Research

I think we can firmly declare December 2010 the Month of Pwnage. Between WikiLeaks, Gawker, McDonalds, and Anonymous DDoS attacks, I’m not sure infosec has been in the news this much since the early days of big data breaches. Heck, I haven’t been in the news this much since I got involved with the Kaminsky DNS thing. To be honest, it’s a little refreshing to have a string of big stories that don’t involve Albert Gonzales. But here’s the thing I find so fascinating. In a very real sense, most of these high profile incidents are meaningless compared to the real compromises occurring daily out there. Our large enterprise clients are continuously compromised and mostly focusing on minimizing the damage. While everyone worries about Gawker passwords, local bad guys are following delivery trucks and stealing gifts off doorsteps – our local police nailed someone who hit a dozen houses and 50 gifts, and Pepper also had a couple incidents. I can no longer tell someone my profession without hearing a personal – generally recent – story of credit card or bank fraud. Heck, this week my bank teller described how a debit card she cut up months earlier was used for online purchases. But I guess none of that is nearly as interesting as Gizmodo and Lifehacker account compromises. Or DDoS attacks that don’t cause any real damage. And even that story became pretty darn funny when they tried to attack Amazon… which is sort of like trying to deflect the course of the Sun with a flock of highly-motivated carrier pigeons. I love my job. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Rich quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Rich also quoted by the AP on the Gawker hack… which made it into a couple hundred publications.. For the record I wasn’t trying to downplay the severity to Gawker, but to contrast vandalism-style attacks (however severe) against financially motivated ones. Some of the context was lost, and I can’t blame the journalist. Network Security Podcast, Episode 225. Mike quoted in Weighing Optimism vs. Pragmatism. Dark Reading on Gawker Goof. Favorite Securosis Posts David Mortman: Market Maturity and Security Competitive Advantage. Mike Rothman: Get over it. If we spent half the time doing stuff that we do bitching about it, a lot more would get done. Rich has it exactly right in this one. Adrian Lane: Market Maturity and Security Competitive Advantage. Not sure the title captures the essence, but an important lesson in how the security industry is shaped. Rich: Sigh. Everyone stole my fave (Market Maturity). I guess we should have written more this week. Other Securosis Posts React Faster and Better: Incident Response Gaps. Infrastructure Security Research Agenda 2011 – Part 4: Egress and Endpoints. Infrastructure Security Research Agenda 2011 – Part 3: Vaulting and Assurance. Incite 12/15/2010: It’s not a sprint…. Infrastructure Security Research Agenda 2011 – Part 2: Posturing and Reacting Faster/Better. Quick Wins with DLP Webinar. Favorite Outside Posts Rich: The Real Lessons Of Gawker’s Security Mess. Daniel nails it with some hype-free, useful in-depth coverage. Some serious pwnage here. Adrian Lane: DO NOT poke the bear. And the beauty is that it ends with 1. David Mortman: The Flawed Legal Architecture of the Certificate Authority Trust Model. Mike Rothman: Can’t measure love. xkcd via Chandler. We can’t measure everything, but we can measure some things. and that’s key to remember for 2011 planning. Pepper: Avast! Beware ‘pirates’!. I just wish ‘Avast’ could be the most ‘pirated’ software of all time, because the name is just too perfect. Research Reports and Presentations The Securosis 2010 Data Security Survey. Monitoring up the Stack: Adding Value to SIEM. Network Security Operations Quant Metrics Model. Network Security Operations Quant Report. Understanding and Selecting a DLP Solution. Understanding and Selecting an Enterprise Firewall. Understanding and Selecting a Tokenization Solution. Top News and Posts Major Ad Networks Found Serving Malicious Ads. Backscatter X-Ray Machines Easily Fooled (pdf). Back door in HP network storage solution – Update. Mozilla Adding Web Applications to the Security Bug Bounty Program. Dancing Snowman storms its way across Facebook. OpenBSD has FBI backdoor, claims contractor. Most likely a hoax. Your email deserves due process. Over 500 patches for SAP. HeapLocker Tool Protects Against Heap-Spray Attacks. Twitter Spam Results from Gawker Leak. Gawker Password Pwnage. Microsoft to address IE, Stuxnet flaws. Blog Comment of the Week Remember, for every comment selected, Securosis makes a $25 donation to Hackers for Charity. This week’s best comment goes to Marisa, in response to Get over it. Only my dad calls it The BayThreat, Rich. :p Gal Shpantzer had a great talk at DojoCon also this weekend about the “Security Outliers” and using analogies from other health and safety industries to tackle the subjects of infosec education and adoption. Seems like there is hope out there, and when the security industry is as old as sterilization practices in hospitals we’ll be seeing more trickle down adoption. Share:

