Save the date of June 10th for the next CMHSecLunch. This month’s event is at the Polaris Mall food court. It’s 11:30 to 1pm.
As usual, you can sign up here. You can also talk to @cahnee about it on Twitter if you would prefer. She can help you find folks wherever we meet.
The event is FREE, open to anyone interested in IT and InfoSec. You can brown bag it, or get food from the vendors. But, the conversations are amazing. You get to see old friends and make some new ones. Check it out!
With the addition of RedDragon Rising (@RedDragon1949) to the blog, we are now pushing forth a new stream of threat data and insights about the growing problem of international threats. Since we added that content to the site, many of you have written in or asked me on Twitter, what is it that YOU can do about these threats? I wanted to take a few minutes and expand on my responses.
First of all, you can remain aware and vigilant. Much of the information we post here isn’t directly actionable. It isn’t designed to be a roadmap of actions for you to take. It’s designed to be a continual source of data that slowly helps you see a clearer picture of the threat, the actors and their capability. It’s designed to keep you AWAKE. It’s custom made to help you understand your adversary. Knowledge is power and insight is key. We make this content to give you both!
Second, you can communicate the threat and knowledge to your management. This helps them remain aware. It also presents to them that you are monitoring the threats and keeping your eye on the rising tides, even as you help them steer the ship through safe waters. You can use this information to build rapport with them, to give them new insights into your decisions when you explain to them various risks and to help them understand the changing nature of the interconnected world.
You can use the information here as an impetus to get the basics of information security right. While there aren’t any panaceas to fight off the threat and there isn’t a single thing you can buy to make it better ~ we do know that focusing on the basics of infosec and getting them done efficiently, effectively and well is the best defense against a variety of threats. That said, consider doing a quick and dirty review of your security initiatives against our 80/20 Rule for Information Security. This is a set of simple projects that represent the basics of information security and map easily to other standards and baselines. Simply judging your maturity in these areas and following the roadmap to improvement will go a long way to getting the basics done right in your organization.
Invest in detection and response. If your organization is doing the basics of prevention, that is you have hardening in place and are performing ongoing assessment and mitigation of your attack surfaces, then the next thing to do is invest in detection and response capabilities. Today, one of the largest advantages that attackers enjoy is the lack of visibility and effective response capabilities in our organizations. You should have some visibility into every segment and at every layer of your environment. You should be able to identify compromises in a timely manner and move to isolate, investigate and recover from any breaches LONG BEFORE they have become widespread and heavily leveraged against you. If you can’t do that today, make it your next major infosec goal. Need help?Ask us about it.
Lastly, share information with your peers. The bad guys are good at information sharing. They have excellent metrics. They openly share their experiences, successes, failures and new techniques. Much of crime and espionage (not all, but MUCH) is “open source” in nature. The cells of attackers free float in conglomerations of opportunity. They barter with experience, tools, data and money. They share. The more we begin to share and emulate their “open source” approaches, the better off we can be at defending. If knowledge is power, more brains with more knowledge and experience equals MORE POWER. Be a part of the solution.
That’s it for now. Just remain calm, get better at the basics, improve your visibility and stay vigilant. As always, thanks for reading State of Security and for choosing MicroSolved as your information security partner. We are striving to dig deeper, to think differently and to give you truly actionable intelligence and threat data that is personalized, relevant to your organization and meaningful. If you’d like to hear more about our approach and what it can mean for your organization, get in touch via Twitter (@lbhuston), email (info(at)microsolved/dot/com) or phone (614-351-1237 ext 250).
Our good friend, Aaron Bedra, posted a fantastic piece at the Braintree Blog this morning about building a security culture. I thought the piece was so well done that I wanted to share it with you.
The best part of the article, for me, was the content about finding creative ways to say yes. IMHO, all too often, infosec folks get caught up in saying no. We are the nay sayers, the paranoid brethren and the net cops. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. It might take a little (or even a LOT) of extra work, but in many cases ~ a yes is possible ~ IF you can work on it and negotiate to a win/win point with the stakeholders.
Take a few minutes and think about that. Think about how you might be able to get creative with controls, dig deeper into detection, build better isolation for risky processes or even make entirely new architectures to contain risk ~ even as you enable business in new ways.
In the future, this had better be the way we think about working with and protecting businesses. If not, we could find ourselves on the sideline, well outside of the mainstream (if you aren’t there already in some orgs).
Great work Aaron and thanks for the insights.
It’s almost time for another CMHSecLunch! This month, the event is May 13th, 11:30a – 1pm at Easton Mall food court. As always, it is FREE and open to anyone interested in infosec and IT to attend. You can find out more, track the event and RSVP all one page by clicking here.
We hope to see you there!
This time around, we have a question from a reader named John: “I work in a small financial institution and we have problems with physical access to our computers. Many of our workstations sit in semi-public areas and could easily be attacked with USB devices or physical access when a teller or customer service person leaves the customers alone with the machine at a desk or cubicle. What advice do the experts have to help counter these types of attacks?”
Bill Hagestad started the conversation:
Recommended Points for mitigating this digital & physical vulnerability;
1) Remove workstations from semi-public areas; 2) Deploy & install single – purpose Internet workstations at no more than 2 public locations with VERY limited access to financial institution records only after 3 factor authentication has been authorized by credentialed users only; 3) Set time limites on inactive sessions on all banking terminals to logoff after physical proximity to machine exceeds 15 seconds; 4) Enforce 32 random, alpha-numeric character password changes to all critical financial institutional systems weekly; and, 5) Implement and /or continue aggressive financial institution information assurance education program with goal of 100% employee participation; review/update monthly and, 6) Mandate information security and awareness program participation from financial institution leadership throughout all employees and ranks within the organization.
John Davis expanded: I know how difficult this is for financial institutions. Your customer service representatives need computers in their cubicles in order to provide service to your customers, while at the same time those same computers are a main point of physical vulnerabilitiy. Easy steps can be taken, though, to harden these work stations.
First, workstation users should be allotted local administration rights on their systems only when a business need is present. So, CSR workstations should have their USB and DVD ports disabled. Furthermore, their is no need for them to have the ability to upload or download software. In addition, workstations in publicly accessible areas must be turned off each and every time they are unattended. Perhaps you could implement a system similar to the cut off device used on treadmills or at casinos: CSRs would have to clip a device from their clothing to the workstation before it will work. You could accompany this with biometric access for quick and easy access for the users.
Jim Klun added:
From my experience, and assuming the worst case of Windows systems configured as normal workstations with end-users having admin level access, some immediate things I would do:
1. Disable all removable media access at the hardware ( i.e. BIOS) level. At minimum: disable ability to boot from such sources. or: remove all DVD and CDROM drives and physically disable USB ports. (e.g. glue) 2. Ensure all workstations log activity and ensure that the logs are directed to a central log repository and reviewed. Example: http://www.intersectalliance.com/projects/SnareWindows/ 3. Ensure surveillance cameras cover workstation areas. 4. Aggressive screen-lock settings 5. Removal of admin access for all but limited support staff if at all possible. 6. Consider Usage of security cabinets for workstations: Example: http://www.globalindustrial.com/g/office/computer-furniture/cabinets/orbit-side-car-cabinet 7. Network Access Control to limit what devices are allowed on the local network. That unattended RJ45 jack or poorly secured wireless environment is as much a threat as that USB port or CDROM. Bluetooth setting should also be reviewed. 8. Ensure all sensitive information traveling over the local LAN is encrypted. 9. Use a firmware password ( e.g drivelock or a BIOS power-on password) to limit who can boot the machine. 10. Monthly re-iteration of security policies – including need to lock workstations. In my experience such messages are best tied to real-world examples. It makes the risk real – not just an abstract “security guy” worry. For example, this event could be used to ensure employees are aware that an unlocked workstation could lead to the installation of malware: http://news.techworld.com/security/3256513/sovereign-bank-and-penfed-warn-customers-after-keyloggers-are-found-on-laptops/
I note that both JD and Bill talk about enhanced authentication – including the use of proximity devices. Using such devices ( mostly bluetooth ) to secure these workstations sounds like a great idea to me and may be the easiest and most effective solution. Once the financial institution walks away from the workstation – it’s locked and ideally will not boot. http://btprox.sourceforge.net/ – open source Google “computer proximity lock” for a number of commercial alternatives.
Adam Hostetler closed the conversation with:
Everyone has really good suggestions so far. I am a fan of the simple phsyical solutions. I would put the workstations in locked cages. This would prevent any malicious people from inserting USB devices or CDs, or implanting sniffers between the keyboard and USB ports. Additionally, follow the other advice of disabling them through software, just to be sure.
