Research

Yep, another white paper is in the can. As you all know, we turn a lot of the research we post on the blog into comprehensive white papers after we gather feedback from the community on our research. You may remember the Monitoring up the Stack series Adrian and Gunnar drove last month, which has now been packaged, edited, and (with the help of our editor Chris Pepper) turned into English. Here is an overview: SIEM and Log Management platforms have seen significant investment, and the evolving nature of attacks means end users are looking for more ways to leverage their security investments. SIEM/Log Management does a good job of collecting data, but extracting actionable information remains a challenge. In part this is due to the “drinking from the fire hose” phenomenon, where the speed and volume of incoming data make it difficult to keep up. Additionally, the data needs to be pieced together with sufficient reference points from multiple event sources to provide context. But we find that the most significant limiting factor is often a network-centric perspective on data collection and analysis. As an industry we look at network traffic rather than transactions; we look at packet density instead of services; we look at IP addresses rather than user identity. We lack context to draw conclusions about the amount of real risk any specific attack presents. The aim of this report is to answer the question: “How can I derive more value from my SIEM installation?” Historically, compliance and operations management have driven investment in SIEM, Log Management, and other complimentary monitoring investments. SIEM can provide continuous monitoring, but most SIEM deployments are not set up to provide timely threat response to application attacks. And we all know that a majority of attacks (whether 60% or 80% doesn’t matter) focus directly on applications. To support more advanced policies and controls we need to peel back the veil of network-oriented analysis and climb the stack, looking at applications and business transactions. In some cases this just means a new way of looking at existing data. But that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? To monitor up the stack effectively, we need to look at how the architecture, policy management, data collection, and analysis of an existing SIEM implementation must change. In this report we tackle all these issues, and some others. A special thanks to ArcSight for sponsoring the report. You can get Monitoring up the Stack: Adding Value to SIEM via our research library, or download the PDF directly. Share:

First, for our non-technical readers who want to know more about this Firesheep/sidejacking thing, check out my relatively non-geeky article over at TidBITS. After that, George Ou put together a great sidejacking security scorecard for a double fistful of major online services. He rates each site’s risk across their various services for full hijacking and full and partial sidejacking. Needless to say, very few services fare well. Being a Mac geek, one service not mentioned is Apple’s MobileMe. I did some poking myself, and MobileMe both uses full-session SSL for all sessions, and sets a secure credential cookie so it won’t pass over basic HTTP. Also, the default for all MobileMe sync services is encrypted connections (I don’t have time to confirm with Wireshark, so I’m currently accepting other articles for that statement). See… a reason Apple should buy Twitter 😉 Share:

Ah, the investment bankers are circling again. Late Friday rumors started circulating about IBM discussions of acquiring Fortinet. With a weekend to stew and the gap open for Fortinet stock, it makes sense to think about what a potential deal means, right? Wrong. I’m pretty sure you have a lot to do. I’m also pretty sure that whether IBM buys Fortinet or not, you’ll still have a lot to do. If you are a Fortinet customer, you may have some impact. If you are an IBM customer or are still running ISS gear, you may have some new options. But ultimately until a deal is announced, spending even one single brain cycle on it is a waste of time. So go back to your To-Do list. And if/when a deal is announced, we’ll be there to tell you what to worry about and why. But until then, get back to work. Share:

I have very little social life, so I spent my weekend researching trends in database security. Part of my Saturday was spent looking at Microsoft’s security model for the Azure SQL database platform. Specifically I wanted to know how they plan to address database and content security issues with their cloud-based offering. I certainly don’t follow all things cloud to the degree our friend Chris Hoff over at RationalSurvivability does, but I do attempt to stay current on database security trends as they pertain to cloud and virtual environments. Rummaging around MSDN, looking for anything new on SQL Azure database security, I found Microsoft’s Security Guidelines and Limitations for SQL Azure Database. And I downloaded their Security Guidlines for SQL Azure (docx). All 5 riveting pages of it. I have also been closely following the Oakleaf Systems blog, where I have seen many posts on secure session management and certificate issuance. In fact Adam Langley had an excellent post on the computational costs of SSL/TLS this Saturday. All in all they paint a very consistent picture, but I am quite disappointed in what I see. Most of the technical implementations I have looked at appear sound, but if the public documentation is an accurate indication of the overall strategy, I am speechless. Why, you ask? Firewall, SSL, and user authentication are the totality of the technologies prescribed. Does that remind you of something? This, perhaps?   