Research

As I sit here writing this, scenes of utter devastation play on the television in the background. It’s hard to keep perspective in situations like this. Most of us are in our homes, with our families, with little we can do other than donate some money as we carry on with our lives. The scale of destruction is so massive that even those of us who have worked in disasters can barely comprehend its enormity. Possibly 45-55,000 dead, which is enough bodies to fill a small to medium sized college football stadium. 3 million homeless, and what may be one of the most complete destructions of a city in modern history. I’ve responded to some disasters as an emergency responder, including Katrina. But this dwarfs anything I’ve ever witnessed. I don’t think my team will deploy to Haiti, and every time I feel frustrated that I can’t help directly, I remind myself that this isn’t about me, and even that frustration is a kind of selfishness. I’m not going to draw any parallels to security. Nor will I run off on some tangent on perspective or priorities. You’re all adults, and you all know what’s going on. Go do what you can, and I for one have yet another reason to be thankful for what I have. This week, in addition to Hackers for Charity, we’re also going to donate to Partners in Health on behalf of our commenter. You should too. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Adrian’s Dark Reading article on Database Discovery. Securosis takes over the Network Security Podcast. Rich, Mike, and Adrian interviewed by George Hulme of Information Week on Attaining Security in the name of compliance. Adrian’s article in Information Security Magazine on Basic Database Security: Step by Step. Rich’s series of Macworld articles on Mac security risks. Rich was a judge for the top 10 web hacking techniques of 2009. The judging gets harder every year. Pepper wrote a piece on scheduling Mac patching over at TidBITS. Favorite Securosis Posts Rich: Database Password Pen Testing. Mike: FireStarter: The Grand Unified Theory of Risk Management – Great discussion on how risk management needs to evolve to become relevant. Adrian: Rich’s post on Yes Virginia, China Is Spying and Stealing Our Stuff. Meier: Yes Virginia, China Is Spying and Stealing Our Stuff – Maybe we can combine the idea behind the Mercenary Hackers post with Rich’s idea to hack China back. Adobe would be all smiley emoticon for sure. Mort: Low hanging fruit in network security. Other Securosis Posts Management by Complaint. Pragmatic Data Security: Introduction. Incite 1/13/2010: Taking the Long View. Revisiting Security Priorities. Mercenary Hackers. Favorite Outside Posts Rich: I’m going to cheat and pick some of my own work. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like the Mac security reality check series I wrote for Macworld in a consumer publication before. It’s hopefully the kind of thing you can point your friends and family to when they want to know what they really need to worry about, and a lot of it isn’t Mac specific. I’m psyched my editors let me write it up like this. Mike: Shopping for security – Shrdlu gets to the heart of the matter that we may be buying tools for us, but there is leverage outside of the security team. We need to lose some of our inherent xenophobia. And yes, I’m finally able to use an SAT word in the Friday Summary. Adrian: On practical airline security. It’s weird that the Israelis perform a security measure that really works and the rest of the world does not, no? And until someone performs a cost analysis of what we do vs. what they do, I am not buying that argument. Mort: Why do security professionals fail?. Meier: Cloud Security is Infosec’s Underwear Bomber Moment – Gunnar brings it all together at the end by stating something most people still don’t get: “This is not something that will get resolved by three people sitting in a room… …it requires architecture, developers and others from outside infosec to resolve.” Pepper: Google Defaults to Encrypted Sessions for Gmail, by Glenn Fleishman at TidBITS. AFT! Project Quant Posts Project Quant: Database Security – Restrict Access. Project Quant: Database Security – Configure. Top News and Posts Dark Reading on the Google hack by China. A lot of good, important information in here. Another Week, Another GSM Cipher Bites the Dust. Adobe hack conducted via 0-day IE flaw. Do security pros need a little humble pie? Top 10 Reasons Your Security Program Sucks and Why You Can’t Do Anything About It. Amrit does it again – funny, snarky, and all too true Insurgent Attacks Follow Mathematical Pattern. I’m sorry but we blew up your laptop (welcome to Israel). I want to know a) why they thought the laptop was a danger, and b) why they thought the screen (rather than the hard disk) was the dangerous part. Blog Comment of the Week Remember, for every comment selected Securosis makes a $25 donation to Hackers for Charity. This week’s best comment comes from ‘Slavik’ in response to Adrian’s post on Database Password Pen Testing: Adrian, I believe that #3 is feasible and moreover easy to implement technically. The password algorithms for all major database vendors are known. Retrieving the hashes is simple enough (using a simple query). You don’t have to store the hashes anywhere (just in memory of the scanning process). With today’s capabilities (CUDA, FPGA, etc.) you can do tens of millions of password hashes per second to even mount brute-force attacks. The real problem is what do you do then? From my experience, even if you find weak passwords, it will be very hard for most organizations to change these passwords. Large deployments just do not have a good map of who connects to what and managers are afraid that changing a password will break something. Share:

