Category Archives: General InfoSec

PIPA/SOPA/Etc. Will Speed Up the Crime Stream

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Today, many sites are protesting PIPA/SOPA and the like. You can read Google or Wikipedia for why those organizations and thousands of others are against the approach of these laws. But, this post ISN’T about that. In fact, censorship aside, I am personally and professionally against these laws for an entirely different reason all together.

My reason is this; they will simply speed up the crime stream. They will NOT shut down pirate sites or illicit trading of stolen data. They will simply force pirates, thieves and data traders to embrace more dynamic architectures and mechanisms for their crimes. Instead of using web sites, they will revert to IRC, bot-net peering, underground message boards and a myriad of other ways that data moves around the planet. They will move here, laws will pass to block that, they will move there, lather, rinse and repeat…

In the meantime, piracy, data theft, data trading and online crimes will continue to grow unabated, as they will without PIPA/SOPA/Etc. Nary a dent will be made in the amount or impact of these crimes. Criminals already have the technology and incentives to create more dynamic, adaptable and capable tools to defy the law than we have to marshall against them in enforcing the law.

After all that, what are we left with? A faster, more agile set of criminals who will actively endeavor to shorten the value chain of data, including intellectual property like movies, music and code. They will strive to be even faster to copy and spread their stolen information, creating even more technology that will need to be responded to with the “ban hammer”. The cycles will just continue, deepen and quicken, eventually stifling legitimate innovation and technology.

Saddest of all, once we determine that the legislative process was ineffective against the crime they sought to curtail, we still will have a loss of speech during that time, even if the laws were to ever be repealed. That’s right, censorship has a lasting effect, and we might lose powerful ideas, ideals and potentially world changing innovations during the time when people feel they are being censored. We lose all of that, even without a single long term gain against crime.

Given the impacts I foresee from these laws, I can not support them. I do believe in free speech. I do believe in free commerce on the Internet as a global enabler. But all of those reasons aside, I SIMPLY DO NOT BELIEVE that these laws will in any way affect the long term criminal viability or capability of pirates, thieves and data traders. Law is simply not capable of keeping pace with their level of innovation, adaptation and incentives. I don’t know what the answer is, I just know that this approach is not likely to be it.

So, that said, feel free to comment below on your thoughts on the impacts of these laws. If you are against the enactment of these laws, please contact your representatives in Congress and make your voice known. As always, thanks for reading and stay safe out there!

These are my opinions, as an individual – Brent Huston, and as an expert on information security and cyber-crime. They do not represent the views of any party, group or organization other than myself.

What the Heck Is FeeLCoMz?

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FeeLCoMz is a string I often get a lot of questions about. Basically, people see it and other strings in their logs, or if they are unlucky, they run into it like this, in a file in their web directories:
 
 Basically, if this is in the file system, then the system has been compromised, usually by a PHP RFI vulnerability. Other strings to check for, if you feel you want to run some basic grep checks against web files, include: 
 
“FaTaLz”,”KinCay”,”CreWz”,”TeaM”,”CoMMunity”,”AnoNyMous”,”Music”,
“ProGraMMeR”,”CyBeRz” and “mIRC”
 
If you find those strings, they usually indicate other PHP scanners, worms or attack tools have compromised the system. Now, if you don’t find those, it does NOT mean the system is safe, the list of all of those relevant strings would be too large and dynamic to manage. 
 
Another good grep check to parse files for in web directories, especially PHP and text files, if the nearly ubiquitous, “base64_decode(“, which is an absolute favorite of PHP bot, shell and malware authors. Any files you find using that call should be carefully inspected.
 
If you want to find more information on how PHP RFI attacks and other such issues occur, check out these links 
 
 
Basically, if you find files with the FeeLCoMz tag in it in the web directories, you have some incident response and investigation work to do. Let us know if we can assist, and stay safe out there. 
 
PS – It’s a good idea to have all PHP applications, even common ones like WordPress and the like, assessed prior to deployment. It might just save you some time, hassle and money! 