With thanks to Gunnar Peterson, who many years ago captured the essence of most web application security strategies within a singe picture. Security minimalism. And if they only want to do the minimum, that’s okay, I guess. But I was hoping for a little content security. Or input validation tools. Or logging. I’m not saying they need to go wild with features, but at this point the burden’s on the application developer to roll their own security. Share:

In our last post we introduced some of the key principles of incident response. Today we will focus on the major roles and organizational structure. Organizational Structure As we return to our IT security focus, the incident response organization consists of two major kinds of resources: those dedicated completely to response, and those with other primary functions who get pulled into incidents as needed depending on the scope or nature. For example, the legal team isn’t necessarily involved in every incident, but clearly plays an important role in anything with legal or regulatory consequences. Also, a smaller organization might have no dedicated resources, while a larger one may have a full time team with defined roles, which deals with multiple overlapping incidents. That’s okay because the structure and system can expand and contract as needed if you follow the ICS principles. Resources These individuals and roles may not spend all their time on incident response, but are the key roles to fill when an incident occurs. One person can fill multiple roles, especially for a smaller incident or organization, but only if they have the right skill set. Team Lead/Incident Commander: The person with overall responsibility and accountability for the direct management of incidents. Typically reports to the CISO, CIO, or even CEO, but following unity of command, should definitely only be accountable to a single manager. When an incident triggers, the first person to respond is the incident lead until they hand off responsibility to someone of equal or higher authority. That way someone is always in charge, even if only for the first few minutes. Command is then handed off to higher and higher levels as needed. When you have a full-time team, the team lead/manager is also responsible for ongoing training, program development, and so on. Network Analysts: Experts in analyzing network packets/traffic, including forensic captures. Analysis includes ongoing monitoring, as well as deeper investigation during incidents. Systems Analysts: Experts in analyzing endpoints and servers. Forensics Analysts: Often a subspecialty of systems analyst, these individuals have deeper training in forensic investigation – which includes both the technical skills for the forensics examination of a system, and the legal training to properly handle evidence if there may be legal considerations (keep in mind that merely firing someone may lead to civil legal action). SIEM/Log Management Analysts: Individuals experienced in monitoring SIEM output and log analysis. Network, Systems, Database, and Application Administrators: Those individuals responsible for the maintenance of systems and networks. It is their responsibility to implement defensive mitigations during and after an incident, and to clean up affected systems. A firewall/IPS administrator might be responsible for closing the entry or egress points being used by the attacker. Systems administrators might roll out patches or configuration changes to host firewalls. A DBA might change account permissions or close out connection methods. This is a rather large bucket, and in most organizations these people operate at the direction of dedicated incident responders or other members of the security team. Legal, Human Resources, and Risk: Any time an incident might involve legal action, employees, or a material costs, you should involve any required combination of these business units. Communications/PR: If an incident has public impact, such as breach notifications, it’s critical to involve those responsible for organizational communications. Accounting/Finance: Incident response costs money. It’s important to include the bean counters early, even if only to pay for the pizza and Red Bull. They can also take responsibility for tracking ongoing incident costs so those of you responsible for stopping and cleaning the problem don’t have to spend