Good Morning: Now that I’m two months removed from my [last] corporate job, I have some perspective on the ‘quarterly’ mindset. Yes, the pressure to deliver financial results on an arbitrary quarterly basis, which guides how most companies run operations. Notwithstanding your customer’s problems don’t conveniently end on the last day of March, June, September or December – those are the days when stuff is supposed to happen. It’s all become a game. Users wait until two days before the end of the Q, so they can squeeze the vendor and get the pricing they should have gotten all along. The sales VP makes the reps call each deal that may close about 100 times over the last two days, just to make sure the paperwork gets signed. It’s all pretty stupid, if you ask me. We need to take a longer view of everything. One of the nice things about working for a private, self-funded company is that we don’t have arbitrary time pressures that force us to sell something on some specific day. As Rich, Adrian, and I planned what Securosis was going to become, we did it not to drive revenue next quarter but to build something that will matter 5 years down the line. To be clear, that doesn’t mean we aren’t focused on short term revenues. Crap, we all have to eat and have families to support. It just means we aren’t sacrificing long term imperatives to drive short term results. Think about the way you do things. About the way you structure your projects. Are you taking a long view? Or do you meander from short term project to project and go from fighting one fire to the next, never seeming to get anywhere? We as an industry have stagnated for a while. It does seem like Groundhog Day, every day. This attack. That attack. This breach. That breach. Day in and day out. In order to break the cycle, take the long view. Figure out where you really need to go. And break that up into shorter term projects, each getting you closer to your goal. Most importantly, be accountable. Though we take a long view on things, we hold each other accountable during our weekly staff meetings. Each week, we all talk about what we got done, what we didn’t, and what we’ll do next week. And we will have off-site strategy sessions at least twice a year, where we’ll make sure to align the short term activities with those long term imperatives. This approach works for us. You need to figure out what works for you. Have a great day. –Mike Photo credit: “Coll de la Taixeta” originally uploaded by Aitor Escauriaza Incite 4 U This week we got contributions from the full timers (Rich, Adrian and Mike), so we are easing into the cycle. The Contributors are on the hook from here on, so it won’t just be Mike’s Incite – it’s everybody’s. Who’s Evil Now? – The big news last night was not just that Google and Adobe had successful attacks, but that the Google was actually revisiting their China policy. It seems they just can’t stand aiding and abetting censorship anymore, especially when your “partner” can haz your cookies. The optimist in me (yes, it’s small and eroding) says this is great news and good for Google for stepping up. The cynic in me (99.99995% of the rest) wonders when the other shoe will drop. Perhaps they aren’t making money there. Maybe there are other impediments to the business, which makes pulling out a better business decision. Sure, they “aren’t evil” (laugh), but there is usually an economic motive to everything done at the Googleplex. I don’t expect this is any different, though it’s not clear what that motive is quite yet. – MR Manage DLP by complaint – We shouldn’t be surprised that DLP continues to draw comparisons to IDS. Both are monitoring technologies, both rely heavily on signatures, and both scare the bejeezus out of anyone worried about being overwhelmed with false positives. Just as big PKI burned anyone later playing in identity management, IDS has done more harm to the DLP reputation than any vendor lies or bad deployments. Randy George over at InformationWeek (does every publication have to intercap these days?) covers some of the manpower concerns around DLP in The Dark Side of Data Loss Prevention. Richard Bejtlich follows up with a post where he suggests one option to shortcut dealing with alerts is to enable blocking mode, then manage by user complaint. If nothing else, that will help you figure out which bits are more important than other bits. You want to be careful, but I recommend this exact strategy (in certain scenarios) in my Pragmatic Data Security presentation. Just make sure you have a lot of open phone lines. – RM USB CrytpoFAIL – As reported by SC Magazine, a flaw was discovered in the cryptographic implementation used by Kingston, SanDisk, and Verbatim USB thumbdrive access applications. The subtleties of cryptographic implementation escape even the best coders who have not studied the various attacks and how to subvert a cryptographic system. This goes to show that even a group of trained professionals who oversee each other’s work can still mess up. The good news is that this simple software error can be corrected with a patch download. Further, I hope this does not discourage people from choosing encrypted flash drives over standard ones. The incremental cost is well worth the security and data privacy they provide. If you don’t own at least one encrypted flash memory stick, I strongly urge you to get one for keeping copies of personal information! – AL I smell something cooking – Two deals were announced yesterday, and amazingly enough neither involved Gartner buying a mid-tier research firm. First Trustwave bought BitArmor and added full disk encryption to their mix of services, software, and any of the other stuff they bought from the bargain bin last year. Those folks are the Filene’s Basement of security. The question is whether they can integrate all that technology into something useful for customers,