Another solution may be to move to a thin client solution. It is possible to buy thin clients that have no USB ports or optical drives. This would also ensure that no sensitive information was on the workstation, in the event that it was stolen.
April’s touchdown task for the month is a suggestion to update your contact list that you should have included in your incident response policy.
A few minutes now to make sure the right people are in the list and that their contact information is current could pay off largely down the road. It might also be a good time to check to make sure your contact process has been updated to include SMS/texting, Skype and/or other supported technologies that may have not been around when your policy was last updated.
Just a quick update on the Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM) Project for today.
We are prepping to do the first beta unveiling of the project at the local ISSA chapter. It looks like that might be the June meeting, but we are still finalizing dates. Stay tuned for more on this one so you can get your first glimpse of the work as it is unveiled. We also submitted a talk at the ISSA International meeting for the year, later in the summer on the SDIM. We’ll let you know if we get accepted for presenting the project in Nashville.
The work is progressing. We have created several of the curve models now and are beginning to put them out to the beta group for review. This step continues for the next couple of weeks and we will be incorporating the feedback into the models and then releasing them publicly.
Work on phase 2 – that is the framework of questions designed to aid in the scoring of the impacts to generate the curve models has begun. This week, the proof of concept framework is being developed and then that will flow to the alpha group to build upon. Later, the same beta group will get to review and add commentary to the framework prior to its initial release to the public.
Generally speaking, the work on the project is going along as expected. We will have something to show you and a presentation to discuss the outcomes of the project shortly. Thanks to those who volunteered to work on the project and to review the framework. We appreciate your help, and thanks to those who have been asking about the project – your interest is what has kept us going and working on this problem.
As always, thanks for reading, and until next time – stay safe out there!
This month’s Touchdown Task is to help you with detection and response. For March, we suggest you do a quick controls review on your firewall logs. Here’s some questions to begin with:
Undertaking a different quick and dirty Touchdown Task each month helps increase vigilance without huge amounts of impact on schedules and resources. Thanks for reading!
Victoria Loewengart (@gisobiz) from AKOTA Technologies and myself (@lbhuston) decided we would start a podcast series to discuss correlation between real world actions and cyber-activity of an illicit nature (“attacks”). This is the first episode which discusses why we think this is a worthy topic for exploration, how it might lead to predictive information security posture improvement and how we got here.
This episode also covers a real time event that occurred while we were recording that may (or may not) relate to attacks experienced in the time between recording sessions.
We hope to keep working on it, but this is a first rough attempt, so don’t expect CNN podcast polish. This is a chance for you to stay in touch with a new movement that represents a clear line of evolution for the information security problems of today.
Stay tuned. We hope to record more episodes as the project progresses.
Yesterday, I listened to @Grap3_Ap3 present at the Columbus OWASP local chapter on Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF). While this attack has been around since 2001, it continues to show a strong presence in web applications across a range of platforms. Phil spent a lot of his time talking about content management systems on the public Internet, but we have seen CSRF very widely exploitable on embedded devices.
Embedded devices, often equipped with rather rudimentery web servers and applications for management, have proven to be a searing hot pain point for CSRF in our research. While that isn’t shocking or new, I definitely see an interesting and potentially dangerous collision between the growth of the “Internet of Things” and web vulnerabilities. Today, some of these platforms are toys, or novelty tools built into home appliances – BUT, the future of internetworking of our devices and our physical lives means that these web controls will eventually have larger impacts on our day to day lives.
What happens when a CSRF attack can be used to trick your teenager into clicking on a picture on the web that while they view it, they also execute a command to raise the temperature on your refrigerator to unsafe levels? Or when an embedded link in an email tricks you into a click that turns your oven onto super heat clean mode without your knowledge? Sound like a prank? Maybe. Extend it to thermostats, home automation and consumer control over alternative energy controls like solar panels and such and it might take a new form.
We are on a course of collision. Our inattention to information security and the exploding complexity and technology dependencies will soon come together in ways that may surprise us. Ignore the hyperbole, but think about it rationally. Isn’t it time we worked with organizations who make products to demand an increase in protection from some of these basic known attacks? In the future, consumers and organizations alike will vote with their dollars. How will you spend yours?