MSI Strategy & Tactics Talk Ep. 20: Denial of Service Attacks

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We haven’t seen anywhere near the thresholds that could happen with massive scale bot-nets. I think it’s clear that bot-nets are the future weapon of DoS and we’ll continue to see that until somebody takes away the capability. In addition, mobile devices are going to experience an increase in DoS attacks. – Brent Huston, MSI CEO and Security Evangelist

Denial of Service attacks were alive and well in 2011 as seen with WordPress and MasterCard. What have we learned from these types of attacks?  In this episode of MSI Strategy & Tactics, the techs discuss what DoS attacks and how organizations can respond. Take a listen! Discussion questions include:

  • Organizations have been dealing with denial of service attacks for a while now, what lessons should they have learned?
  • What about this new hashdos attack against web sites?
  • How should they create and test dos detection and response plans?
  • What is the future of denial of service attacks?
Panelists:
Brent Huston, CEO, Founder, and Security Evangelist
Adam Hostetler, Network Engineer and Security Analyst
Phil Grimes, Security Analyst
John Davis, Risk Management Engineer
Mary Rose Maguire, Marketing Communication Specialist and moderator

Click the embedded player to listen. Or click this link to access downloads. Stay safe!

How to Choose a Security Vendor: Beware of “Free InfoSec”

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In your search for security vendors, be aware of those who offer assessments on the “we find holes or it’s free” basis.  Below are a few points to consider when evaluating your choices.

  1. Security testing choices should not be based on price. They should be based on risk. The goal is to reduce the risk that any given operation (application, network, system, process, etc.) presents to the organization to a level that is manageable.

    Trust me, I have been in the security business for 20 years and all vendor processes are NOT created equal. Many variations exist in depth, skill level, scope, reporting capability, experience, etc. As such, selecting security testing vendors based upon price is a really bad idea. Matching vendors specific experience, reporting styles and technical capabilities to your environment and needs is a far better solution for too many reasons to expound upon here.
     

  2. The “find vulnerabilities or it’s free” mentality can backfire.It’s hard enough for developers and technical teams to take their lumps from a security test when holes emerge, but to also tie that to price makes it doubly difficult — “Great, I pay now because Tom made some silly mistake!” is just one possibility. How do you think management may handle that? What about Tom?

    Believe me, there can be long term side effects for Tom’s career, especially if he is also blamed for breaking the team’s budget in addition to causing them to fail an audit.
     

  3. It actually encourages the security assessment team to make mountains out of mole hills.Since they are rewarded only when they find vulnerabilities and the customer expectations of value are automatically built on severity (it’s human nature), then it certainly behooves the security team to note even small issues as serious security holes.

    In our experience, this can drastically impact the perceived risk of identified security issues in both technicians and management and has even been known to cause knee-jerk reactions and unneeded panic when reports arrive that show things like simple information leakage as “critical vulnerabilities”. Clearly, if the vendor is not extremely careful and mindful of ethical behavior among their teams, you can get seriously skewed views between perceived risk and real-world risk, again primarily motivated by the need to find issues to make the engagement profitable.

In my opinion, let’s stick to plain old value. We can help you find and manage your risk. We focus on specific technical vulnerabilities in networks, systems, applications and operations that attackers could exploit to cause you damage. The damages we prevent from occurring saves your company money. Look for a service vendor that provides this type of value and realize in the long run, you’ll be coming out ahead.

MSI Strategy & Tactics Talk Ep. 18: Vulnerability Assessment vs. Penetration Testing

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A vulnerability is the process of identifying and quantifying vulnerabilities on your network systems. A penetration test is a goal-oriented exercise — it can be to get data on the system or to cause as much damage as you can in order to test the system. – Adam Hostetler, MSI Network Engineer and Security Analyst

What is the best security assessment for you? A vulnerability assessment or a penetration test? Are’t they the same? In this episode of MSI Strategy & Tactics, the techs discuss the differences between the two and how to know which one is best for you. Take a listen! Discussion questions include:

  • The difference between a vulnerability assessment and a penetration test
  • The width versus depth analogy
  • When an organization should use a vulnerability assessment and when to use a penetration test
  • How an organization can make sure they are asking for and getting the right fit

Panelists:
Brent Huston, CEO, Founder, and Security Evangelist
Adam Hostetler, Network Engineer and Security Analyst
Phil Grimes, Security Analyst
John Davis, Risk Management Engineer
Mary Rose Maguire, Marketing Communication Specialist and moderator

Click the embedded player to listen. Or click this link to access downloads. Stay safe!