Guess what, folks – not only is industrial espionage rampant, but sometimes it’s supported by nation-states. Just ask Boeing about Airbus and France, or New Zealand about French operatives sinking a Greenpeace ship (and killing a few people in the process) on NZ territory. We’ve been hearing a lot lately about China, as highlighted by this Slashdot post that compiles a few different articles. No, Google isn’t threatening to pull out of China because they suddenly care more about human rights, it’s because it sounds like China might have managed to snag some sensitive Google goodies in their recent attacks. Here’s the deal. For a couple years now we’ve been hearing credible reports of targeted, highly-sophisticated cyberattacks against major corporations. Many of these attacks seem to trace back to China, but thanks to the anonymity of the Internet no one wants to point fingers. I’m moving into risky territory here because although I’ve had a reasonable number of very off the record conversations with security pros whose organizations have been hit – probably by China – I don’t have any statistical evidence or even any public cases I can talk about. I generally hate when someone makes bold claims like I am in this post without providing the evidence, but this strikes at the core of the problem: Nearly no organizations are willing to reveal publicly that they’ve been compromised. There is no one behind the scenes collecting statistical evidence that could be presented in public. Even privately, almost no one is sharing information on these attacks. A large number of possible targets don’t even have appropriate monitoring in place to detect these attacks. Thanks to the anonymity of the Internet, it’s nearly impossible to prove these are direct government actions (if they are). We are between a rock and a hard place. There is a massive amount of anecdotal evidence and rumors, but nothing hard anyone can point to. I don’t think even the government has a full picture of what’s going on. It’s like WMD in Iraq – just because we all think something is true, without the intelligence and evidence we can still be very wrong. But I’ll take the risk and put a stake in the ground for two reasons: Enough of the stories I’ve heard are first-person, not anecdotal. The company was hacked, intellectual property was stolen, and the IP addresses traced back to China. The actions are consistent with other policies of the Chinese government and how they operate internationally. In their minds, they’d be foolish to not take advantage of the situation. All nation-states spy, includig on private businesses. China just appears to be both better and more brazen about it. I don’t fault even China for pushing the limits of international convention. They always push until there are consequences, and right now the world is letting them operate with impunity. As much as that violates my personal ethics, I’d be an idiot to project those onto someone else – never mind an entire country. So there it is. If you have something they want, China will break in and take it if they can. If you operate in China, they will appropriate your intellectual property (there’s no doubt on this one, ask anyone who has done business over there). The problem won’t go away until there are consequences. Which there probably won’t be, since every other economy wants a piece of China, and they own too much of our (U.S.) debt to really piss them off. If we aren’t going to respond politically or economically, perhaps it’s time to start hacking them back. Until we give them a reason to stop, they won’t. Why should they? Share:

Over the past 7 years or so I’ve talked with thousands of IT professionals working on various types of data security projects. If I were forced to pull out one single thread from all those discussions it would have to be the sheer intimidating potential of many of these projects. While there are plenty of self-constrained projects, in many cases the security folks are tasked with implementing technologies or changes that involve monitoring or managing on a pretty broad scale. That’s just the nature of data security – unless the information you’re trying to protect is already in isolated use, you have to cast a pretty wide net. But a parallel thread in these conversations is how successful and impactful well-defined data security projects can be. And usually these are the projects that start small, and grow over time. Way back when I started the blog (long before Securosis was a company) I did a series on the Information-Centric Security Cycle (linked from the Research Library). It was my first attempt to pull the different threads of data security together into a comprehensive picture, and I think it still stands up pretty well. But as great as my inspired work of data-security genius is (*snicker*), it’s not overly useful when you have to actually go out and protect, you know, stuff. It shows the potential options for protecting data, but doesn’t provide any guidance on how to pull it off. Since I hate when analysts provide lofty frameworks that don’t help you get your job done, it’s time to get a little more pragmatic and provide specific guidance on implementing data security. This Pragmatic Data Security series will walk through a structured and realistic process for protecting your information, based on hundreds of conversations with security professionals working on data security projects. Before starting, there’s a bit of good news and bad news: Good news: there are a lot of things you can do without spending much money. Bad news: to do this well, you’re going to have to buy the right tools. We buy firewalls because our routers aren’t firewalls, and while there are a few free options, there’s no free lunch. I wish I could tell you none of this will cost anything and it won’t impose any additional effort on your already strained resources, but that isn’t the way the world works. The concept of Pragmatic Data Security is that we start securing a single, well-defined data type, within a constrained scope. We then grow the scope until we reach our coverage objectives, before moving on to additional data types. Trying to protect, or even find, all of your sensitive information at once is just as unrealistic as thinking you can secure even one type of data everywhere it might be in your organization. As with any pragmatic approach, we follow some simple principles: Keep it simple. Stick to the basics. Keep it practical. Don’t try to start processes and programs that are unrealistic due to resources, scope, or political considerations. Go for the quick wins. Some techniques aren’t perfect or ideal, but wipe out a huge chunk of the problem. Start small. Grow iteratively. Once something works, expand it in a controlled manner. Document everything. Makes life easier come audit time. I don’t mean to over-simplify the problem. There’s a lot we need to put in place to protect our information, and many of you are starting from scratch with limited resources. But over the rest of this series we’ll show you the process, and highlight the most effective techniques we’ve seen. Tomorrow we’ll start with the Pragmatic Data Security Cycle, which forms the basis of our process. Share:

Yesterday’s FireStarter was one of the two concepts we discussed during our research meeting last week. The other was to get folks to revisit their priorities, as we run headlong into 2010. My general contention is that too many folks are focusing on advanced security techniques, while building on a weak or crumbling foundation: the network and endpoint security environment. With a little tuning, existing security investments can be bolstered and improved to eliminate a large portion of the low-hanging fruit that attackers target. What could be more pragmatic than using what you already have a bit better? Of course, my esteemed colleagues pointed out that just because the echo chamber blathers about Adobe suckage and unsubstantiated Mac 0-days, that doesn’t mean the run of the mill security professional is worried about this stuff. They reminded me that most organizations don’t do the basics very well, and that not too many mid-sized organizations have implemented a SDL to build secure code. And my colleagues are right. We refocused the idea on taking a step back and making sure you are focusing on the right stuff for your organization. This process starts with getting your mindset right, and then you need to make a brutally honest assessment of your project list. Understand that every organization occupies a different place along the security program maturity scale. Some have the security foundation in place and can plan to focus on the upper layers of the stack this year – things like database and application security. Maybe you aren’t there, so you focus on simple blocking and tackling that pundits and blowhards (like me!) take for granted, like patch management and email/web filtering. All will need to find dollars to fund projects by pulling the compliance card. Rich, Adrian, and I did an interview with George Hulme on that very topic. Security programs are built and operated based on the requirements, culture, and tolerance for risk of their organizations. Yes, the core pieces of a program (understand what needs to be protected, plan how to protect it, protect it, and document what you protected) are going to be consistent. But beyond that, each organization must figure out what works for them. That starts with revisiting your assumptions. What’s changing in your business this year? Bringing on new business partners, introducing new products, or maybe even looking at new ways to sell to customers? All these have an impact on what you need to protect. Also decide if your tactics need to be changed. Maybe you need to adopt a more Pragmatic approach or possibly become more of a guerilla security leader. I don’t know your answer – I can only remind you to ask the questions. Tactically, if you do one thing this week, go back and revisit your basic network and endpoint security strategy. Later this week, I’ll post a hit list of low hanging fruit that can yield the biggest bang for the buck. Though I’m sure the snot nosed kid running your network and endpoint stuff has everything under control, it never hurts to be sure. Just don’t coast through another year of the same old, same old because you are either too busy or too beaten down to change things. Share:

