Feb 24

attackers are doing their homework – are you?

By alberg best practices, CSO, hacks, malware, privacy Comments Off

Some spear phishing wisdom from Security BSides SFO today…

Rohyt Belani of PhishMe told an interesting story highlighting just how much research attackers do when choosing their targets and crafting spear phishing payloads. In an attack on an energy company, employees received an email appearing to be from the company’s HR department offering information on discounted health care premiums for employees with more than 3 children. The only employees to receive the message? The two people at the company with 4 or more children.

This raises two issues for InfoSec professionals…

First, the attackers are doing their homework, people. They are taking the time to craft their social engineering payloads in ways that target very specific targets. This means (IMHO) that they are extremely motivated – most probably by money or ideology.

Second, our coworkers are helping the attackers with their targeting by sharing all sorts of personal information via social networking platforms. We need to educate them about:

+ The fact that their social media profiles are visible not only to friends and family, but also bad guys who will use that information to craft their attacks. The “familiarity cues” which we tend to use to determine whether a message or request is from a friend or a foe just don’t work anymore.

+ Their ability to control who sees their social networking information by using the privacy features offered by Facebook, LinkedIn, and to a lesser extent, Twitter. They need to think about what they are posting and who will see it – not only to protect the company, but to protect the privacy of themselves and their families.

While we put all sorts of technical solutions in place to protect our systems and information from malware, our users are the front line defense against the most serious threats we face. Educating them to be aware of how their actions both inside and outside the office affect the organization’s security is one of the most important tasks we face as InfoSec professionals.

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Jan 21

java: threat or menace?

By alberg best practices, CSO, hacks Comments Off

Too much Java can make you cranky…

It has been a pretty bad few weeks for Oracle’s Java language – zero day vulns, followed by an out of band patch, with another serving of zero days to top things off.   “Uninstall Java – it is dangerous at any speed!” was the message from some security experts.

The things that make Java attractive to web app developers (it’s cross platform compatibility and pretty ubiquitous distribution) are the same things that make it such an attractive target for malware authors.  Add to that a seemingly endless supply of critical security vulnerabilities, and you have a recipe for big trouble.

I have pretty much had it up to here (my hand is at neck level) with Java as a web plugin and would love to just uninstall the whole bug infested mess from my users’ computers at the office.  (Of course I could say the same thing about Flash)  However, some pretty critical parts of our business rely on Java web apps to bring in revenue (some of which goes to pay my salary – nuff said).  So, I had to get a bit clever in coming up with a defensive strategy.

After looking at my web proxy logs, I determined that Java usage at my firm pretty much fell into two buckets:  a small number of business related apps from trusted business partners and a whole bunch of totally non business related apps accessed during recreational surfing.  This made my job pretty easy… I figured out where the business apps came from and created a whitelist.  Then I set the web filter to block all .jar and .class file downloads from other locations.  In the two or so weeks that this policy has been in place, I have gotten exactly one request to whitelist a new jar file.  The result?  A much reduced attack surface for the company.  My users seem to be OK with the new policies, which I explained in an email blast.

Yes, we will continue to update our Java Runtime Environments – after all, there could be some locally installed software which needs the JRE and using the latest and greatest versions is just good practice.  And we’ll continue to implement other good practices (getting rid of unused software, keeping an eye on our log files and network traffic, keeping patches and fixes up to date and the like).

While I can’t say that we are totally protected from Java based attacks, I do feel that we have struck a pretty good balance between security and the need to let the business do business on this one.

 

 

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Oct 14

NLRB continues push to regulate social media in non union companies

By alberg CSO, law, worst practices Comments Off

No union? No problem…

It seems that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is continuing to extend its push into the regulation of social media in non unionized work places.  According to this Morgan Lewis LawFlash, two recent cases (which may end up in the appellate courts) continue the Board’s assault on workplace social media confidentiality policies.

In the first case, involving Costco, the NLRB found that a whole section of the firm’s social media policy dealing with prohibition of posting confidential information to social media platforms was rendered invalid because it included a ban on posting “payroll information,” which the NLRB felt pertains to protected activity under section 8(a)(1) of the Labor Relations Act.

The second case, involving an auto dealer named Knauz, struck down the employer’s social media policy based on the following language:

[c]ourtesy is the responsibility of every employee. Everyone is expected to be courteous, polite and friendly to our customers, vendors and suppliers, as well as to their fellow employees. No one should be disrespectful or use profanity or any other language which injures the image or reputation of the Dealership.

The Board felt that the language would discourage employees from using social media for activities covered under section 7 of the Labor Relations Act, such as organizing a union or having discussions about work conditions.

The lesson?  Make sure that your company’s Social Media policy passes muster with your legal team – and make sure your legal team knows about what the NLRB has been up to in this area.  Social media has the potential to be an exfiltration vector for your organization’s confidential information; you don’t want to end up with a policy which is thrown out when you need it most.

 

 

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Sep 26

time to strengthen your human firewall

By alberg best practices, CSO, hacks Comments Off

The most valuable piece of security equipment in your organization

For the past few years, the Social Engineering Capture the Flag contest has been a highlight of the Defcon security conference.  The report from the 2012 edition of the contest provides some interesting insight into the social engineering threat and what companies need to do to protect themselves.

The targets of this year’s contest were 10 firms in the retail, oil, freight, telecom and technology industries.  The oil industry got the highest marks for keeping their information secret, which makes sense to me.  Their employees probably have a lot less interaction with the public on a day to day basis, so unusual requests for information would probably stand out from the norm.  Retail giants Walmart and Target brought up the rear, giving up the most information.

The theme of this year’s contest was “Battle of the SExes,” pitting male social engineers off against their female counterparts.  While the male contestants scored higher than the social engineers of the fairer sex, the small sample size (10 men and 10 women) and the fact that female participants in prior years of the contest were few and far between, makes me wonder if these results are indicative of a trend.

The contest participants were given two weeks to perform “open source intelligence” (the gathering of information about their targets from public sources on the Internet).  A number of the companies targeted provided attackers with lots of information during this phase.  Some of the more noteworthy information leaks resulted from photos posted on social media, which yielded pictures of employee ID badges and layouts of facilities – either which could help an attacker get physical access to their targets.  Other information gathered from social media included ESSIDs of wireless networks and location checkins by employees.

The real fun began when contestants got on the phone.  A number of pretexts were used to explain the callers’ requests for information.  The trickiest pretext was that the caller was an employee of the targeted organization.  Knowing the right jargon and using widely available caller ID spoofing services bolstered these callers in some cases, but maintaining a believable cover story here was difficult.  Callers who purported to be “taking a survey” or calling from a vendor did not do too well, since many employees find these types of calls annoying and thus routinely terminate such calls quickly.  One more successful pretext was that the caller was a student doing research on the targeted company for a school assignment.

The conclusions in the report were what you would expect:

  • Employees need to be better educated against social engineering threats (true, in spite of  the report writer’s business in performing such training and social engineering tests).
  • Employers need to tighten their social media policies to control the leakage of confidential information to the Internet.

The second finding, while it sounds great, is potentially problematic for US companies.  As I have noted in previous posts, US law does not allow companies to place many restrictions which make sense from a corporate security perspective on employees’ personal social media accounts.  The regulations are aimed at preventing employers from quashing employees’ rights to discuss their work environment and organize unions, but have the side effect of making it very difficult to write social media policies which both protect the organization and stand up to legal scrutiny.  If you haven’t reviewed your social media policies in a while, now is a good time to do so – and include your legal counsel.

The restrictions on social media restrictions make the need for employee education all the more important.  The social engineers are out there and they are gunning for your company’s crown jewels.  Taking the time to strengthen your Human Firewall is a worthwhile investment.

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Aug 14

sharks versus cows

By alberg CSO, deep thoughts Comments Off

OK – what are you more afraid of – sharks or cows?  Well, according to the folks at Popular Mechanics (via blog Boing Boing), it is the crazed bovine death machines which are the real threat:

Between 2003 and 2008, 108 people died from cattle-induced injuries across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 27 times the whopping four people killed in shark attacks in the United States during the same time period, according to the International Shark Attack File.

It seems to me that information security risks are a lot like sharks and cows.  We infosec professionals love to talk about, hunt and defend against sharks, like zero-day vulnerabilities, state sponsored cyber-weapons, and other exotic threats.  However, it is the cows of the infosec world, like unpatched software, misconfigured systems and devices, human errors, and users falling for malware laden links or emails, that are much more likely to result in a system compromise.

When making decisions about where to put our  limited infosec funds and resources, we need to decide whether the threat we are defending against is a shark or a cow.  Let’s take care of the cows first – before they take care of us.  Then we can have some fun and hunt the sharks!

 

 

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Jul 20

more (and better) social media guidance from the nlrb

By alberg best practices, CSO, law, useful stuff Comments Off

A while back, I wrote about how US organizations writing social media policies need to beware of the National Labor Relations Board’s requirements that these policies not interfere with the rights of employees to discuss their working conditions or organize unions.  At the time of my original post, the NLRB had released a guidance document which raised more questions than it answered.  Since then, they have released additional guidance which includes a number of examples of bad policies and explains the specific problems with each.  More importantly, it includes a sample policy which is in compliance with NLRB rules and which can be used as a guide in writing (or updating) your company’s social media policy.  It is really worth taking a look at this document – many things that any normal, reasonable infosec professional would expect to be acceptable (ie. “don’t post confidential information to social media sites”) are not.

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May 15

sec breach reporting requirements for publicly traded companies

By alberg best practices, CSO, hacks, law, useful stuff Comments Off

If you are an information professional at a publicly traded company, I would strongly suggest reading a recent blog post by Richard Bejtlich about the SEC’s requirements for the disclosure of cybersecurity breaches.   Bejtlich points out that the ramifications of these requirements go well past getting in to hot water with the regulators – they also raise other risks, such as whistleblowing by employees or third parties as well as the potential for shareholder lawsuits when companies do not take the proper steps to secure information (or are perceived as not doing so).  Having a conversation about this issue with your General Counsel before an incident occurs makes a lot of sense.  All this being said, kudos to the SEC for recognizing the role  of cybersecurity in good corporate governance.

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Apr 15

is your company’s social media policy legal?

By alberg best practices, CSO, law Comments Off

As the line between work and personal life becomes thinner and thinner, employee use of social media sites has become a more and more important (and vexing) issue for organizations.  Companies are building their brands online, but so are employees.  Social Media posts made by employees (on or off the clock) can work to enhance or sully companies’ online reputations.  In response, most social media policies include a clause prohibiting employees from making disparaging comments about their employer online.  However, these policies may not be legal without a very specific carve out – whoever is responsible for social media policies in your organization should take some time to read this blog post over at the Workplace Privacy Counsel blog.

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Apr 15

violate corporate policies, go to jail?

By alberg CSO, hacks, law Comments Off

Here's where playing Farmville at work will get you...

This week, the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled on a case which has an important impact on us information security types: US vs. Nosal.

Nosal was employed by recruiting firm Korn/Ferry.  He left the firm to start his own, competing firm.  After he left, he persuaded some of his Korn/Ferry colleagues to access confidential information owned by K/F and provide it to him.  The K/F employees had access to the information as part of their work for the company, but were violating company policy in providing confidential information to a third party.  When Korn/Ferry discovered the theft of information, they initiated legal proceedings against Nosal. In addition to suing him for civil damages, they filed a criminal complaint stating that he had “aided and abetted” the Korn/Ferry employees in violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 by encouraging them to “exceed their authorized access to” Korn/Ferry computers.

Let’s stop here for a moment… what Nosal and the Korn/Ferry employees are alleged to have done was clearly wrong, and Korn/Ferry would be entitled to fire the employees and recover civil damages from the whole lot of them (IMHO).  The question here is whether Nosal or the employees committed a federal crime which could lead them to jail time.

The Appeals Court did not agree with Korn/Ferry (and the federal prosecutors on the case).  In its opinion, the court pointed out that the K/F employees were allowed to access the data in the course of their work, and thus did not “exceed their authorization” and that when they passed on the information to Nosal, they were in breach of their (civil) responsibilities of their employer.  The court went further and said that interpreting the CFAA in the broad way advocated by Korn/Ferry and the prosecutors would make many very common behaviors federal crimes.

In particular, the court felt that the wider interpretation would make violation of corporate computer use policies and terms of service for Internet services criminal acts.  For example, an employee who spent time shopping, playing games, or reading the sports pages online at a company with a computer usage policy limiting use of corporate systems to business use could find themselves in the “big house.”  Now, as a corporate security professional, even I think that this is a bit excessive; corporate policy violations should lead to disciplinary actions and/or termination of employment, but prison time seems just a wee bit excessive to me.

The court also pointed out that criminalizing such a wide range of common behaviors would lead to a situation where the law would be applied inconsistently and arbitrarily.

There was a dissenting opinion, which contended that the ultimate use of the data (theft and providing it to a competitor) in and of itself was “exceeding authorized access.”  The dissenting judge used the example of a bank teller’s access to their employer’s cash.  The teller is authorized to access the cash in the course of doing their job, but would be exceeding their access should they access the cash to take it for their own use.  I am not convinced by this argument, as the taking of the cash is a separate act which is criminal in and of itself.

In any case, this court has said that federal criminal law is not meant to help companies enforce their computer usage policies and that violation of those policies is a civil matter between employer and employee.  This seems like a reasonable decision to me.

The court’s decision is worth a read – it was refreshing to read a decision which shows awareness of how the Internet is used in real life.

 

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Oct 04

elephant repellent

By alberg CSO, deep thoughts Comments Off

An elephant, a mouse, or a ghost?

Sometimes I feel like I’m selling elephant repellent:

I identify a particular species of elephant (for example, compromise of our networks due to spearphish delivered email).

I find examples of this particular elephant showing up on the networks of similar organizations.

I try to calculate the damage which said elephant would cause (which nearly always includes hard to quantify types of damage to things like “reputation” and “trust.”)

I run some tests to show that, yes, some of our users would in fact happily open the gates of the village to this particular elephant by clicking on just about any link emailed to them.

I then look for some sort of elephant repellent – a policy, a procedure, education, some technology or a combination of the above to keep said pachyderm from rampaging through our village.

Of course, elephant repellent is not free… there is a cost in productivity, usability, share of user attention, or cold hard cash. If the risk to cost ratio seems right, I take action, spraying elephant repellent all around the village. Time passes. No elephants show up, I proudly announce the success of this particular elephant repellent and start looking for the next elephant to repel. Of course, the question remains as to whether the lack of elephantine activity in the village is due to the repellent, well, repelling or whether the elephants never would have shown up at the village gates in the first place. (or whether the elephants will get clever and will show up next week and trample the place in spite of my efforts)

Elephants come in a variety of sizes. Some of them can rampage through the village and leave a wide path of destruction. Other elephants sound scary, but end up being more mouse like in their impact. If you ring the elephant alarm every day, the villagers (in particular, the village elders) are going to pay less attention as time goes on. Elephants are also unpredictable – sometimes they show up, other times, they pass your village by and trample the village next door. You gotta pick your elephants. I guess that is part of the “art” side of infosec (anticipating howls of protest from the quantitative guys on this).

At least Infosec people don’t usually have to deal with elephants which kill people – let’s say, a devastating earthquake. The stakes are, of course, very high in these cases and the village elders can get very angry when these elephants make it through the village gates. In fact, six seismologists and a government official are currently on trial for manslaughter in Italy for failing to predict an earthquake which struck the L’Aquila region in April, 2009. Yes, you read that right… While this episode may be an outlier, it does point out the rising expectations of all sorts of village elders (both corporate and governmental) as to the risk experts’ ability to make very accurate predictions of risks – expectations which may not be possible to achieve. Call it the “CSI effect” – we are used to seeing all sorts of cool technology providing definite answers to questions and we have come to expect that all questions can be answered in this way.

We as Infosec professionals have to strike a balance between the quantitative and qualitative approaches to choosing which elephants to worry about. To add to the problem, some of us (particularly in highly regulated industries like finance) are given a set of elephants which we must repel by regulators and other stakeholders. These “default elephants” may pose less risk to the village than other, less famous, elephants, but we have to divert resources (and repellent) to deal with them in order to stay in business.

So… the takeaway? We need to share best practices for spotting, measuring and evaluating risk from both a qualitative and quantitative point of view. Organizations like the FS-ISAC (and other industry ISACS) where we can share information in confidence with our peers are a great place to do this. We need to up the level of information sharing in these fora – while it is great to get lists of bad IP addresses and URLs, I’d also like to see more (anonymous) sharing of stories about risks and repellents. The more people looking at the elephant and reporting on what it did when it visited their villages the better picture we can put together.

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