Category Archives: End-user Focused

More on Persistent Penetration Testing from MSI

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MicroSolved has been offering Persistent Penetration Testing (PPT) to select clients now for a couple of years. We have been testing and refining our processes to make sure we had a scalable, value driven, process to offer our full client base. We have decided to open the PPT program up to another round of clients, effective immediately. We will be open to adding three additional clients to the PPT group. In order to qualify, your organization must have an appetite for these services and meet the criteria below:

The services:

  • MSI will actively emulate a focused team of attackers for either a 6 or 12  month period, depending on complexity, pricing and goals
  • During that time, MSI will actively and passively target your organization seeking to reach a desired and negotiated set of goals (usually fraud or theft of IP related data, deeper than traditional pen testing)
  • Full spectrum attacks will be expressed against your organization’s defenses in red team mode, across the time window 
  • Once an initial compromise occurs and the appropriate data has been identified and targeted, we will switch to table top exercises with the appropriate team members to discuss exploitation and exfiltration, prior to action
  • If, and only if, your organization approves and desires, then exploitation and exfiltration will occur (note that this can be pivoted from real world systems to test/QA environments at this point)
  • Reporting and socialization of the findings occurs, along with mitigation strategies, awareness training and executive level briefings
  • The process then repeats, as desired, through the terms and sets of goals

The criteria for qualification; Your organization must:

  • Have full executive support for the initiative, all the way to the C-level and/or Board of Directors
  • Have a mature detection and egress process in place (otherwise, the test will simply identify the needs for these components)
  • Have the will to emulate real world threat activity without applying compliance-based thinking and other unnatural restraints to the process
  • Have a capable security team for MSI to work with that has the capability to interface with the targeted lines of business in a rapid, rational and safe manner
  • If desired, have the capability to construct testing/QA platforms and networks to model real world deployments in a rapid and accurate fashion (requires rapid VM capability)
  • Be open to engaging in an exercise with an emulated aggressive adversary to establish real world risk and threat profiles
  • Be located in the US (sorry, we are not currently accepting non-US organizations for this service at this point)

If your organization meets these requirements and you are interested in discussing PPT services, please drop me a line (Twitter: @lbhuston), or via email at Info at microsolved dot com. You can also reach me via phone at (614) 351-1237 x 201.

August Touchdown Task: Change Management Audit

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This month’s touchdown task is to take a quick audit of your organization’s change management process. Give it a quick walkthrough.

  • Make sure that you are tracking when admins make changes to machine configurations or network device configs
  • Are proper peer review and approval processes being followed?
  • Check to make sure that the proper folks are in the loop for various kinds of communication, error handling and reporting
  • Review risk acceptance for changes and make sure it meets your expected processes
  • Examine a couple of changes and walk them through the entire process to see if things are falling through the cracks
  • Update any change management documentation to reflect new processes or technologies that may be in place now

Give this a quick review this month and you can rest assured for a while that change management is working strongly. With the coming fall and holiday rush ahead, you’ll know you have this base covered and can depend on it as a good foundation for the rest of your security initiatives. 

Until next time, as always, thanks for reading and stay safe out there! 

Always Remember the Business, InfoSec Folks

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I just got out of yet another meeting with a big company partner for whom we act as an information security and threat advisor. In that meeting, I listened to a keyed-up,  hypercaffinated group of good guy security geeks tell their senior executives about the latest set of DLP controls they were putting in place. They spent 45 minutes describing packet-level checking, data flows, architecture diagrams and the technology of their solution set in painful (even for me) detail. Many of the executives were dosing lightly, while the geeks spun their techno-web. That’s when things took a turn for the worse…

The COO asked them one single question, interrupting a slide about email data flows ~ “How will this impact the business of ‘Dan’s’ group and the ‘Singularity’ project we have been working on since 2011? Doesn’t it depend on some of that data?” (**Names changed to protect the innocent and the guilty…)

Then, NOTHING HAPPENED. You could have heard a pin drop. Dead silence for close to two minutes. Finally, the COO repeated the question. Still nothing. He asked the lead geek if he knew who Dan was, and the geek said yes. He asked if Dan had been interviewed by the geeks prior to this. They said, no. The COO erupted in a rage, railing about how Singularity was the largest new line of business launch in the history of the company and how the projected income from the business would change the landscape of the firm. There were a LOT of apologies and some amount of notes taken to immediately consult with Dan. Much geek cred was lost. It will be a while before they get to present to the executives again like that. 

I tell you this story simply to remind all infosec folks about something I see all too often. It’s about the business. We are about the business. We are there to secure the business, nurture it, protect it, empower it to succeed. If that’s not where you or your team are, then you are doing it wrong. Get it right. Talk to the business. Speak their language. Give up on the “beauty of the baud” approach. Your packets and technology stack may be gorgeous to you, but if they don’t align with the business, then they won’t do anyone, including you, any good at all. Keep that in mind at all times. Also, remember to always talk to Dan ~ he’s a nice guy and he appreciates it. He can give you the answers you need and usually, he desperately wants to understand what you can do to make his project a success. Get to know all the Dan’s in your organization. They drive the world, you support them, together you build business and all of you will succeed!

Ask The Experts: Too Much Data

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Q: “I have massive amounts of log files I have to dig through every day. I have tried a full blown SEIM, but can’t get it to work right or my management to support it with budget. Right now I have Windows logs, firewall logs and AV logs going to a syslog server. That gives me a huge set of text files every day. How can I make sense of all that text? What tools and processes do you suggest? What should I be looking for? HELP!!!!”

 

Adam Hostetler answered with:

 

I would say give OSSEC a try. It’s a free log analyzer/SEIM. It doesn’t

have a GUI with100 different dashboards and graphs, it’s all cli and

e-mail based (though there is a simple web interface for it also). It is

easy to write rules for, and it has default rules for many things,

except for your AV. You can write simple rules for that, especially if

you are just looking for items AV caught. It does take some tuning, as

with all analysis tools, but isn’t difficult after learning how OSSEC

works. If you want to step it up a bit, you can feed OSSEC alerts into

Splunk where you can trend alerts, or create other rules and reports in it.

 

Bill Hagestad added:

 

First things first – don’t be or feel overwhelmed – log files are what they are much disparate data from a variety of resources that need reviewing sooner rather than later.

 

Rather than looking at another new set to tools or the latest software gizmo the trade rags might suggest based on the flair of the month, try a much different and more effective approach to the potential threat surface to your network and enterprise information network.

 

First take a look at what resources need to be protected in order of importance to your business. Once you have prioritized these assets then begin to  determine what is the minimum level of acceptable risk you can assign to each resource you have just prioritized.

 

Next, make two columns on a either a piece of paper or a white board. In one column list your resources in order of protection requirements, i.e.; servers with customer data, servers with intellectual property, so and so forth. In a column to the right of the first assets list plug in your varying assigned levels of risk. Soon you will see what areas/assets within your organization/enterprise you should pay the most attention to in terms of threat mitigation.

 

After you have taken the steps to determine your own self- assessment of risk contact MicroSolved for both a vulnerability assessment and penetration test to provide additional objective perspective on threats to your IT infrastructure and commercial enterprise. 

 

Finally, Jim Klun weighed in with: 

 

You are way ahead of the game by just having a central log repository.  You can go to one server and look back in time to the point where you expect a security incident.

 

And what you have – Windows logs, firewall logs, and AV – is fantastic.  Make sure all your apps are logging as well ( logon success, logon failure).

Too often I have seen apps attacked and all I had in syslog was OS events that showed nothing.

 

Adam’s suggestion, OSSEC, is the way to go to keep cost down… but don’t just install and hope for the best.

You will have to tweak the OSSEC rules and come up with what works.

 

Here’s the rub: there is no substitute for knowing your logs – in their raw format, not pre-digested by a commercial SIEM or OSSEC.

 

That can seem overwhelming. And to that, some Unix commands and regular expressions are your friend.