A few years back I worked on a database password checker at the request of my employer. A handful of customers wanted to periodically audit passwords, verifying that they complied with their password policies. As databases can use internal password management – outside the scope of primary access control systems like LDAP – they wanted auditing capabilities across the database systems. The goal was to identify weak passwords for service and general database user accounts. This was purely a research effort, but as I was recently approached by yet another IT person on this subject, I thought it was worth discussing the practical merits of doing this. There were four approaches that I took to solve the problem: Run the pen test against the live database. I created a password dictionary and tried to brute force known accounts. The problems of user account discovery, how to handle databases that supported lockout on failed login attempts, load on the database, and even the regional nature of the dictionary made this a costly choice. Run the pen test against a mirrored or VM copy of the database. Similar to the above in approach except I made the assumption I had credentialed access to the system. In this way I could discover the local accounts and disable lockout if necessary. But this required a copy of an entire production database be kept, resources allocated, logistical problems in getting the copy and so on. Hash comparisons: Extract the password hashes from the database, replicate the hashing method of the database, pre-hash the dictionary, and run a hash comparison of the passwords. This assumes that I can get access to the hash table and account names, and that I can duplicate what the database does when producing the hashes. It requires a very secure infrastructure to store the hashed passwords. Use a program to intercept the passwords being sent to the database. I tried login triggers, memory scanning, and network stack agents, all of which worked to one degree or another. This was the most invasive of the methods and needed to be used on the live platform. It solved the problem of finding user accounts and did not require additional processing resources. It did however violate separation of duties, as the code I ran was under the domain of the OS admin. We even discussed forgetting the pen test entirely, forcing subsequent logins to renew all password, and using a login trigger to enforce password policies. But that was outside the project scope. If you have a different approach I would love to hear it. As interesting as the research project was, I’m of the opinion that pen testing database passwords is a waste of time! While it was technically feasible to perform, it’s a logistical and operational nightmare. Even if I could find a better way to do this, is it worth it? A better approach leverages enforcement options for password length, attributes, and rotation built into the database itself. Better still, using external access control systems to support and integrate with database password management overcomes limitations in the database password options. Regardless, there are some firms that still want to audit passwords, and I still periodically run across IT personnel cobbling together routines to do this. Technical feasibility issues aside, this is one of those efforts that, IMO, should not ever have gotten started. I have never seen a study that shows the value of password rotation, and while I agree that more complex passwords help secure databases from dictionary attacks, they don’t help with other attack vectors like key-loggers and post-it notes stuck to the monitor. This part of my analysis, included with the technical findings, was ignored because there was a compliance requirement to audit passwords. Besides, when you work for a startup looking to please large clients, logic gets thrown out the window: if the customer wants to pay for it, you build it! Or at least try. Share:

Dino Dai Zovi (@DinoDaiZovi) posted the following tweets this Saturday: Food for thought: What if <vendor> didn’t patch bugs that weren’t proven exploitable but paid big bug bounties for proven exploitable bugs? and … The strategy being that since every patch costs millions of dollars, they only fix the ones that can actually harm their customers. I like the idea. In many ways I really do. Much like an open source project, the security community could examine vendor code for security flaws. It’s an incredibly progressive viewpoint, which has the potential to save companies the embarrassment of bad security, while simultaneously rewarding some of the best and brightest in the security trade for finding flaws. Bounties would reward creativity and hard work by paying flaw finders for their knowledge and expertise, but companies would only pay for real problems. We motivate sales people in a similar way, paying them extraordinarily well to do what it takes to get the job done, so why not security professionals? Dino’s throwing an idea out there to see if it sticks. And why not? He is particularly talented at finding security bugs. I agree with Dino in theory, but I don’t think his strategy will work for a number of reasons. If I were running a software company, why would I expect this to cost less than what I do today? Companies don’t fix bugs until they are publicly exploited now, so what evidence do we have this would save costs? The bounty itself would be an additional cost, admittedly with a PR benefit. We could speculate that potential losses would offset the cost of the bounties, but we have no method of predicting such losses. Significant cost savings come from finding bugs early in the development cycle, rather than after the code has been released. For this scenario to work, the community would need to work in conjunction with coders to catch issues pre-release, complicating the development process and adding costs. How do you define what is a worthwhile bug? What happens if I think it’s a feature and you think it’s a flaw? We see this all the time in the software industry, where customers are at odds with vendors over definitions of criticality, and there is no reason to think this would solve the problem. This is likely to make hackers even more mercenary, as the vendors would be validating the financial motivation to disclose bugs to the highest bidder rather than the developers. This would drive up the bounties, and thus total cost for bugs. A large segment of the security research community feels we cannot advance the state of security unless we can motivate the software purveyors to do something about their sloppy code. The most efficient way to deliver security is to avoid stupid programming mistakes in the application. The software industry’s response, for the most part, is issue avoidance and sticking with the status quo. They have many arguments, including the daunting scope of recognizing and fixing core issues, which developers often claim would make them uncompetitive in the marketplace. In a classic guerilla warfare response, when a handful of researchers disclose heinous security bugs to the community, they force very large companies to at least re-prioritize security issues, if not change their overall behavior. We keep talking about the merits of ethical disclosures in the security community, but much less about how we got to this point. At heart it’s about the value of security. Software companies and application development houses want proof this is a worthwhile investment, and security groups feel the code is worthless if it can be totally compromised. Dino’s suggestion is aimed at fixing the willingness of firms to find and fix security bugs, with a focus on critical issues to help reduce their expense. But we have yet to get sufficient vendor buy-in to the value of security, because without solid evidence of value there is no catalyst for change. Share:

The FireStarter is something new we are starting here on the blog. The idea is to toss something controversial out into the echo chamber first thing Monday morning, and let people bang on some of our more abstract or non-intuitive research ideas. For our inaugural entry, I’m going to take on one of my favorite topics – risk management. There seem to be few topics that engender as much endless – almost religious – debate as risk management in general, and risk management frameworks in particular. We all have our favorite pets, and clearly mine is better than yours. Rather than debating the merits of one framework over the other, I propose a way to evaluate the value of risk frameworks and risk management programs: Any risk management framework is only as valuable as the degree to which losses experienced by the organization were accurately predicted by the risk assessments. A risk management program is only as valuable as the degree to which its loss events can be compared to risk assessments. Pretty simple – all organizations experience losses, no matter how good their security and risk management. Your risk framework should accurately model those losses you do experience; if it doesn’t, you’re just making sh&% up. Note this doesn’t have to be quantitative (which some of you will argue anyway). Qualitative assessments can still be compared, but you have to test. As for your program, if you can’t compare the results to the predictions, you have no way of knowing if your program works. Here’s the ruler – time to whip ‘em out… Share:

Speaking as a “master of the obvious,” it’s worth mentioning the importance of having a correct mindset heading into the new year. Odds are you’ve just gotten back from the holiday and that sinking “beaten down” feeling is setting in. Wow, that didn’t take long. So I figured I’d do a quick reminder of the universal truisms that we know and love, but which still make us crazy. Let’s just cover a few: There is no 100% security I know, I know – you already know that. But the point here is that your management forgets. So it’s always a good thing to remind them as early and often as you can. Even worse, there are folks (we’ll get to them later) who tell your senior people (usually over a round of golf or a bourbon in some mahogany-laden club) that it is possible to secure your stuff. You must fight propaganda with fact. You must point out data breaches, not to be Chicken Little, but to manage expectations. It can (and does) happen to everyone. Make sure the senior folks know that. Compliance is a means to an end There is a lot of angst right now (especially from one of my favorite people, Josh Corman) about the reality that compliance drives most of what we do. Deal with it, Josh. Deal with it, everyone. It is what it is. You aren’t going to change it, so you’d better figure out how to prosper in this kind of reality. What to do? Use compliance to your advantage. Any new (or updated) regulation comes with some level of budget flexibility. Use that money to buy stuff you really need. So what if you need to spend some time writing reports with your new widget to keep the auditor happy. Without compliance, you wouldn’t have your new toy. Don’t forget the fundamentals Listen, most of us have serious security kung fu. They probably task folks like you to fix hard problems and deflect attackers from a lot of soft tissue. And they leave the perimeter and endpoints to the snot-nosed kid with his shiny new Norwich paper. That’s OK, but only if you periodically make sure things function correctly. Maybe that means running Core against your stuff every month. Maybe it means revisiting that change control process to make sure that open port (which that developer just had to have) doesn’t allow the masses into your shorts. If you are nailed by an innovative attack, shame on them. Hopefully your incident response plan holds up. If you are nailed by some stupid configuration or fundamental mistake, shame on you. Widgets will not make you secure Keep in mind the driving force for any vendor is to sell you something. The best security practitioners I know drive their projects – they don’t let vendors drive them. They have a plan and they get products and/or services to execute on that plan. That doesn’t mean reps won’t try to convince you their widget needs to be part of your plan. Believe me, I’ve spent many a day in sales training helping reps to learn how to drive the sales process. I’ve developed hundreds of presentations designed to create a catalyst for a buyer to write a check. The best reps try to help you, as long as that involves making the payment on their 735i. And even worse, as a reformed marketing guy, I’m here to say a lot of vendors will resort to bravado in order to convince you of something you know not to be true. Like that a product will make you secure. Sometimes you see something so objectionable to the security person in you, it makes you sick. Let’s take the end of this post from LogLogic as an example. For some context, their post mostly evaluates the recent Verizon DBIR supplement. What does LogLogic predict for 2010? Regardless of whether, all, some, or none, of Verizon’s predictions come true, networks will still be left vulnerable, applications will be un-patched, user error will causes breaches in protocol, and criminals will successfully knock down walls. But not on a LogLogic protected infrastructure. We can prevent, capture and prove compliance for whatever 2010 throws at your systems. LogLogic customers are predicting a stress free, safe 2010. Wow. Best case, this is irresponsible marketing. Worst case, this is clearly someone who doesn’t understand how this business works. I won’t judge (too much) because I don’t know the author, but still. This is the kind of stuff that makes me question who is running the store over there. Repeat after me: A widget will not make me secure. Neither will two widgets or a partridge in a pear tree. So welcome to 2010. Seems a lot like 2009 and pretty much every other year of the last decade. Get your head screwed on correctly. The bad guys attack. The auditors audit. And your management squeezes your budget. Rock on! Share:

A lot of my tech friends make fun of me for my minimal use of Google services. They don’t understand why I worry about the information Google collects on me. It isn’t that I don’t use any Google services or tools, but I do minimize my usage and never use them for anything sensitive. Google is not my primary search engine, I don’t use Google Reader (despite the excellent functionality), and I don’t use my Gmail account for anything sensitive. Here’s why: First, a quote from Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google (the full quote, not just the first part, which many sites used): If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities. I think this statement is very reasonable. Under current law, you should not have an expectation of privacy from the government if you interact with services that collect information on you, and they have a legal reason and right to investigate you. Maybe we should have more privacy, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. Where Eric is wrong is that you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. There are many actions all of us perform from day to day that are irrelevant even if we later commit a crime, but could be used against us. Or used against us if we were suspected of something we didn’t commit. Or available to a bored employee. It isn’t that we shouldn’t be doing things we don’t want others to see, it’s that perhaps we shouldn’t be doing them all in one place, with a provider that tracks and correlates absolutely everything we do in our lives. Google doesn’t have to keep all this information, but since they do it becomes available to anyone with a subpoena (government or otherwise). Here’s a quick review of some of the information potentially available with a single piece of paper signed by a judge… or a curious Google employee: All your web searches (Google Search). Every website you visit (Google Toolbar & DoubleClick). All your email (Gmail). All your meetings and events (Google Calendar). Your physical location and where you travel (Latitude & geolocation when you perform a search using Google from your location-equipped phone). Physical locations you plan on visiting (Google Maps). Physical locations of all your contacts (Maps, Talk, & Gmail). Your phone calls and voice mails (Google Voice). What you read (Search, Toolbar, Reader, & Books) Text chats (Talk). Real-time location when driving, and where you stop for food/gas/whatever (Maps with turn-by-turn). Videos you watch (YouTube). News you read (News, Reader). Things you buy (Checkout, Search, & Product Search). Things you write – public and private (Blogger [including unposted drafts] & Docs). Your photos (Picassa, when you upload to the web albums). Your online discussions (Groups, Blogger comments). Your healthcare records (Health). Your smarthome power consumption (PowerMeter). There’s more, but what else do we care about? Everything you do in a browser, email, or on your phone. It isn’t reading your mind, but unless you stick to paper, it’s as close as we can get. More importantly, Google has the ability to correlate and cross-reference all this data. There has never before been a time in human history when one single, private entity has collected this much information on a measurable percentage of the world’s population. Use with caution. Share: