Research

With the holidays upon us, and the weather in Phoenix at that optimal temperature of 50F warmer than wherever people come from, the migration has begun. The snowbirds are back in Phoenix. And all my relatives want to visit. All pretty much at the same time. As I write this I am recovering from 20 contiguous days of four different groups of friends and relatives staying at my home. Overlapping, I might add. And it was glorious – it was great to see each and every one of them – but I heaved a great sigh of relief when the last party got onto a plane and flew back home. I think I have baked, roasted, toasted, and barbecued every type of food I know how to cook. I’ve been a tour guide across the state – twice over – showing off every interesting place within a three-hour drive. Today’s summary is a toast to all of you who survived Thanksgiving – I am thankful for many things, and I am also thankful this holiday is only once a year. Paul Ford has a thoughtful piece called I Dreamed of a Perfect Database. It nails down the evolutionary track of many of us, who have long straddled the database and software development worlds. As our needs changed there were grass-roots projects to make new types of databases – that did, well, whatever the heck we needed them to do. Cheaper and faster. More data, or maybe more types of data, or maybe a single specific type of data with functions optimized for it. There were some that performed analytics or cube analysis, and some that offered lightning fast in-memory lookups or graph data. We got self-healing, self-organizing, self-indexing clouds of data nodes, with whatever the heck we wanted sitting on top of them. When the Internet boom hit, Oracle was the database of choice. During this last cloudburst we got 250 flavors of NoSQL. But Paul’s dream is getting closer to reality. When you assemble Hadoop with a stack of add on modules, namely Apache Spark, you get pretty close. Want SQL? OK, you can have it. Or MapReduce. Deep analytics or memory-resident lookups. You want it, you can have it. The point is that the demands on databases will always be in flux. Performance and scalability have always been core needs, but how we want to use data will continue to morph. The current generation of databases, typically based off Hadoop, are veritable Swiss Army knives, to be formed and customized as we need them. There has never been a better time to be a database developer! If you run a bug bounty program you know there is a lot more to it than Most people consider when they start. Randy Westergren’s post on his experience with the United Airlines Bug Bounty Program offers some insight into what can happen. For example, when multiple researchers find the same critical flaw, the researchers who do not get paid can – and likely will – go public. Sure, this is bad behavior by the researcher. Your legal team can try to stop it, but you need to plan for this situation before it comes up. Second, it is amazing to me that what in-house developers consider a suitably fast release date for vulnerabilities; but it is often totally unacceptable to the research community. Both are developers by nature, but to one party three months is lightning fast. The other considers that criminally dangerous. You’ll need to set expectations going in. United Airlines was communicative, but in today’s world six months to patch is an eternity. Virtual patching techniques, API gateways, and Continuous Deployment techniques allow many organizations to deal with these issues far more quickly. A bug bounty program is a great way to leverage the community of experts to help you find flaws your in-house team might never discover, but you need to have this effort fully planned out before you start. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Rich quoted on automotive ‘cyber security’ Gunnar’s Security Champions Guide to Web Application via Akamai. Other Securosis Posts Incite 12/2/2015: Grateful Habits. Summary: Boy in the Bubble. Cloud Security Best Practice: Limit Blast Radius with Multiple Accounts. The Blame Game. Summary: Refurbished. Critical Security Capabilities for Cloud Providers. Massive, Very Bad Java 0-Day (and, Sigh, Oracle). Favorite Outside Posts Adrian Lane: Microsoft’s New Threat Modeling Tool. This post is a couple weeks old but I forgot to mention it. Microsoft added tools to their threat modeling approach to catch errors earlier in the process. We talk about the need to find vulnerabilities earlier in the process, and MS is helping to do just that. Mike Rothman: Think Security is Expensive, Insecurity Costs Much More: It’s a hard thing to justify spending on security; this article makes the point that you should do it right the first time. And I’ll even give Tony a pass for mentioning Ponemon. The general point is good. Chris Pepper: Man Uses LifeLock To Track Ex-Wife; Company Didn’t Care Research Reports and Presentations Pragmatic Security for Cloud and Hybrid Networks. EMV Migration and the Changing Payments Landscape. Network-based Threat Detection. Applied Threat Intelligence. Endpoint Defense: Essential Practices. Cracking the Confusion: Encryption and Tokenization for Data Centers, Servers, and Applications. Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network. Monitoring the Hybrid Cloud: Evolving to the CloudSOC. Security Best Practices for Amazon Web Services. Securing Enterprise Applications. Top News and Posts Mozilla’s Improving Revocation: OCSP Must-Staple and Short-lived Certificates Mark Cuban slams SEC for blocking email privacy reform effort Java 0-day shocker VTech Hack Seven Tips for Personal Online Security DHS Giving Firms Free Penetration Tests Worldwide Cryptography Product Survey Criminals steal $4 million in cash with novel ‘reverse ATM’ attack Share:

