<![CDATA[[SecurityRatty] tag: insight]]> http://securityratty.com/tag/insight Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:39:27 +0000 iRatty Engine http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Regulations that affect your mobile security policy]]> http://securityratty.com/article/0596ce8e4a5250f1911d02e0b220d3bb http://securityratty.com/article/0596ce8e4a5250f1911d02e0b220d3bb ]]> Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:57:33 +0000 mobile security mobile security policy government regulations affect government regulations high-profile data losses enterprise enterprise data wake-up call mobile insight Regulations that affect your mobile security policy <![CDATA[On Stratfor]]> http://securityratty.com/article/3a9d4cea7cf308c71df112b7ea133337 http://securityratty.com/article/3a9d4cea7cf308c71df112b7ea133337 Stratfor. I am addicted. They have a unique way of saying things, an elegant mix of insight, cynicism and humor. How about this one, for instance:

"But in Georgia’s twilight hour, Stratfor’s gaze is not particularly riveted on Tbilisi. Georgia’s fate is more or less sealed. At dawn either the bombs will fall and the tanks will advance and depose the Georgian government by force, or a siege will begin that will depose it in time. Either way, the government of what is currently known as Georgia will evolve into a form that slavishly respects Russian wishes. The only reason Russian officials have not said they will enforce “regime change” is because they feel the term is too American. Whatever the nomenclature, the details of how this change happens pale in comparison to what such a change represents."
About me: http://www.chuvakin.org
]]> Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:35:00 +0000 change change represents enforce regime change georgias georgias twilight hour georgian government government reason russian officials love stratfor On Stratfor <![CDATA[Primary group authority: How it works]]> http://securityratty.com/article/7838297bc5245e7ee1d03c8891785412 http://securityratty.com/article/7838297bc5245e7ee1d03c8891785412 ]]> Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:52:22 +0000 system system performance authority impacts primary carol woodbury insight as400 Primary group authority: How it works <![CDATA[Q&A: E-mail spam and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions]]> http://securityratty.com/article/87c54c54327d8210db9b3ec6f7ab16b3 http://securityratty.com/article/87c54c54327d8210db9b3ec6f7ab16b3 Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:32:22 +0000 e-mail spam quality assurance software development network administration product management david vella insight sof experience Q&A: E-mail spam and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions <![CDATA[Summarizing July's Threatscape]]> http://securityratty.com/article/2860027a1eaa69350d814429c3bf6070 http://securityratty.com/article/2860027a1eaa69350d814429c3bf6070
July's threatscape -- consider going through June's summary as well -- once again demonstrated that nothing is impossible, the impossible just takes a little longer where the incentive would be the ultimate monetization of the process.

Russian hacktivists attacking Lithuania and Georgia, several Storm Worm campaigns, a couple of new malware tools, Neosploit team abandoning support for their web malware exploitation kit, CAPTCHA for several of the most popular free email providers getting efficiently attacked in order to resell the bogus accounts registered in the process, several copycat SQL injects next to the evasion techniques applied by the copycats, botnets continuing to commit click fraud and generate revenue for those who own or have rented them, an infamous money mule recruitment service taking advantage of the fast-fluxed network provided by the ASProx botnet - pretty interesting month indeed.

01. Decrypting and Restoring GPcode Encrypted Files -
The GPcode authors read the news too, and are catching up with the major weaknesses pointed out in their previous release in order to come with a virtually unbreakable algorithm. And since more evidence of who's behind the GPcode ransomware was gathered, vendors and independent researchers realized that the latest release is also susceptible to a plain simple flaw, namely the encrypted files were basically getting deleting and not securely erased making them fairly easy to recover.

02. Chinese Bloggers Bypassing Censorship by Blogging Backward -
When you know how it works, you can either improve, abuse or destroy it in that very particular order. Chinese bloggers are always very adaptive in respect to spreading their message by obfuscating their messages in a way that common keywords filtering software wouldn't be able to pick them.

03. Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail’s CAPTCHA Broken -
This has been an urban legend for a while, but with more services starting to offer hundreds of thousands of pre-registered accounts at these providers, it's surprising that spam and phishing emails coming from legitimate email providers is increasing. The "vendors" behind these propositions are naturally starting to "vertically integrate" by offering value-added services for extra payments, namely, scripts to automatically abuse the pre-registered accounts for automatic registration of splogs and anything else malicious or blackhat SEO related.

04. The Antivirus Industry in 2008 -
If it were anyone else but a security vendor to come up with such a realistic cartoon aiming to stimulate innovation by emphasizing on how prolific and sophisticated malware groups have become, it would have been a biased cartoon. However, this one is courtesy of a security vendor, and it's pretty objective.

05. Lithuania Attacked by Russian Hacktivists, 300 Sites Defaced -
This attack is a good example of a decent PSYOPS operation. Of course they have already build the capabilities to deface and even execute DDoS attacks against Lithuania, so why not put them in a "stay tuned" mode, by speculating on the upcoming attack and then executing it making it look like they delived what they've promised? This a lone gunman mass defacement given that the sites were all hosted on a single ISP, with no indication of any kind of coordination whatsoever. The same for the Georgia President’s web site which was under DDoS attack from Russian hackers later this month. Despite that the hacktivists behind it dedicated a separate C&C for the attack, one that hasn't been used in any type of previous attacks so far, they did a minor mistake by using a secondary command and control location that's known to have been connected with a particular "botnet on demand" service in the past. The second attack once again proves that you don't need to build capacity when you can basically outsource the process to someone else.

06. The ICANN Responds to the DNS Hijacking, Its Blog Under Attack -
The ICANN finally issued a statement concerning the DNS hijacking of some of their domains, which is in fact what Comcast.net and Photobucket.com should have done as well, next to stating it was a "glitch". The ICANN also took advantage of the moment and also pointed out that their blog has also been under attack during the month. There's no better example of how the combination of tactics can result in the hijacking of the domains of the organizations implementing procedures aiming to protect against these very same attacks. And while Photobucket.com remained silent during the entire incident, the hosting provider that was used by the Netdevilz team in the two attacks, since they were also responsible for the ICANN and IANA DNS hijackings, technological and social engineeringissued a statement.

07. The Risks of Outdated Situational Awareness -
Security vendors are often in a "catch-up mode" and if I were an average Internet user not knowing that real-time situational awareness speaks for the degree to which my vendor knows what going on online, I'd be pretty excited. However, I'm not. Prevx were catching up with a service which I covered approximately two months ago, I even had the chance to constructively confront with one of the affected sites on how despite their security measures in place, this attack was still possible. Recently Prevx have once again demonstrated an outdated situational awareness by coming across a banking malware in July 2008, whereas the malware has been around since July 2007, and earlier depending on which version you're referring to.

08. Fake Porn Sites Serving Malware - Part Two -
Yet another domain portfolio of fake porn sites serving rogue codecs and live exploit URLs, just the tip of the iceberg as usual, however their centralization is greatly assisting in tracking them down.

09. Storm Worm's U.S Invasion of Iran Campaign -
Stormy Wormy is once again making the headlines with their ability to actually make up the headlines on their own.

10. Mobile Malware Scam iSexPlayer Wants Your Money -
The best scams are the ones to which you've personally agreed to be scammed with without even knowing it. Like this one, which was tracked down and analyzed a couple of hours once a uset tipped on it.

11. The Template-ization of Malware Serving Sites -
The increase of fake porn and celebrity sites is due to the overall template-ization of these, with the people behind them basically implementing several malicious doorways to ensure that the domains get rotated on the fly. Despite that they all look the same, they all sever different type of malware, and zero porn of celebrity content at all except the thumbnails.

12. Violating OPSEC for Increasing the Probability of Malware Infection -
No better way to expose your affiliations and several unknown bad netblocks so far, by adding the netblocks and the malicious domains as trusted sites upon infecting a PC with the malware. Of course, the usual suspects lead the "trusted netblocks".

13. Monetizing Compromised Web Sites -
Several years ago, a script kiddie would install Apache on a mail server, they claim that they defaced it. Today, these amusing situations are replaced by monetization of the compromised sites, by reselling the access to them to blackhat SEO-ers, malware authors, phishers, or personally starting to manage a scammy infrastructure on them, by earning money on an affiliate based model, like this particular attack.

14. Malware and Office Documents Joining Forces -
A recent DIY malware kit, sold as a proprietary tool basically crunching out malware infected office documents, whose built-in obfuscation makes them harder to detect. It will sooner or later leak out, turning into a commodity tool, a process that's been pretty evident for web malware exploitation kits as well.

15. Are Stolen Credit Card Details Getting Cheaper? -
Depends on who you're buying them from, and whether or not they offer discounts on a volume basis, namely the more you buy the cheaper the price of a card is supposed to get. With the current oversupply of stolen credit card details, what used to be an exclusive good once where they could enjoy a higher profit-margin, is today's commodity good.

16. The Neosploit Malware Kit Updated with Snapshot ActiveX Exploit -
Since alll the web malware exploitation kits are open source, and leaked in the wild at large, their modularity allows everyone to easily embed any type of exploit that they want to, resulting in Neosploit's single most beneficial feature, the fact that certain versions include all the publicly available exploits targeting Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. Moreover, the open source nature of the kit is resulting in a countless number of modified versions yet to be detected and analyzed, therefore keeping track of the exploits included in a malware kit can only be realistic if you take into considered the exploits that come with the default installation.

17. Obfuscating Fast-fluxed SQL Injected Domains -
Now that's a very good example of different tactics combined to attack, ensure survivability, and apply a certain degree of evasion in between.

18. The Unbreakable CAPTCHA -
There's never been a shortage of ideas, there's always been an issue of usability.

19. The Ayyildiz Turkish Hacking Group VS Everyone -
That's a pretty inspiring mission if you are to ensure your future in the next couple of years, by targeting everyone, everywhere that has ever publicly stated their disagreement with the Turkish foreign policy.

20. Money Mule Recruiters use ASProx's Fast Fluxing Services -
A true multitasking in action with a botnet that's been crunching out phishing emails, SQL injecting and now hosting a well known money mule recruitment service.

21. SQL Injecting Malicious Doorways to Serve Malware -
Constantly switching tactics and combining different ones to achive an objective that used to be accomplished by plain simple techniques, is only starting to take place. In this case, instead of a hard coded SQL injected domain, we have the typical malicious doorways the result of the converging traffic management tools with web malware exploitation kits.

22. Impersonating StopBadware.org to Serve Fake Security Warnings -
Typosquatting popular security vendors and services is nothing new, by having HostFresh providing the hosting for the parked domains promoting the rogue security software, is a privilege and flattery for the success of the Stopbadware initiative.

23. Coding Spyware and Malware for Hire -
Customerization -- not customization -- has been taking place for a while, that's the process of tailoring your upcoming products to the needs of your future customers, compared to the product concept myopia where the malware coder would code something that he believes would be valuable to the potential customers. End user agreements, issuing licenses for the malware tool, as well as forbidding the reverse engineering of the malware so that no remotely exploitable flaws could be, are among the requirements the coder assists on.

24. Lazy Summer Days at UkrTeleGroup Ltd -
Taking a random snapshot of the current malicious activity at a well known provider of hosting services for rogue security applications, live exploit URLs and botnet command&control locations, always provides an insight into what are their customers up to. In this case, centralization of their scammy ecosystem, and parking a countless number of rogue domains on the same server.

25. Email Hacking Going Commercial -
Cybercrime is in fact getting easier to outsource, and while the number of scammers trying to offer non-existent services, or at least services where they cannot deliver the goods, the business model of this service that is that you only pay once they show you a proof that they've managed to hack the email address you game them. How are they doing it? Social engineering and enticing the user to click on live exploit URL from where they'll infect the PC and obtain the email password, of course, next to definitely abusing it for many other purposes in the process.

26. Vulnerabilities in Antivirus Software - Conflict of Interest -
You can easily twist the number of vulnerabilities found in your antivirus solution, but not recognizing them as vulnerabilities at the first place. It's all a matter of what you define as a vulnerability, or perhaps what you admit as a serious vulnerability - remote code execution through a security software, or a flaw that's allowing malware to bypass the security solution itself.

27. Counting the Bullets on the (Malware) Front -
Emphasizing on the number of malware/threats/viruses/worms/slugs your solution detects may be marketable in the short-term, but is damaging the end user's understanding of the threatscape in the long-term. So, by the time he catches up with what exactly is going on, he'll recall the moment in time where he was using the number of threats his solution was detecting as the main benchmark for its usefulness. In reality through, the number is irrelevant from a pro-active point of view, with zero day malware like the one coded for hire undermining the signatures based scanning model.

28. Smells Like a Copycat SQL Injection In the Wild -
It was pretty obvious that copycats seeing the success of SQL injections the the huge number of sites susceptible to exploitation, would also starting taking advantage of the practice. Some are, however, targeting local communities and trying to avoid detection by using targeted SQL injections.

29. Click Fraud, Botnets and Parked Domains - All Inclusive -
The scheme is nothing new, what's new is that the botnet masters are trying to limit the revenues that used to go out to affiliate networks they were participating in, and are trying to own or rent the entire infrastructure on their own.

30. Over 80 percent of Storm Worm Spam Sent by Pharmaceutical Spam Kings -
With access to Storm Worm sold and resold, and new malware introduced on Storm Worm infected hosts used as foundation for the propagation of the new malware in this case, it's questionable whether or not the Storm Worm-ers themselves are sending out the junk emails, or are they people who've rented access to the botnet doing it.

31. Neosploit Team Leaving the IT Underground -
Pretty surprising at the first place, but in reality it clearly demonstrates that when you cannot enforce the end user agreement on your crimeware kit, but continue seeing it used in a very profitable malware operations, you basically shut down the support for the public version. The team is not going to stop innovating for their own purposes, and in the long-term they may in fact re-appear with an updated malware kit that's converging different services next to the product itself.

32. Dissecting a Managed Spamming Service -
Managed spamming services using botnets as the foundation for the campaigns are starting to introduce improved metrics for the delivery, as well as experienced customer support ensuring the spam messages make it through spam filters, or at least increase the probability of making the happen. This is an example of a random service emphasizing on the improved metrics they're capable of delivering.

33. Storm Worm's Lazy Summer Campaigns -
Looks like a "cybercrime intern" launched this campaign, lacking any of the usual Storm Worm evasive practices, no exploitation of client side vulnerabilities, as well as no survivability offered by their usual fast-flux nodes.
]]> Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:08:24 +0000 malware profitable malware operations malware authors malware tools malware coder malware kit malware infection neosploit malware kit spam Summarizing July's Threatscape <![CDATA[Is effective performance management in the data center possible?]]> http://securityratty.com/article/9d7473602898ccf862bfb213b2b80ad1 http://securityratty.com/article/9d7473602898ccf862bfb213b2b80ad1 ]]> Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:11:38 +0000 performance management reliable services data centers business services potential delivery key challenge crucial Is effective performance management in the data center possible? <![CDATA[A Blast from the Past: CEP at Stanford,1998-2003]]> http://securityratty.com/article/ecd27eebd62b2df7d9e99b1fcf7ac96f http://securityratty.com/article/ecd27eebd62b2df7d9e99b1fcf7ac96f Courtesy of Complex Event Processing at Stanford

Complex event processing (CEP) is a new technology. It can be applied to extracting and analyzing information from any kind of distributed message-based system. It is developed from the Rapide concepts of (1) causal event modeling, (2) event patterns and pattern matching, and (3) event pattern maps and constraints. Complex event processing can be applied to a wide variety of Enterprise monitoring and management problems, from low level network management to high level enterprise intelligence gathering.

Applications of Complex Event Processing:

Presentations:

Publications:

  • Complex Event Processing in Distributed Systems. David C. Luckham and Brian Frasca, Stanford University Technical Report CSL-TR-98-754, March 1998, 28 pages.Abstract: Complex event processing is a new technology for extracting information from distributed message-based systems. This technology allows users of a system to specify the information that is of interest to them. It can be low level network processing data or high level enterprise management intelligence, depending upon the role and viewpoint of individual users. And it can be changed from moment to moment while the target system is in operation. This paper presents an overview of Complex Event Processing applied to a particular example of a distributed message-based system, a fabrication process management system. The concepts of causal event histories, event patterns, event filtering, and event aggregation are introduced and their application to the process management system is illustrated by simple examples. This paper gives the reader an overview of Complex Event Processing concepts and illustrates how they can be applied using the Rapide toolset to one specific kind of system.
     
  • Event Mining with Event Processing Networks. Louis Perrochon and Walter Mann and Stephane Kasriel and David C. Luckham, The Third Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. April 26-28, 1999. Beijing, China, 5 pages.Abstract: Event Mining discovers and delivers information and knowledge in a real-time stream of data, or events. We show that the process of delivering knowledge by searching patterns in data and subsequent abstraction of found patterns can be applied in real-time to a complex, asynchronous system. Our event processing engine consists of a network of event processing agents (EPAs) running in parallel that interact using a dedicated event processing infrastructure. The agents can be configured at run-time using a formal pattern language. The underlying infrastructure (1) provides an abstract communication mechanism and thus allows dynamic reconfiguration of the communication topology between agents at run-time and (2) provides transparent, location-independent access to all data. These features allow dynamic allocation of EPAs to different threads and processes on different machines at run time.
     
  • eJava - Extending Java with Causality. Alexandre Santoro and Walter Mann and Neel Madhav and David Luckham, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, June 1998, 10 pages.Abstract: Programming languages like Java provide designers with a variety of classes that simplify the process of program development. Some of these classes allow one to easily build multithreaded programs. Though useful, especially in the creation of reactive systems, multithreaded programs present challenging problems such as race conditions and synchronization issues. Validating these programs against a specification is not trivial since Java does not clearly indicate thread interaction. These problems can be solved by modifying Java so that it produces computations, collections of events with both causal and temporal ordering relations defined for them. Specifically, the causal ordering is ideal for identifying thread interaction. This paper presents eJava, an extension to Java that is both event based and causally aware, and shows how it simplifies the process of understanding and debugging multithreaded programs.
     
  • Event-Based Execution Architectures for Dynamic Software Systems. James Vera, Louis Perrochon, David C. Luckham.
    Proceedings of the First Working IFIP Conf. on Software Architecture. 1999. San Antonio, Texas.Abstract: Distributed systems’ runtime behavior can be difficult to understand. Concurrent, distributed activity make notions of global state difficult to grasp. We focus on the runtime structure of a system, its execution architecture, and propose representing its evolution as a partially ordered set of predefined architectural event types. This representation allows a system’s topology to be visualized, analyzed and con-strained. The use of a predefined event types allows the execution architectures of different systems to be readily compared.
     
  • Using Context-Based Correlation in Network Operations and Management. Louis Perrochon (work in progress, mail author for newest version)Abstract: Network operation consists to a large degree of reaction to activities happening in the network. Better knowledge of the network at any time allows more appropriate reactions. On the example of intrusion detection, we show how context-based correlation of such activities can provide a more detailed view of the network in shorter time. We first present how we model context and then describe the architecture of the Stanford University CEP context-based correlator. Correlation is specified as event patterns in a declarative language that allows us to specify what needs to be detected, instead of specifying how it should be detected. CEP introduces the concept of causal context to intrusion detection. The correlator is able to process events on-line, as they are generated and it can be reconfigured at dynamically. We then show how it increases detection rate, reduce false alarms, and detect large-scale attack patterns at an early stage.
]]> Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:20:21 +0000 architectural event types event event pattern maps event types event aggregation event patterns complex event event based hierarchical event A Blast from the Past: CEP at Stanford,1998-2003 <![CDATA[On Logs and Breach Disclosure Laws]]> http://securityratty.com/article/3ad2d8b27336bd882920155941a59db4 http://securityratty.com/article/3ad2d8b27336bd882920155941a59db4 Where the truth is: Logs and breach-disclosure laws" at ComputerWorld. I personally find the premise that logs help with breach notification mandates to be a perfect no-brainer, but it looks like some people consider it to be deep insight.

And, let's leave it at that: deep insight it is :-)

Key point for the impatient bunch: "... logs are essential for compliance with breach-notification laws because you know who exactly to notify. Proper log-keeping will save massive amounts of money while complying with both the letter and the spirit of this law."
About me: http://www.chuvakin.org
]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:40:00 +0000 logs deep insight laws save massive amounts fun paper impatient bunch breach notification perfect no-brainer law On Logs and Breach Disclosure Laws <![CDATA[Meet ratproxy, our passive web security assessment tool]]> http://securityratty.com/article/bc78dd4116c64ea5b3a05fa82e188ff7 http://securityratty.com/article/bc78dd4116c64ea5b3a05fa82e188ff7 Posted by Michal Zalewski

We're happy to announce that we've just open-sourced ratproxy, a passive web application security assessment tool that we've been using internally at Google. This utility, developed by our information security engineering team, is designed to transparently analyze legitimate, browser-driven interactions with a tested web property and automatically pinpoint, annotate, and prioritize potential flaws or areas of concern.

The proxy analyzes problems such as cross-site script inclusion threats, insufficient cross-site request forgery defenses, caching issues, cross-site scripting candidates, potentially unsafe cross-domain code inclusion schemes and information leakage scenarios, and much more. (A more-detailed discussion of these features and information on securing vulnerable applications is provided here.) Compared with more-traditional active crawlers, or with fully manual request inspection and modification frameworks, this approach offers several significant advantages in terms of minimized overhead; marginalized risk of site disruptions; high coverage of complex, client-driven application states in web 2.0 solutions; and insight into dynamic cross-domain trust models.

We decided to make this tool freely available as open source because we feel it will be a valuable contribution to the information security community, helping advance the community's understanding of security challenges associated with contemporary web technologies. We believe that responsible security research brings a net overall benefit to the safety of the Web as a whole, and have released this tool explicitly to support that kind of research.

To download the proxy, please visit this page. Also, please keep in mind that the proxy is designed solely to highlight interesting patterns in web applications, and a further analysis by a security professional is often required to interpret the results and their significance for the tested platform.
]]> Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:49:00 +0000 web information information leakage scenarios information security contemporary web technologies information security community web property community web applications Meet ratproxy, our passive web security assessment tool <![CDATA[The 802.1X Hat-Trick]]> http://securityratty.com/article/09d9695144200f268c18e0c036eec36b http://securityratty.com/article/09d9695144200f268c18e0c036eec36b Well my recent blogging, or lack there of, may have clued you in on my recent hectic travel schedule. It’s June, and that means the end of government’s fiscal year, so we’ve been busy little bees at the office. (Read my primer on 802.1X here.)

For June, we have an 802.1X hat-trick to blame for my slack blogging habits. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had back-to-back 802.1X implementations, one wired, one wireless and one with both. Two government customers and one commercial, not in that order. And I even did one semi-training-slash-semi-implementation-quick-start for another customer.

It’s been fun, but 1X is always challenging. The variety of components, the nature of the interactions and the ‘newness’ of actual implementations make it difficult to work from any type of cookbook or implementation guide. There are just too many variables.

When will it be easier? I think as 1X is more widely implemented in the real world, customers will become more familiar with the concepts and integrators will have more experience to make it go smoothly. For now, everyone has to just take it one step at a time and address issues as they arise. And, for now, I’ll enjoy the job security that 1X offers ;)

Luckily, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of customers and a variety of environments and equipment while hammering out 802.1X. The experience and exposure has certainly given me a unique insight into the issues, complications and solutions that come along with a 1X project.

At present, I think we’ve successfully configured 1X on about a dozen different types of equipment, both switches and wireless APs and controllers, from a variety of vendors. It may not sound like much, but in the world of 1X, that’s quite a variety when you consider each manufacturer has their own ‘system’ for configuring 1X and the commands and procedures can vary greatly even from product-to-product from the same vendor.

Is the 1X streak over? Not at all. We have several customers with NAC and 802.1X projects that we had to queue up for after June 30. I’ll keep you posted!

# # #

 

]]> Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:39:27 +0000 customers government customers variety real world implementations wireless aps actual implementations wireless address issues The 802.1X Hat-Trick