Category Archives: General InfoSec

Wasp’s 0-Interface Design

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A few people have asked me to elaborate on HoneyPoint Wasp’s (and HoneyPoint Agent’s) zero interface design. I’ll take a moment to explain what it is and how it works. Both Wasp and Agent are designed to be run on Windows systems as a “service”. Windows services run in the background on the system and usually do not have a graphical user interface.

With Wasp and Agent, we extended that concept to make them further transparent to the user by ensuring that no communication with the user of the system takes place. Unlike personal firewalls and most other information security, HoneyPoint does not have pop-up windows, user alerts or the like that occur on the Windows system. Instead, all alerts, security events and data are sent from the monitored system to the centralized Console. The Console then alerts the security team to incidents and security threats, without bothering the user at all.

The nicest thing about this design is that end users are never bothered with alerts and pop-ups that impact their work, cause help desk calls or interfere with their use of the system. In our experience, users usually don’t read the alerts or respond to the pop-ups anyway, so we spare them the noise. Instead, the security team can centrally monitor the Console and make decisions about when to act, contact the user or remove the computer from service based on what they see. This leads to better security choices overall, higher user productivity and vastly improved visibility for the security team.

The 0-interface design is a fantastic strength of HoneyPoint. It allows for the easy installation of a security tool that is all but invisible to the end-users of the system. It has no impact on user productivity, causes no spikes in help desk calls and requires no end-user training to deploy. Security teams get all of the positives of stronger visibility into the workstation world without any of these negatives, long associated with more traditional approaches.

Give HoneyPoint Wasp a try on your workstations and we think you’ll agree that 0-interface is the best way to go. Give us a call to discuss demo, schedule a pilot or to schedule a technical briefing. We look forward to showing you how HoneyPoint can help your organization have better security with far less hassle!

Better Detection on the Desktops is Now Available!

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Gang, as we have been talking about for several months, MicroSolved is proud to announce the immediate availability of HoneyPoint Wasp. Version 1.00 of this new tool focused on detecting compromised workstations and Windows servers is now running full speed ahead. Clients and participants in the beta program have had some great things to say about the product, like:

“It’s a no-brainer!”, “…deeply extends visibility into the desktop world…” and “Immensely helpful!”

For more information about how Wasp can help you defend your desktops and workstations, plus play a critical role in identifying attacks against Windows servers, check out the press release, web page or give us a call at (614) 351-1237 to set up a briefing!

New Feature, Just In Time for Fall! Introducing Touchdown Tasks! #security

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We started a new feature in our newsletter called “Touchdown Task.” Each month, we focus on a specific, measurable task you can use to firm up your own security strategy. This “Touchdown Task” focuses on authentication credentials. Here we go!

Goal: To identify and remove all network, system and application access that does not require secure authentication credentials or mechanisms.

What this task entails is finding all those systems and applications on your network that can be accessed without having to enter a user name or password; or that can be entered using a widely known default password. This is a very important task indeed! Our techs are often able to compromise the systems we test because of blank or poor passwords. This is especially dangerous since attackers of any skill level or even just the curious can take advantage of these blank or poor user credentials to poke around, access private information or even elevate their privileges and take control of the system!

There are a number of very common services and applications that come from the vendor with blank or well known default passwords. One of the most dangerous of these, and one we see all the time, is the SQL database. This software installs a blank SA administrator password and it is very easy to forget to change once the software is installed.

How do you find the blank and common vendor default passwords that may be present on your network? The best way is to perform an internal network vulnerability assessment (or have one performed for you by your security partner). There are a number of assessment tools available to carry out this task. Your organization most likely already has one in place. You can configure your assessment tool to perform these tests; isolating the data needed for this task from a more general security finding. Also make sure to check your FTP sites and file shares to ensure that they cannot be accessed anonymously.

To remedy the situation once suspicious access credentials have been found, simply change or install passwords that comply with your site’s information security password policy. Generally speaking, passwords should never be blank, widely known (default) or easily guessable. For example, your password should never be “password”, “admin”, “1234567”, “qwerty”, etc.

Passwords should also never be the same as the account name, the name of the organization, the name of the software package or other easily guessable possibilities. Good passwords should contain at least three of the four possible character types (upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters).
Undertaking this Touchdown Task is relatively easy and will prove to be truly valuable in protecting your network from attack! Give us a call if you’d like us to partner with you for security assessments.

SAMBA Vuln Could Be Dangerous

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If you are not already looking at the newest SAMBA issue, you should be paying attention. It is a stack-based buffer overflow, exploitable remotely without credentials. The MetaSploit folks are already hard at work on an exploit and some versions are rumored to be floating about the underground.

The vulnerability exists in OS X, Linux and a variety of appliance platforms using the core SAMBA code. Updates are starting to roll into the primary distributions and OS images. Ubuntu, for example, already has a fixed version available.