Back in April I published a slightly different take on DLP: Low Hanging Fruit: Quick Wins with Data Loss Prevention. It was all about getting immediate value out of DLP while setting yourself up for a full deployment. On Wednesday at 11:30am EST I’ll be giving a free presentation on that material. If you’re interested, you can register at the Business of Information Security site. Share:

Over the weekend I glanced at Twitter and saw a bit of hand-wringing inspired by something going on at (I think) the Baythreat in California. This is something that’s been popping up quite a bit on Twitter and in blog posts for a while now. The core of the comments centered on the problem of educating the unwashed security masses, combined with the problems induced by a compliance mentality, and the general “they don’t understand” and “security is failing” memes. (Keep in mind I’m referring to a bunch of comments over a period of time, and not pointing fingers because I’m over-generalizing). My response? You can probably figure it out from the title of this post. I long ago stopped worrying about the big picture. I accepted that some people understand security, some don’t, and we all suffer from deformation professionnelle (a cognitive bias: losing the broader perspective due to our occupation). In any risk management profession it’s hard to temper our daily exposure to the worst of the worst with the attitudes and actions of those with other priorities. I went through a lot of similar hand-wringing first in my physical security days, and then with my rescue work. Ask any cop or firefighter and you’ll see the same tendencies. We need to keep in mind that others won’t always share our priorities, no matter how much we explain them, and no matter how well we “speak in the language of business”. The reality is that unless someone suffers noticeable pain or massive fear, human nature will limit how they prioritize risk. And even when they do get hit, the changes in thought from the experience fade over time. Our job is to keep slogging through; doing our best to educate as we optimize the resources at our disposal and stay prepared to sweep in when something bad happens and clean up the mess. Which we will then probably be blamed for. Thankless? Only if you want to look at it that way. Does it mean we should give up? No, but also don’t expect human nature to change. If you can’t accept this, all you will do is burn yourself out until you end up as an alcoholic passed out behind a dumpster, naked, with your keys up your a**. Fight the good fight. But only if you can still sleep well at night. Share:

Someone will predict a big cyberattack someplace that may or may not happen. Someone will predict a big SCADA attack/failure someplace that probably won’t happen, but I suppose it’s still possible. Someone will predict that Apple will do something big that enterprises won’t adopt, but then they will. Someone will predict some tech will die, which is usually when a lot of people will buy it. Most people will renew every security product currently in their environment no matter how well they works (or don’t). Someone will predict that this time it’s really the year mobile attacks happen and steal everyone’s money and nekked photos off their phones. But it probably won’t happen, and if it does the press headlines will all talk about ‘iPhone’ even if it only affects Motorola StarTACs. Vendors will scare customers into thinking 20 new regulations are right around the corner – all of which require their products. There will be a lot of predictions with the words “social networking”, “2.0”, “consumerization”, “Justin Bieber”, and whatever else is trending on Twitter the day they write the predictions. Any time there’s a major global event or disaster, I will receive at least 8 press releases from vendors claiming bad guys are using it for spam/phishing. Some botnet will be the biggest. And a bonus: #11. The Securosis Disaster Recovery Breakfast at RSA will totally rock. I miss anything? Update – 12. Someone will predict cloud computing will cause/fix all these other problems (via @pwrcycle) Share:

This morning Amazon announced that Amazon Web Services achieved PCI-DSS 2.0 Validated Service Provider compliance. This is both a very big deal, and no big deal at all. Here’s why: This certification means that the AWS services within scope (EC2, EBS, S3, and VPC – most of the important bits) passed an annual assessment by a QSA and undergo quarterly scans by an ASV. This means that Amazon’s infrastructure is certified to support payment system applications and services (anything that takes a credit card). This is a big deal, because there is no longer any question (until something changes) that you are allowed to deploy a payment system/application on AWS. Just because AWS is certified doesn’t mean you are. You still need to deploy a PCI compliant application/service and anything on AWS is still within your assessment scope. But any assessment you pay for will be limited to your installation – the back-end AWS components are covered by Amazon’s assessment, and your assessor won’t need to pound through all of Amazon to certify your environment deployed on AWS. Chris Hoff presciently wrote about this the night before Amazon’s announcement. Anything on your side that’s in scope (containing PAN data) is still in scope and needs to be assessed, but there are no longer any questions that you can deploy into AWS (another big deal). The “big whoop” part? As we said, your systems are still in scope even if you deploy on AWS, and still need to be assessed (and compliant). The open question? PCI-DSS 2.0 doesn’t address multi-tenancy concerns (which Amazon actually notes in their release). This is a huge political battleground behind the scenes (ask anyone in the virtualization SIG), and just because AWS is certified as a service provider doesn’t mean all cloud IaaS providers will be, nor that there won’t be a multi-tenancy failure on AWS leading to exposure of cardholder data. Compliance (still) != security. For a practical example: you can store PAN data on S3, but it still needs to be encrypted in accordance with PCI-DSS requirements. Amazon doesn’t do this for you – it’s something you need to implement yourself; including key management, rotation, logging, etc. If you deploy a server instance in EC2 it still needs to undergo ASV scans and meet all other requirements, and will be assessed by your QSA (if in scope). What this certification really does is eliminate any doubts that you are allowed to deploy an in-scope PCI system on AWS, and reduces your assessment scope to only your in-scope bits on AWS, not the entire service. This is a big deal, but your organization’s assessment scope isn’t necessarily reduced, as it might be when you move to something like a tokenization service where you reduce your handling of PAN data. Share:

Thanks to some dude who looks like a James Bond villain and rents rack space in a nuclear bomb resistant underground cavern, combined with a foreign nation running the equivalent of a Hoover mated with a Xerox over the entire country, “data leaks” are back in the headlines. While most of us intuitively understand that preventing leaks completely is impossible, you wouldn’t know it from listening to various politicians/executives/pundits. We tend to intuitively understand the impossibility, but we don’t often dig why – especially when it comes to technology. Lately I’ve been playing with aspects of quantum mechanics as metaphors for information-centric (data) security. When we start looking at problems like protecting data in the highly distributed and abstracted environments enabled by virtualization, decentralization, and cloud computing, they are eerily reminiscent of the transition from the standard physics models (which date back to Newton) to the quantum world that came with the atomic age. My favorite new way to explain the impossibility of preventing data leaks is quantum tunneling. Quantum tunneling is one of those insane aspects of quantum computing that defies our normal way of thinking about things. Essentially it tells us that elementary particles (like electrons) have a chance of moving across any physical barrier, regardless of size. Even if the barrier clearly requires more energy to pass than the particle possesses. This isn’t just a theory – it’s essential to the functioning of real-world devices like scanning-tunneling microscopes, and explains radioactive particle decay. Quantum tunneling is due to the wave-particle duality of these elementary particles. Without going too deeply into it, these particles express aspects of both particles and waves. One aspect is that we can’t ever really put our finger on both the absolute position and momentum of the particle; this means they live in a world defined by probabilities. Although the probability of a particle passing the barrier is low, it’s within the realm of the possible, and thus with enough particles and time it’s inevitable that some of them will cross the barrier. Data loss is very similar conceptually. In our case we don’t have particles, we have datum (for our purposes, the smallest unit of data with value). Instead of physical barriers we have security controls. For datum our probabilities are location and momentum (movement), and for security controls we have effectiveness. Combine this together and we learn that for any datum, there is a probability of it escaping any security control. The total function is all the values of that datum (the data), and the combined effectiveness of all the security controls for various exit vectors. This is a simplification of the larger model, but I’ll save that for a future geekout (yes, I even made up some equations). Since no set of security controls is ever 100% effective for all vectors, it’s impossible to prevent data leaks. Datum tunneling. But this same metaphor also provides some answers. First of all, the fewer copies of the datum (the less data) and the fewer the vectors, the lower the probability of tunneling. The larger the data set (a collection of different datums), the less probability of tunneling if you use the right control set. In other words, it’s a lot easier to get a single credit card number out the door despite DLP, but DLP can be very effective against larger data sets, if it’s well positioned to block the right vectors. We’re basically increasing the ‘mass’ of what we’re trying to protect. In a different case, such as a movie file, the individual datum has more ‘mass’ and thus is easier to protect. Distill this down and we get back to standard security principles: How much are we trying to protect? How accessible is it? What are the ways to access and distribute/exfiltrate it. I like thinking in terms of these probabilities to remind us that perfect protection is an impossibility, while still highlighting where to focus efforts in order to reduce overall risk. Share:

What a week. Last Monday and Tuesday I was out meeting with clients and prospects and was totally psyched at all the cool opportunities coming up. I was a bit ragged on Wednesday, but figured it was the lack of sleep. Nope. It was the flu. The big FLU, not its little cousin the cold. I was laid up in bed for 4 days, alternating between shivering and sweating. I missed our annual Turkey Trot 10K, Thanksgiving, and a charity dinner at our zoo I’ve been looking forward to all year. Then a bronchial infection set in, resulting in a chest x-ray and my taking (at one point) five different meds. Today (Thursday) is probably my first almost-normal day of work since this started. Those of you in startups know the joy that is missing unexpected time. But all is not lost. We are in the midst of some great projects we’ll be able to provide more detail on in the coming months. We are partnering with the Cloud Security Alliance on a couple things, and finally building out our first product. I’m actually getting to do some application design work again, and I forgot how much I miss it. I really enjoy research, but even though the writing and presenting portion is a creative act, it isn’t the same as building something. Not that I’m doing much of the coding. No one needs a new “Hello World” web app, no matter how cleverly I can use the <BLINK> tag. On a different note, we are starting (yes, already) to put together our 2011 Guide to RSA. We think we have the trends we will cover nailed, but if you have something you’d like in the guide please let us know. And don’t forget to reserve Thursday morning for the Disaster Recovery Breakfast. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Adrian on Database Password Crackers. Rich quoted in SC: WikiLeaks prompts U.S. government to assess security. No easy tech answers for leaks, folks. Mike on consumerization of IT security issues at Threatpost. Rich wasn’t on the Network Security Podcast, but you should listen anyway. Favorite Securosis Posts Adrian Lane: Criminal Key Management Fail. No Sleep Till… David Mortman: Are You off the Grid? Mike Rothman: Are You off the Grid? You’ve got no privacy. Get over it. Again. Rich: Counterpoint: Availability Is Job #1. Actually, read the comments. Awesome thread. Other Securosis Posts I can haz ur email list. Incite 12/1/10: Pay It Forward. Holiday Shopping and Security Theater. Grovel for Budget Time. Ranum’s Right, for the Wrong Reasons. Incident Response Fundamentals: Phasing It in. Incite 11/24/2010: Fan Appreciation. I Am T-Comply. Meatspace Phishing Encounter. Availability and Assumptions. Favorite Outside Posts Adrian Lane: Security Offense vs. Defense. It’s a week old, but I thought this post really hit the mark. David Mortman: Software [In]security: Cyber Warmongering and Influence Peddling. Mike Rothman: And Beyond…. We all owe a debt of gratitude to RSnake as he rides off into the sunset. To pursue of all things – happiness. Imagine that. Rich: More than just numbers. Jack Jones highlights why no matter what your risk approach – quantitative or qualitative – you need to be very careful in how to interpret your results. Mike Rothman: Palo Alto Networks Initiates Search for Top Executive. Rarely do you see a white-hot private start-up take out the CEO publicly over differences in “management philosophy.” Board room conversations must have been ugly. Chris Pepper: Modern Espionage and Sabotage. Project Quant Posts NSO Quant: Index of Posts. Research Reports and Presentations The Securosis 2010 Data Security Survey. Monitoring up the Stack: Adding Value to SIEM. Network Security Operations Quant: Metrics Model. Network Security Operations Quant Report. Understanding and Selecting a DLP Solution. White Paper: Understanding and Selecting an Enterprise Firewall. Understanding and Selecting a Tokenization Solution. Top News and Posts Chrome Gets a Sandbox for the Holidays. WordPress Fixes Vuln. RSnake’s 1000th post. Top Web Hacking Techniques Contest. Some great links! Robert Graham and the TSA. Kinda fun following his rants about the TSA. User Profiles Security Issue on Twitter. Ford employee stole $50M worth of secrets. Armitage UI for metasploit. Blog Comment of the Week Remember, for every comment selected, Securosis makes a $25 donation to Hackers for Charity. This week is a bit different – we had a ton of amazing comments on Firestarter: A Is Not for Availability and Counterpoint: Availability Is Job #1. Far too many to choose just one, so this is a group award that goes to: Somebloke Mark Wallace endo Steve Paul ds Dean Matt Franz Lubinski LonerVamp Franc mokum von Amsterdam TL sark Andrew Yeomans And of course, Adrian, Mike, Gunnar, and Mortman. Share:

