Russians used non-public exploits to hack governments; Debunking: skill vs. budget

Organizations being hacked is not always the result of superior adversary, but more often than not (I think the figure is closer to 85% defender mistakes vs. 15% “very skilled) the result of poor defenses. The recent Russian hacking highlights against the White House website (note that GAO rated MOST Federal agencies as failing w/ regards to their information security postures) was noted as skilled, because they used yet known vulnerabilities. This is a generous leap in conclusion.

Their sophistication is not a factor here, but they have budget to buy such vulnerabilities off the open market. These are easily available and a successful attack could be orchestrated with less than $10k. According to public sources, the very expensive vulnerabilities cost around $100k. Easily within the reach of any financed attack group.

As we enter the week of RSA, and likely a slew of discoveries that are released this week let’s be pragmatic on their impacts and the defenders role.

They’ve determined that APT28, a politically-motivated Russian hacking group, used unpatched exploits in Flash Player and Windows in a series of assaults against a “specific foreign government organization” on April 13th. Patches for both flaws are either ready or on the way, but the vulnerabilities reinforce beliefs that APT28 is very skilled — less experienced groups would use off-the-shelf code.

via Russians are using undiscovered exploits to hack governments.

See you at RSA!

James @jdeluccia

Bored w/ Security warnings? MRIs show our brains shutting down when we see security prompts

Ever find yourself just click click clicking through every message box that pops up? Most people click through a warning (which in the land of Web Browsers usually means STOP DON’T GO THERE!!) in less than 2 seconds. The facts seem to be due to be from habituation – basically, you are used to clicking, and now we have the brain scans to prove it!

What does this mean for you? Well specifically you won’t be able to re-wire your brain, but perhaps you can turn up the settings on your web browser to not allow you to connect to a site that has the issues your web browser is warning against. Simple – let the browser deal with it and take away one nuisance.

From the study:

The MRI images show a “precipitous drop” in visual processing after even one repeated exposure to a standard security warning and a “large overall drop” after 13 of them. Previously, such warning fatigue has been observed only indirectly, such as one study finding that only 14 percent of participants recognized content changes to confirmation dialog boxes or another that recorded users clicking through one-half of all SSL warnings in less than two seconds.

via MRIs show our brains shutting down when we see security prompts | Ars Technica. (photo credit Anderson, et al)

Don’t forget to check out – www.facebook.com/hntbh if you are looking for quick reminders. The book is coming along and chapter releases are (finally) coming in April!

1,600 Security Badges Missing From ATL Airport in 2 yr period – NBC News

While not a complicated or strategic topic that I would normally highlight, this one bit of news is from my home airport and personally meaningful.

Basically the report shows that 1,600 badges were lost or stolen in a 2 year period. This seems like a big number (2.6%), but this is a control that should (and not highlighted in broadcast) secondary supportive controls, such as:

• Key card access review logs to prevent duplicate entries (i.e., same person cannot badge in 2x)
• Analytics on badge entries against the work shifts of the person assigned
• Access to areas not zoned for that worker
• Termination of employees who don’t report in 12 hours on lost/missing badge

There are safeguards highlighted in broadcast that are good, but easily modified to the point of not being any value, and include:

• Pin (can be easily observed due to tones and no covering)
• Picture (every movie ever shows how easy this is done)
• An old badge could be re-programmed and be a duplicate of another higher ranking / alternate security zone

Bottom line is organizations, especially those tasked with safety of human life, must have the primary and secondary controls in place. Hopefully the remarks of a minor risk are based on their security assessments with the considerations above (and more perhaps).

Article:
Hundreds of ID badges that let airport workers roam the nation’s busiest hub have been stolen or lost in the last two years, an NBC News investigation has found.

While experts say the missing tags are a source of concern because they could fall into the wrong hands, officials at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport insist they don’t pose “a significant security threat.”

via Hundreds of Security Badges Missing From Atlanta Airport – NBC News.com.

Also thanks to the new new aggregator (competitor to AllTops) Inside on Security or the clean new interface.

Best,

James

 

Moving forward: Who cared about encrypted phone calls to begin with…The Great SIM Heist

TOP-SECRET GCHQ documents reveal that the intelligence agencies accessed the email and Facebook accounts of engineers and other employees of major telecom corporations and SIM card manufacturers in an effort to secretly obtain information that could give them access to millions of encryption keys.

-The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle.

This news made a number of people upset, but after studying it for several weeks and trying to consider the macro effects to regular end users and corporations I have reached a contrarian point in my analysis.

Who cared?  Nobody (enough)

Sure the implications are published and are known, but who ever considered their cell phone encrypted and secure mobile device? I don’t think any consumer ever had that feeling and most professionals that WANT security in their communications use special precautions – such as the Black Phone.

So, if nobody expected it, demanded it, and the feature was primarily used to help billing than what SHOULD happen moving forward?

• The primary lesson here is that our assumptions must be revisited, challenged, valued, and addressed at the base level of service providers
• Second, businesses that depend (if they ever did so for instance on mobile device encrypted communication) on such safeguards – must pay for it

I would be interested in others points of view on the lessons forward. I have spent a good deal of time coordinating with leaders in this space and believe we can make a difference if we drop the assumptions, hopes, and focus on actual effective activities.

Helpful links on the Black Phone by SGP:

• Welcome to Blackphone

  https://blackphone.ch/

  Blackphone was created by the best minds in cryptology, security and mobile technology.
  

• Blackphone review: putting a price on privacy – Engadget

  Oct 3, 2014 – The Blackphone is billed as a security- and privacy-first device, not one with a record-breaking spec sheet or award-winning design. It shouldn’t …

• Blackphone – Wikipedia

   The Blackphone is a smartphone developed by SGP Technologies

FedRamp on the Cloud: AWS Architecture and Security Recommendations

In December Amazon released a nice guide with architecture layouts + tips across the NIST 800-53 standard. This is an important tool for ANY business looking to accelerate their operations into a distributed system model.

I took a few things away from this PDF – the two are that every company moving to the cloud should read this document. It not only provides an architecture layout that is critical in planning, but it also has numerous nuggets of awesome sprinkled throughout – an example:

 Many of the SAAS service providers do not have a FedRAMP ATO, so using their services will have to be discussed with the authorizing official at the sponsoring agency. Pg 28 <– sounds simple, but very costly if done under hopeful assumptions of acceptance!

Regarding the need to harden a base system:

AWS has found that installing applications on hardened OS’s can be problematic. When the registry is locked down, it can be very difficult to install applications without a lot of errors. If this becomes an issue, our suggestion is to install applications on a clean version of windows, snapshot the OS and use GPOs (either locally or from the AD server) to lock down the OS. When applying the GPOs and backing off security settings, reboot constantly because many of the registry changes only take effect upon reboot.

A bit about the White paper as described by Amazon:

Moving from traditional data centers to the AWS cloud presents a real opportunity for workload owners to select from over 200 different security features (Figure 1 – AWS Enterprise Security Reference ) that AWS provides. “What do I need to implement in order to build a secure and compliant system that can attain an ATO from my DAA?” is a common question that government customers ask. In many cases, organizations do not possess a workforce with the necessary real-world experience required to make decision makers feel comfortable with their move to the AWS cloud. This can make it seem challenging for customers to quickly transition to the cloud and start realizing the cost benefits, increased scalability, and improved availability that the AWS cloud can provide

A helpful guide and glad to see a major Cloud provider enabling it’s clients to excel at information security operations, and in this case – FedRamp