Category Archives: Risk Management

Hackers Hate HoneyPoint

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We have been getting so much great feedback and positive response to our HoneyPoint products that Mary Rose, our marketing person, crafted this logo and is putting together a small campaign based on the idea.

We are continuing to work on new capabilities and uses for HoneyPoint. We have several new tricks up our sleeve and several new ways to use our very own “security swiss army knife”. The capabilities, insights and knowledge that the product brings us is quickly and easily being integrated into our core service offerings. Our assessments and penetration testing brings this “bleeding edge” attack knowledge, threat analysis and risk insight to our work. We are routinely integrating the attack patterns and risk data from our deployed HoneyPoints back into the knowledge mix. We are adding new tools, techniques and risk rating adjustments based on the clear vision we are obtaining from HoneyPoint.

This is just one of the many ways that HoneyPoint and the experience, methodology and dedication of MSI separate us from our competitors. Clients continue to love our rapport, reporting formats, flexibility and deep knowledge – but now, thanks to HoneyPoint, they also enjoy our ability to work with them to create rational defenses to bleeding edge threats.

You can bet that you will see more about HoneyPoint in the future. After all, hackers hate HoneyPoint, and in this case, being hated is fine with us!

Why Replacing Internal NIDS with HoneyPoint is Critical to Your Organization

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We are in a new age of information security. The primary threats to our critical data assets are well within the firewalls and layered architectures of the degenerative “perimeter”. Attackers can and will leap your firewalls, tunnel through your DMZs and trick your users into being the gateway to attack. The idea of the walled castle as a form of defense is destroyed and no longer serves anyone well.

With 55% of all attacks that cause financial damages to organizations originating internally, it makes sense that organizations change their focus to internal prevention, detection and response. But using a “false positive generator” like Snort!, Proventia or other NIDS approach is just madness. These mechanisms are so fraught with bad data when focused on the typical internal network that applying any attention to them at all is a huge waste of resources. Of course, the vendors will respond with their magic phrases – “tuning” and “managed service” both of which are just marketing speak for “spend more time and resources that you already don’t have on making our tool actually useful”. Don’t believe me, just ask them about applying their tool to a complex internal environment. Our polls, interviews and questions to users of these technology showed immense amounts of time, money and human resources being applied to keeping signatures up to date, tweaking filters and rules to eliminate false positives and spending HUGE amounts of security team time to chase ghosts and sort out useful events from the noise.

Our initial metrics, as we discussed previously showed that we could cut those resource requirements by 60-90% using a different approach. By leveraging the power of HoneyPoints, their deploy and forget architecture and their lack of false positives your organization can reap the reward of better security with less time, money and work. By combining HoneyPoint Security Server and an appropriate log monitoring tool (like OSSEC), organizations have been able to greatly simplify their deployments, reduce their costs and increase their abilities to focus on the security events that matter. Many have relegated their NIDS deployments at the perimeters to being another source of forensic data to be used along with syslog server data, file system analysis and other data sources compiled to provide evidence when a true incident occurs. NIDS at the perimeters have their value here and being a part of solution as a forensic tool makes them effective when needed, but prevents the “attention overload” that they require when used as a data source on a daily basis.

Detection of attackers in your environment IS CRITICAL. But the way you go about it has to make sense from both a security and manageability standpoint. NIDS has proven to be an ineffective solution in terms of allowing organizations with average resources to succeed. There is a way forward. That way is to change the way we think about information security. HoneyPoint Security Server and MicroSolved can help your organization do just that!

Check out http://www.microsolved.com/honeypoint/ for more information, or give us a call and we will be happy to explain how it works!

Please note: Snort! and Proventia are trademarks of their respective companies. They are great tools when applied to appropriate problems, but in the case of internal network security – we just have a better way! 🙂

Myriad of Ways to Trigger Internal DNS Recursion – Please Patch Now!

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For those organizations who have decided not to patch their DNS servers because they feel protected by implemented controls that only allow recursion from internal systems, we just wanted to point out that there a number of ways that an attacker can cause a recursive query to be performed by an “internal” host.

Here is just a short list of things that an attacker could do to cause internal DNS recursion to occur:

Send an email with an embedded graphic from the site that they want to poison your cache for, which will cause your DNS to do a lookup for that domain if it is not already known by your DNS

Send an email to a mail server that does reverse lookups on the sender domain (would moving your reverse lookup rule down in the rule stack of email filters help minimize this possibility???)

Embed web content on pages that your users visit that would trigger a lookup

Trick users through social engineering into visiting a web site or the like

Use a bot-net (or other malware) controlled system in your environment to do the lookup themselves (they could also use this mechanism to perform “internal” cache poisoning attacks)

The key point here is that many organizations believe that the fact that they don’t allow recursion from external hosts makes them invulnerable to the exploits now circulating in the wild for the DNS issue at hand. While they may be resilient to the “click and drool” hacks, they are far more vulnerable than they believe to a knowledgeable, focused, resourced attacker who might be focused on their environment.

The bottom line solution, in case you are not aware, is to PATCH YOUR DNS SYSTEMS NOW IF THEY ARE NOT PATCHED ALREADY.

Please, do not wait, active and wide scale exploitation is very likely in the very near future, if it is not underway right now!

Time to Play Some Offense…

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To quote, Allan Bergen, it sure looks like it might be “time to play some offense”…

Not surprising to me, I read today that the primary security concern of IT managers is the inside threat. It doesn’t surprise me because I have been working on educating organizations for several years about the seriousness of the insider threat. In fact, I would suggest that there are very very few threats that are NOT insider threats. Why? Because there really is no inside or outside. Thanks to disruptive technologies and evolved attacker capabilities – just about everything is exposed to attack. Just ask some of the recent vendors who were compromised in high profile “PCI-related” cases how well they feel that their “perimeter security” protected them…

The truth is, there are three powerful things that can be done to combat modern attacks, whether internal-based or executed by attackers half a world away.

1. Implement and enforce data classification – Know where your critical assets are, how they move around your environment throughout their lifecycle and then use tools like access controls, encryption and integrity verification to make sure that they are protected. Use logging analysis and event management to detect issues and make sure all of the controls, including role-based access controls, are HEAVILY and PERIODICALLY tested.

2. Embrace enclaving – Enclaving is like defense in depth throughout the whole network. Establish proper need to know boundaries, then build enclaves of security mechanisms around the data. Don’t build networks that trust user workstations with access to databases and other servers, segregate them with firewalls, detection mechanisms and access controls. Build as much security for the users as makes sense, but design the environment so that if users make bad decisions (which they will) and get popped – so what! Client side exploits and malware are only a concern if users have access to inordinate amounts of data. The problem is making sure that you get your controls and practices tight enough to limit the exposure that user compromise presents. That alone should go a LONG way toward minimizing your risk if done properly.

3. Move up the security stack to Threat Management and Risk Assessment – Use processes like risk assessment as a factor in business decision making. Security can truly empower business, but you have to let security teams stop being the “patch patrol” and “net cop” and let them get to actually helping you manage risk. They have to be able to identify threats, model threats and understand attacks and exposures. That requires education, dependable tools and upper management support. Encourage your security team to mature and begin to take real-world risk into consideration. Help them to resist the cult of the arcane technical security issue…

Of course, MicroSolved can help you with all three of these areas. We have the experience, insight and expertise to help you build effective enclaves and design data classification systems that make sense. We can help your team find security assessment goals that make more sense and provide ongoing assessment to keep them focused on the real-world risks. Our HoneyPoint products can help them model threats, frequency of attacks, understand the capability and intent of attackers and even give them deep insight into proactive risk metrics that they can leverage for “more science than academic” metrics of risk measurement. All of these things help your organization protect against the insider threat. All of them are available today.

The bottom line is this – if you are an IT manager looking to defend against the insider threat – give us a call. Together we can apply these strategies and others that your organization may need to effectively manage their risk and protect their assets.

At MicroSolved, we think differently about information security. So should you.

What is “Defensive Fuzzing”?

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Since the release of HornetPoints with the newest version of HoneyPoint Security Server, I have been getting a lot of mail asking about “defensive fuzzing”. I thought I would take a moment and talk a little bit about it and explain a bit about its uses.

Defensive fuzzing is a patent-pending approach to network, system and application defense. It is based on the idea of using techniques from “fuzz testing”, but applying them against incoming connections in a defensive manner rather than as a test mechanism for known software. The idea is that attacker tools and malware probably fail to meet established best practices for software development and thus, are likely to have issues with unexpected input just as normal professionally developed software does. Further, “defensive fuzzing” lends itself to using fuzzing techniques as a protective mechanism to cause attacker tools, malware and other illicit code to abnormally terminate. Basically, by fuzzing incoming connections to a HornetPoint (which should have no real world use, thus all incoming connections are illicit) we can terminate scans, probes, exploits, worms, etc. and reduce the risk that our organization (and other organizations) face from these attacks.

For those of you who might not be familiar with fuzzing, you can read more about the basics of it here. However, keep in mind, that defensive fuzzing applies these techniques in new ways and for a protective purpose rather than a software testing process.

HornetPoints simply embody this process. They can be configured to fuzz many types of existing connections, emulating varying protocols and applications. For example, targeting spam and relay scanners can be done by implementing the SMTP HornetPoint. It listens on the SMTP port and appears to be a valid email relay. Instead, however, it not only captures the source and traffic from the spammers, but also fuzzes the connection as the spam is sent, attempting to terminate the spammer scanning tool, bot-net client or other form of malware that is generating the traffic. Obviously, success rates vary, but our testing has shown the process to be quite effective against a number of tools and code bases used by attackers today.

That is just one example and many more are possible. For more information about defensive fuzzing or HornetPoints, please leave us a comment or contact us. We would be happy to discuss this evolution in security with you!

Changing the World….Again!

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In the last couple of years since we launched the HoneyPoint family of products, it has been an interesting experience. I have learned the joys and hardships of marketing a security software product. I have tried to make myself heard in an overcrowded and noisy marketplace. I would do it all over again, because HoneyPoint is the right idea and the right thing to do.

Now, MSI is again out to change the world. This week, we are launching a new release of HoneyPoint Security Server Console and officially releasing the long awaited HoneyPoint Trojan. Using these new tools, security teams can now create friendly Trojans that report information back to them whenever they are used. Security teams can gather when people access data that they should not and they can track data, documents and other pseudo-information around the world. That means that if you make jet engines, you can drop these Trojans on your file servers and anonymous FTP sites and then proceed to learn more about where they propagate!

But, that isn’t even the big news. The big deal is a new enhancement to HoneyPoint Security Server called HornetPoint. HornetPoints are the world’s first implementation of what we call “defensive fuzzing”. Like normal HoneyPoints, these pseudo-services listen on IP ports and wait for network contact. Just like HoneyPoints, they then capture the source and content of those transactions and report them to the central server. HoneyPoints, of course are often deployed to create an enterprise honeypot.

But, unlike normal HoneyPoints, HornetPoints are not a passive defense. Instead of replying with normal and expected data, the HornetPoints fuzz the expected data and mutate it into random and unexpected ways. The result is that a high number of attacker tools, worms, scanners and bot-net tools crash when the mutated data is received. Thus, HornetPoints, actively defend themselves and the network of their owners. Unlike more traditional defenses, HornetPoints don’t just guard against attacks – they break attackers and their tools!

We are just starting to populate the web site with information on these new versions and enhancements to the HoneyPoint product line. Over the next several days, we will make the new versions available and get the updated marketing added to the web site. In the meantime, if you are interested in hearing more about these new capabilities and the evolution from security to Corporate Counter Intelligence, just give us a call.

A special thanks is due from the MSI staff to those who have supported us during this process. Thanks to all of the folks who have urged us to complete the enhancements and to those who have helped challenge us to again rise to a new level. Things are certainly changing and we are all very proud to be a part of the next evolution of information security! We promise, we will continue to work hard to bring the best bleeding-edge protection and insights to all of you. As always, thanks so much for believing in us and in choosing MSI as your security partner!

MSI Launches New Threat Modeling Offering & Process

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Yesterday, we were proud to announce a new service offering and process from MSI. This is a new approach to threat modeling that allows organizations to proactively model their threat exposures and the changes in their risk posture, before an infrastructure change is made, a new business operation is launched, a new application is deployed or other IT risk impacts occur.

Using our HoneyPoint technology, organizations can effectively model new business processes, applications or infrastructure changes and then deploy the emulated services in their real world risk environments. Now, for the first time ever, organizations can establish real-world threat models and risk conditions BEFORE they invest in application development, new products or make changes to their firewalls and other security tools.

Even more impressive is that the process generates real-world risk metrics that include frequency of interaction with services, frequency of interaction with various controls, frequency of interaction with emulated vulnerabilities, human attackers versus automated tools, insight into attacker capabilities, focus and intent! No longer will organizations be forced to guess at their threat models, now they can establish them with defendable, real world values!

Much of the data created by this process can be plugged directly into existing risk management systems, risk assessment tools and methodologies. Real-world values can be established for many of the variables and other metrics, that in the past have been decided by “estimation”.

Truly, if RISK = THREAT X VULNERABILITY, then this new process can establish that THREAT variable for you, even before typical security tools like scanners, code reviews and penetration testing have a rough implementation to work against to measure VULNERABILITY. Our new process can be used to model threats, even before a single line of real code has been written – while the project is still in the decision or concept phases!

We presented this material at the local ISSA chapter meeting yesterday. The slides are available here:

Threat Modeling Slides

Give us a call and schedule a time to discuss this new capability with an engineer. If your organization is ready to add some maturity and true insight into its risk management and risk assessment processes, then this just might be what you have been waiting for.

New MSI Tool for Analyzing Your Security Program

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MSI is proud to release a new tool to help security managers analyze the overall balance, maturity and capability of their security program. The new tool is a simple matrix based around quantifying the amount of controls, efforts and processes you are employing.

Using the tool as brainstorming aid is also possible. Security engineers have told us that the process works for them to analyze particular applications and other security undertakings. Simply build out the matrix on paper or in your chosen office product and it should help you clarify where your security initiative stands.

Effective, mature security programs should be well rounded in the matrix and should be well balanced between all of the cells. They also tend to balance out between strategic and tactical approaches.

Feel free to give us feedback on this project and let us know if we can answer any questions you may have.

You can obtain the relevant file here.

SecurityProgramAnalysis.pdf

It is licensed under Creative Commons. Check out the PDF for details.

Hardware Hacking Gets All Too Real

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Hardware and wireless hacking have combined in a pretty scary way. This article talks about security researchers that have found ways to monitor, attack and exploit the most popular of pacemakers used today. According to the article, the attackers were able to gain remote access to the data and control system of the device. Once they tapped into it, they were able to siphon off health-related information and even cause the pacemaker to apply voltage or shutdown – essentially killing the human host of the device.

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It really doesn’t get more scary than that. While the odds of such an attack occurring in real life against a specific person are very slim, it is simply another side effect of the integration of technology into our daily lives. As I have written about many times before, the integration of technology into so many aspects of our lives is a powerful thing. On one hand, it frees us up to do other work, makes our lives easier, more healthy, perhaps even longer than life would have been otherwise. However, many vendors simply fail to realize the implications of the risks that are inherent in their products. They fail to comprehend the basic methodologies of attackers and certainly fail to grasp how the combination of technologies in many of their products can create new forms of risk for the consumer.

I am quite sure that the company who created the pacemaker was truly interested in advancing the art of healthcare and extending the human life. They simply wanted to make things better and saw how adding remote management and monitoring to their device would allow patients to be diagnosed and the device operation modified without the need for surgery. That is quite an honorable thing and is sure to make patients lives easier and even reduce the rate of death since patients would no longer undergo the stressful and dangerous operations that used to be needed to make changes to the implanted pacemakers. These are very noble ideas indeed.

Unfortunately, the creators of the heart system were so focused on saving lives and so focused on medical technology, that they seem to have missed the idea of securing their pacemaker against improper access. This is certainly understandable, given that they are a medical company and not an IT firm, where such risks have been more public in their discussion. The problem is, in many cases today, there is essentially no difference between IT and other industries, since many of the same technologies are present in both.

Again, there is little to truly be immediately concerned about here. While the attack is possible, it does require technical knowledge and the vendors will undoubtably work on improving the product. However, upgrading existing users is unlikely. But, unless you happen to be a high profile target, you are obviously much safer with the device than without it. The big lesson here and the one I hope vendors, consumers and the public are learning is that we must add risk management and security testing processes to any device with a critical role, regardless of industry. Today, there are simply too many technologies that can impact our daily lives to continue to ignore their risks.