your time spinning accounting spreadsheets. Logistics: This role can be a bit nebulous, but includes those responsible for getting the things you need during an incident. It may be someone from finance, the purchasing team, or the security team. Basically it’s someone with a credit card and the authority to use it. They keep people fed, purchase needed hardware and software, and hire outside experts. Communications: Those responsible for making sure responders (and management) can communicate. You might only need this role in a big incident, but make sure you identify people ahead of time who can keep you talking – via cell phones, landlines, email, IM, or whatever other mechanism isn’t totally pwned. Executive Management: We list them last, but they are ultimately responsible for everything in the organization – including incidents. Except in the organization’s very largest incidents, they probably won’t be involved directly. Yes, that is a large number of potential roles, but remember that not all are needed for every incident, and the same person might fill multiple roles based on organization and incident size. For example, in a small or mid-sized organization it isn’t unusual to have the team lead also be the network and systems analyst, and possibly also responsible for cleaning systems or reconfiguring the firewall. In terms of structure, here is one approach:   Finally, don’t forget our key concepts for the organizational structure: People should only report to a single manager. Any manager should only command 3 to 7 other people, ideally 5. The organizational structure fills in resources as needed. You don’t need everything, and what you do need you don’t need all the time. This is a scaffold to build on, not a permanent building. Share:

Imagine you’re a young, skilled techie just starting your career. Maybe you’re fresh out of school, or still in an internship program. Or maybe you’ve been out of school for a few years, working your way up through various companies in the industry. You came from a normal background – possibly you thought about the military at some point, but the allure of working in technology drew you into the private sector. Your skills are solid, you produce at work, and you don’t get into any trouble beyond the usual for your age. Then one day you’re contacted by someone in the government who was sent your way by a buddy from school, or maybe an old professor. They need someone with your skills to help them out with a project. Perhaps it’s to join their agency directly. Or maybe they merely ask you to take a look at something for them – sort of steering you toward a bit of a grey area you wouldn’t normally explore because you don’t want to get in trouble. They tell you it’s a matter of national security, and this is finally your opportunity to give back to your country without having to get shot at. Heck, maybe you spent time in the military and this is a great opportunity to continue your service on a volunteer basis without getting stuck with crappy military pay and travel/deployment requirements. Perhaps you already work for a foreign company your government friends are worried may be a risk to national security. All they want is for you to provide a little information, or maybe plug a USB drive into a system in the office for a few minutes. Or maybe you’ve been working for them on some projects for a while, even if they don’t really pay you and merely “suggest” things for you to look at. You’ve done a good job and they ask you to apply for some work or study abroad in another country. Or for a foreign company in your country. Either way, all they’re asking for is you to further your education and career, maybe helping your country out a little along the way. Ethically this is no different than joining the military, an intelligence agency, or working for a private contractor or university on government projects. You are serving your country while advancing you career – pretty much the best of both worlds. You can’t talk much, if at all, about it with your friends and family, but you sleep at night with the satisfaction that you’re able to blend the needs of your nation with your own personal development goals. Did I mention you grew up outside Shanghai? The thing about espionage is that there are no good guys or bad guys. Merely patriotic individuals living in different places who believe, with complete conviction, that they are doing the right thing and serving the public good. Share:

What a wild few weeks. Talk about been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It all started October 9th, when I finally achieved a goal I’ve been chasing for well over a decade, and completed my first Olympic-distance triathlon. (1.5K swim, 40K bike, 10K run – those are distances, not dollar values). I first learned about triathlon when I was working as a medic for a race in Boulder – probably back in 1992. Being the young, aggressive type, I thought any sport where you write your number on your arms and legs in permanent ink had to be hard core. I spent most of those years competing in a sport where you hit people in the face a lot (I guess that’s kind of hard core too), but in the late 90’s I started traveling a lot for work, which made staying competitive at the level I was at pretty much impossible. Getting frustrated by not being able to make it to the next level (I was competing nationally, but only winning locally), and spending a lot of time injured due to overtraining, I decided to give tri a shot. At least I could run, and often swim or bike, when on the road. But then I got sick… really sick. As in people started calling me “liver boy” because some virus attacked my third favorite part of my body and I couldn’t drink for over a year, never mind sustain hard workouts. But I recovered, started working with a swim coach, and then got distracted by getting married and traveling even more. And then I tore my rotator cuff and had surgery. And then had a kid. And… you get the idea. About 4-5 months ago I was finally injury-free and working out regularly again, and decided to give it another shot. Started riding with a bike group and then joined a masters swim program. I figured another 3 months of training and I’d be ready, but my swim coach pushed me to race and I gave it a shot. I may have finished near the back, but I finished. Easily. And now I’m hooked. Next up is a marathon, and maybe a half-Ironman in a year or so. Then back to the booze. The day after the tri I boarded a plane and headed off to London for RSA Europe. Chris Hoff and I spent a bunch of (platonic) private time together, and it turns out we’ve been working on some extremely complementary research that we’re going to combine for our joint RSA presentation this year. I was also really happy my work passed the sniff test, because Chris spends a heck of a lot more time on cloud than I ever will, and if the research holds up for him I know it’s solid. Then back home for 3 days, and back on a plane to China. I was again presenting with Hoff, and we managed to sneak out for a few hours to visit the Forbidden City. Which is quite welcoming, if you buy a ticket. They have beer. All reds for some reason. On a sour note, the day before the tri I got word that a very good friend died of cancer. Jim launched my technology career and changed the course of my life in ways that are hard to describe. A little over a year ago we started on some collaborative smart grid research, soon after which he found out about the cancer he never recovered from. Jim deserved better. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Rich in China. In Chinese. Mike quoted in Dark Reading on SIEM and cloud. Dave Lews and David Mortman get a mention in an article on SecTor. Rothman again, this time on consolidation. Rich talks about China and Europe on The Network Security Podcast Favorite Securosis Posts Mike Rothman: The Thing about Espionage. Clearly a fine line between good and bad. But I do think there is right and wrong. And regardless of how you slice it, if it’s called espionage, it’s probably wrong. Adrian Lane: React Faster and Better: Incident Command Principles. Rich: Can we ever break IT?. (We’re light on posts this week, so we’ll leave it at that.) Other Securosis Posts React Faster and Better: Roles and Organizational Structure. SunSec Rises on November 3rd. Incite 10/27/2010: Traffic Ahead. NSO Quant: The Report and Metrics Model. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about DLP. Favorite Outside Posts Adrian Lane: Robert Graham’s FireSheep analysis. Mike Rothman: Cloud Creates SIEM Blind Spot. Keep in mind the cloud changes the rules for how we do things like monitoring. And I’m quoted. Enjoy the gratuitous pat on my own back… Chris Pepper: iPhone Jailbreak Tool Sets Stage for Mobile Malware. Eric Monti demonstrates that “jailbreak” = “remote root exploit”. Gunnar Peterson: Paypal enables billing and payments on Azure cloud. Project Quant Posts NSO Quant: Index of Posts. NSO Quant: Health Metrics – Device Health. NSO Quant: Manage Metrics – Monitor Issues/Tune IDS/IPS. Research Reports and Presentations Network Security Operations Quant Metrics Model. Network Security Operations Quant Report. Understanding and Selecting a DLP Solution, v2.0. White Paper: Understanding and Selecting an Enterprise Firewall. Understanding and Selecting a Tokenization Solution. Top News and Posts Koobface Worm Targets Java. NSA Declassified Documents. Interesting stuff. Adobe Flash Bug. Perhaps we should leave a permanent reference in the Friday summary for Flash vulnerabilities and just update the link du jour. Idiocy tool. Just to remind people they are insecure. Firesheep launched. Critical Firefox Bug. LinkedIn Drive-by Malware Attack. 19 Arrested in Zeus Malware Bank Heists. Oracle claims Google directly copied Java code. Silver Tail Systems gets In-Q-Tel funding. Banks weak against skimming attacks. PCI Council releases a “sort of” update. 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 Mike Fratto, in response to The Thing About Espionage. Rich, based on your definition, the good guys are us and the bad guys are them for any definition of “us”

For those of you in the Phoenix area, or with way too many frequent flier miles and too much spare time, the Phoenix OWASP chapter is organizing a SunSec meetup after their meeting on November 3rd. It has been a long time since we had a real SunSec, after getting off to a good start a few years ago. This is a great excuse to meet up with local security folks over your favorite frosty beverages. SunSec will be held from 6:30 onward on November 3rd at SunUp Brewing. Share:

I saw an old friend last week, and we were talking about the business of Securosis a bit. One of the questions he asked was whether it’s a lifestyle business. The answer is that of course it is. Rich, Adrian, and I have done lots of things over the years and we all have independently come to the conclusion that we don’t want to work for big machines any more. We all have different reasons for that, and I was reminded of one of mine on Monday. Traffic. The mere mention of the word makes me cringe. Not like the Low Spark of High Heeled Boys (YouTube) cringe, but the cringe of wasted time. I’ve been lucky in that even when I did have an ‘office’, my commute was normally less than 15 minutes. But for most of the past 10 years, I’ve worked from a home office, which really means from random coffee shops and lunch joints. But on Monday I had to take a morning flight, and I wanted to help out the Boss and get the kids ready for school. I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal to leave 30 minutes later to head down to Hartsfield (Atlanta’s airport). I was wrong. Instead of the 35 minutes it normally takes, I was in my car for almost 80. Yeah, almost an hour and a half. I couldn’t help but feel that was wasted time. Even more, I feel for the folks who do that every day. I mean there are people who drive 70 or 80 miles each way to their offices. Now I’m not trying to judge anyone here, because folks live where they do for lots of reasons. And they work where they work for lots of reasons. Some folks don’t feel they can change jobs or can’t find something that’ll work closer to home. But you have to wonder about the opportunity cost of all that commuting time. Not to mention the environmental impact. Now to be clear, I’m a novice commuter. I didn’t have any podcasts loaded up to listen to or audio books or phone calls to make first thing on Monday morning. Yeah, who the hell wants to hear from me first thing in the morning? So there are more productive ways to pass the time. But that’s not for me. I want my biggest decision in the morning to be which coffee shop to hit and when to make sure I have no exposure to traffic. And it works much better for me that way. – Mike Photo credits: “Rush Hour” originally uploaded by MSVG Incite 4 U Hot wool for you… – The big news this week was the release of a new Firefox plug-in called Firesheep, which basically implements dead simple sidejacking over a wireless network for key social network sites. Like Facebook and Twitter. I saw sidejacking of a Gmail account by Rob Graham at BlackHat about 3 years ago, so this isn’t a new attack. But the ease of doing it is. Rich uses this as another reminder that Public WiFi is no good, and you can’t dispute that. Sure we could get all pissy that this guy released the tool, but that’s the wrong conclusion. I suggest you think of this as a great opportunity to teach users something. You can Firesheep their stuff in the office or in a conference room and use that to show how vulnerable their sites are. I suspect it will have the same educational effect as an internal phishing attack, meaning it’ll shock the hell out of the users and they may even remember it for more than an hour. This piece on GigaOm goes through some of the preventative measures, such as connecting via SSL when that is an option, and using a VPN to encrypt your traffic. Both are good ideas. – MR Bass ackwards (more on Firesheep) – Joe Wilcox argues that the new Firesheep Firefox Plugin is akin to “Giving Guns to Kids”. He claims that, because it’s so easy for anyone to see the cleartext password and cookies that are being blasted around the planet at the speed of light, nearly anyone can compromise an account. I can’t quite comprehend what Mr. Wilcox is thinking by calling the plugin ‘abominable’, as it is simply shining a powerful spotlight on stupidity that has been going on for a long time. Every semi-skilled criminal is doing this today – or more precisely has been doing this for almost a decade. Can the plugin turn kids into hackers? No, but it gives them a handy tool if they did not already have one. But it will help make a lot more people aware of the stupidity going on with web providers, and of logging in over untrusted wireless connections. Better to learn that lesson on Toys ‘R Us than Wells Fargo. – AL Reconcile that, Gunnar – I’ll admit it: I’m a big fan of Gunnar and my man crush has grown since he’s joined our team as a Contributor. Watching the man at work is a learning experience for me, and that’s a good thing. But in his Reconcile This post he’s missing part of the story. He unloaded on security folks for solving yesterday’s problems by making firewalls the highest priority spend. If he’s talking about traditional port-based firewalls, then I’m with him. But I suspect a great deal of those folks are looking at upgrading their perimeter defenses by adding application awareness to the firewall. We described this in depth in our Understanding and Selecting an Enterprise Firewall paper. These devices address social network apps (by enforcing policy on egress), as well as helping to enforce mobile policies (via a VPN connection to leverage the egress policies). I realize GP is talking about the need to focus on the root cause, which is application and higher-level security. But security folks don’t generally control those functions. They do control the network, which is why they usually look to solve whatever security problem they have with an inline device. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks

I know what you’re thinking to yourself right now: “They promised me a cool series of posts on the cutting edge of incident response, and now we’re talking management principles and boxes on an org chart? What a rip.” But believe it or not, the most important aspect of incident response is the right organization, followed by the right process. How do I know this? Because I’ve been through a ton of incident response training with local and federal agencies, and have directly responded to everything from single-rescuer ski accidents to Hurricane Katrina. (And a few IT things in the middle, but those don’t sound nearly as exciting). While working as an emergency responder I fall under something known as the National Incident Management System, which uses a formalized process and structure called the Incident Command System (ICS). ICS consists of a standard management hierarchy and processes for managing temporary incidents of any size and nature. ICS was originally developed for managing large wildfires in the 1970s, and has since expanded into a national standard that’s also used (and adapted) by a variety of other countries and groups. While our React Faster and Better series won’t to teach you all of ICS, everything we will talk about in terms of process and organization is adapted directly from it. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel when you have something with over 30 years of battle-hardened testing available. Additionally, those of you in larger companies or verticals like healthcare or public utilities may be required to learn and use ICS in your own incidents. Incident Command System Principles ICS solves a lot of the problems we encounter in incidents. Its focus is on clear communications and accountability, with a structure that expands and contracts as needed, allowing disparate groups to combine even if they’ve never worked together before. ICS includes 5 key concepts: Unity of command: Each person involved in an incident only responds to one supervisor. Common terminology: It’s hard to communicate when everyone uses their own lingo. Common terminology applies to both the organizational structure (with defined roles, like “Incident Commander”, that everyone understands) and use of plain English (or the language of your choice) in incident communications. You can still talk RPC flaws all you want, but when communicating with management and non-techies you’ll use phrases like “The server is down because we were hacked.” Management by objectives: Responders have specific objectives to achieve, in priority order, as defined in a response plan. No running around fighting fires without central coordination. Flexible and modular organization: Your org structure should expand and contract as needed based on the nature and size of the incident. The organizational structure can be as small as a single individual, and as large as the entire company. Span of control: No one should manage less or more than 3-7 other individuals, with 5 being the sweet spot. This one comes from many years of management science, which have repeatedly confirmed that attempting to directly manage more is ineffective, while managing less is an inefficient use of resources. If you want to learn more about ICS you can run through the same self-training course used by incident responders at FEMA’s online training site. Start with ICS 100, which covers the basics. While the process we’ll outline in this series is based on ICS principles, it’s specific to information security incident response. We won’t be using terms like “branch” and “section” because they would distract from our focus, but you can clearly plug them in if you want to standardize on ICS. But if you need the Air Ops branch for a cyberattack, something is very very wrong. For the next post we will focus on three of the key concepts related to organizational structure: unity of command, flexible and modular organization, and span of control, as we talk about the key response roles and structure. Share: