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Chris Hoff and I decided to have a little fun and fake some back and forth exploits to highlight some security risks. It’s nearing the end of the year; either crunch time for some of you, or boring time for the rest. We figured a little humor couldn’t hurt in either case. We decided to blow this open early so it doesn’t get away from us. The attack Chris described could clearly work, but I’m surprised more people didn’t pick up the holes. While I do have a home automation system (but no cameras) I don’t know of any that use SCADA-based technologies. Then again, SCADA is going all IP so it might not be a stretch to define my system that way. For the record, I use an Insteon system but haven’t finished implementation yet. Bonus points to the commenters that noticed there’s no way I’d have a yard with that much green in Phoenix. The idea of the Quicktime rtsp attack was completely real. Until Apple released the patch a day or so ago, the only defense was avoiding clicking on potentially hostile links. I trust Chris, and would click on most things he sends me. Outbound filtering (which I do one one of my machines) could block the request unless it directed me to an unusual port; something Chris is capable of. The idea of pwning my workstation is dead on- and one reason I often recommend SCADA workstations be isolated from the Internet. I don’t have to take over your SCADA network if I can take over the workstation and do whatever I want when you aren’t looking. We were planning on highlighting a few other attack vectors in the next few days. Among them was a fake pretexting of Chris’s phone (we had a viable way for me to get his SSN) and username/password sniffing from wireless access points. All are common vectors that even us security pros are a little lax with sometimes. I suspect most of you enjoyed this, and we’ll come up with something more creative for April 1. Share:

My second monthly column is up over at Dark Reading; The Perils of Predictions & Predicting Perils. This is not your ordinary year-end prediction special. Here’s an excerpt: As the end of the year approaches, a strange phenomenon begins. As we relax and prepare for the holidays, we feel a strange compulsion to predict the future. For some, this compulsion is so overwhelming that it bursts the bounds of late night family dinners and explodes onto the pages of blogs, magazines, newspapers and the ever-dreaded year-end specials on TV. Ah, year’s end. Legions of armchair futurists slobber over their keyboards, spilling obvious dribble that they either predict every year until it finally happens or is so nebulous that they claim success if a butterfly flaps its wings in Liechtenstein. As you can tell, I’ve never been the biggest fan of these year-end predictions, especially in the security business. Since the days of the slide rule, scores of pundits have consistently, inaccurately predicted a devastating SCADA attack or the next big worm. Instead, I focus on two major threat trends and the security innovation they are inspiring. My favorite line in the column is near the end, so I’ll pull it out: Vulnerability scanning, secure software development, and programmer security training cannot solve the Web application security problem. I’ll leave you with two words: anti-exploitation, but you should really go read the article. Share:

Here I am, about 30 hours away from home, and my home automation system is freaking out. Why does stuff like this only happen when I’m on the road? Time to whip out my copy of How To Prepare For The Robot Uprising. I guess I know what I’ll be fixing this weekend… Share:

Oh no he didn’t! http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/blog/2007/12/breaking-news-s.html I should be crossing the border back to the US in about 12 hours. Share:

Ah, the wonders of year end predictions. We just couldn’t help ourselves, so we invited Chris Hoff, our favorite prognosticator, to join us. This week focuses on the negative trends affecting security, and Chris will be joining us again next week to finish up with the positive. As always, show notes and podcast link are over at NetSecPodcast.com. Share:

Looks like the ipfw rules project that Chris is leading is pretty popular. We’ve set up a permanent link that we’ll redirect to the latest version as we keep refining this thing. You can find it here. Thanks again to everyone who has helped on this project: windexh8er: http://www.slash32.com/ Rob Lee: http://thnetos.wordpress.com/ Josh Chris Pepper http://www.extrapepperoni.com/ Share:

