Research

I hate to admit it, but someone will probably hack this site at some point. And they may even use it to hack your computer. And there’s not a darn thing I can do about it. Security, and hacking, are kind of trendy. Both the good guys and the bad guys have a habit of focusing on certain attacks and defenses based on what’s “hot”. We’re kind of the fashion whores of the IT world. I mean I just can’t believe Johnny calls himself a 1337 hax0r for finding a buffer overflow in RPC. I mean that’s just so 2002. Everyone knows that all the cool hackers are working on XSS and browser attacks. The trend of the month seems to be cross-site scripting and embedding attacks into trusted websites. Cross site scripting (XSS) is a form of attack where the attacker takes advantage of poorly-programmed or poorly-configured web pages, and can embed his or her own code in the page to go after your browser (a seriously simple explanation, check out Wiki for more). MITRE (they speak CVE!) called cross-site scripting the number 1 vulnerability of all time (in terms of volume). Dark Reading reports a number of major sites hacked recently this way. Possibly hundreds of sites hosted on HostGator were hacked (not with cross site scripting) and code inserted (using an iframe for you geeks) to infect anyone with the temerity to visit the sites using Internet Explorer (we DID warn you). None of this is new. We’ve had attackers embedding attacks into trusted sites for years. It may be trendy, but it isn’t new by any means. Some are pretty devious- like hacking advertising servers that then distribute their ads on sites all over the net. It’s a great form of social engineering- compromising a trusted authority and using that to distribute your attack. Not that I’m assuming my paranoid readers actually trust this site, but I won’t be surprised if it’s hacked, and hopefully most of you are following security precautions and won’t be compromised yourself. Why? Because this site is hosted. I manage my little part of the server, but I don’t control it myself. I use all sorts of tools like WordPress and cPanel, all of which have their own security flaws. Sure, I’ve managed secure servers and coded secure pages in the past, but I kind of have a day job now. I rely on my hosting provider, and while I tried to choose one with a good reputation, my ego can’t write checks their bodies can’t cash. We, as users, need to take some responsibility ourselves. Just staying away from “those” sites isn’t enough, we also need to understand trusted sites may be compromised at some point, too. So far I’m safe on a Mac, and you Windows users can stay off IE (maybe until 7 comes out) and use anti-spyware and antivirus tools with maybe a little host intrusion prevention. Not that I don’t want you to trust me, but heck, I don’t even really trust myself. I’m just some dude with a blog waiting for the fall security colors… Share:

If someone ever tells you something like the following: “We defend against all zero day attacks using a holistic solution that integrates the end-to-end synergies in security infrastructure with no false positives.” Run away. Share:

I swear, every time I think this thing is dead, its pale desiccated hand reaches from the grave, grabbing at our innocent ankles. Lynn Fox at Apple responded to some very direct questions from George Ou at ZDNet. At this point I’m surprised Apple is letting this drag on; all it does is bring the black spotlight of security on them which, as Microsoft and Oracle will attest to, isn’t necessarily a good thing. Fox’s response seems risky unless she is absolutely certain Maynor and Ellch have nothing, and are basically, you know, suicidal. That doesn’t jive with what I know- even what I’m allowed to (and have) revealed. Toorcon is the end of this week. Ou will be there to watch Maynor and Ellch present. I suspect it will be somewhat interesting. I never suspected a chance meeting at Defcon would drop me into what’s become one of the most bizarre disclosure situations I’ve ever seen. This is even making Ciscogate look tame. Share:

Amrit Williams is a coworker over at Gartner and he’s obsessed with cowbell and security tools that go to 11. Let’s just say this post isn’t the first time he’s brought it up. Seriously, Amrit is a great analyst and welcome addition to the security blogging world. Unlike many of us he worked his way through the trenches of the vendor world, including stints at McAfee and NCircle. And, in this case, he’s right. A dirty secret of security is that if you do your job too well, people stop buying new product. Remember when AV was $30 with unlimited free updates (and didn’t bring your system to its knees)? Seriously, it was. Here’s a snippet, and check out his site: Bottom line: You should not have to pay more for increased functionality year over year – demand more from your vendors, tell them that you don’t need an anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit, anti-phishing, anti-x, with a personal firewall, host-based intrusion detection, and wireless security and networking configuration capabilities each sold to you at a premium – get them all for a single price, the price you paid last year for AV. Let them know that turning it up to 11 is not going to win the gig when what you are really looking for is more cow-bell. Share:

In a post titled “Access of Access + Audit” Dr. Anton Chuvakin discusses the importance of logging, well pretty much everything. When it comes to working in the enterprise environment I tend to agree- audit logs are some of the most useful security, troubleshooting, and performance management tools we have. Back when I was operational I had two kinds of bad log days- those hair pulling, neurotic-in-a-here’s-johnny-way days spent combing, manually, through massive logs, and (even worse) those really I’m-so-screwed days where we didn’t have the logs at all. Since, thanks to better search and analysis tools, those former days are much rarer, we can focus on the latter. But here’s where my fractured personality splits like a tree hit by lightning- while I believe we should respect personal privacy at work, there’s no expectation of privacy, nor should there be. We’re paid to help our employer succeed, using their resources, and it’s their right to watch everything we’re doing. I advise my corporate clients to be respectful, but activity monitoring is an absolutely essential security tool. But personal life is a whole different bowl of Cheerios and, despite a noted absence in the Constitution, I believe we have a right to privacy in our personal lives. Be it the right to be left alone, or the right to control how our information is collected and used, privacy is essential to freedom. {yes, I’m wearing a flag around my shoulders as I type this} But Dr. Chuvakin seems to think a little different: So, what is the connection between the above definition and my call for “no access without logging”? Logging is NOT a privacy risk; inappropriate use for collected data is. Before you object by invoking the infamous “guns don’t kill people; gaping holes in vital organs do” 🙂 I have to say that the above privacy definition is about access to information about people, not about the existence of said information. And, yes, Virginia, there IS a difference! Similarly, nowadays many folks are appalled when they see stuff like this (“Fresh calls for ISP data retention laws. US attorney general cranks up the volume.”), but it actually – gasp! – seems reasonable to me, in light of the above. Admittedly, if your bandwidth is so huge that you cannot log and retain, you might be able avoid logging or at least avoid long term log retention, but that is a different story altogether. We live in a digital age. One we don’t fully comprehend. One that requires new thinking in ways we haven’t even thought about yet. One of the essential features of this age is a redefinition of scope and scale. Rules of the past break with the reach of networks and the volume of data we collect- data that can exist, effectively, forever. So I propose “Mogull’s Rules of Privacy” (remember, I’m kind of egotistical): All data, once stored, is never lost Collected data is never private data Everyone has a different definition of appropriate use (corollary to 1: unless, of course, you need the data for a disaster recovery) What do I mean? Once we record a digital track it’s nearly impossible to assure that said track is ever really deleted. There’s everything from backups to forensic analysis. Do we lose data every day? Of course. Back as a sysadmin I was really good at it. But when dealing with private data we have to assume it’s eternal. Now why is this data never private? Because everyone has a different definition of appropriate use. Be it law enforcement, a disgruntled employee, or the head of marketing, someone, somewhere, will eventually come up with an “appropriate” reason to use the data. Privacy is like virginity- you can’t get it back. Yes, long-term logging can help in criminal investigations, but if we’re going to pretend we live in a free society, widespread logging or monitoring of innocent citizens is not acceptable. Since our digital lives are now our physical lives, digital communications should be as sacrosanct as the mail or phone calls. I’m all for legal and aggressive monitoring, logging, and wiretapping of known criminals and those under reasonable suspicion, but the day we give in and start logging everyone, just in case, we should just dump all the voting machines, electronic or otherwise, in the Potomac and stop pretending we still believe in the Constitution. Then again, maybe it’s too late. Share:

An article just posted by the New York Times reveals that the latest National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism concludes that our involvement in Iraq has increased the global terror threat. Most of the time I make fun of security pundits that think because they stopped a few hackers they’re qualified to discuss issues of national security, but this time I just can’t help myself. I’ve become what I loathe. Edited- I take that back, and the rest of the post. There are people losing their lives over this; I deleted my initial comments. Just go read the article and make your own decision. Apologies for letting my ego temporarily get the better of me. Share:

There’s a lot going on in the world of Digital Rights Management (DRM) these days and I realized not everyone understands exactly what DRM is, how it works, and what the implications are. This has popped up a few times recently among friends and family as (being the alpha geek) I’ve been asked to explain why certain music or movie files don’t work on various players. Before digging into some of the security issues around DRM I thought it would be good to post a (relatively) brief overview. I’ll be honest – as objective as I try to be, the title of this post alone should indicate that I have some serious concerns with the current direction of consumer DRM. While one of the better parts of having a personal blog is being able to throw objectivity off a very tall bridge to a very messy landing, tossing all objectivity to the wind often seriously undermines core arguments. Thus I’ll try and keep this a relatively (but not perfectly) impartial overview of the technology. In future posts I’ll dig into the security issues of DRM and make specific recommendations on security requirements for any consumer DRM system. If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t just copy a DVD, why a song you downloaded from iTunes only plays on an iPod, why a song downloaded from Napster won’t play on an iPod, or why you can print some .pdf files but not others… keep reading. If you wonder why it’s so hard to get HDTV on a TiVo or computer… keep reading. If you want to know what that new expensive HDMI cable for your XBox 360 or flat panel really is… keep reading. (and if you know all this stuff you might want to skip this post and wait for the big DRM security analysis in the coming weeks) DRM Defined Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a collection of technologies used to control the use of digital media like music, movies, television, and text. DRM decides and controls who is allowed to read or play a file, copy it, print it, email it, download it to a portable player, burn it to CD, and so on. We broadly divide the market into two halves- the consumer world, and the enterprise world (businesses). While some of the technologies overlap, this is pretty much a hard split and the use and implications of enterprise DRM are very different than consumer DRM. I’m going to simplify a bit here, but DRM essentially works by encrypting a file and tagging it with rules on how that file is allowed to be used (the rules are also protected). Whatever reads that file must be able to both decrypt it and understand (and be able to enforce) those rules. A DRM system has two technical goals: Control/protect content by restricting what software and devices can read it. Control/protect content by restricting what that software/device (and thus the user) can do with it. On the user side, this leads to two major implications: Users are restricted in how they can use content (copying, saving, etc.). Content (and thus users) are locked into using specific players/readers. Thus content publishers and technology companies use DRM as a tool to protect their content (mostly from copying, but there are other implications), and to force you to use their devices. There’s also no single standard technology for DRM, creating a bit of confusion among us consumers. Consumer DRM is actually really hard, since we’re talking about an environment where the user can hack away at both the protected content and the players (devices and software) privately, which tends to give them an advantage over time. Rather than boring you with all sorts of technical jargon I’ll explain a little bit of how this works by comparing two kinds of shiny plastic disks- CDs and DVDs. Compact Discs- Living a Life of Freedom CDs were one of the first (maybe the first, we skipped that in my college history classes) formats for digital distribution. Before music CDs all music distributed to consumers was analog, and one of the characteristics of analog is it tends to degrade over time, and as we make copies, noise sneaks into the signal. CDs changed all that by distributing music in digital form. Not that anyone was playing these things on computers in the 80s, but CDs barged into our lives with the promise of crystal-pure digital music- no scratchy records or stretchy tape. Back then all most of us knew was “it’s digital”, and beyond that we really didn’t think about it. Until CD drives started turning up in computers, that is. Most anyone who has ripped a CD into iTunes now knows that a CD is really just a collection of bits. CDs are totally unprotected unless the music label adds some sort of DRM (which rarely works, since it’s not part of the Compact Disk Digital Audio standard, and our players don’t understand it). As soon as we started putting CD drives in computers we were able to pull perfect copies off CDs onto our computers. Once CD writers and discs became cheap enough we could make perfect copies of these commercial CDs. Then we learned about file compression (to squeeze those big music files into something easier to store and trade) and combined that with the Internet and broadband and all of a sudden anyone, anywhere, could trade nearly-perfect digital music with anyone else in the world without a cent going to the music labels (or artists). They really didn’t like this. It really pissed them off. Their response? Sue the hell out of everyone and write some laws. You see, there’s a huge disparity in perception between content companies and consumers when we buy those CDs. Historically we think of it as “buying music”. We paid money, we own the CD, thus don’t we own the music? Not really- the copyright holder always owns the music, we’re just allowed to use it.

So Apple issued an update for the Mac wireless drivers to prevent a buffer overflow, but denies SecureWorks provided them anything useful. Right. We believe you. Got it. You “just happened” to discover exactly the kind of vulnerability that Maynor and Ellch demoed, but they were evil, uncooperative bad guys for hinting they might be there. Considering SecureWorks works responsibly with all sorts of other vendors in the market I suspect the anger may be a tad misplaced. Come on Apple; all software has vulnerabilities. It’s time to stop putting PR in charge of vulnerability management. To quote the Macworld article linked above: The internal audit came as a result of claims by a senior researcher at SecureWorks that said he had revealed a vulnerability in Apple”s MacBook wireless software driver that would allow him to take control of the machine. SecureWorks later clarified its position and said it had used a third-party driver and not Apple”s driver. Apple has maintained that SecureWorks has provided no proof that Mac drivers are vulnerable in any way. “They did not supply us with any information to allow us to identify a specific problem, so we initiated an internal audit,” Apple spokesman, Anuj Nayar, told Macworld. “Today”s update preemptively strengthens our drivers against potential vulnerabilities, and while it addresses issues found internally by Apple, we are open to hearing from security researchers on how to improve security on the Mac.” According to the update issued by Apple, two separate stack buffer overflows exist in the AirPort wireless driver”s handling of malformed frames. An attacker in local proximity may be able to trigger an overflow by injecting a maliciously crafted frame into a wireless network. When the AirPort is on, this could lead to arbitrary code execution with system privileges. It seems Apple also found some flaws in PowerPC systems, not just Intel Macs. At least the research spurred by Maynor and Ellch’s Black Hat/Defcon disclosures is improving security across the entire Mac product line. But seriously- stop the security PR game or you’ll end up like Microsoft a few years ago… edited 11pm : just want to state that based on additional information I believe it’s quite probable specific vulnerability details, especially on PPC, were discovered independently via Apple’s internal audit. My criticism is of the vitriolic handling of the situation when I believe this could have been resolved more quickly and responsibly had Apple played less with PR, and more with the researchers who obviously found something. Share:

New IE Flaw Exploited on Porn Sites Now we did warn you, and I quote: Especially if you go to “those” sites. Yes, you. Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about. For the record “those sites” are porn and gambling. So you poker addicts are next. And you file sharers- don’t start thinking you’re all safe or something. Those torrent trackers are web pages you know. Of course Disney World fingerprints everyone these days, so maybe they’ll pick this up. Share:

To whom it may concern, While, as a security professional, I take great care to protect all of my systems and data, I cannot guarantee that I am fully compliant with both the HIPAA security and privacy requirements. I have never undergone a HIPAA audit, nor any official HIPAA training or evaluations of any kind beyond those provided to first responders. For your information I do take extensive security precautions including: Hardware and software firewalls on all systems and networks Home directory encryption on my primary Mac Antivirus/antispyware on all Windows systems OS hardening and service minimization Rapid deployment of all security updates Despite these precautions I believe you should discontinue faxing medical records to my online fax system as I cannot guarantee I am handling said records within HIPAA guidelines. While I appreciate the amnio results and insurance records disputes (for multiple patients) they do not directly affect the patient care I administer as a former ski patroller and disaster medic. It is, however, good to know that should I manage to perform an amniocentesis on my pregnant patients in the middle of a ski slope you will be able to provide me with accurate and timely results. By faxing my online system (which forwards to my work email) your medical records are subject to a number of possible security risks, including, but not limited to: Interception on my corporate email server Review by unauthorized persons Loss due to lost backup tapes of said email system Other standard security vulnerabilities I do appreciate you value my medical opinion (since I’m only an EMT/washed-up paramedic) and my input on billing issues (for which I have no training). That said, you should probably remove me from your consultation list. Sincerely, Rich ((Doesn’t it make you feel just peachy that the entire healthcare industry still runs on fax for medical orders, results, and billing? And may have sent me your colonoscopy results?)) Share: