1. Great paper that complements the whole "SIEM is dead?" saga - "Most enterprises are looking for a product that will solve all of their problems in some sort of off-the-shelf miracle, and when they find out that the currently available tools can't do it, they either postpone their deployment or put them on the back burner. "
2. "The Mess: looking for someone to blame?" is an awesome piece on Internet security and its architecture - and so is Gunnar's follow-up ("If a tree falls in someone else's silo...")
3. Mike call to "Rise up against Mediocrity."  - "Dilbert makes the risk of the lowest common denominator approach abundantly clear."; in other words, you say 'best practices', I say 'mediocrity!' Mike also remind us, in vain, to do "Security FIRST!" (and compliance second)
4. A great piece from Burton: "On Response" - I think the world needs another 10-20 million reminders that PREVENTION FAILS. This is definitely a good one for those still in the "we'll just block the threat world" - "we will not win a continuing war of escalation" and "using response can be more cost effective than installing the latest and greatest preventative tool"
5. More on metrics, including the highly-awaited ISO27004.
6. Pretty dumb paper by a person confused by why PCI DSS exists (the guy needs to read this). PCI doesn't "fall short," it helps people who will otherwise not do anything and their systems will "power" those botnets of the future...
7. While we are on this subject: a really good coverage of PCI 1.2. changes, released Oct 1st. More PCI fun here. And more here ("PCI Compliance - dispelling some common myths"). And, more PCI myths. And more good ideas on PCI from Mike R. Sorry, can't stop thinking about PCI :-)  - also this is good.
8. Adrian on behavioral monitoring; mostly in DAM, but also elsewhere in security.
9. "Premature Chasm-Crossing"  - a must-read for all security vendors and especially their marketing (and  their easily-excitable PR teams...) - "Shouldn't vendors be spending more time fighting the problems that security managers are facing today, right this minute?" (Mike R also comments on that). A related - and  just as interesting point is made here: "Security is not a solution"
10. More on compliance and security checklists, good and bad: "I think this is a dangerous trend unless the "checklist" is all inclusive." (how can a checklist include ALL? :-))
11. "SANS Top 7 New IR/Forensic Trends In 2008"
12. Read "The three approaches to computer security!"  Why? Come on, it is from Joanna! :-)
13. A fun discussion about a hot new technology: network IDS. Is IDS absolutely indispensable to ALL companies? No. Can it be incredibly useful? You bet. End of discussion.
14. On an unrelated note, are lasers the future of warfare? Some say no.
15. Finally, some security humor from Gartner (!): "Get Rich Quick With Network Security"

Enjoy!

Previous security reading.

We read many stories on the net where folks claim that the current financial crisis could have been avoided with more or better use of technology.     This is expected, as software companies and IT professionals will often try to piggy-backtheir business development strategy on the “crisis of the day” to sell more goods and services.    Honestly, in this current situation, the main technology that we needed was simple, accurate financial models.

For example, in the chart above, the US economy was doing quite well with US federal funds rates low.   Housing prices in the US were skyrocketing and there was a concern about inflation.    There was an understandable concern the sustainability of that economy.

So, in perhaps one the most ill-advised Federal Reserve actions of many decades, the folks at the helm of the Fed decided to raise their lending rates around 500 percent over a two year period.

As we all know, primarily because of the action by the Fed, the world faces perhaps the worst economic disaster in modern times, while the US Executive Branch and the Congress fight over how to spend $700 Billion taxpayer dollars to inject liquidity into the markets to try to head off a global financial disaster.

It is amazing to me that the US Federal Government, or their advisors, does not have simple financial models with cause-and-effect analysis such as:

• Homeowners with adjustable rate mortuages will not be able to make payments;and
• Housing prices will fall dramatically; then
• Homeowners will default on loans where the collateral is much less than the asset value, and
• Banks will suffer great losses, and
• Lending will come to a halt, then
• Banks will collapse, then
• Wall Street will exit the markets in panic
• … and more trouble….. !!

There are and continue to be a lot of discussion and opinions about how risk management needs improvement. and I agree.   We will also read folks talk about how technology can be used to help solve this problem, including CEP/EP and related software (see also Capital Market CEP Fantasy Land). However, as much I would be pleased to see more CEP/EP applications and use cases, I do not believe that event processing technology is really very useful to solve the core problem of the current financial crisis.

The core problem is, seemingly, that our “financial experts” do not even have simple models that will illustrate what will or could happen when you raise the fed lending rates 500 percent in two years in an economy pregnant with adjustable rate mortgages.

To me, this does not appear to be rocket science.  The negligence by the US Federal Reserve and their advisors is astonishing.

So, here is my next monthly "Security Warrior" blog round-up of top 5 popular posts and topics.

1. Shockingly, AGAIN this month, the "Top 11 Reasons to Secure and Protect Your Logs" came up as #1 most popular post (maybe driven by my poll).  BTW, see my other logging polls.
2. Security ROI - and its parent topic "security metrics"/"measuring security" - is definitely an ongoing HOT debate. Indeed, the old post "Security ROI Pile-Up!" takes the #2 spot this month, possibly propelled by a more recent post "Second ROI War."
3. Some say that "short blog posts rule", but, in reality, good, fun content is the best. Here is an example:  "Dumb Luck IS a Strategy!" post makes the top list. In it, I try to explore why people still ignore security concerns even if stare people in the face...
4. Discussion on what you can do to soften the impact of "getting 0wned" ( "What CAN You Do?") made the top list. Good!
5. As before, my post "11 Signs That Your SIEM Is A Dog or "Raffy, You Killed SIM!"". It is both humorous and sadly true (and backed up by other sources)
6. Still burning hot is a post with my irreverent comments on a Terry Childs saga. Namely, "On Doomsaying (Terry Childs case)", "So ... Am I? Maybe I Am!" and "Admins , Good Guys or "I am NOT an Idiot!""

See you in October.

Possibly related posts / past monthly popular blog round-ups:

• Monthly Blog Round-Up - August 2008
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - July 2008
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - June 2008
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - May 2008  
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - April 2008  
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - March 2008  
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - February 2008  
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - January 2008  
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - December 2007  
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - November 2007  
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - October 2007  
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - September 2007
• Monthly Blog Round-Up - August 2007

You can read all the details on their website (except for the part about the certification not being a measure of practical skills). From what I can tell, the CSSLP is just the CISSP with different CBKs, or Common Bodies of Knowledge. As with the CISSP, they are going for broad knowledge, not depth. Starting in June 2009, you can get certified by taking a paper exam, likely a multiple choice test similar to the CISSP. Why June? Because the test isn’t even written yet — I’ve heard from several sources that they are actively soliciting their existing pool of CISSPs to help write test questions.

Ah, but what if you can’t wait that long and want to get certified right away? You’re in luck. If you act before March 31, 2009, you can get grandfathered in without even having to take the exam! That’s right, they call it the CSSLP Experience Assessment, and here are the requirements:

• Upload a resume showing three years of experience related to software security, or four years if you don’t have a college degree
• Write short essays (500 words maximum) discussing four CBKs of your choice
• Get a CISSP to vouch for you
• Pay $650

Let’s examine these requirements one at a time.

Three years of experience. (ISC)2 doesn’t provide any requirements on depth of experience, other than citing the broadly-defined CBKs. Considering they are targeting everyone from software developers to security assessors to business analysts (yes, really), chances are they are going to accept any experience that is even tangential to the SDLC or software security.

Short essays on four of the CBKs. I asked the (ISC)2 exhibitors specifically what they are looking for to satisfy this requirement, and they said the essays should be a general discussion of the CBK topic, optionally citing your personal experience in that area if you have any. This messaging is not quite aligned with the website guidance, which states that the essays should be “Accomplishment Records” which are self-reported descriptions of experience. Either way, with a maximum essay length of 500 words, it’s pretty obvious that substance is not (ISC)2’s first priority. Here’s one data point for you: I spoke to someone who has already submitted the CSSLP Experience Assessment, and he said it took about an hour to write the essays.

Get a CISSP to vouch for you. Actually this can be any (ISC)2 certified person, not just CISSPs. Contrary to what you’d expect, though, the person isn’t vouching for your skillset so much as they are confirming that the attestations on your resume are accurate.

Pay $650. You knew it was coming. After all, there is money to be made. How is it that qualifying for the CSSLP through professional experience should cost $650? If you’re taking the written exam, fair enough, (ISC)2 does incur the cost of administering and grading that exam (even though the Scantron machine is probably paid off by now). But $650 for the submitted-online Experience Assessment? If we assume that the person reading these essay submissions makes a rather generous $100k per year, then $650 accounts for roughly a day and a half. Will it really take that long to read a maximum of 2,000 words and pass judgment? Of course not. (ISC)2 wants to get as many people as possible to qualify based on “experience”, seeding the initial pool of CSSLPs and netting them $650 per head for doing next to nothing.

As Lee Kushner stated during his OWASP AppSec presentation (7 Habits of Highly Effective Career Managers), “the more people who own a cert, the less relevant it becomes.” Irrelevant — that’s exactly what the CISSP has become, and it’s exactly where the CSSLP is headed. Meanwhile, (ISC)2 will sit back and watch while you and your employers continue to fill their coffers.

In closing, let me acknowledge that this blog entry probably comes across as judgmental. I accept that. I’m not ranting against the idea of certifications, though admittedly I’m not a fan of them either. I am disappointed that (ISC)2, an organization with tremendous influence, could have created something more meaningful but chose not to. Why bother when people will just fork over the cash anyway?

However, this approach risks alienating folks who take their politics serious or have other concerns.   For that reason,  I am going to go another, less political, direction on The CEP Blog.  I will not blog on the US presidential election here.

In my next series of  blog posts I will discuss how asymmetric event processing and asymmetric situational awareness was the genesis for complex event processing.

COBIT rivals ITIL from The IT Skeptic

“Everyone is tiptoeing around the fact that COBIT offers a significant competitive body of knowledge (BOK) to ITIL. Sure ITIL goes into more depth in places, but to say COBIT sits over the top is to grossly understate the overlap. COBIT extends a long way down into the “how” and it does it with an intellectual rigour that ITIL lacks.”

Interesting stuff that.  A detailed mapping might help some folks.  Either way, the good news for those keen on understanding risk management is that governance metrics, done right, allow us to understand a part of that “capability to manage risk” we’re always looking for.   Assurance, verification and the acquisition and interpretation of knowledge is king.   Speaking of which….

How To Tell When “Nothing Happens” by Pete Lindstrom

“…problem is that, it isn’t really true that “nothing happens” when you employ some specific security control to prevent an exploit. Not only that, but even when it is difficult to collect data on what didn’t happen, one can devise experiments to tell how frequently that nothing occurred.”

Good analysis is all about the uncertainty.   Speaking of accounting for uncertainty…

Assets Good Until Reached For by Gunnar Peterson

“If you have a 100,000 dekstops or 100,000 servers it hard to manage. You will need to automate and to do that you need to abstract, but you should also realize that its a drawing on a whiteboard not reality. You need abstraction assurance.”

And there’s the trick.  We might call “abstraction assurance” an analog to “confidence” or “uncertainty” in certain priors (metrics) or posteriors (calculated values based on those metrics).  The stronger that abstraction assurance is, the less uncertainty we have in our knowledge and the better our ability to create wisdom from that knowledge (you know, make decisions).

Epstein, Snow and Flake: Three Views of Software Security by Adam Shostack

Adam’s focus is on software security, but the discussion here can be abstracted out into the broader realm of risk management quite nicely.

Two-thirds of firms hit by cybercrime from Security Focus

The US DoJ says that in 2005 (there’s some timely data) 2/3 of their surveyed firms detected at least one cybercrime.  “Cybercrime” is “classified … into cyber attacks, cyber theft, and other incidents.”  Pretty general.  Also from the report:  “Computer viruses made up more than half of all cyber attacks.”

(That sound you hear is me tapping my forehead lightly on large iron object)

Lessons Learned from “Personal” Risk Management By: Christopher Daugherty

“This process is what I call “personal risk management.”  All of us have done it and will continue to do so.  Why is it, then, many companies have ignored following similar principles with the on-going health of the business?  This is a debate with many different answers so I ask you to select the best answer for your employer:

a) Have not ignored as this keeps me awake at night!

b) Please restate the problem, I cannot hear well with my head buried in the sand.

c) We passed our SOX audit so we checked this off the list!

d) We are informed of the challenge but we have a business to run and profits to make

e) Is this what internal audit and risk management has been telling us?”

So, in conjunction with the BlueHat team, I am pleased to announce that the SDL team will be organizing the sessions for the second day of the fall BlueHat conference. The BlueHat SDL sessions will be laser-focused on not just describing vulnerabilities but also solving them. Every attendee should leave every presentation with a clear idea of exactly what he or she needs to do to protect themselves from the threat that was discussed during the session.

The sessions will begin, appropriately, with the topic of secure design. Danny Dhillon of EMC and the SDL team’s own Adam Shostack will each present their organization’s approach to threat modeling. As a bonus, Adam will also be demonstrating the new SDL Threat Modeling tool that you might have heard about last week.

Next up is Matt Miller, a recent and very welcome addition to the Microsoft Security Science team. Matt has a fantastic presentation on the evolution of buffer overflow attacks and on the corresponding development of overflow mitigations. From there we will switch gears to look at some managed code implementation issues: iSEC Partners’ Scott Stender and Alex Vidergar will demonstrate coding techniques to mitigate elusive concurrency vulnerabilities in web applications.

At this point we will have covered the Design and Implementation phases of the SDL; where better to go from here than Verification? One of the most important activities in the Verification phase is fuzzing, and we have a trio of security experts from the Microsoft Security Science team to talk about it. Jason Shirk, Lars Opstad, and Dave Weinstein will answer three of the most common fuzzing questions: How should I fuzz? When have I fuzzed enough? And what do I do now that I’ve fuzzed?

Finally, we will wrap up the Verification phase talks with a return appearance to BlueHat by Stach & Liu’s Vinnie Liu. Vinnie will compare different approaches to security verification – static code analysis, blackbox analysis, and manual code review – and make recommendations as to when each approach is best used.

Even if you can’t make it in to BlueHat in person, you can still watch the sessions via streaming media on TechNet. Additionally, webcast interviews with the speakers – condensed “Cliff’s Notes” versions of their full presentations – will be posted on Channel 9. And we’ll be continuing the BlueHat tradition of inviting speakers and other industry notables to guest blog about their topics and the latest security trends. More information on all of these resources will be posted here when it becomes available.

I used to react to this with "Are you stupid?! PCI being prescriptive is the best thing since sliced cake :-) Finally, there is some specific guidance for people to follow and be more secure!" BTW, in many cases end users who have to comply with PCI DSS still think it is "too fuzzy" and "not specific enough" (e.g. see "MUST-DO Logging for PCI"); and they basically ask for  "a compliance TODO list." (also see this and especially this on compliance checklists)

But every time it happens, I can't stop but think - why do people even utter such utter heresy? :-) And you know what?  I think I got it!

When people say "PCI is too prescriptive," they actually mean that it engenders "checklist mentality" and leads to following the letter of the mandate blindly, without thinking about WHY it was put in place (to protect cardholder data, share risk/responsibility, etc). For example, it says "use a firewall" and so they deploy a shiny firewall with a simple "ALLOW ALL<->ALL" rule (an obvious exaggeration - but you get the point!) Or they have a firewall with a default password unchanged... In addition, the proponents of "PCI is too prescriptive" tend to think that fuzzier guidance (and, especially, prescribing the desired end state AND not the tools to be installed) will lead to people actually thinking about the best way to do it.

So the choices are:

1. Mandate the tools (e.g. "must use a firewall") - and risk "checklist mentality", resulting in BOTH insecurity and "false sense" of security.
2. Mandate the results (e.g. "must be secure") -  and risk people saying "eh, but I dunno how" - and then not acting at all, again leading to insecurity.

Take your poison now?! Isn't compliance fun? What is the practical solution to this? I personally would take the pill #1 over pill #2 (and that is why I like PCI that much), but with some pause to think, for sure.  I think organizations with less mature security programs will benefit at least a bit from #1, while those with more mature programs might "enjoy" #2 more...

BTW, this post was originally called "Isn't Compliance Fun?!"  I had a few fierce debates with some friends and all of them  piled on me to convince me that "compliance is boring, while security is fun!" The above does illustrate that there are worthy and exciting intellectual challenges in the domain of regulatory compliance. It is not [only] a domain of minimalists (who just "want the auditor to go away") and mediocrity, as some think. What makes security fun - the people aspect, the ever-changing threat landscape, cool technology, high uncertainty, even risk - also apply to compliance ...

So, need a cool marketing slogan BUT hate "making compliance easy"?  Go for "Making Compliance Fun!" :-)

All posts on PCI - some are fun:-)