You can read the SAMBA folks release here for more information.

Likely, wide scale exploitation is on the horizon and malware/worm development is also predicted for this particular issue.

In terms of actions, begin to understand where SAMBA is used in your environment, reduce your attack surfaces as much as possible, implement the patches where available and increase your vigilance on SAMBA utilizing systems/processes.

Keep your eyes on this one. With this also being a fairly heavy/serious Microsoft patch day, your security team and admins might be focused on other things. You don’t want this one to slip through the cracks.

HoneyPoint Wasp is Almost Ready to Leave the Nest

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As many of you may know, the MSI team has been hard at work the last several months finishing the beta of our new compromised workstation detection product, HoneyPoint Wasp. It is a fully integrated component of HoneyPoint Security Server, capable of executing distributed detection and threat monitoring on Windows workstations across enterprises. The initial feedback by the beta group have been absolutely amazing. We are finding bots, malware and compromised hosts in a variety of locations, once thought to be “clean” and “safe”.

Wasp accomplishes this mission by being deployed as a service on workstations and by monitoring for the most common signs of compromise. It can watch for changes in the users, admins, port postures and such. It does white list detection of the running processes and it is even capable of detecting DNS tampering and changes to selected files on the operating system.

Even better, it does this work without the need for workstation event logs, signature updates or tuning. It “learns” about the workstation on which it is deployed and adapts its detection techniques to focus on important changes over the long run.

We designed Wasp to be easy to install, easy to manage and to be transparent to the end – user. As such, it is deployed as a 0-interface piece of software. There are no pop-ups, no GUI and no interaction at all with the user. All alerts are routed to the HoneyPoint console and the security team, eliminating any chance of increased help desk calls, user push back and confusion.

In the next couple of weeks, we will be making some announcements about the general availability of the Wasp product. I hope you will join me in my excitement when we announce this launch. In the meantime, think about what you are doing today to protect against initial stage compromises and congratulate the MSI development team and our beta testers on a job well done. I think you are going to be amazed at how easy, capable and advanced Wasp is, when it is released. I know I continue to be amazed at what it is detecting and how much stuff has evaded current detection techniques.

In the meantime, while we await the full release, check out this PDF for some more information about where we are going with Wasp and our HoneyPoint product line. I think you are going to like the diagrams and the explanations. If you would like to book a special sneak preview of Wasp and the rest of HoneyPoint, give your account executive a call. We will be happy to sit down and discuss it with you. As always, thanks for reading!

Excellent Source for Metrics on PHP RFI

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My friend Eric has put up some excellent statistics and metrics on PHP RFI attacks against his honeynet. This is some excellent data. If you have read other stuff we have pointed to from Eric, then you know what to expect. But, if you are interested in a real world look at trends and metrics around PHP exposures, give this a few moments of your time.

You can find the interface and metrics set here.

Check it out, I think you’ll be impressed. Thanks, as always, to Eric and other folks in the honeypot community for all of their hard work, time and attention.

If you have some honeypot metrics to share, drop a comment below! As always, thanks for reading!

Passwords, Dinosaurs, and 8-Track Tapes

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What do passwords dinosaurs and 8 track tapes all have in common? Pretty soon they will all be in the same category: things of the past! It’s not just a matter of people using short, simple, “stupid” passwords any more. With advances in easily available and cheap computing power such as advanced graphics processors and solid state drives (SSDs), even long and complex passwords can be cracked in seconds! Not to mention the fact that if you get hacked and someone installs a keylogging Trojan on your machine, it doesn’t matter how long and complex a password you use; it’s game over!

There are always big concerns about the “exploit du jour” in the information security field. SQL injection, application hacks, XSS, Bots – you name it! But ever since the start the number one way computers get hacked is because of password problems. It’s still going on today! No matter what system one tests, it seems someone has a password of “password” or “admin” or something dumb like that. Or someone forgets to change a blank SA password or forgets to change the default password in some application. Then, of course, there are the system admins who use the same passwords for their user and admin accounts. Instant privilege elevation is given to domain admin and, once again, game over! This is really just a problem of human nature. We all have ambitions to follow the password policies exactly, to use strong passwords all the time, use different passwords for every account, change them on a regular basis, and never reuse the same ones twice, etc. But we all get lazy, or complacent or busy or forget or just screw up! Like I say – human nature.

What is the upshot of all this? Passwords alone as a security measure are hopelessly inadequate. And they always have been! So what is the answer? Well, obviously, we need to use something in addition to passwords. Ideally it would be preferable to use all three of the possible authentication techniques: something we know, something we have and something we are. But it’s hard enough to get people and organizations to consider even two of the three. There is TREMENDOUS resistance against insisting that everyone use tokens for example. And I can understand that. They cost money, you always have to remember to have them with you, they might break at the most awkward of moments, they can be stolen or they can be lost. Same thing with biometrics. They are expensive, they are not always reliable, they can be often be circumvented and they may leave you open to personal attack or even kidnapping! These are all real issues that need to be addressed and, what’s more, gotten used to. People are just going to eventually come to the realization that one or more of these techniques MUST be used. Until now, though, people have been willing to accept the consequences rather than bite the bullet and put up with the hassles and expense. The tipping point has yet to be reached. But, with identity theft, cyber crime and the increasing ease with which passwords can be stolen or broken that point is now very close indeed!

In the mean time, we all should REALLY do a much better job in using strong passwords. The new MINIMUM standard for passwords should be 12 characters and they should use at least three of the four possible character types. And that’s just for normal folks. For system admins and other high value access passwords alone should never be enough. These folks should surely be using multi-part authentication techniques no matter what the expense or hassle. After all, they DO hold the keys to the kingdom for all of us!

Another Good Reason to Increase Internal Security

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Well, the much anticipated 2010 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report is out, and once again it is an eye-opener! Let me say what a boon these reports are to the infosec community! Verizon and their team are to be praised and congratulated for all their hard work. These reports really help us keep current so we can protect our information from the right threats in the right ways. I know it’s not a large scale study, but I do feel it gives us good indications of trends and threats in the industry.

This particular threat report mainly gives us the data breach picture for 2009. It was compiled from nearly 900 actual incidents and includes a lot of input from the U. S. Secret Service this year. One of the surprising results of this particular report was the 26% increase in data breaches from insiders. It seems that organized cybercriminals are promising money to insiders with access to administrator level credentials. Unfortunately for these naïve inside individuals, it is proving very easy for the authorities to catch them. Also, it seems, the cybercriminals are usually not even paying them as promised! Despite these facts, it is evidently fairly easy to find plenty of insiders that are willing to sell their credentials. Go figure!

There are several ways to help counter the insider threat. The easiest thing you can do right off the bat is to ensure that those with high level access to the system don’t use the same credentials for their administrator and user accounts. You’d be amazed at what a common practice this is! All cybercriminals have to do is bust a few user level accounts and there is a VERY good chance that they will then be able to gain administrator level access. Administrator level passwords should be long, strong and ONLY used for administration purposes.

Another very effective method to counter the insider threat is to use true multi-part authentication mechanisms for administrative level access to the system; especially with very effective mechanisms such as tokens. Employing this practice means that cyber criminals not only have to steal credentials, they also have to get their hands on a token. And even if they do, it only gives them a short time to act; admin tokens are usually missed very quickly. There is also the option to employ biometrics. These can be problematic, but are improving all the time. And effective and reliable biometrics are even harder to overcome than token use.

You might say that good passwords, biometrics, and tokens won’t keep actual system and database administrators from selling out to the bad guys, which is true. However, there are other mechanisms available that can prevent lone bad-actors from compromising the system. One effective practice is management monitoring of high level access. If, every day, managers are looking at who accesses what and when, then the difficulty of stealing or corrupting data goes WAY up! Also, there are applications out there that can send out alerts when high level access is underway.

Another method, and a tried and true one, is the use of dual controls. If it takes two individuals to access systems, then cybercriminals have to corrupt two individuals and it becomes even easier for the authorities to figure out who the rats are. I don’t recommend this control except for very high value assets. The downside is that it’s a hassle to implement. There ALWAYS has to be at least two individuals available at all times or access becomes impossible. There are vacations, lunches and breaks to consider, and what happens in true emergencies such as floods, snow storms and the like? But this is a control that has been in use since long before computer systems were in place and it has proven to be very reliable.

These certainly aren’t all of the controls available to help counter the inside threat. I’m sure that you can come up with some others if you give it a little thought. But used individually, or even better, in combinations, should go a long way in protecting your data from the bad guys within!

Tips for Input Validation

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Input validation is the single best defense against injection and XSS vulnerabilities. Done right, proper input validation techniques can make web-applications invulnerable to such attacks. Done incorrectly, they end up bringing little more than a false sense of security. The bad news is that input validation is difficult. “White listing,” or identifying all possible strings accepted as input, is nearly impossible for all but the simplest of applications. “Black listing,” that is parsing the input for bad characters (such as ‘, ;,–, etc.) and dangerous strings, can be challenging as well. Though this is the most common method, it is often the subject of a great deal of challenges as attackers work through various encoding mechanisms, translations and other avoidance tricks to bypass such filters.

Over the last few years, a single source has emerged for best practices around input validation and other web security issues. The working group OWASP has some great techniques for various languages and server environments. Further, vendors such as Sun, Microsoft and others have created best practice articles and sample code for doing input validation for their servers and products. Check with their knowledge base or support teams for specific information about their platform and the security controls they recommend.

While application frameworks and web application firewalls are evolving as tools to help with these security problems, proper developer education and ongoing training of your development team about input validation remains the best solution.