Want Rapid Feedback? Try a Web Application Security Scan!

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A web application security scan is a great way to get rapid feedback on the security and health of your web-based applications.

You can think of the web application scan as a sort of vulnerability assessment “lite”. It leverages the power and flexibility of automated application scanning tools to do a quick and effective baseline test of your application. It is very good at finding web server configuration issues, information leakage issues and the basic SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities so common with attackers today. 

This service fits particularly well for non-critical web applications that don’t process private information or for internal-facing applications with little access to private data. It is a quick and inexpensive way to perform due diligence on these applications that aren’t key operational focal points.

Many of our clients have been using the application scanning service for testing second-line applications to ensure that they don’t have injection or XSS issues that could impact PCI compliance or other regulatory standings. This gives them a less costly method for testing the basics than a full blown application assessment or penetration test.

While this service finds a number of issues and potential holes, we caution against using it in place of a full application assessment or penetration test if the web application in question processes critical or highly sensitive information. Certainly, these deeper offerings find a great deal more vulnerabilities and they also often reveal subtle issues that automated scans will not identify.

If you are interested in learning more about the applications scanning service, please fill out the contact form and put in the “Questions” box: Web App Scan. We can help you identify if these services are a good fit for your needs and are more than happy to provide more detail, pricing and other information about web application scans.

Business of Security Webcast Featuring Brent Huston: December 7

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Join the Business of Security to hear from Brent Huston, recent winner of (ISC)2 Information Security Leadership Award, who will lay out the need for and principles of performing detection in depth. Brent, CEO and Security Evangelist of MicroSolved, will share his research and hands-on experience that validates the leading approach for detecting threats against your most precious assets.

When: Wednesday, December 7th, Noon EDT
Where: GoToWebinar
Cost: Complimentary Register to attend live or to receive the event archive information for on-demand viewing at: http://www.businessofsecurity.com/

You’ll learn:

  • Huston’s postulate and why location matters
  • The detection in depth maturity model
  • The detection in depth focus model
  • Tools and approaches for doing detection in depth

Brent’s contribution to the community was recognized by (ISC)2 for employing the HoneyPoint Internet Threat Monitoring Environment (HITME) to alert critical infrastructure organizations whose machines are compromised. MSI provides pro-bono services to help them to mitigate the compromise and manage the threat.

Earn (1) CPE Group A credit for the CISSP and SSCP: This event meets the criteria for a Continuing Professional Education (CPE) activity for the Information Security and Risk Management domain.

MSI Strategy & Tactics Talk Ep. 15: Information Security for Credit Unions

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Credit Unions have become popular over the past few weeks as societal trends have placed greater pressure on bank policies. What’s the scoop on Credit Unions and information security? Take a listen! Discussion questions include:

  • Supporting Credit Union swap through infosec
  • The “hactivist” group Anonymous and “Dump Your Bank Day”
  • Is infosec strong at Credit Unions?
  • Our approaching toward testing Credit Unions and banking apps

Panelists:
Brent Huston, CEO, Founder, and Security Evangelist
Adam Hostetler, Network Engineer and Security Analyst
Phil Grimes, Security Analyst
John Davis, Risk Management Engineer
Mary Rose Maguire, Marketing Communication Specialist and moderator

Click the embedded player to listen. Or click this link to access downloads. Stay safe!

The Detection in Depth Focus Model & Example

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Furthering the discussion on how detection in depth works, here is an example that folks have been asking me to demonstrate. This is a diagram that shows an asset, in this case PII in a database that is accessed via a PHP web application. The diagram shows the various controls around detection in place to protect the data at the various focus levels for detection. As explained in the maturity model post before, the closer the detection control is to the asset, the higher the signal to noise ratio it should be and the higher the relevance o the data should be to the asset being protected (Huston’s Postulate). 

Hopefully, this diagram helps folks see a working example of how detection in depth can be done and why it is not only important, but increasingly needed if we are going to turn the tide on cyber-crime.
 
As always, thanks for reading and feel free to engage with ideas in comments or seek me out on Twitter (@lbhuston) and let me know what you think.