I had an insanely early flight this morning for some client work in the Bay Area, so last night I hopped out to fill up on gas and grab some pizza for family movie night (The Muppets Take Manhattan, in case you were wondering). I’m at the gas station when the guy at the pump next to me asks if I ever shop at Target. This is the sort of question that raises my wariness under most circumstances, and since we were, at that moment, about 100 meters from said Target, this line of conversation was clearly headed someplace interesting. My curiosity piqued, I said, “yes”. My pump-mate then proceeded to ask me, “We’re just trying to get some cash to find a place to stay tonight, I have this $50 gift card that I’ll sell you for $40…” “No thanks.” I realize it’s been over two decades since I lived in New Jersey (the part that likes to say they’re from New York), but some instincts never die. Anyone reading this blog knows that said gift card was, shall we say, certified pre-owned. The odds of there being $.01 left on it, never mind $50, were significantly lower than those of my baby’s diaper not requiring a full hazmat response. Or it was totally fake. This isn’t that significant an event. Most of you encounter this sort of stuff every couple years or so, at a minimum. I even once fell for an artful scam when I was traveling abroad, although my paranoia did manage to constrain the damage. But I do find the parallels with online scams interesting. Unlike my overseas adventure, this dude was clearly not the most trustworthy on the face of the planet. That’s one nice thing about online – even with bad grammar, no one knows you smell like a wet dog on a three week bender, and look like Lindsay Lohan after a weekend drug vacation with Charlie Sheen. And this dude had to run from location to location, because sitting still for very long would result in a call to law enforcement. And never mind that each contact is a one-off, costing time and gas. Perhaps it’s an effective scam, but certainly not overly efficient. Anyway, it’s been a long time since someone tried to defraud me face to face, so it was kind of refreshing. Share:

It’s drilled into us as soon as we first cut our help-desk umbilical cords and don our information security diapers: C is for Confidentiality I is for Integrity A is for Availability We cite it like a tantric mantra. Include it in every presentation, as if anyone in the audience hasn’t heard it. Put it on security tests, when it’s the equivalent of awarding points for spell your name at the top. We even use it as the core of most of our risk management frameworks. Too bad it’s wrong. Think about this for a moment. If availability is as important as confidentiality or integrity, how is CIA even possibly internally consistent? Every time we ask for a password we reduce availability. Every time we put in a firewall, access control, encryption, or nearly anything else… we restrict availability. At least when we are talking about information security. When we talk about infrastructure security, I agree that availability is still very much in the mix. But then we aren’t really concerned with confidentiality, for example – although we might still include integrity. Keeping the bits flowing? That’s infrastructure rather than information security. (And yes, it’s still important). But I do think there is still a place for the “A”. I mean, who wants to ruin a perfectly good acronym? Especially one with a pathetically juvenile non-sexual double entendre. A doesn’t stand for Availability, it stands for Attribution. Logging, monitoring, auditing, and incident response? Knowing who did what and when? That’s all attribution. Who owns a piece of information? Who can modify and change it? All that relies on attribution. Pretty much all of identity management – every username, password, and token: attribution. Availability? When it comes to information, that’s really a usability issue… not security. If anything, more availability means less security. Changing A from Availability to Attribution solves that problem and makes security internally consistent. (This is a prelude to a series of deeper theoretical (nope, not pragmatic) posts based on my Quantum Datum work. Special thanks to the Securosis Contributors for helping me flesh it out – especially Gunnar). Share:

Lin Mun Poo of Malaysia sounds like a pretty bad-ass criminal hacker. He cracked into the Federal Reserve, and snagged hundreds of thousands of card numbers from a bank in Cleveland. But perhaps his intellectual skills don’t extend quite as far as they should for criminal survival. The article describes how he was nabbed selling card numbers in Brooklyn a few hours after landing at Kennedy airport. If you’re a conspiracy nut, the following sentence might indicate the government has some secret master key to crack your encryption: The stolen card numbers were found on his encrypted laptop after he was nabbed… In our internal chat room, Dave Lewis thinks this was all a sting, and his computer was probably unlocked as he was showing off the numbers. Considering how fast they nabbed him, that’s my guess too. You sort of have to wonder why he came to the US in the first place, considering it’s easy to sell that stuff in underground markets, also supporting the sting theory. But there’s one more interesting bit: Poo has also confessed to breaking into networks of several international banks and a major Defense contractor, the complaint states. Gee, I wonder when we’ll see those disclosures go out? Yeah, probably not. Share: