s all the cost of doing business…until you look at what it really CAN cost your business.

The latest statistics from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) are enlightening – taken directly from the IC3 site:

The following BEC/EAC statistics were reported to the IC3 and are derived from multiple sources, including IC3 and international law enforcement complaint data and filings from financial institutions between October 2013 and May 2018:

Domestic and international incidents: 78,617
Domestic and international exposed dollar loss: $12,536,948,299

The following BEC/EAC statistics were reported in victim complaints where a country was identified to the IC3 from October 2013 to May 2018:

Total U.S. victims: 41,058
Total U.S. victims: $2,935,161,457
Total non-U.S. victims: 2,565
Total non-U.S. exposed dollar loss: $671,915,009

The following BEC/EAC statistics were reported by victims via the financial transaction component of the IC3 complaint form, which became available in June 20163. The following statistics were reported in victim complaints to the IC3 from June 2016 to May 2018:

Total U.S. financial recipients: 19,335
Total U.S. financial recipients: $1,629,975,562
Total non-U.S. financial recipients: 11,452
Total non-U.S. financial recipients exposed dollar loss: $1,690,788,278

That’s billions with a B…and the dollars and cents cannot measure the intangible costs like reputation, consumer confidence, etc.

What are the growing targets, and vectors of compromise? Financial transactions of all kinds tend to be the low hanging fruit. Real estate transactions, wire transfers, anything with a routine methodology of process, where information requests are constant, and a change of source or target would not be unusual. What’s another call from the bank, asking to verify your account information for payment? Another wire transfer request from the CFO?

There are also information breaches to consider. Let’s look at DocuSign for a moment – their own statement admits that email addresses were compromised, but indicates that additional personal information was not at risk. This statement is a bit misleading. A threat actor could collate the additional info to make an attack appear legitimate through other sources – and the fact that these emails came from DocuSign means that they would legitimately expect to receive email FROM DocuSign! In sales, that’s a pre-qualified lead, and it’s no less valuable to an attacker.

Another high-profile incident is the indictment of Russian operatives in the DCCC and DNC compromise – MSI has written about that here.

Add the preponderance of mobile devices, webmail, and online portals to your business of all kinds…it’s a risk. And any breach of your business data, client/customer data, and/or employee data is high profile as a risk to YOU. MSI has had a number of clients this year with compromises of Office 365 email accounts, administrative accounts that were externally facing, wire transfer issues, etc. On a personal level, individuals have had fraudulent tax returns filed under their SSN, etc. Size is irrelevant when it’s your data (and money) at risk.

So, what can you do to protect yourself, and your company? Email filtering, mobile device management, and other security measures can help – but the one measure that is consistently most effective against these attacks is MFA – multi-factor authentication. MFA is, at its core, something you know and something you have.

Often, this is an SMS code, or something physical like an RSA hard or soft token. However, do not rule out MFA for less technical transactions. In a situation where the CFO emails in a wire transfer, also add a vocal component – the individual must call and answer a challenge response question.

Are there challenges to implementing MFA? Of course. One of the primary challenges is user resistance – one of my favorite sayings is…change is inevitable, except in vending machines. But humans are wired to see their consistent patterns as a comfort, and you’re asking them to leave their comfort zone.

Another challenge is the technology gap. NIST is no longer recommending SMS as a component of MFA – but if that is all your organization is capable of leveraging, is it better than nothing? That’s a question for your technical and risk staff to consider.

The solution you choose will always NOT work for someone or something in your organization – someone will have a device that is too old, or incompatible, and they’re high enough up the corporate ladder that allowances will be considered. If you use a hardware token, someone will break it at a critical moment – or the USB token won’t work with their new whizz bang device.

And once you begin implementation, your organization won’t go from zero to 100% compliant immediately – in addition to dealing with the outliers, you’ll need a transition plan while implementation is underway.

Documented policies and procedures will need to be present – create these as you go, it will be a less onerous task than after the fact. In the case of our verbal challenge and response for a wire transfer example, where will those procedures be kept and how will they be protected – they should be safe from easy compromise, but not invalidate the solution when the primary person is out of the office?

Then there’s the issue of critical software that may need to be externally facing, but doesn’t support MFA. What do you do when the developers cannot implement this in a manner to protect your company? “The program wouldn’t do it” will be of little comfort when you’ve been compromised.

Are the challenges overwhelming? We cannot LET them be, folks. Scroll back up to those numbers – that’s billions with a B. Consider the challenges as things to rise up and meet, in the best way for your organization – rather than mountains that you simply cannot climb.

Questions, comments? I’d love to hear from you – lwallace@microsolved.com, or @TheTokenFemale on Twitter!

If you would like to know more about MicroSolved or its services please send an e-mail to info@microsolved.com or visit microsolved.com.

Mobile devices…innocent until proven guilty?

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How many of us have been on Facebook, and laughed when a friend’s child posts “Child is my favorite!” after their parent left the table with their phone unlocked?

And who has had a friend – or been the friend – who left their phone at the table? Don’t laugh – try being the one who did that WITH the security team. (Guilty…)

Amusing anecdotes? Absolutely. Now, let’s imagine that mobile device is unlocked when it’s left unattended, and contains your corporate data…now what?

That’s where MDM – mobile device management – comes into play. There are a few things to consider when you’re planning your deployment:

  • Who will have access to corporate information on the device?
  • Will you allow people to use personal devices – BYOD – or restrict this to corporate assets?
  • What will you allow, and what do you want to prevent, with device access? Email only? Other resources? Will you allow attachments to be downloaded and stored on the device?
  • How important are remote wipe capabilities – think of the worst case scenario with a disgruntled employee at all levels, with access to your data?
  • What about geolocation capability? Do you want the ability to block access from certain areas of the world – and how easy will it be to fix this when the VP is in Hong Kong, and you’ve blocked APNIC? Do you want to be able to pinpoint the device’s location if it has been lost or stolen?
  • What platforms will you support? Android, iOS, others? Yes, there are other platforms…
  • Consider whether it makes sense to only allow mobile devices to access corporate data via a VPN? Depending on the sensitivity of your data, this may make sense for your scenario.

The majority of MDM vendors will support some or all of the feature set that you desire. Once you’ve weighed out your desired list, and chosen your vendor, there are a number of other factors to look at when considering your actual deployment. A few things to consider:

  • Back to the basics. Passwords – require devices, whether corporate or BYOD, to have a password and to change that password regularly.
  • Encryption. Again, another basic – devices that carry your corporate data should be encrypted.
  • Jailbroken, rooted, and otherwise compromised phones should not be allowed to access corporate data.
  • Require virus/malware protection, particularly for Android devices. Free solutions from well regarded vendors exist, so this is not an onerous requirement for employees.
  • Have valid, documented procedures for geolocation features – whether blocking access or locating devices. Include removal as well as deployment in those procedures – when the VP is back, you will want to remove the access to Hong Kong. And when an employee leaves your company, so should your ability to track their BYOD device.
  • Another item to have documented is your remote wipe or content removal process when a user leaves the company – willingly or not – or when a device is lost or stolen.
  • Decide what you will and will not allow in terms of software on a corporate device. Will you allow users to install Waze? Their favorite game? Define that line in advance, rather than closing the loop later.
  • Regularly audit your configuration, the device compliance, and any exceptions that have been granted. Are there changes that need to be made in light of emerging threats? Are there exceptions that are no longer required?

And remember to take a real vacation occasionally, and put that mobile device down, folks. Those nice people? They’re your family, friends, or others in your life outside of work.

Questions, comments? I’d love to hear from you – lwallace@microsolved.com, or @TheTokenFemale on Twitter!