[SecurityRatty] tag: period

Vulnerabilities and Office Versions

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:19:33 +0000

Most of the ink on Microsoft vulnerability coverage goes to browsers and operating systems, but in a way the best progress vulnerabilities have made has been in Microsoft Office. Some of the great attacks of all time (remember LoveLetter?) have been through Office bugs, and I believe most targeted attacks over the last few years have utilized vulnerabilities in Office document parsers. That's why it's encouraging that Microsoft has done a much better job in making current versions of Office secure, as David LeBlanc's recent blog shows. He claims that the company has really stepped up the security testing for Office 2003 SP3 and Office 2007, and that it shows up in the number of reported vulnerabilities. The trend is clear: There are about half as many vulnerabilities as for earlier versions. There may be a little flaw in the analysis in that LeBlanc studied reports during the period from 9/18/2007 to 11/17/2008. By that time earlier Office versions had been around for a long time and many vulnerabilities had already been reported on them. But even so, it makes the numbers all the more impressive for the new versions; the older ones had already had the low-hanging fruit picked clean and yet they still had CVE numbers in excess of the new ones. It seems there is no low-hanging vulnerability fruit in new versions of Office. Are you running an old version of Office? Are you running Office 2003 SP2, which reached the end of support life in October? If so, you are exposing yourself to more known threats than you may think. Office versions are not plug-and-play interchangeable. It's unfortunate that Microsoft saw fit to accompany Office 2007's security enhancements with a radical user interface change. I personally have gotten used to it, but I can see an enterprise being intimidated by the training it would necessitate. If you feel you're stuck in Office 2003, at the very least it's irresponsible to linger on in an old service pack. Do what you can to move on to SP3.

Chairman Tata Surprised by Tricky Terrorists

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Chairman Rata Tata, whose company owns the Taj hotel in Mumbai, gave a frank and honest interview to CNN. I would imagine that the Tata Group's PR people and General Counsel are scrambling at the moment trying to do as much damage control as possible.

The sad part of this unfolding story is the feeling one gets that the terrible loss of life at the hotel may have been prevented or at least mitigated had proper security measures been implemented and if the security that had been in place prior to the attack had not been removed.

One eye witness who stayed at the hotel a week before the terrorist assault spoke about metal detectors and baggage being checked. The same witness then went on to say that those security measures had been removed within the last week, allowing people to enter without being checked.

The most surprising news to surface must be the Chairman's comments regarding the terrible event. Unbelievably, he actually said; "They knew what they were doing and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements were on the front entrance".

Who is Tata's security advisor, a kitchen worker? Actually, he might have been better off if that were the case since the terrorists entered the hotel through the rear kitchen door. ANNOUNCEMENT TO ALL CHAIRMEN AND CEO's; Terrorists are Tricky. That is their job. They are watching your businesses and will do the opposite to what you expect.

In the case of the TAJ HOTEL, you made it easy for them. Did nobody in Mumbai ever stop to think that a bad person can go through the back door? It is one thing for a cafe in a pedestrian area to be attacked as anyone can walk right by or walk through the front and open fire, but how can a major landmark that attracts Western vistors drop their security measures AFTER they have received terrorist alert warnings that the hotel may be the target of terrorsit attacks?

I don't know if it was the case with the Taj Hotel, but cutting corners where security is concerned is common place in corporate culture. Security is often seen as a necessary evil and usually the first department to experience budgetary cutbacks. It is very difficult to convince some clients that nothing happening is really a good thing and that by cutting out security may open the door to evil.

This appears to have been the case with the Taj. There is no doubt that the terrorists had conducted hundreds of hours of surveillance in and around Mumbai. Was it a coincidence that the attack occurred the week after security measures had been removed? What might have been the result if security had remained tight (if you could call watching the front entrance and disregarding the back as "tight security")? Maybe the terrorists would have held back another month or two...maybe in that time they would have been detected...

One thing is for certain, places like the Taj Hotel have to get serious about security. Mr. Tata's claim that; "If I look at what we had...it could not have stopped what took place", must be replaced by more progressive, proactive thinking. If the Tata Group had spent an adequate amount of funding on ensuring that a strict security policy was in force - if only for the period in question - then they might not now be facing a 5 Billion Rupee reconstruction bill. Who knows how high the civil suits against the Taj will run when compensation and punitive costs are calculated.

Kudos though to Chairman Tata for at least recognizing that the Indian authorities may not be able to handle the situation on their own. "These attacks underscore the need for Law Enforcement to seek outside expertise for training, equipment and strategic operations", he said.

We agree Mr. Tata. We also hope that you will recognize the need for the Tata Group to seek similar outside expertise to assist you with your security planning and training.

National Security Perspectives A Post-Election Insider View

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:13:25 +0000

Recently I participated in an event entitled National Security Perspectives held at the famous Congressional Country Club in Maryland. The featured panelists had impressive credentials from the NSA, DHS and the CIA. The topics of discussion ranged from Current Geopolitical Threats and Evolving Technology Demands to predictions about the New Administrations Intelligence, Defense and Homeland Security focus.

The panelists were:
William P. Crowell – former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency
Michael P. Jackson – Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security
Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr. – former Director CIA, National Clandestine Service & CIA, DCI Counterterrorist Center

Overall, it was a very nicely arranged event on a brisk fall evening with about 100 CXO attendees; mostly large but some small government contractors and a few product companies like ScienceLogic that conduct business with military, intelligence and the public sector.

No surprise, given the financial crisis the economy is suffering from that the panelists said we also have a crisis coming on the Federal budget front. This will put enormous pressure on the way Administration thinks, and how and where to spend the $$.

Obama’s tone regarding the issues he will be confronting in the world during the election was encouraging. Make the world more non-partisan and take on the threats that we have in front of us head-on!

The panel was very upfront about current threats. William Crowell said,

“It is highly imprudent to believe that there will not be another 9-11. We have to fund and support the work to stop other attacks. We can only mitigate risk but we can’t eliminate risk. We have to try to absorb the sense of urgency and wake up every day looking at the intelligence screens as if 9-11 happened within the last couple of months.”

He added,

“They (the intelligence community) need the innovation, sense of commitment and urgency that comes from the private sector – a sense of mutual commitment to that mission.”

Predicted Priorities for investment for DHS:

Cyber attack as the top issue
Nuclear threats including dirty bomb
Chemical and biological attacks
Explosive attacks against critical infrastructure with maximum # of lives and or financial disruption / loss.
Large scale natural disasters – hurricane + earthquakes
Border penetration - identity management and border management issues

An Obama administration will spend dollars around these threat vectors. They will want to spend $$ to help state and local governments. Grants to state and local governments should significantly increase with the Obama administration, so think about how you will increase your focus on the state and local government spending initiatives.

Secure border investments – the panelists believe that the new administration will feel compelled to invest here. Michael P. Jackson bluntly said, “You have to make investments in border tools to get meaningful immigration reform.”

Panelists agreed that the 1^st year will be an intense period of scrutiny about fundamental directions. We can’t afford it all at DHS; it is dramatically under budgeted. At TSA/DOT and then at DHS, we spent about $4 Billion on technology investments since 9-11; those investments are now reaching the end of the original service life.

One gripe from the panel that I found humorous: “We don’t have a group of people who think like entrepreneurs.” It is insane how long things last when you buy things in the government. As an example, we are still replacing vacuum tubes in some of the very old FAA gear… this is well beyond what any reasonable person would think these initial investments should/would last.

Final Thoughts:
I actually think that the Obama Administration will be quite favorable to COTS software products, SaaS offerings, and creative financing initiatives from the private sector. The government just won’t have the capital budget to do everything it wants to accomplish. I would say if you look at how intelligently and aggressively Obama used technology to assist his campaign, the odds are good that this new breed of IT talent (which is already really comfortable with SaaS products, blogs, wiki’s, hosted/outsourced Cloud solutions… this team really understands the latest technology trends) will quickly work to bring these new IT paradigms to the Federal marketplace. Clearly the private sector can help the Government achieve more with lower capital budgets – beginning to provide services rather than transaction-based selling. Another clear idea is to think about leasing as a better way to work with the government which going forward will have increased budgets restrictions.

They will likely be in confrontation with members of Congress that won’t change fast enough, however the future of our nation’s ability to fight terror lies in becoming more efficient and effective. It requires the government be flexible enough to figure out what jobs and IT functions to outsource in a nimble and smart way. My prediction: this is great news for Service Providers. Overall the next 4 years should be great for our business as well as the Managed Service Provider/SaaS industry!

Most Spam Came from a Single Web Hosting Firm

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:11:07 +0000

Really:

Experts say the precipitous drop-off in spam comes from Internet providers unplugging McColo Corp., a hosting provider in Northern California that was the home base for machines responsible for coordinating the sending of roughly 75 percent of all spam each day.

Certainly this won't last:

Bhandari said he expects the spam volume to recover to normal levels in about a week, as the spam operations that were previously hosted at McColo move to a new home.
"We're seeing a slow recovery," Bhandari. "We fully expect this to recover completely, and to go into the highest ever spam period during the upcoming holiday season."

But with all the talk of massive botnets sending spam, it's interesting that most of it still comes from hosting services. You'd think this would make the job of detecting spam a lot easier.

A Less Tasteful Internet

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:59:47 +0000

It may take awhile, but ICANN can change things for the good. The public comment period is still open on the formal policy on AGP DELETEs, but the stopgap budget measure in place seems to be very effective. ICANN announced that AGP DELETEs declined "... from approximately 17.6M in June 2008 to 2.8M in July 2008." 2.6M of the 2.8M were subject to the fee, so it would seem that even those would continue to decline as the people paying them realize they're wasting their money. AGP DELETEs are the mechanism used by "domain tasters" who register a domain, throw PPC ads up on it and DELETE the registration before five days are up for a full refund of all fees. Under the new budget policy, registrars who exceed a certain threshold of DELETEs as a percentage of total registrations can no longer refund the 20 cent ICANN fee. This alone has led to the massive decline in DELETEs, showing how little margin is involved in each domain. Let's hope that ICANN keeps the policy at least as restrictive as this. Domain tasting may no longer be a problem. ICANN has placed the EstDomains registrar back on death row. Read about it here.

The Economics of Spam

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:52:17 +0000

Excellent paper on the economics of spam. The authors infiltrated the Storm worm and monitored its doings.

After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted -- a conversion rate of well under 0.00001%. Of these, all but one were for male-enhancement products and the average purchase price was close to $100. Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88 -- a bit over $100 a day for the measurement period or $140 per day for periods when the campaign was active. However, our study interposed on only a small fraction of the overall Storm network -- we estimate roughly 1.5 percent based on the fraction of worker bots we proxy. Thus, the total daily revenue attributable to Storm's pharmacy campaign is likely closer to $7000 (or $9500 during periods of campaign activity). By the same logic, we estimate that Storm self-propagation campaigns can produce between 3500 and 8500 new bots per day.
Under the assumption that our measurements are representative over time (an admittedly dangerous assumption when dealing with such small samples), we can extrapolate that, were it sent continuously at the same rate, Storm-generated pharmaceutical spam would produce roughly 3.5 million dollars of revenue in a year. This number could be even higher if spam-advertised pharmacies experience repeat business. A bit less than "millions of dollars every day," but certainly a healthy enterprise.

Of course, the authors point out that it's dangerous to make these sorts of generalizations:

We would be the first to admit that these results represent a single data point and are not necessarily representative of spam as a whole. Different campaigns, using different tactics and marketing different products will undoubtedly produce different outcomes. Indeed, we caution strongly against researchers using the conversion rates we have measured for these Storm-based campaigns to justify assumptions in any other context.

Spam is all about economics. When sending junk mail costs a dollar in paper, list rental, and postage, a marketer needs a reasonable conversion rate to make the campaign worthwhile. When sending junk mail is almost free, a one in ten million conversion rate is acceptable.

News articles.

Zeus Crimeware Kit Gets a Carding Layout

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:53:52 +0000

With cybercriminals clearly expressing their nostalgia for several notorious and already shut down credit card fraud communities, they seem to have found a way to once again give their self-esteem a boost. Following the ongoing modification of open source crimeware kits and the inevitable innovation introduced by third parties, last week a new layout was introduced for Zeus, once again courtesy of a group that's piggybacking on Zeus popularity.

It's particularly interesting to see how a one-man operation evolves into a group of third-party developers starting to claim ownership rights over the modified versions despite that they're basically brandjacking the Zeus brand and building business models on the top of it.

Open source crimeware and web malware exploitation kits on the other hand undermine the business model of a great number of "malware/spyware for hire" vendors, which surprisingly doesn't stop them from continuing offering their services and products which are often using the de facto crimeware kits as the foundations for their propositions. Are the buyers even aware of this fact? From a buyer's perspective in times when most of the output is sold in bulk form, or access to the botnet rented for a specific period of time, the buyer doesn't care about the cybercrime platform of use, but is looking for transparent ways to justify the investment he's made into renting the service.

Now that Zeus administrators and their cybercrime clerks in the face of those managing the campaigns knowingly or unknowingly knowing the type of campaigns and the data that they manage, can listen to their favorite music within Zeus and choose different layouts for the command and control interfaces while commiting cybercrime, what's next?

Convergence and improved monetization.

Stop Me if This Sounds Familiar

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:30:30 +0000

My favorite book from last year was Charlie Munger's "Poor Charlie's Almanack", there are so many fascinating parts in the book I can't go into them all here. Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett's partner at Berkshire Hathaway, the book is a collection of a number of his speeches, and serves as a great backdrop for today's events, an investing education, and a way to think through complex problems ("invert! always invert!"). It goes without saying that I think you should buy this book.

Chapter Three is a collection of Munger's unscripted remarks at Berkshire Hathaway and Wesco annual meetings. The below sections were transcribed by Whitney Tilson, from annual meetings around the 2003-4 time period, and are pretty interesting given our current financial predicament.

Warnings About Financial Institutions and Derivatives
Risks of Financial Institutions
The nature of a financial institution is that there are a lot of ways to go to hell in a bucket. You can push credit too far, do a dumb acquisition, leverage yourself excessively---its not just derivatives [that can bring about your downfall].
Maybe it's unique to us, but we're quite sensitive to financial risks. Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well.
We're exceptionally goosey of leveraged financial institutions. If they start talking about how good their risk management is, it makes us nervous.
We fret way earlier than other people. We've left a lot of money on the table through early fretting. It's the way we are -- you'll just have to live with it.
Derivatives
The system is almost insanely irresponsible. and what people think are fixes aren't realy fixes. It's so complicated I can't do it justice here - but you can't believe the trillions of dollars involved. You can't believe the complexity. You can't believe how difficult it is to do the accounting. You can't believe how big the incentives are to have wishful thinking about values and wishful thinking about ability to clear.
People don't think about the consequences of the consequences. People start by trying to hedge against interest rate changes, which is very difficult and complicated. Then, the hedges make the [reported profits] lumpy. So they use the new derivatives to smooth this. Well, now you've morphed into lying. This turns into a Mad Hatter's Tea Party. This happens to vast, sophisticated corporations.
Somebody has to step in and say, "We're not going to do it - it's just too hard."
I think a good litmus test of the mental and moral quality at any large institutions [with significant derivative exposure] would be to ask them, "Do you really understand your derivatives book?" Anyone who says yes is either crazy or lying.
It's easy to see [the dangers] when you talk about [what happened with] the energy derivatives - they went kerflooey. When [the companies] reached for the assets that were on their books, the money wasn't there. When it comes to financial assets, we haven't had any such denouement and the accountings hasn't changed so the denouement is ahead of us.
Derivatives are full of clauses that say if one party's credit gets downgraded then it has to put up collateral. It's like margin - you can go broke [just putting up more margin]. In an attempt to protect themselves, they've introduced instability. Nobody seems to recognize what a disaster of a system they've created. It's a demented system.
In engineering people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don't give a damn about safety. They let it balloon and balloon and balloon. It's aided by false accounting. I'm more pessimistic about this than Warren is.
Accounting for Derivatives
I hate with a passion GAAP [Generally Accepted Accounting Principles] as applied to derivatives and swaps. JP Morgan sold out to this type of accounting to front-end revenues. I think it's a disgrace.
It's bonkers, and the accountants sold out. Everyone caved, adopted loose [accounting] standards, and created exotic derivatives linked to theoretical models. As a result, all kinds of earnings, blessed by accountants, are not really being earned. When you reach for the money, it melts away. It was never there.
It [accounting for derivatives] is just disgusting. It is a sewer, and if I'm right, there will be hell to pay in due course. All of you will have to prepare to deal with a blowup of derivative books.
Likelihood of a Derivatives Blowup
We tried to sell Gen Re's derivatives operations and couldn't, so we started liquidating it. We had to take big markdowns. I would confidently predict that most of the derivatives books of [this country's] major banks cannot be liquidated for anything like what they're carried on the books at. When the denouement will happen and how severe it will be, I don't know. But I fear the consequences could be fearsome. I think there are major problems, worse than in the energy field, and look at the destruction there.
I'll be amazed if we don't have some kind of significant [derivatives-related] blowup in the next five to ten years.
I think we're he only big corporation in America to be running off its derivative book.
It's a crazy idea for people who are already rich - like Berkshire - to be in this business. It's a crazy business for big banks to be in.
Yo would be disgusted if you had a fair mind and spent a month really delving into a big derivative operation. You would think it was Lewis Carroll. You would think it was the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. And the false precision of these people is just unbelievable. They make the worst economics professors look like gods. Moreover, there is depravity augmenting the folly. Read the book F.I.A.S.C.O., by law professor and former derivative trader Frank Partnoy, an insider account of the depravity of derivative trading at one of the biggest and best-regarded Wall Street firms. This book will turn your stomach.