A week ago most folks in the US were in food comas from the Thanksgiving feast. Of course this is a great time of year to be grateful for what you have. Whether it’s family, health, work, or anything else. This morning I got a great reminder that expressing gratitude is a habit, which requires daily work – especially for security people. I was doing a speaking gig for a client in Atlanta, and I ran into an old friend who traveled in for the seminar. We were catching up and he mentioned how busy he was and that it was a bit overwhelming. I jumped right in because we at Securosis are pretty busy ourselves. But then I got a flash of awareness and decided I had to break the cycle. I specifically asked whether he remembered 10 years ago when no one cared about security? I certainly do. A lot of you (like Rich, Adrian, and myself) did security before security was cool. You remember talking to blank stares when evangelizing the importance of security. You remember cleaning the same malware off the same person’s device, over and over again, because they just couldn’t understand why they can’t click ads on questionable sites. You also remember looking for a new job when the senior team needed a scapegoat after yet another breach, after they didn’t listen to what you said the first time. It’s a different situation now. Many folks still don’t understand what they need to do, but they don’t really argue about the importance of security any more. Most of us have a bigger issue finding talent to fill open positions, rather than making the case for why any security people are needed. These are things to be grateful for. It turns out that a little gratitude leads to a lot. So if you have any interest, don’t just think about being thankful around the holidays. Start the day by making a list of 2 or 3 things you are grateful for every day. It’s hard to get into the right mindset to get things done, when you wake up overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that needs to get done. So break that cycle too. Think about what’s working in your life. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Just a little thing. Take a small step toward feeling gratitude every day. I do this consistently, every day. It puts me in the right frame of mind. I’m thankful for so many things, but none more than the habits I have established over the past few years, which have made a huge difference in my life. –Mike The fine folks at the RSA Conference posted the talk Jennifer Minella and I did on mindfulness at the 2014 conference. You can check it out on YouTube. Take an hour. Your emails, alerts, and Twitter timeline will be there when you get back. Securosis Firestarter Have you checked out our new video podcast? Rich, Adrian, and Mike get into a Google Hangout and… hang out. We talk a bit about security as well. We try to keep these to 15 minutes or less, and usually fail. Nov 16 — The Blame Game Nov 3 – Get Your Marshmallows Oct 19 – re:Invent Yourself (or else) Aug 12 – Karma July 13 – Living with the OPM Hack May 26 – We Don’t Know Sh–. You Don’t Know Sh– May 4 – RSAC wrap-up. Same as it ever was. March 31 – Using RSA March 16 – Cyber Cash Cow March 2 – Cyber vs. Terror (yeah, we went there) February 16 – Cyber!!! February 9 – It’s Not My Fault! January 26 – 2015 Trends January 15 – Toddler December 18 – Predicting the Past November 25 – Numbness Heavy Research We are back at work on a variety of blog series, so here is a list of the research currently underway. Remember you can get our Heavy Feed via RSS, with our content in all its unabridged glory. And you can get all our research papers too. Building Security into DevOps The Role of Security in DevOps Tools and Testing in Detail Security Integration Points The Emergence of DevOps Introduction Building a Threat Intelligence Program Using TI Gathering TI Introduction Network Security Gateway Evolution Introduction Recently Published Papers Pragmatic Security for Cloud and Hybrid Networks EMV Migration and the Changing Payments Landscape Applied Threat Intelligence Endpoint Defense: Essential Practices Cracking the Confusion: Encryption & Tokenization for Data Centers, Servers & Applications Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network Monitoring the Hybrid Cloud Best Practices for AWS Security Securing Enterprise Applications Secure Agile Development The Future of Security Incite 4 U Can security be fixed? Is it broken? I’ve gotta send a hat tip to my friend Don, who pointed out this article on TechCrunch explaining how Humility, Accountability And Creative Thinking Can Fix IT Security. Really? A lot of the security folks I know are pretty humble and creative. It’s not like they sit around and talk about how great they are while the city is burning. But aside from the clickbait title, there are some decent points in that post. I especially like the idea of killing silver bullet syndrome. There is no single answer for dealing with sophisticated adversaries. I