  There’s been a lot going on in the industry since we last covered the Data Security Lifecycle, and it’s been far too long since the previous post. Today we’ll finish off our discussion of the controls technologies, and in our next post we’ll discuss supportive technologies, like Identity and Access Management and network encryption, that don’t fit neatly into the lifecycle itself. Since it’s been a while, here are links to the rest of the series: The Data Security Lifecycle Create and Store Technologies Use and Share Technologies The final two phases, Archive and Destroy, involve fewer technologies; making this one of the shorter posts. I’m sure at least a few of you will appreciate the brevity. 200712111207 Archive Encryption: As data migrates to archived storage, especially tape and other removable media, the risk of exposure through physical loss increases. In most cases losing a copy of data doesn’t result in any disclosure, but since you can’t definitively confirm that the data is safe you have to act as if it has been disclosed. This often leads to breach disclosures or other regulatory and reputation consequences. Inline Tape Encryption: An inline network appliance to automatically compress and encrypt data as it is transferred to a tape drive or library. Solutions currently exist for fiber channel, iSCSI, and TCP/IP, with support for all major tape protocols. Support for mainframe protocols may be possible with virtual tape adapters. Best suited for quickly encrypting existing infrastructure. Tape Drive Encryption: Hardware encryption built into the tape drive, sometimes requiring use of special tapes. Key management is typically more difficult than when using an inline appliance, mostly due to weak vendor offerings. Users state a strong preference for drive encryption in the long term, and key management is expected to improve over time, especially with the adoption of interoperability standards. Backup Software Encryption: Software encryption built into the backup tool. Performance is significantly worse than when using hardware encryption, but for lower-volume backups (especially in distributed environments) it’s often sufficient. Users are advised to be careful when choosing this option to make sure they can effectively retain and manage keys over the life of the tapes. Mainframe Tape Encryption- Hardware Accelerated: Some mainframes are able to use hardware crytographic accelerator cards in combination with tape encryption software. This eliminates the need for adapters or encrypted drives when creating mainframe tapes. Accelerator card support is included as an option in backup software from multiple vendors, often obviating the need to additional encryption software. Third-Party Software Encryption: Third-party encryption software designed to work with one or more backup software packages. Some products offer performance that exceeds that of encryption built into backup software, with superior key management, or support for multiple backup packages in a heterogenous environment. Inline SAN/NAS Encryption: An inline network appliance or feature of a SAN controller to encrypt all data moving to mass storage. Protects against physical loss of drives when SAN or NAS is used for archival storage, but does not offer separation of duties nor protection from network and software attacks. Hard Drive Encryption (Drive Level): When hard drives are used for archival storage, drive level encryption may protect data from physical loss. As with inline SAN/NAS encryption it does not protect against network or software level attacks. Requires external key management. Field-Level Encryption: Data already encrypted in a database is still secure in archives. In some cases, you may consider encrypting data normally left unencrypted in a live database when it moves to an archived database. Software Encryption: For file and media encryption. Covered in the Store section. Also usable for archived storage, including CD/DVDs. Asset Management: Since you don’t know if it’s been lost or misplaced, simply losing track of archival media can result in negative losses similar to a breach. The majority of public breach disclosures are the result of lost media (including laptops and tapes) that may or may not have ended up in the hands of the bad guys. Asset management tools, including software, tagging, and tracking technologies, reduce the risk of lost media. Destroy Crypto-Shredding: Deliberate destruction of all encryption keys essentially destroys the data until (if ever) the encryption protocol used is broken or capable of being brute-forced within a reasonable time period. This is sufficient for nearly every use case in a private enterprise, but shouldn’t be considered acceptable for highly sensitive government data. Encryption tools must have this as a specific feature to absolutely ensure that the keys are unrecoverable. Dedicated enterprise key management tools may be needed. Disk/Free-Space Wiping: Software or hardware designed to destroy data on hard drives and other media. At a minimum the tool should overwrite all possible space on the media 1-3 times, and 7 times is recommended for especially sensitive data. Merely formatting over data is not sufficient. Secure wiping is highly recommended for any systems with sensitive data that are sold or reused, especially laptops and desktops. File-level secure deletion tools exist when it’s necessary to destroy just a portion of data in active storage, but are not as reliable as a full media wipe. Physical Destruction: The possibilities for physically destroying media are only limited by your imagination, but break out into two categories: Degaussing: Use of strong magnets to scramble magnetic media like hard drives and backup tapes. Dedicated solutions should be used to ensure data is unrecoverable, and it’s highly recommended you confirm the efficiency of a degaussing tool by randomly performing forensic analysis on wiped media. Physical Destruction: Complete physical destruction of media, focusing on shredding actual magnetic media (platters or tape). Content Discovery: When truly sensitive data reaches end-of-life, you need to make sure that the destroyed data is really destroyed. Use of content discovery tools helps ensure that no copies or versions of the data remain accessible in the enterprise. Considering how complex our storage, archive, and backup strategies are today, this can’t absolutely guarantee the data is unrecoverable, but it does reduce the risk of subsequent retrieval.