These are very blunt warnings from a legendary investor over many years, yet no one listened. It does explain why it is so hard for Infosec to make its case for building margins of safety into the system.

Sleep more and live longer

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:16:00 +0000

An interesting study was discussed on WTOP radio today.

It seems that two Swedish doctors conducted a sleep study between 1987 and 2006. Their findings have been published in the New England School of Medicine's records.

They discovered that 5% more heart attacks were recorded the Monday after clocks go forward. At the same time, there were less heart attacks documented on the Monday following the weekend period when clocks go backward.

The findings indicate the importance of getting a good night's rest. When the clocks are set forward an hour, people lose an hour of sleep. That was the time when more heart attacks were found to have occurred.

In the field of security, it is not always possible to get enough rest. Many times it is necessary to work a 12 hour shift and then drive home afterwards. If this is the case, the officer/agent should make sure that he/she gets adequate rest when they are off duty.

Unfortunately, there are other elements that add to a less than healthy lifestyle such as; drinking a lot of coffee, not eating balanced meals, lack of exercise, etc. Armed with the knowledge that sleep is so vital to our health, it is more important now than ever to ensure that we are taking proper care of ourselves.

Information security in bad economy

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:37:40 +0000

Economy looks grim. The headlines are very discouraging. Capitalism does not guarantee wealth and success all the time. The talking heads on TV blame the greed in the stock market. I wish stock market is made of just computers that are not greedy human beings. These are bound to happen when there are human beings that participate! Money flows will eventually correct itself I hope, capitalism will be healthy again. This will take time. I am not an economist, but I do understand that people part with money for a period of time to collect higher return in the horizon based on their aptitude for risk. Simple is it not! But, all these complex financial instruments and its machinations seem to blur the reality and make even the brainiest act dumb - or are they just plain greedy?

Setting the context for this post, it is a tough economic situation all over the world. IT spending has reduced and will reduce significantly. In one of earlier posts, I had referred to information security as an overhead of an overhead (IT). What is a good approach for security practice in this type of economy?

I don't have a magic wand to pull a rabbit out of a hat. I have always been told that: tough economy is the time for real smart people to make money. Coming back to information security topic, with a bit of common sense, it is wise for information security professionals to offer services in those areas that does not involve capital expenditure. As a Security Manager, you may be already aware that your people are willing to go an extra mile in the current economic times.

- No budget or lack of budget, means no new capital expenditure. Spend time wisely in building a future technology strategy and keep it in the back pocket when the economy turns around.

- This is a good time to create roles/responsibilities and ownership for various areas. Create operating procedures. Make your team to automate tasks. This will help your operations become more efficient.

- This is time for security awareness education. Create pamphlets/brochures/presentations for an online or classroom training. Engage your and your team's time to impart training.

- Leverage already invested technology platforms. Leverage utilized features that reduce costs. If you have already invested in technology such as VMware, this is the time to get the best out of it. You can use VMware's toolkit to build your lab and staging environment and optimize on hardware cost.

- Off shoring has been the mantra of senior executives, this is the time to revisit those services and measure their performance closely and assess your satisfaction level. This is a good time to build a case for not off shoring if it makes sense.

- Companies are more vulnerable in bad economic times. You are in a better position to influence senior management about information security risks under these circumstances and drive home the value of protecting your intellectual property under these kinds of circumstances. management will be all ears for such a pitch.

- Time to engage your architect to optimize your security architecture, revisit standards and optimize design for cost efficiency.

- Revisit various controls and see if there are some risks that you could optimize spending on.

- Training budget is an unfortunate victim of this type of economy. Encourage employees to take free webinars offered by various security vendors and encourage them to share the summary across the team. This will put your employees in touch with latest happenings in security at the same time there is some learning that is imparted despite zero training budget.

- Since there are very few projects in action, this is a good time to have conversations with cross functional teams and educate them about your services and solicit feedback on how to do better.

- Revisit your vendor logistics and identify whether you can renegotiate some of your already existing contracts.

The above are some good ways by which you can optimize costs, this will also enhance your team's competence level in the long run. And this approach is better than letting people go, if you can pull this.