Scope….or, why can’t you just send me a form?

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Scoping….the process of gathering data to put together a statement of work for a client.

To be 100% honest, I love scoping. And MSI doesn’t scope via form letter, although I’ve seen a variety of companies take this approach.

Is it because I want to talk to you? Well, partially – I do enjoy the vast majority of our clients. But here’s where I think the “fill in the form” plan fails.

First, when you’re not engaged in conversation, you’re viewing the client requirements with an eye towards putting a peg in the hole of one of your offerings. Even if that ends up to be a square peg in a round hole.

Second, the conversation often takes many twists and turns. As we talk about MSI, and our capabilities…it will happen that what a client asks for isn’t precisely what they need. We can offer a different service, and help them get to their end goal in a different way. And this isn’t always more services…it’s equally likely that it will be less, or a custom variation on a service we already have. The majority of clients don’t fall into “canned” services….and it’s refreshing to talk to them when they’re also engaging other vendors simply dropping them into a slot.

So the first question of any scoping conversation is – what is the purpose? What problem are you trying to solve? Is it regulatory – you have to have X assessment? Is something broken? Or are you trying to become aware of some security gaps – whatever they may be.

That’s the springboard of the conversation, helps us get to know you, and helps you to get the right mix of services. It’s personalized, customized, and based on individual attention from our sales and technical staff.

The next piece of serious hands-on attention comes when we’ve gathered the details for the engagement. Does the information provided make sense? If you’re a financial services firm, and you’ve chosen to be measured against HIPAA, is that really the right choice for you? The push-button approach may miss that.

Another item that’s fairly common is typos or inaccurate information in the network space provided. So we’ll do passive recon on the information provided. Does the IP space really belong to your company? Are you using hosting via AWS, which requires an additional penetration test form? Are you using a host like Rackspace that has additional contract stipulations on penetration testing?

Throughout the engagement, there are more personal touches. Via our project management portal, the engineers working on your engagement touch base every day, every other day as work progresses. If a highly critical issue is discovered, all work stops, and the engineers will get on the phone with you. We don’t believe in a situation where a critical vulnerability is only shared in a report, weeks after the discovery.

Now the reports are in your hands. We keep those reports for ~90 days – after that, all reports are purged from the system. During that 90 days, we can supply replacement copies – we can also supply the password used for encryption, if you’ve misplaced it. Sanitized copies of reports can be produced as well, for dissemination to vendors, clients, regulatory bodies, or any interested parties that you need to share this information with – a small fee may apply.

At the end of the day, the question is – who did you help today? It’s rare for MSI to end the day where we can’t answer that question in multiple avenues. It’s one of my favorite things, and we’d love to help you!

The hotel wifi is encrypted, it’s all good…No?

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One of the modern amenities we always look for when booking a hotel room is that it has wifi. However, there are considerations and issues.

When using the hotel wireless network, you are a part of a network with many hundreds of other hotel guests. Innocent and anonymous, family, corporate, hotel guests. And possibly hackers and generally anyone up to no good. They could potentially snoop and view your unencrypted browsing activity. They could scan your laptop and leverage an existing vulnerability.

Traveling from one hotel to another, it can be tedious to enter the hotel wifi passcode to your 10 wireless devices to get connected each time you book into a new hotel (your devices, your spouse’s, your kids’).

You may think the hotel wifi is encrypted because you had to enter a passcode to get connected, but that is not necessarily true. The wireless network may simply require you to login using your room number and last name in order to be authorized to get connected, but that does not necessarily mean the connection is encrypted.

You could use a VPN to encrypt all your internet activity, but you still have to set up all your devices to connect to the hotel wifi first. And you need to have a VPN subscription/setup.

So, how can we secure our wireless connectivity to the hotel wireless network a little bit more?

One of the easiest solutions is to use a travel router. They range in cost from $30 to several hundred. They could be as small as a matchbox or a pack of cards. They could have all the features of a home router, and more. They can be setup as a router, a bridge, a wireless repeater, an access point, a firewall; some even have a SIM card slot so that you can connect to a cellular network and have multiple devices share the internet connection. Others can be setup as a file server or even have a battery, so it can be a free-standing device with no cable attachments.

On a recent multi city trip, I brought along one of these – a RAVPower FileHub Plus, reviewed in this article. I’d set it up before traveling into bridge mode, with my own non-broadcasting SSID with WPA2 encryption. I connected my laptop, phone and tablet to it, and saved the wireless connection details on each device.

After checking into each hotel, I’d connect my laptop or tablet to the router device, and setup its WAN connection – if I connect the device to the hotel room Ethernet, then there’s no need for this step. Otherwise, I would setup the device to connect its WAN to the hotel wireless. Then immediately, all my other devices would have internet connectivity, through my own router, encrypted.

If the hotel wireless network requires a login first, like you have to enter your room number and name, you would do that once, from a browser on any of the devices, then all the other devices would immediately have internet access. Easy. Secured. (Well, as secure as WPA2 can be.)

Connecting to a hotel wireless connection has some considerations – it may not be encrypted and you are connecting to a network where your device is easily visible to all several hundred others. Take some simple precautionary steps to create an additional layer of security around your devices.

Be safe…

Ensure You Give The Client The Right Services At The Right Time

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Many of our clients come to us looking for direction on the right cadence for implementing security initiatives; what’s first, what’s next and how should I space these services out to best fit our budget and needs?. These are questions that many of our clients struggle with.

As with any initiative, it is imperative to allocate resources towards activities that not only get the job done, but that also provide the “most bang for the buck.” We have found that, in many ways, information security initiatives will stack in a logical order of what we like to call the “rhythm of risk.”

We suggest that a good place to start the conversation is with the “must haves,” which means understanding compliance with regulation and all that implies. Many organizations must be able to positively check certain questionnaire boxes in order to maintain their ability to operate in regulated industries or to partner with certain companies. In these cases, achieving and maintaining specific security benchmarks is like giving companies a “hunting license” for certain types of partnerships.

This process really starts with understanding the gap between where companies are and where they need to be. This is the basis of formulating effective compliance strategies. The idea is to come to a complete understanding of the organization’s security posture and needs up front; an approach that helps ensure that security dollars are spent wisely and achieve the desired effects. Many times we see organizations rush through this step, spinning their wheels on the path to compliance by either misappropriating resources or by simply over spending. Each client and situation is a bit different; a successful approach leverages understanding what needs to be done in the cadence that stacks logically for that particular client.

Another pivotal factor guiding our recommendation starts with the maturity level of the organization’s security program. For a security program that is less mature, it is important to focus on not only those security mechanisms that most effectively address the risk, but also those that are the least expensive and easiest to implement.

We gauge maturity based on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework as it applies to the particular organization’s security posture. The core of the NIST framework sets out five functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover. Within each function are related categories with activities to be rated and applied. For example, under Identity are Asset Management, Business Environment, Governance, Risk Assessment and Risk Management Strategy. These blocks stack on top of each other and layout a path based on a hierarchy of risk; what is most likely to occur weighted against the impact to the organization.

In addition to an organization’s maturity, it is important to consider the cyber-economic value of the content they manage. This usually correlates with proprietary or sensitive personal information held by companies. The higher the value of the data held by an organization, the greater the lengths hackers will go to attain it. As usual the market will drive the velocity and veracity of breach attempts along with the level of criminal attracted to them. Therefore, the value of your organization’s information should have a direct correlation with the amount of time, energy and investments needed to protect it.

Hotel Wifi = Raw Internet. A true story.

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A friend on a road-trip recently had an experience using hotel wifi that was a little surprising.  For several hours, while on the hotel’s wifi, her machine was effectively on the open Internet with no intervening firewall,

Her laptop was instrumented with one of MSI’s “honeypoints“, a lightweight honeypot that emulates various services and reports back to a central console when these “fake” services are interacted with, possibly by an attacker.

Over the several hour period while on wifi, the following Internet probes (and in some cases clear attacks) were seen.

The attacker IP and the port probed are in bold below:

  • Jan 15 18:03:43 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 198.20.87.98 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 18:03:42 Alert Data: Connection Received  ==> https probe
  • Jan 15 18:03:49 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 198.20.87.98 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 18:03:48 Alert Data: GET / HTTP/1.1#015#012Host: 63.140.158.108#015#012#015
  • Jan 15 18:03:49 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 198.20.87.98 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 18:03:48 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2215.txt
  • Jan 15 18:23:02 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 181.214.87.7 on port 3389 at 2018-01-15 18:23:02 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2216.txt  ==> Terminal services probe from Sweden
  • Jan 15 20:06:21 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 209.126.136.7 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 20:06:20 Alert Data: Connection Received
  • Jan 15 20:06:29 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 209.126.136.7 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 20:06:28 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2217.txt
  • Jan 15 20:20:36 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 189.219.71.36 on port 23 at 2018-01-15 20:20:35 Alert Data: cat /proc/mounts; (/bin/busybox BBFMC || )  ==> Port 23 (telnet) IOT attack from Mexico. Likely from a Mirai botnet variant.
  • Jan 15 20:26:22 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 8.3.123.42 on port 1433 at 2018-01-15 20:26:21 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2218.txt  ==> Microsoft SQL Server probe from Guam
  • Jan 15 20:26:22 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 8.3.123.42 on port 1433 at 2018-01-15 20:26:22 Alert Data: Connection Received
  • Jan 15 20:26:33 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 8.3.123.42 on port 1433 at 2018-01-15 20:26:32 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2219.txt
  • Jan 15 22:03:44 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 198.199.113.84 on port 1433 at 2018-01-15 22:03:43 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2220.txt  ==> SQL Server probe from U.S. 

These alerts were being reported to the console from the IP address assigned by the hotel to my friend’s laptop: 63.140.158.108

That IP is registered to:

NetRange: 63.140.128.0 – 63.140.255.255
CIDR: 63.140.128.0/17
NetName: WAYPORT-63-140-182-NET

Wayport is an ATT wifi service providing “hotspots” to various large companies.

These are the types of probes and attacks a box on the open Internet can expect to get. It’s become like cosmic radiation – pervasive. I discussed a previous related event here:  https://stateofsecurity.com/?p=4126

What is interesting in this case is the fact they happened at all.

The hotel was part of a major chain.  The common assumption is they are watching out for their guests to ensure a “safe” wifi environment…and in general they are.

But – there maybe some fine print.

Some hotel wifi agreements apparently specifically allow you to request “advanced” connectivity options, in some cases as a result of wanting to do VPN from your laptop.  The result of those decisions may lead to a public Internet address and full Internet exposure of your device .

So – no Internet firewall but the one you bring with you.

Bottom Line:

  • Regardless of the cause, you should expect the worst from “free” wifi.
  • Assume full Internet exposure and have a software firewall enabled that blocks unsolicited inbound traffic.

See:

Quote from that last:

“Most private LANs use network firewalls to defend trusted insiders against Internet-borne attacks.This is not necessarily true in hotel broadband LANs, where topologies and security practices vary widely.For example, some use private IP addressing, while others assign each user their own public IP address to facilitate VPN tunneling. Users may assume they are insulated from outsiders, but really have no idea whether any firewall lies between
their notebook and the Internet. Notebooks that do not firewall themselves or that use certain applications that open holes in firewalls could thus be exposed to intrusions from the far side of the Internet.”

Spectre and Meltdown and Tigers, Oh my….well, maybe not tigers….

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On January 3rd, three new vulnerabilities were disclosed. These vulnerabilities take advantage of how various CPU’s handle processing in order to return a faster result.

The technical details for Spectre and Meltdown are addressed by the papers linked to their names above. And some POC’s from the Project Zero team.

A few observations on how the industry is addressing this issue…and a few points of interest that I’ve found along the way. First, let’s note that the CVE’s for these are 2017…when in 2017? We don’t know. But the catchy domain names were registered around the third week in December, 2017.

The full vendor matrix at CERT – this is always worth watching, and there are some useful tips for cloud implemenations via Amazon and Microsoft Azure:

Operating system manufacturers:

Apple

  • Will release updates for Safari and iOS in coming days. Some speculation that iOS on Mac’s that is 10.13.2 or higher has some protection from one or more variants – not verified
  • https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394

Windows

Linux

Some antivirus solutions are causing blue screens after application of these patches:

This is particularly interesting to me – the browsers. I did not expect to see the browser patch bandwagon to be as rapid as it has been:

Firefox

Internet Explorer

Safari

  • Will be addressed in approximately the same timeframe as Apple iOS patches – current ETA unknown

Chrome

The long and short. Is the sky falling? Probably not. If you have solutions that are hosted with a cloud provider, check in with them. What are their recommended mitigations, and have you implemented them? In an enterprise environment, do your due diligence on patches. Patch in your test environment first, and research your antivirus solution for potential impact.

And I believe I’m paraphrasing the excellent Graham Cluley. Calm down, make a cup of tea – although mine is salted caramel coffee. Patch during your normal cadence for critical patches, and keep the ship afloat!

GDPR: It’s Coming Soon, and it has Teeth!

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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was passed in May of 2016 and comes into force exactly five months from Christmas Day on May 25, 2018. The aim of this regulation is to strengthen and unify personal data protection for all citizens (and residents) in the European Union, and to allow them to control their personal information (data). This personal data must be protected according to a number of articles in the regulation, and also applies to non-European organizations that process the personal data of EU citizens.

According to the European Commission, personal data is “any information relating to an individual, whether it relates to his or her private, professional or public life. It can be anything from a name, a home address, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, or a computer’s IP address.” As can be seen, this list covers just about everything!

One of the big requirements that is going to affect US organizations that do business with EU persons is their “right to be forgotten.” This means that EU citizens and residents can request that their personal data be removed from corporate databases in a timely manner. If this cannot be done, they have the right to know exactly why not.

Unlike HIPAA/HITECH, non-compliance with the GDPR can lead to some major league fines: in some cases, up to 20,000,000 Euros or 4% of the annual worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year of the organization (whichever is greater). I think that fines on this level show just how seriously personal privacy is being taken in the EU.

This new regulation just illustrates the pressing need for organizations to know how data flows across and is stored on computer networks. If you know exactly where personal data is and how it flows, you can deal with it. If you don’t, better get ready for some trouble ahead!

You need your own “cop on the beat”: Why security scanning services are not enough.

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He knows what “normal” is. Source: Wikimedia Commons

I have repeatedly had the experience of performing external vulnerability assessments and discovering significant issues that were not being called out as such by the regular commercial assessment services employed by the client organization.

I recently discovered a case where active web server logs were freely available on the open Internet .  The usual information – source IP address, target resource, and status codes –  were all available.

Example:

64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:07 -0400] “GET /client/chat.php?id=1%22%20%3E%3C/script%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert%28%27QualysXSSTestPart2%27%29%3C/script%3E&xhash=1 HTTP/1.1” 302 433 “-” “-“
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:08 -0400] “GET /index.do HTTP/1.1” 302 301 “-” “-”
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:10 -0400] “GET /userui/welcome.php HTTP/1.1” 302 311 “-” “-”
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:12 -0400] “GET /struts2-rest-showcase/orders HTTP/1.1” 302 321 “-” “-”
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:08:58 -0400] “POST /rest/json/login HTTP/1.1” 302 308 “-” “-”
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:14 -0400] “GET /node.xml HTTP/1.1” 302 301 “-” “-”
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:14 -0400] “GET /user/login HTTP/1.1” 302 303 “-” “-”
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:15 -0400] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 302 293 “-” “-”
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:16 -0400] “GET /admin.php HTTP/1.1” 302 302 “-” “-”
64.39.99.99 – – [02/Aug/2017:10:09:16 -0400] “GET /console/login/LoginForm.jsp HTTP/1.1” 302 320 “-” “-”

The highlighted entry is a “cross site scripting” (XSS) test being run over the Internet by the vulnerability management service “Qualys“.

From “whois 64.39.99.99”

NetRange: 64.39.96.0 – 64.39.111.255
CIDR: 64.39.96.0/20
NetName: QUALYS

Anyone on the Internet was able to view these logs and learn of the organization’s use of Qualys and something of the types of tests being performed and what the outcome of those tests were.

All highly useful information to any potential attacker.

Note that the problem here is NOT with Qualys.

The site that allowed these logs to be revealed had no “technical” security problem. Any internal user who was basing their understanding of the external security status of the organization strictly on the scanning service reports would likely have no reason to believe anything was wrong.

Your organization needs at least one knowledgeable and caring staff member whose job it is to know what your organization looks like from the Internet and can see when something is clearly wrong in the same way a neighborhood patrol officer can notice a strange car or a gate open that is normally locked.

You need your own “cop on the beat”.

 

 

 

We’re Growing Again!

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From social media:

Got #infosec skills? We’re looking for a new team member to join MicroSolved. Pen-testing, threat intel & innovation are core reqs. Ethics, rapid learning, positivity are must haves. #Columbus preferred. Get in touch!  

Here is a bit more information: 

This engineer will engage with clients to review technical systems/applications, perform vulnerability assessments/pen-testing, application assessments, cyber threat intelligence assessments, network segmentation analysis, validate technical findings and support customers with security issues across the attack event horizon. 

Projects will cover the scope of networks, applications, security devices, servers/systems and likely embedded systems/components. Deep enterprise network knowledge in one or more areas of networking and/or security is a requirement. Familiarity with NIST standards/cyber security frameworks is preferred. 

To apply, send a resume and cover letter to (jobs <at> microsolved <dot> com). Please, no recruiters and no phone calls. If you have questions, please reach out on Twitter to @lbhuston. 

Thanks! 

Phishing URLs

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How many of us inspect a link before we actually click on it? Be honest now, how many hover your mouse over the link and identify the destination in the status bar or popup, before you actually click? If the link is from a trusted site, say in the middle of a CNN article, very likely you don’t. If it’s a link in an email from your colleague, maybe. And even then, how closely do you look?

In many of MicroSolved’s social engineering exercises, alright, authorized phishing campaigns, creating fake links that appear valid is a tried and true method. To make an email look like it’s from John Glenn, a very familiar name recognized as an American hero, it takes 2 minutes to create an email address JohnGlemn@gmail.com. Or BilllyCrystal@gmail.com. Alright, how many of you actually caught the 3 lower case L’s in Billly? And the misspelling of Glemn in the email address?

Same thing with domains. Not to pick on this domain but why is MICRPSOFT.COM registered? Don’t browse to that domain, it gets forwarded to a suspicious link – which proves the point. An internet search for the string “MICRPSOFT” comes up with nothing for that string, all results are for “MICROSOFT.”

It’s a common technique referred to as URL hijacking or Typosquatting. It counts on the user not paying attention to what they’re typing into the browser address bar. Or it counts on the user not noticing the misspelling even if they were hovering the mouse over a link before they clicked.

Many of you have heard of the Equifax breach earlier this year. They registered and set up a domain for the public – equifaxsecurity2017.com. At this site, you could get more information, as well as enter your SSN (last few digits) to find out if your personal data had been part of the breach. However, a security professional registered securityequifax2017.com – and many legitimate sites actually directed traffic to this fake domain instead. Fortunately, it wasn’t anyone malicious, but someone who wanted to prove the point – and did – that these domain names can easily be abused. Equifax itself tweeted the fake domain, thinking it was their own.

So what are we to do? It’s easy to say, just be vigilant, be cautious, be on the lookout. There are tools, browser plugins, background running processes that can check links or clicks. But here’s an anecdote on relying on an “automated” tool that does things for us. I was pulled over at dusk couple weeks ago (wasn’t night yet, could still see the setting sun), driving my wife’s car that did NOT have daytime running lights. My car does. I have so heavily relied on this automated feature that when I was in a different environment that did not have it, I forgot to check the basics – it’s getting dark, are my lights on? Incidentally, the officer just gave me a warning.

Recommendation is, be vigilant, be cautious, be on the lookout. Check those links or email addresses. Check the spelling. Type in the link instead of clicking on it. Copy the link and paste it into the browser address bar, and verify before pressing Enter to navigate to it.

It’s a jungle out there. Be safe…

Malicious libraries and plugins

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How closely do you inspect what 3rd party plugins and libraries you use with software and development? We kind of tend to take for granted that once we vet a library or plugin and add that into our usage, then it’s likely to never be a threat in the future. However, over the last few years attackers have started increasing abuse of this trust. A type of watering hole attack that reaches a larger amount of people than a typical focused attack.

There’s 3 main ways this has happened:

  • Attackers buy the plugin/library from the original author or assume control of one that is abandoned
  • Development system or other system in chain is compromised by attacker
  • Attackers create releases that mimic popular and established libraries/plugins in name and function

This has affected a wide range of software, from web applications to web browsers to text editors/IDE’s. Let’s take a brief look at a few instances.

WordPress Display-Widgets plugin. This plugin was sold by the original developer, and at that time had several hundred thousand active installations. The new developers then added code to it that downloaded and installed a plugin that added spam the site.

The Node.js package repository was found to have malicious packages that looked like real packages, differing slightly in the name in an attempt to fool anyone trying to find specific packages. The malicious packages generally tried to send sensitive environment data back to a server.

Python also experienced something very similar. Package uploaded in an attempt to fool anyone not paying close enough attention. Not relying on just misspelling the name, but with names that look legitimate, such as “bzip” for the real package “bzip2file”.

Those are just a few examples, Chrome and Firefox have both had similar issues multiple times as well. So how do we protect against this? Partly some of this has to be on the software that allows the plugins to run. There are some bad policies and practices here, such as WordPress letting anyone claim “abandoned” plugins.

Some things you can do yourself are to install any libraries/plugins (for python, ruby etc) with your systems package manager. If you use pip, gem or the like, make sure you are using the correct plugins, avoid misspellings or “close enough” names. Check the reputations of plugins via Twitter or search for reviews and info on plugins, by name, in your search engine. If you find any  anomalies report them on social media and forums associated with your language. Try not to use plugins that have been abandoned and recovered by another developer with no reputation.