 

So:

 

zcat auth.log | grep ssh | egrep -i ‘failed|accepted’

 

produces:

 

Jul  4 16:32:16 dmz-server01 sshd[8786]: Failed password for user02 from 192.168.105.51 port 38143 ssh2

Jul  4 16:33:53 dmz-server01 sshd[8786]: Accepted password for user01 from 192.168.105.38 port 38143 ssh2

Jul  4 16:36:05 dmz-server01 sshd[9010]: Accepted password for user01 from 192.168.105.38 port 38315 ssh2

Jul  5 01:04:00 dmz-server01 sshd[9308]: Accepted password for user01 from 192.168.105.38 port 60351 ssh2

Jul  5 08:21:58 dmz-server01 sshd[9802]: Accepted password for user01 from 192.168.105.38 port 51436 ssh2

Jul  6 10:21:52 dmz-server01 sshd[21912]: Accepted password for user01 from 192.168.105.38 port 36486 ssh2

Jul  6 13:43:10 dmz-server01 sshd[31701]: Accepted password for user01 from 192.168.105.30 port 34703 ssh2

Jun 26 11:21:02 dmz-server01 sshd[31950]: Accepted password for user01 from 192.168.105.70 port 37209 ssh2

 

 

Instead of miles of gibberish the log gets reduced to passed/fail authentication attempts.

 

You can spend an hour with each log source ( firewall, AV, etc) and quickly pare them down to whats interesting.

 

Then make SURE your OSSEC  rules cover what you want to see.

If that does not work – cron a script to parse the logs of interest using your regular expression expertise and have an email sent to you when something goes awry.

 

Revisist the logs manually periodically – they will change. New stuff will happen.  Only a human can catch that.

 

Take a look at:

http://www.securitywarriorconsulting.com/logtools/

 

The site lists a number of tools that may be useful

 

John Davis added:

 

You voice one of the biggest problems we see in information security programs: monitoring! People tell us that they don’t have the proper tools and, especially, they don’t have the manpower to perform effective logging and monitoring. And what they are saying is true, but unfortunately doesn’t let them out from having to do it. If you have peoples financial data, health data (HIPAA) or credit card information (PCI) you are bound by regulation or mandate to properly monitor your environment – and that means management processes, equipment, vulnerabilities and software as well as logs and tool outputs. The basic problem here is that most organizations don’t have any dedicated information security personnel at all, or the team they have isn’t adequate for the work load. Money is tight and employees are expensive so it is very difficult for senior management to justify the expenditure – paying a third party to monitor firewall logs is cheaper. But for real security there is no substitute for actual humans in the security loop – they simply cannot be replaced by technology. Unfortunately, I feel the only answer to your problem is for government and industry to realize this truth and mandate dedicated security personnel in organizations that process protected data.

 

As always, thanks for reading and if you have a question for the experts, either leave it in the comments, email us or drop us a line on Twitter at (@lbhuston). 

Ask The Experts: Daily Tasks

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This time around, we get a great question from a reader:

Q: “I’m a one man infosec team at a small financial company, and as such, I stay overtasked. Can you give me a few examples of some key tasks I should make sure I am doing daily/weekly/monthly to make sure I am hitting them all and to help me better structure my schedule?”

Bill Hagestad answered with:

Daily Tasks: 

– Keep self and staff educated about latest cyber threats to your business – read the MSI Blog @ State of Securityhttps://stateofsecurity.com/;
– Review what Federal Law Enforcement considers top cyber threats are base on current cases:
– Compromise of account holder credentials leading to legitimate account compromise;
-Via  phasing attack vectors; unauthorized ACH transfers; 
– Compromise of Third Party Payment Processors;
 
Source: FBI Threat To Financial Sector
 
-Insider attacks – perhaps the largest threat to any commercial enterprise – especially given the recent NSA dilemma via a US contractor
 
– Have staff follow all account verification standing operating procedures – covering all types of customer interaction, including but not limited to; phone, Internet, and in-person account interactions;
– Information Security/Assurance infrastructure configuration changes should be reviewed daily and approved/counter-approved internally to eliminate potential administrative abuses;
– Hold weekly Information Security/Assurance infrastructure team meetings – invite MicroSolved to participate as a credible resource for staff to ask questions of and make sound recommendations.
 
Weekly Tasks:
 
– Stay ahead of international financial sector threat intelligence – read the MSI Blog @ State of Securityhttps://stateofsecurity.com/;
– Ensure account access lists are secure and validated both for external customers (most importantly) and also internal employee need to access/right to access customer account information;
  
Monthly Tasks:
 
– Participate in professional cyber/information assurance mailing lists – if not sure who or what these are contact MSI Cyber Threat Intelligence;
– Be certain to review the US Government Hearing Notes: Cybersecurity: Threats to the Financial Sector downloadable @ http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg72601/pdf/CHRG-112hhrg72601.pdf
– Review or create a cyber threat identification strategy involving key staff and MicroSolved – install HoneyPoint Security Server to capture knowledge about who truly is probing your network, eliminate the proverbial network noise and focus on specific threat actors – e.g.; Russian Cyber Crimianls, Chinese entities using government cyber espionage tools for crime purposes
 
Adam Hostetler added:
It’s hard to answer exactly what you should be doing on a timely basis
without reviewing your current requirements, tools, processes, and
infrastructure. However, If you go to www.microsolved.com and look at
our 80/20 white paper, you can use that as a guideline to give you some
ideas to help build out your security program.

Examples of some things you could/should be doing.

Daily:
Log reviews. Not necessary for all logs, but if you have
IDS/IPS/Honeypots etc, they should be reviewed and investigated if needed
Spend a bit of time following up on the latest security news/threats.
That includes things like new vulnerabilities or exploits, and then
following up if it would affect you.

Weekly:
Check and verify backups and processes

Monthly:
Update software/OS patches.

 
Finally, Jim Klun weighed in with: 
1. Make sure your subscribed to security news-feeds/alerting services that apply to your environment. Review those daily.

2. Make sure you are reviewing your logs daily.  You should know every day about successful and unsuccessful logins. You should also be paying attention to your firewall logs for inbound activity and outbound activity.

3 If you have a local help desk, talk to them at least monthly. They are often in a position to see things that are in fact security problems.

4. Automate your patching program if that is not true already, then review patch reports monthly.

5. If you have Internet exposures, check them monthly. Make absolutely sure at the end of each month you are absolutely sure of what services your organization offers to the Internet – and why.

As always, thanks for reading and if you have a question for the experts, either leave it in the comments, email us or drop us a line on Twitter at (@lbhuston). 

Average Knowledge Worker & Infosec

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Last week, I had the chance to interview someone I would consider to be an average knowledge worker. They work in the area of being a virtual personal assistant, often using the Internet and their computer to serve the needs of their clients. They were chosen at random from a pool of VPAs. Here’s the short interview I did with them:

Q. What types of information security threats concern you most as a person who is dependent on their computer to earn a living?

A: I am most concerned about the potential for my getting “hacked” to impact clients or colleagues. I would hate to be the “weakest link” in the chain of information, and therefore take information security very seriously.

Q. What types of security tools do you use to protect the systems that belong to your family (firewalls, anti-virus, anti-malware, etc.)

A. I have my home network secured and encrypted, installed McAfee’s anti-virus app on all computers in the household network, and have taught my oldest son, who uses it via his laptop, to ALWAYS ask if he’s in doubt about clicking a link or approving an update. I’d rather he pester me every time Windows wants to update itself than potentially put our network at risk!

Q. How much does information security impact your life on the Internet? (Do you bank, shop, vote, trade, etc. online?)

A.  I bank and shop online, and honestly I mostly just try not to think about it. I take every reasonable precaution and don’t want to let fear influence my decision-making beyond that. 

My takeaways from the interview were actually good news. The basics of having a network firewall, doing some basic wireless security and installing some basic AV on machines has clearly entered the mainstream of the computing culture. That’s the good news. Sadly though, it would seem, I would guess that the controls stop there. I was glad to see that knowledge workers are training their children in the basics as well. I remember when just those steps were quite a leap. 

I was also kind of sad that the person said they try not thing think about the security risks. I wish they had said something along the lines of “I try and make rational security decisions to still enjoy modern online conveniences while allowing a modicum of safety.” or something like that. Sigh, I guess we still have some work to do. 🙂

As always, thanks for reading!

 

InfoSec, The World & YOU Episode 2

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Once again, Victoria Lowengart (@gisobiz) and I team up to discuss events in the real world and how they impact cyber threats. This time around we talk North Korea, Anonymous and touch on Industrial Control Systems. We also give a quick preview of Op Petrol. Check it out here:

Grab the MP3.

Thanks for listening and until next time, stay safe out there! 

Ask the Experts: Travel Abroad with Electronics

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This time around, a reader wrote in with a very common question:

Q: “A member of my management team is about to go on a business trip to a country with known cyber-spying capabilities. She wants to take her phone, tablet and laptop so she can be productive on the road. What can I do to make this safer for her and our organization without restricting her work capability on the road in an unreasonable manner?”

Adam Hostetler opened with: 

The standard here is don’t bring anything electronic, if you can help it. In most cases, that’s not probable so don’t bring your normal personal phones or laptops, no smartphone at all is advisable. Bring loaner devices that have only exactly what they need and can be burned when they get back. Only connect through a VPN, and have that account monitored on the other end. Don’t leave phone or laptop in a hotel room, even in the safe, and don’t talk business there either.

Jim Klun added:

There is likely no way to do this without restricting – or at least significantly changing – the way she works. 

It has to be assumed that any information on her personal devices will be compromised. 
It also can be assumed that any information flowing between her devices and the outside world will be compromised. 

I would recommend two things:

1. Take only what you can afford to lose. Communicate only what you can afford to lose. 

        So – take a small number of devices (e.g. phone, laptop) minimally configured with only that information absolutely required for this trip. 
        Better to have corporate staff respond to email requests from her rather than to allow access to critical corporate resources from suspect location. 
        If internal connectivity to corporate resources must be allowed ( e.g VPN) it should be ideally require 2-factor auth of some sort, use strong encryption, and grant access only to a limited subset of resources. 
        All credentials can be assumed to be lost – hence the utility of two-factor.  All of the employees credentials should be changed on return. 

        All devices brought back should be assumed to be compromised and will need complete re-imaging. 
                

2.  Consider creating “go-kits” and well-defined repeatable processes for employees who travel to such locations. 

     A special set of devices ( laptop, phone, etc) that are minimally configured and can be wiped on return.  No personally owned devices should be allowed. 
     Connectivity for those devices – if absolutely needed – that allows access only to a tightly restricted and monitored subset of internal corporate resources. 
     Most importantly – training for employees who make these trips.  The employee must understand the special risks being incurred and be aware of their responsibility to protect the company and the companies existing customers.   
      As above – all of the employees credentials should be changed on return.

Bill Hagestad summed it up with this: 

This one is near and dear to my heart…I call these rules of counter cyber espionage the  李侃如的中國旅遊規則 (Lieberthal’s China Travel Rules)

Cellphone and laptop @ home brings “loaner” devices, erased before he leaves home country & wiped clean immediately upon returns;

In China, disable Bluetooth & Wi-Fi, phone never out of his sight;

In meetings, not only turn off his phone but also remove battery, microphone could be turned on remotely;

Connect to the Internet only via encrypted, password-protected channel, copies & pastes his password from a USB thumb drive;

Never type in a password directly, “the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop.”

The article can be found @ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-security-a-worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.html?pagewanted=all

Brent Huston closed with:

Any electronic items they do take on the road with them should be current on patches, AV signatures and detection capabilities. All data, drives, systems, etc. should be strongly encrypted when possible to do so (Pay special attention to export restrictions on crypto depending on where they are going.) Also, turn and burn EVERYTHING when they come back. Treat all media and data obtained during the travel as suspicious or malicious in nature. Trojans of data and documents are common (and usually they scan as clean with common tools). This is especially true for high value targets and critical infrastructure clients. Trust us! Safe travels! 

李侃如的中國旅遊規則

(Lieberthal’s China Travel Rules)


ØCellphone and laptop @ home brings “loaner” devices, erased before he leaves home country & wiped clean immediately upon returns;
ØIn China, disable Bluetooth & Wi-Fi, phone never out of his sight;
ØIn meetings, not only turn off his phone but also remove battery, microphone could be turned on remotely;
ØConnect to the Internet only via encrypted, password-protected channel, copies & pastes his password from a USB thumb drive;
ØNever types in a password directly, “the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop.”

HoneyPoint Used to Confirm Skype URL Indexing

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Last week, several sources were talking about the indexing of URLs that happen inside supposedly secure and private Skype sessions. There was a bit of press about it and we thought it would be fun to test it out and easy to do with HoneyPoint Personal Edition. Here’s how we did it:

  • First, we stood up a HoneyPoint Personal Edition and dilated port 80 with a web listener. We configured it to look like a default under construction page on an IIS box. We then exposed it to the Internet.
  • In order to cut down on noise from scanning while we were testing, we decided we would use a target page in our test URL of vixennixie.htm, since scanners aren’t generally looking for that page, if we get scanned while we are testing, it won’t interfere with our data gathering and analysis.
  • Next, we created a Skype chat between to members of the team and made sure each of us was configured for full security.
  • Once this was confirmed, we passed the URL: http://target_ip/vixennixe.htm between us. The time was 1:13pm Eastern.
  • Then, we waited.
  • Lo and behold, we got this nearly 12 hours later:

                     2013-05-22 01:09:45 – HoneyPoint received a probe from 65.52.100.214 on port 80 Input: HEAD /vixennixie.htm HTTP/1.1 Host: target_ip Connection: Keep-Alive

A whois of 65.52.100.214 shows:

#
# ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use
# available at: https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html
#

#
# Query terms are ambiguous. The query is assumed to be:
# “n 65.52.100.214”
#
# Use “?” to get help.
#

#
# The following results may also be obtained via:
# http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=65.52.100.214?showDetails=true&showARIN=false&ext=netref2
#

NetRange: 65.52.0.0 – 65.55.255.255
CIDR: 65.52.0.0/14
OriginAS:
NetName: MICROSOFT-1BLK
NetHandle: NET-65-52-0-0-1
Parent: NET-65-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
RegDate: 2001-02-14
Updated: 2012-03-20
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-65-52-0-0-1

OrgName: Microsoft Corp
OrgId: MSFT
Address: One Microsoft Way
City: Redmond
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98052
Country: US
RegDate: 1998-07-10
Updated: 2011-04-26
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/MSFT

OrgNOCHandle: ZM23-ARIN
OrgNOCName: Microsoft Corporation
OrgNOCPhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgNOCEmail: noc@microsoft.com
OrgNOCRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZM23-ARIN

OrgTechHandle: MSFTP-ARIN
OrgTechName: MSFT-POC
OrgTechPhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgTechEmail: iprrms@microsoft.com
OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/MSFTP-ARIN

OrgAbuseHandle: HOTMA-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Hotmail Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@hotmail.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/HOTMA-ARIN

OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE231-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@hotmail.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ABUSE231-ARIN

OrgAbuseHandle: MSNAB-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: MSN ABUSE
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@msn.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/MSNAB-ARIN

RTechHandle: ZM23-ARIN
RTechName: Microsoft Corporation
RTechPhone: +1-425-882-8080
RTechEmail: noc@microsoft.com
RTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZM23-ARIN

#
# ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use
# available at: https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html
#

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide what they think about the data. You can draw your own conclusions. We just appreciated yet another use for HoneyPoint and a quick and dirty project to play with. Thanks for reading!