I’m working on a project where I’m having to codify some of my thoughts on the rise of the data security markets, and I’m lumping in application security since I consider the line between those two disciplines far grayer than we usually admit. This is one of those great projects where I get to reuse a lot of material I’ve already posted (like the Data Security Lifecycle), and finally codify some things I’ve been talking and thinking about that I haven’t had the time to post yet. Here’s the introduction; designed to explain the rising importance of data security markets to a business audience. The last line is a prediction I’ll highlight for the attention-deficit crowd: Data and business application security will drive most of the new growth of the security market over the next 3-5 years. Nothing Earth-shattering, and probably common sense to many of you, but you might find this good fodder to help explain the rise of data security to your non-security folks. At some point I need to convert some of this into real numbers, if I can. The Rise Of Data Security Over the past few years we”ve seen a dramatic shift in the electronic threats faced by business and government, but only minor shifts in how organizations protect themselves. In the early days of the Internet, most attackers were mere experimenters or vandals, exploring connected systems and leaving behind the virtual equivalent of graffiti. The most damaging attacks tended to be worms or viruses that disrupted the ability to do business without materially affecting enterprise assets on the back end. The information security industry responded with tools focused on easing this immediate pain, securing the electronic perimeter and filtering out this bad traffic. The practice of “Information security” degraded to mere “network security” with a dash of “host security”. Products such as firewalls, IDS, and antivirus came to dominate the security market. This was a logical response to the disruptive risks at the time- attackers focused on damage and disruption using the network as the primary avenue of attack, and the industry responded with tools and technologies to keep systems running and carry out business. Beginning around five years ago the main threats began developing away from the attacks of the 1990s and focusing on profitable crime as opposed to mindless vandalism, but our approach to security failed to respond in kind. True, profitable cybercrime always existed, but it only became more common than experimentation and vandalism relatively recently. This is a natural evolution driven by three factors: Increased skill among attackers and a sufficient talent pool of technically proficient individuals willing to break the law. A growing volume of financially valuable data online- primarily personal data and corporate intellectual property. Development of criminal markets to facilitate conversion of this data to money. Bad guys now have effective skills, something to steal, and a place to sell it. Most of this crime occurs under the covers, outside the public eye. In many cases it’s because enterprises lack the fundamental capability to detect these attacks. In other cases, as opposed to a business outage that”s difficult to hide, organizations see no reason to publicize that they”ve become victims of crime, potentially putting their partners and customers at risk. Network security is very successful at limiting the risks it was developed for, but the environment has changed, and new tools and techniques are needed. These failures have been highlighted over the past 2 years by a combination of regulatory changes and a series of dramatic breaches. Since the passing of the California breach notification law in 2003 (SB 1386) there have been hundreds of reported disclosures of private information- over 500 in 2006 and 2007. The Sarbanes-Oxley act in the United States and similar laws in other nations have highlighted the importance of securing corporate financial data. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) requires companies to better protect credit card data to limit financial fraud. Over 34 U.S. states and Japan have passed breach notification laws similar to California’s, with more nations expected to follow (Australia is in active debate). Other notable laws (mostly in the US) include HIPAA for healthcare, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for financial services. On the breach front, companies such as SAP and Oracle are ensnared in major industrial espionage lawsuits (Oracle vs. SAP) and nary a day passes without a new headline of supposed Chinese hackers stealing state and industrial secrets from western nations. The combination of the increase in cybercrime, changing regulations, and public exposures is increasing the attention and resources dedicated to data security. Over the next three years it’s expected that data security issues (and the related application security) will account for over 60% of new enterprise security spending- this includes spending on new technologies, and excludes maintenance of existing technologies such as firewalls and antivirus, which account for most current security costs. Data and business application security will drive most of the new growth of the security market over the next 3-5 years. Share:

Ah, the silly season of predictions. Rothman has a round up of the early entries, and I’ll have more to say on that particular subject in my monthly Dark Reading column (should be up next week). Stiennon was a little different this year- he blogged his methodology, took a few days off to ruminate, then blogged the results of his analysis. Chris Hoff described his methods to me over IM (it involves Guiness, a keyboard, and about an hour), and came to very similar results. Me? I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to clients (mostly on the vendor and investment side) about various data security markets and predicted growth rates. There’s been a ton of acquisition activity in the areas I spend most of my time on and I’m being frequently asked to predict the next “hot” market. I guess with the RSA conference delayed until April people are getting a little impatient. I won’t be making any predictions today, but like Stiennon it never hurts to share my secret sauce for making educated guesses. When I look at security markets I generally divide them into three categories which tend to correlate to hype, adoption, and investment trends. Threat/Response: These markets are driven by a rapid rise in a threat that demands an immediate response in order to effectively continue to engage in business. A jump in worm activity (around Code Red) drove firewall investments. Viruses like Melissa and LoveLetter forced wide adoption of enterprise antivirus. Huge jumps in spam forced a dramatic increase in antispam. And so on. In each case, the threat increased at a rapid enough pace to disrupt normal business operations, forcing a response. These are the markets that creep along, then suddenly explode, resulting in big numbers and year over year revenue increases in the hundreds of percent. Compliance Driven: In compliance markets the threat driving investment isn’t one of external attack, but of regulatory fines, disrupted business operations due to an inability to meet industry standards, or fears of material negative public perception due to press related to an inability to meet a standard (e.g. HIPAA). Compliance rarely, if ever, drives the same adoption rates as threat/response since daily business operations aren’t disrupted, but these markets see steady growth with increases ranging from 75% to over 100% year over year. Examples include Data Loss Prevention, Security Information and Event Management, Identity Management, and Database Activity Monitoring. More rapid growth rates are tied to solutions for problems leading to audit or compliance failures, then followed by solutions that reduce the cost of compliance, then followed by solutions that are only sometimes required for compliance or otherwise not explicitly required (like DLP). Internally Motivated: These are tools we buy to improve security, which aren’t demanded by an immediate external force. They often address threats that don’t necessarily disrupt daily business operations but often result in higher losses when they hit. The bad news is these are often the most important tools for improving security and preventing material losses, but since those incidents aren’t as “in your face” as spam or loss of services, the adoption rate is much lower. This is, of course, only part of the market evaluation process. The real trick is to predict when these market drivers will hit and markets will switch to the next (or previous) category. But if I gave everything away, no one would hire me, I’d end up just a full time blogger, and I’d have to move in with my Mom and learn to speak Klingon. Share:

I was amused to get this in the mail today. Since I’m not a total bastard, I’ve removed the header and sender’s name. From: xxxxxxx@dimacc.com Subject: Seeking an ad on your windows security page Date: December 6, 2007 2:45:09 PM GMT-07:00 To: rmogull@securosis.com Thanks for your great page on OSX vs. windows security over at http://securosis.com/2006/11/20/mac-vs-windows-security-its-a-whole-new-game-and-doesnt-matter/. I think you’ve built a great security resource and I am writing to ask if I could buy a text ad on that page for a security website. I can pay 35 dollars for the ad. Do you do paypal? Cheers, xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx Wow. A whole $35!!!! That could like pay for almost like a few months of my web hosting!!! I could, like, buy 1/3 of a nice dinner for a girl!!!!Maybe even my wife!!!! Looking up their site I find the following: David Robertson CEO and Founder When only the best will do, DIMACC is here for you! Specializing in Website Advertising As you may already have guessed, we’re in the marketing business. The company’s founder and CEO, David Robertson, is a 1989 Harvard graduate. While attending Harvard University working towards his MBA, a class project made Dave realize what his life calling was – Advertising. He was required to set up a mock business detailing every aspect including plans to make and keep it a success. He chose to create an advertising company for his project and enjoyed it so much that he wanted to pursue it in real life. Five years later, in Maplewood, Minnesota, this dream became a reality when DIMACC took on its first client. The company’s main goal, which remains #1 today, was to do anything and everything for the client so they get the results they are after. The advertising business can be a cut-throat and hectic business to get into, but with the knowledge and experience found at DIMACC mixed with the positive atmosphere found in the work environment, it’s no wonder this company has become such a success. Well darn, Harvard! I’m impressed. What a success! They should be so proud!!!! Oh well, it’s still better than Facebook’s Beacon garbage. Share: