Emulating SIP with HoneyPoint

Posted on June 7, 2016 by Brent Huston

Last week, Hos and I worked on identifying how to emulate a SIP endpoint with HoneyPoint Security Server. We identified an easy way to do it using the BasicTCP capability. This emulation component emulates a basic TCP service and performs in the following manner:

Listens for connections
Upon connection, logs the connection details
Sends the banner file and awaits a response
Upon response, logs the response data
Sends the response, repeating the wait and log loop, resending the response to every request
When the connection limit is reached, it closes the connection

It has two associated files for the emulation:

The banner file – “banner”
The response file – “response”

In our testing, we were able to closely emulate a SIP connection by creating a banner file that was blank or contained only a CR/LF. Then we added the appropriate SIP messaging into the response file. This emulates a service where thew connection is completed and logged, and the system appears to wait on input. Once input is received, then a SIP message is delivered to the client. In our testing, the SIP tools we worked with accepted the emulation as SIP server and did not flag any anomalies.

I’ll leave the actual SIP messaging as a research project for the reader, to preserve some anonymity for HPSS users. But, if you are an HPSS user and would like to do this, contact support and we will provide you with the specific messaging that we used in our testing.

As always, thanks for reading and especially thanks for being interested in HoneyPoint. We are prepping the next release, and I think you will be blown away by some of the new features and the updates to the documentation. We have been hard at work on this for a while, and I can’t wait to share it with you shortly!

Interesting Talk on Post Quantum Computing Impacts on Crypto

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Brent Huston

If you want to really get some great understanding of how the future of crypto is impacted by quantum computing, there is a fantastic talk embedded in this link.

The talk really turns the high level math and theory of most of these discussions into knowledge you can parse and use. Take an hour and listen to it. I think you will find it most rewarding.

If you want to talk about your thoughts on the matter, hit us up on Twitter. (@microsolved)

Clients Finding New Ways to Leverage MSI Testing Labs

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Brent Huston

Just a reminder that MSI testing labs are seeing a LOT more usage lately. If you haven’t heard about some of the work we do in the labs, check it out here.

One of the ways that new clients are leveraging the labs is to have us mock up changes to their environments or new applications in HoneyPoint and publish them out to the web. We then monitor those fake implementations and measure the ways that attackers, malware and Internet background radiation interacts with them.

The clients use these insights to identify areas to focus on in their security testing, risk management and monitoring. A few clients have even done A/B testing using this approach, looking for the differences in risk and threat exposures via different options for deployment or development.

Let us know if you would like to discuss such an approach. The labs are a quickly growing and very powerful part of the many services and capabilities that we offer our clients around the world!

Podcast Episode 7 Now Available

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Brent Huston

The newest version of the State of Security Podcast is now available. You can go the main page here, or listen by clicking on the embedded player below.

This episode features:

This episode is a great interview with Mark “Phork” Carey. We riff on the future of technology & infosec, how machine learning might impact security in the long term, what it was like to build the application-centric web with Sun, lessons learned from decades of hardware hacking and whole lot more! The short for this month is with @pophop, so check out what the self-proclaimed “elder geek” has to say as he spreads some wisdom. Let us know what you think and send in ideas for other folks you would like to hear on the podcast.

The Mixed Up World of Hola VPN

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Brent Huston

Have you heard about, or maybe you use, the “free” services of Hola VPN?

This is, of course, a VPN, in that it routes your traffic over a “protected” network, provides some level of privacy to users and can be used to skirt IP address focused restrictions, such as those imposed by streaming media systems and television suppliers. There are a ton of these out there, but Hola is interesting for another reason.

That other reason is that it turns the client machine into “exit nodes” for a paid service offering by the company:

In May 2015, Hola came under criticism from 8chan founder Frederick Brennan after the site was reportedly attacked by exploiting the Hola network, as confirmed by Hola founder Ofer Vilenski. After Brennan emailed the company, Hola modified its FAQ to include a notice that its users are acting as exit nodes for paid users of Hola’s sister service Luminati. “Adios, Hola!”, a website created by nine security researchers and promoted across 8chan, states: “Hola is harmful to the internet as a whole, and to its users in particular. You might know it as a free VPN or “unblocker”, but in reality it operates like a poorly secured botnet – with serious consequences.”[23]

In this case, you may be getting a whole lot more than you bargained for when you grab and use this “free” VPN client. As always, your paranoia should vary and you should carefully monitor any new software or tools you download – since they may not play nice, be what you thought, or be outright malicious.

I point this whole debacle out, just to remind you, “free” does not always mean without a cost. If you don’t see a product, you are likely THE PRODUCT… Just something to keep in mind as you wander the web…

Until next time, stay safe out there!

3 Things I Learned Talking to InfoSec People About Crime

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Brent Huston

Over the last several years, I have given many many talks about the behavior of criminal rings, how the criminal underground operates and black market economics. I wanted to share with my audiences some of the lessons I have learned about crime. Many people responded well and were interested in the content. Some replied with the predictable, “So what does this have to do with my firewall?” kind of response. One older security auditor even went so far as to ask me point blank “Why do you pay attention to the criminals? Shouldn’t you be working on helping people secure their networks?” I tried to explain that understanding bad actors was a part of securing systems, but she wouldn’t hear of it…

That’s OK. I expected some of that kind of push back. Often, when I ask people what they want to hear about, or where my research should go, the responses I get back fall into two categories: “more of the same stuff” and “make x cheaper”, where x is some security product or tool. Neither is what I had in mind… 🙂

Recently, I announced that I was taking this year off from most public speaking. I don’t think I will be attending as many events or speaking beyond my podcast and webinars. Mostly, this is to help me recover some of my energy and spend more time focused on new research and new projects at MicroSolved. However, I do want to close out the previous chapter of my focus on Operation Aikido and crime with 3 distinct lessons I think infosec folks should focus on and think about.

1. Real world – i.e.” “offline” crime – is something that few infosec professionals pay much attention to. Many of them are unaware of how fraud and black markets work, how criminals launder money/data around the world. They should pay attention to this, because “offline” crime and “online” crime are often strongly correlated and highly related in many cases. Sadly, when approached with this information – much of the response was – “I don’t have time for this, I have 156,926 other things to do right now.”

2. Infosec practitioners still do not understand their foes. There is a complete disconnect between the way most bad guys think and operate and the way many infosec folks think and operate. So much so, that there is often a “reality gap” between them. In a world of so many logs, honeypots, new techniques and data analysis, the problem seems to be getting worse instead of better. Threat intelligence has been reduced to lists of IOCs by most vendors, which makes it seem like knowledge of a web site URL, hash value or IP address is “knowing your enemy”. NOTHING could be farther from the truth….

3. Few infosec practitioners can appreciate a global view of crime and see larger-scale impacts in a meaningful way. Even those infosec practitioners who do get a deeper view of crime seem unable to formulate global-level impacts or nuance influences. When asked how geo-political changes would impact various forms of crime around the world, more than 93% of those I polled could only identify “increases in crime” as an impact. Only around 7% of those polled could identify specific shifts in the types of crime or criminal actors when asked about changes in the geo-political or economic landscapes. Less than 2% of the respondents could identify or correlate accurate trends in response to a geo-political situation like the conflict in Ukraine. Clearly, most infosec folks are focused heavily ON THIER OWN STUFF and not on the world and threats around them.

I’m not slamming infosec folks. I love them. I want them to succeed and have devoted more than 20 years of my life to helping them. I will continue to do so. But, before I close my own chapter on this particular research focus, I think it is essential to level set. This is a part of that. I hope the conversation continues. I hope folks learn more and more about bad actors and crime. I hope to see more people doing this research. I hope to dig even deeper into it in the future.

Until then, thanks for reading, stay safe out there, and I will see you soon – even if I won’t be on stage at most events for a while. 😉

PS _ Thanks to all of the wonderful audiences I have had the pleasure to present to over the years. I appreciate and love each and every one of you! Thanks for all the applause, questions and, most of all, thanks for being there!

Lots of PHP Web Shells Still Circulating

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Brent Huston

Many PHP-based web shells are still making the rounds, and while many of them are based on old code, mutations, customizations and updates abound. They are so common, that new variants and modified versions are often seen at the rate of about 10 a day in our TigerTrax Threat Intelligence systems and honeypots.

Variants exist for a wide variety of platforms and human languages, many with some very nasty features and even some cool ASCII art. There are many variants for attackers to choose from for just about any of the popular PHP-based content management platforms. From WordPress to Joomla and beyond to the far less common apps, there are easily used exploits and shell kits widely available.

If you run a PHP-based site or server, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the file system changes and watch closely for new files being uploaded or added. Pay particular attention to those using the “base64_decode” function, since it is so common among these tools.

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

Pay Attention to this Samba Vulnerability

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Brent Huston

We have a feeling that this recent Samba vulnerability should be at the top of your mind. We are seeing a lot of attention to this across a variety of platforms and we wanted to make sure you saw it. It should be patched as soon as possible, especially on highly sensitive data stores and critical systems.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Keep Your Hands Off My SSL Traffic

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Brent Huston

Hey, you, get off my digital lawn and put down my binary flamingos!!!!!

If you have been living under an online rock these last couple of weeks, then you might have missed all of the news and hype about the threats to your SSL traffic. It seems that some folks, like Lenovo and Comodo, for example, have been caught with their hands in your cookie jar. (or at least your certificate jar, but cookie jars seem like more of a thing…)

First, we had Superfish, then PrivDog. Now researchers are saying that more and more examples of that same code being used are starting to emerge across a plethora of products and software tools.

That’s a LOT of people, organizations and applications playing with my (and your) SSL traffic. What is an aging infosec curmudgeon to do except take to the Twitters to complain? 🙂

There’s a lot of advice out there, and if you are one of the folks impacted by Superfish and/or PrivDog directly, it is likely a good time to go fix that stuff. It also might be worth keeping an eye on for a while and cleaning up any of the other applications that are starting to be outed for the same bad behaviors.

In the meantime, if you are a privacy or compliance person for a living, feel free to drop us a line on Twitter (@lbhuston, @microsolved) and let us know what your organization is doing about these issues. How is the idea of prevalent man-in-the-middle attacks against your compliance-focused data and applications sitting with your security team? You got this, right? 🙂

As always, thanks for reading, and we look forward to hearing more about your thoughts on the impacts of SSL tampering on Twitter!

MSI :: State of Security

Insight from the Information Security Experts

Category Archives: Threat-Centric