also agree that security will need to evolve as the cloud and mobility continue to take root. Inflection anyone? The article also points out the need to share information, and that’s all about Threat Intelligence. But I still push back on the contention that security is broken. It’s not broken, because that supposes that it can be fixed. I posit that you don’t win security – you just survive to fight another day. – MR Student jobs: It appears the FBI is funding security vulnerability research; not for bug bounties, but to conduct surveillance. Recently they paid University students to hack Tor networks so they could inspect Tor traffic and de-anonymize Tor users. The FBI’s disclosed target could have been tracked financially, and Tor offers law enforcement other means to locate users, which implies (shockingly) their goal was something more than

I’m going to write a fairly innocuous opening to this week’s Friday Summary, despite the gravity of current events. Because some things are best dealt with… not now, and not here. It’s November 19th as I write this. A week until Thanksgiving, and less than a week until we take a family vacation (don’t worry, one of our relatives stays at our place when we are gone, the advantage of living near in-laws and having the fastest Internet connection in the family). I’m not really sure how that happened, since I’m fairly certain I just took our Christmas lights down a few weeks ago. When we get back from the trip it will be exactly ten days until Star Wars comes out. At this point some of you are possibly a tad worried about my mental state (especially if the movie sucks) and the depth of my obsession. But based on the private emails, some of you put my to shame. I just happen to have a publishing platform. Last week I actually engaged my filter bubble. I stopped reading certain news sites, fast forwarded through the commercials on television, and skipped the Japanese trailer with extra footage. That last official trailer was so perfect I don’t have any compelling need to see anything except the film itself. It set the tone, it built the trust, and now it all comes down to the final execution. Filter bubbles are interesting anomalies. We most often see the term used in a negative way, as people create feedback loops to only reinforce their existing opinions. This isn’t merely a political manifestation, it’s one with profound professional effects, especially in risk and research related fields. It’s one of the first characteristics I look for in a security professional – is a person able to see things outside their existing frames of reference? Can they recognize contradictory information and mentally adjust their models? For example, “cloud is less secure”. Start with that assumption and you fail to see the security advantages. Or “cloud is always more secure”, which also isn’t true. If you start on either side there is a preponderance of evidence to support your position, especially if you filter out the contradictory data. Or “the truth is somewhere in between”, which is probably true, but it’s rarely dead center, which people tend to assume. Filter bubbles can be positive, used properly. One of the first things you learn as an emergency responder, at least if you are going to be halfway decent, is how to filter out the things that don’t matter. For example, the loudest patient is usually a low priority. You need a certain amount of energy to scream and it proves you have a good pulse and respirations. It’s the quiet ones you need to worry about. Same for security. We all know how easy it is to become totally overwhelmed with the flood of data and priorities we face every day. The trick is to pick a place to start, iterate through, and adapt when needed. No, it certainly isn’t easy, but analysis paralysis is a real thing. My Star Wars filter might not last until December 17th, but I’ll certainly make the effort. Besides, I’ll probably be too busy playing Star Wars: Battlefront on my Xbox to pay attention to pesky things like “the news”, “work”, or “eating”. Although we’ve been writing more recently, with the holidays kicking in publishing will be more sporadic for a while due to vacations and end of year client work. Thanks, as always, for sticking with us. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Security Champions Guide to Web Application Security. Gunnar wrote a book. Watch the reply of Rich’s webinar on cloud network security Rich is presenting a webinar on cloud storage security for Box on December 10th. Rich quoted by the Macalope on the dangers of poor security research. Well, the research might have been great, but the report sucked. Rich quoted over at TechRepublic on the risks of hybrid clouds. Don’t worry, Mike and Adrian are alive, they’ve just been super busy. Other Securosis Posts Cloud Security Best Practice: Limit Blast Radius with Multiple Accounts. The Blame Game. Summary: Refurbished. Critical Security Capabilities for Cloud Providers. Favorite Outside Posts Report: Everyone Should Get a Security Freeze. While you are at it, get one for your kids if you are in a state that allows that. Research Reports and Presentations Pragmatic Security for Cloud and Hybrid Networks. EMV Migration and the Changing Payments Landscape. Network-based Threat Detection. Applied Threat Intelligence. Endpoint Defense: Essential Practices. Cracking the Confusion: Encryption and Tokenization for Data Centers, Servers, and Applications. Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network. Monitoring the Hybrid Cloud: Evolving to the CloudSOC. Security Best Practices for Amazon Web Services. Securing Enterprise Applications. Top News and Posts Microsoft Invests $1 Billion In ‘Holistic’ Security Strategy. Some services, some internal stuff. Attackers Can Use SAP to Bridge Corporate, Operational ICS Networks Adobe Pushes Hotfix for ColdFusion. Yep, there’s still a lot of CF out there. Carnegie Mellon Denies FBI Paid for Tor-Breaking Research. Follow up from last week’s report. Here’s a Spy Firm’s Price List for Secret Hacker Techniques Windows’ disk encryption could be easily bypassed in ‘seconds’ Blog Comment of the Week This week’s best comment goes to Dewight, in response to Cloud Security Best Practice: Limit Blast Radius with Multiple Accounts. Since one looses the ability to centrally manage the accounts with this practice, can you give an example of how to use automation? In particular for a highly decentralized organization that has a very large IT presents. See the post’s comments for my reply… Share:

This is one of those ideas that I’m pretty sure I picked up on while either at a presentation or working with a client, but I honestly can’t remember where I first heard it. That said, it’s become one of my absolutely essential cloud security recommendations for years now. It’s also a great example of using the cloud for security advantage, rather than getting hung up on the differences. I do know that I first heard the term blast radius from Shannon Lietz over at DevSecOps.org. Here’s the concept: Accounts at each cloud provider are completely segregated and isolated from each other. That is a core capability for multitenancy. It’s also the kind of thing a cloud provider can’t screw up if they want to stay in business. There is nothing limiting you from buying multiple accounts from a cloud provider. Heck, that’s sometimes kind of the problem, since any old employee (especially those developers) can sign up with nothing more than an email address and a credit card. Some cloud providers allow you to communicate across accounts. This is usually pretty restrictive, and both sides need to set it up, and only for very specific things. But these ‘things’ can include cross-connecting networks, migrating storage, or sharing other assets. Super admin (root) accounts are distinct for each account, and can’t be bridged. Thus you can use cloud provider accounts to segregate your environments! This seriously limits the blast radius of any security events, since there’s no way to bridge between accounts except those specific connections you allow. Use of multiple accounts is often an operational best practice anyway. I currently recommend multiple accounts per project for different environments (e.g. dev/test/prod/sec_monitoring). For me this started as a way to limit administrator activity. You can allow developers full admin access in their dev environment, but lock things down in test, and then lock them out completely in production. DevOps techniques can handle moving code and updates across environments. But talking with admins who manage much larger environments than I do emphasized how powerful this is in limiting security incidents. Some companies have hundreds, if not thousands, of accounts. If something bad happens, they blow the entire account away and build it from scratch. Clearly you need to be using automation and immutable infrastructure to pull this off. But think about the advantages. Every project is isolated. Heck, every environment is isolated. It makes it nearly impossible for an attacker to move laterally. This makes network segregation look passe. What’s the downside? This is much harder to manage, since there is no centralization. It absolutely relies on automation. You need to be super careful with your automation, so that doesn’t become the single point of failure. Not all cloud providers support it. I don’t know any large-scale cloud operations that haven’t eventually ended up with this approach. Even most new cloud projects on a smaller scale start this way, purely for operational reasons, if they use any kind of continuous delivery/deployment (DevOps). Think of accounts as disposable, because they are. Share:

Get hacked? Blame China. Miss a quarter? Blame China. Serve malware to everyone visiting your site? Don’t take responsibility, just blame your anti-ad-blocking vendor. Or China. Or both. Look, we really can’t keep track of these things, but in this episode Mike and Rich talk about the lack of accountability in our industry (and other industries). One warning… a particular analogy goes a little too far. Maybe we need the explicit tag on this one. Watch or listen: Share:

Between teaching classes and working with clients, I spend a fair bit of time talking about particular cloud providers. The analyst in me never wants to be biased, but the reality is there are big differences in terms of capabilities, and some of them matter. Throwing out all the non-security differentiators, when you look at cloud providers for enterprises there are some critical security capabilities you need for security and compliance. Practically speaking, these quickly narrow down your options. My criteria are more IaaS-focused, but it should be obvious which also apply to PaaS and SaaS: API/admin logging: This is the single most important compliance control, a critical security control, and the single biggest feature gap for even many major providers. If there isn’t a log of all management activity, ideally including that by the cloud provider itself, you never really know what’s happening with your assets. Your only other options are to constantly snapshot your environment and look for changes, or run all activity through a portal and still figure out a way to watch for activity outside that portal (yes, people really do that sometimes). Elasticity and autoscaling: If it’s an IaaS provider and it doesn’t have autoscaling, run away. That isn’t the cloud. If it’s a PaaS or SaaS provider who lacks elasticity (can’t scale cleanly up or down to what you need), keep looking. For IaaS this is a critical capability because it enables immutable servers, which are one of the cloud’s best security benefits. For IaaS and PaaS it’s more of a non-security advantage. APIs for all security features: Everything in the cloud should be programmatically manageable. Cloud security can’t scale without automation, and you can’t automate without APIs. Granular entitlements: An entitlement is an access right/grant. The provider should offer more than just ‘admin’. Ideally down to each feature or API call, especially for IaaS and PaaS. Good, easy, SAML support that maps to the granular entitlements: Federated identity is the only reasonable way to manage all your users in the cloud. Fortunately, we nearly always see this one available. Unfortunately, some cloud providers make it a pain in the ass to set up. Multiple accounts and cross-account access: One of the best ways to compartmentalize cloud deployments is to use entirely different accounts for different projects and environments, then connect them together with granular entitlements when needed. This limits the blast radius if someone gets into the account and does something bad. I frequently recommend multiple accounts for a single cloud project, and this is considered normal. It does, however, require security automation, which ties into my API requirement. Software Defined Networking: Most major IaaS providers give you near complete control over your virtual networks. But some legacy providers lack an SDN, leaving you are stuck with VLANs or other technologies that don’t provide the customization you need to really make things work. Read my paper on cloud network security if you want to understand more. Regions/locations in different countries: Unless the cloud provider only want business in their country of origin, this is required for legal and jurisdictional reasons. Thanks to Brian Honan for catching my omission. This list probably looks a hell of a lot different than any of the other ones you’ve seen. That’s because these are the foundational building blocks you realize you need once you start working on real cloud projects. I’m probably missing some, but if I break this out all I’m really talking about are: Good audit logs. Decent compartmentalization/segregation at different levels. Granular rights to enforce least privilege. A way to manage everything and integrate it into operations. Please let me know in the comments or via Twitter if you think I’m missing anything. I’m trying to keep it relatively concise. Share:

The grout in my shower isn’t merely cracking, it’s starting to flake out in chunks, backed by the mildew it spent years defending from my cleansing assaults. Our hallway walls downstairs are streaked like the protective concrete edges around a NASCAR track. Black, gray, and red marks left behind from hundreds of minor impacts with injection-molded plastic vehicles. The carpet in our family room, that little section between the sliding glass door to our patio and the kitchen, looks like it misses its cousins at the airport. In other words, our house isn’t new anymore. This is the second home I have owned. Well, it’s the second home a bank has owned with my name attached to it. The first was an older condo back in Boulder, but this is the house my wife and I custom ordered after we ere married. I still have the pictures we took the day we moved in, before we filled the space with our belongings and furniture. Plus all the minor things that lay waste to the last of your post-home disposable income, like window treatments and light fixtures. It was clean. It was exciting. A box of wood and drywall, filled with the future. That was about 9 years ago. A year before I left Gartner, and near when I started Securosis as a blog. Since then the house isn’t the only thing that’s a little rougher around the edges. Take me, for instance. I’m running a little light on hair, some days I can barely read my Apple Watch, and I’ve never recovered the upper body strength I lost after that rotator cuff surgery. I won’t even mention the long-term effects of a half-decade of sleep deprivation, thanks to having three kids in four years. Even Securosis shows its age. Despite our updates and platform migrations, I know the time is coming when I will finally need to break down and do a full site refresh. Somehow without losing 90 research papers and 19,000 blog posts. No, those aren’t typos. We also haven’t seen significant blog comments since Twitter entered the scene, and while we know a ton of people read our work, the nature of engagement is different. But that’s fine – it’s the nature of things. We are busy. Busier than ever since my personal blog first transformed into a company. And the nature of the work is frankly the most compelling of my career. We don’t really write as much, although we still write more than anyone else short of full-time news publications. Pretty soon I need to have the house painted, fix some cracking drywall, and replace some carpet. This house isn’t full of potential anymore – it’s full of life. It’s busy, messy, and sometimes broken. That only means it’s well used. So the next time you find a blog post with a broken image, or our stupid comment system snaps, drop us a line. We aren’t new, exciting, or shiny anymore, but sure as hell we still get shit done. Even if it takes an extra week or so. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Rich is presenting a webinar on cloud network security next week Securosis Posts Critical Security Capabilities for Cloud Providers Massive, Very Bad Java 0-Day (and, Sigh, Oracle). The Power of Immutable. The Economist Hack: Good Intentions, Bad Execution. Summary: Distract and Deceive. CSA Guidance V4 Content on GitHub. Favorite Outside Posts Rich: Trey Ford’s SecTor Keynote – Maturing InfoSec: Lessons from Aviation on Information Sharing. Trey is a pilot. Although I considered not putting this link in until he takes me up for a hop next time he’s in town. But that would be selfish. Research Reports and Presentations Pragmatic Security for Cloud and Hybrid Networks. EMV Migration and the Changing Payments Landscape. Network-based Threat Detection. Applied Threat Intelligence. Endpoint Defense: Essential Practices. Cracking the Confusion: Encryption and Tokenization for Data Centers, Servers, and Applications. Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network. Monitoring the Hybrid Cloud: Evolving to the CloudSOC. Security Best Practices for Amazon Web Services. Securing Enterprise Applications. Top News and Posts Apple user anger as Mac apps break due to security certificate lapse. You had one job… Latest Android phones hijacked with tidy one-stop-Chrome-pop. You had one job… Tor Project claims FBI paid university researchers $1m to unmask Tor users. This is an interesting situation. There have always been close ties between academic researchers and law enforcement and defense. But if you cross the line from generic research to specific targets, or it involves ‘human’ testing that typically requires an IRB approval, it certainly crosses an academic boundary. And if law enforcement hires civilians to perform actions they are legally restricted from, that also seems more like garbage you would see on a CBS police procedural. I’ll leave this one for the lawyers. With just a password needed to access police databases, the FBI got basic security wrong. I was talking with a client today who asked if they had to use MFA on their (SAML authenticated) cloud accounts because they didn’t require it internally for admins. I told them that’s a great way to end up in the headlines. And, oh yeah, also turn it on for cloud. Comodo Issues Eight Forbidden Certificates. You had one… oh, nevermind. November Patch Tuesday Brings 12 Bulletins, Four Critical. Massive Hack of 70 Million Prisoner Phone Calls Indicates Violations of Attorney-Client Privilege. Guess who needs to write a post on data retention? Share:

Last Friday my wife and I were out at a concert when, thanks to social media, I learned there is a major vulnerability in a common component of Java. I planned to write it up, but spent most of Monday dealing with a 6+ hour flight delay, and all day yesterday in a meeting. I’m glad I waited. First, if you are technical at all read the original post at Foxglove Security. Then read Mike Mimoso’s piece at Threatposst. The short version is this is a full, pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability in a component that isn’t built into Java, but is nearly always installed and used in applications. Including things like WebSphere and JBoss. What’s fascinating is that this one has been floating around for a while but no one really paid attention. It was even reported to Oracle, who (according to Threatpost) didn’t pass the information on to the team that maintains that component! While Apache Commons has told Breen and Kennedy that a patch is being developed, there had been debate within the bowels of the Java community as to who should patch the bug: Apache Commons? Affected vendors? Oracle? Breen and Kennedy said Oracle was notified in July but no one had disclosed the issue to the Apache Commons team until recently. Jenkins has already mitigated the issue on its platform. … “We talked to lots of Java researchers and none of us had heard of [the vulnerability]. It was presented at the conference and made available online, but no one picked it up,” Breen said. “One thing it could be is that people using the library may not think they’re affected. If I told you that Apache Commons has an unserialize vulnerability, it probably wouldn’t mean much. But if I tell you JBoss, Jenkins and WebSphere have pre-authentication, remote code execution vulnerabilities, that means a lot more to people. The way it was originally presented, it was an unserialize vulnerability in Commons.” I harp on Oracle a lot for their ongoing failures in managing vulnerabilities and disclosures, going back to my Gartner days. In this case I don’t know how they were informed, which team it hit, or why it wasn’t passed on to the Apache Commons team. These things happen, but they do seem to happen more to Oracle than other major vendors responsible for foundational software components. This does seem like a major internal process failure, although I need to stress I’m basing that off one quote in an article, and happy to correct if I’m wrong. I’m trying really hard not to be a biased a-hole, but, well, you know… I don’t blame Oracle for all the problems in Java. Those started long before they purchased Sun. And this isn’t even code they maintain, which is one of the things that really complicates security for Java – or any programming framework. Java vulnerabilities are also a nightmare to patch because the software is used in so many different places, and packaged in so many different ways. If you use any of the major affected products, go talk to your vendor. If you write your own applications with Java, it’s time to pull out the code scanner. Share:

I wrote up a post over at the RSA Conference blog this week introducing the idea of immutable infrastructure to security professionals. It is a concept that really highlights some of the massive security benefits when you combine cloud computing and DevOps principles. Here’s a snippet: A simple example is when you use autoscaling in a cloud provider. You have a standard image of a server, and when you need more capacity the cloud service starts new instances behind a load balancer. When you don’t need that much capacity anymore (based on preset rules) the cloud service shuts down instances. This is exactly how elasticity in the cloud works. … No live patching. No remote logins. No antivirus needed (maybe). Any change, at all, to a running server easily detectable and indicative of an attack. I skipped a lot… go read the full article. Share:

The Economist used a tool on their site to block collect stats and serve ads to visitors using ad blockers. I will avoid diving into the ad-blocking debate, but I will note that my quick check showed 16 ad trackers and beacons on the page. I don’t mind ads, but I do mind tracking. It turns out that tool, called PageFair, was compromised by attackers to serve malware to Economist readers. The Economist is one of the few publications I still respect, so this made me more than a little sad. This one is a good learning case. Ryan Naraine and I discussed it on Twitter. Both of us were critical of The Economist’s hack response, Ryan a bit more than me. I see the seeds of good intent here, but flawed execution. Let’s use this as a learning opportunity. Good: They detected the situation (or, more likely, someone else did and told them) and responded within 6 days. Good: They put up a dedicated page with information on the attack and what people should do. Good: They didn’t say “we care very deeply about the security and privacy of our customers”. I hate that crap. Good: The response page pops up when you visit the home page. Bad: The response page only pops up when you visit the home page from certain browsers (probably the ones they think are affected), and could be stopped if you use certain blockers. That’s a real problem if people use multiple systems, or if the attackers decide to block the popup. Bad: They don’t specify the malware to look for. They mention it was packaged as a fake Adobe update, but that’s it. No specificity, so you cannot know if you cleaned up the right badness. Bad: They recommend you change passwords before you clean the malware. VERY BAD. Thanks to @hacks4pancakes and @malwrhunterteam for finding that and letting me know. Bad: They recommend Antivirus, without confirm recommended tools would really find and remove this particular malware. That should be explicitly called out. It looks like an even split, but I’d give this response a C-. Right intention, poor execution. They should have used an in-page banner (not a popup) and a popup to grab attention. They should have identified the malware and advised people to clean it up before changing banking passwords. There is one issue of contention between myself and Ryan. Ryan said, “No one should ever rely on free anti-malware for any kind of protection”. I often recommend free AV, especially to consumers (usually Microsoft). It’s been many years since I used AV myself. Yes, Ryan works for an AV vendor, but he’s also someone I trust, who actually cares about doing the right thing and providing good advice. I don’t want to turn this into an AV debate, and Ryan and I both seem to agree that the real questions are: Would the AV they recommend have stopped this particular attack? Would the AV they recommend clean an infection? But they don’t provide enough detail, so we cannot know. Even just a line like, “we have tested these products against the malware and confirm it will completely remove the infection” would be enough. I’m not a fan of blaming the victim, but this is the risk you always face when embedding someone else’s code in your page. Hell, I talked about that when I was at Gartner over 10 years ago. You have a responsibility to your customers. The Economist seems to have tried to make the right moves, but made some pretty critical mistakes. Let’s not lambaste them, but we should certainly use this as a learning opportunity. Share: