[SecurityRatty] tag: scale

Yet Another Web Malware Exploitation Kit in the Wild

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:24:43 +0000

With business-minded malicious attackers embracing basic marketing practices like branding, it is becoming increasingly harder, if not pointless to keep track of all XYZ-Packs currently in circulation. How come? Due to their open source nature allowing modifications, claiming copyright over the modified and re-branded kit, the source code of core web malware exploitation kits continue representing the foundation source code for each and every newly released kit.

In fact, the practice is becoming so evident, that anecdotal evidence in the form of monitoring ongoing communications between sellers and buyers reveals actual attempts of intellectual property enforcement in the form of exchange of flames between an author of a original kit, and a newly born author who seems to have copied over 80% of his source code, changed the layout, re-branded it, added several more exploits and started pitching it as the most exclusive kit there is available in the underground marketplace.

What's new about this particular kit anyway? Changed iframe and js obfuscation techniques, doesn't require MySQL to run, with several modified Adobe Acrobat and Flash exploits - all patched and publicly obtainable. This is precisely where the marketing pitch ends for the majority of malware kits released during the last quarter.

As always, there are noticable exceptions to the common wisdom that time-to-underground market isn't allowing them to innovate, but thankfully, these exceptions aren't yet going mainstream. What is going to change in the upcoming 2009? Web malware exploitation kits are slowly maturing into multi-user cybercrime platforms, where traffic management coming from the SQL injected or malware embedded sites is automatically exploited with access to the infected hosts or to the traffic volume in general offered for sale under a flat rate, or on a volume basis.

Converging traffic management with drive-by exploitation and offering the output for sale, all from a single web interface, is precisely what malicious economies of scale is all about.

Related posts:
Cybercriminals release Christmas themed web malware exploitation kit
New Web Malware Exploitation Kit in the Wild
Modified Zeus Crimeware Kit Gets a Performance Boost
Zeus Crimeware Kit Gets a Carding Layout
Web Based Malware Emphasizes on Anti-Debugging Features
Copycat Web Malware Exploitation Kit Comes with Disclaimer
Web Based Malware Eradicates Rootkits and Competing Malware
Two Copycat Web Malware Exploitation Kits in the Wild
Copycat Web Malware Exploitation Kits are Faddish
Web Based Botnet Command and Control Kit 2.0
BlackEnergy DDoS Bot Web Based
A New DDoS Malware Kit in the Wild
The Small Pack Web Malware Exploitation Kit
The Nuclear Grabber Kit
The Apophis Kit
Nuclear Malware Kit
The Random JS Malware Exploitation Kit
Metaphisher Malware Kit Spotted in the Wild

Localizing Cybercrime - Cultural Diversity on Demand Part Two

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:55:21 +0000

It's where you advertise your services, and how you position yourself that speak for your intentions, of course, "between the lines". There's a common misunderstanding that in order for a malware campaigner or scammer to launch a localized attack speaking the native language of their potential victims, they need to speak the local language. This misconception is largely based on the fact that a huge number of people remain unaware on how core strategic business practices have been in operation across the cybercrime underground for the last couple of years.

Outsourcing the localization process (translation services for spam/phishing/malware campaigns) has been happening for a while, courtsy of DIY servics ensuring complete anonymity of their customers. Interestingly, the translators may in fact be unaware that the advertising channels the service is using is directly attracting everyone from the bottom to the top of the cybercriminal food chain as a customer. Sometimes, it's services like this that open a new market segment covering an untapped opportunity, with this particular service already pointing out that it's charging cheaper than their competitors.

"We offer our services in translation. We are only competent translators profile higher education. Service is working with all types of texts. Languages available at this time of Russian, English, German. Average translation of the text takes up to 10 hours (usually much faster) through the full automation of the order and payment. Just want to note that we do not keep any logs on IP and does not require registration. In addition you can remove your order from the database after his execution. In addition to running more than 1000 translations already, we can use all the lessons learned to be more effective in our services. Prices vary depending on the complexity of the topic covered.

Prices and deadlines:
* Standard - the deadline is not more than 24 hours. Prices depend on the direction and guidance from the 'Order'.
* Term - work on your translation begins precedence. The price of the 50% more than the standard translation. Prices also depend on the direction and guidance from the 'Order'.

The cost of the transfer depends on the amount of work. The workload is measured in symbols. In calculating the characters are shown letters and numbers. Punctuation do not count. Minimum order 100 characters."

I'm particularly curious how is a contractor(translator) going to react to a situation when a large scale malware campaign speaking several different languages tell a fake story that the contractor might have recently translated for them. With the employer positioning itself as a fully legitimate company, whereas its customers requesting localized version of texts for the spam/phishing/malware campaigns are the "usual suspects", the contractors would continue allowing cybercriminals the opportunity to build more authenticity within their campaigns.

Related posts:
E-crime and Socioeconomic Factors
MPack and IcePack Localized to Chinese
The Icepack Exploitation Kit Localized to French
The FirePack Exploitation Kit Localized to Chinese
Localizing Open Source Malware
Localized Fake Security Software
A Localized Bankers Malware Campaign
Lonely Polina's Secret (Localized malware campaign)

Seven classic PC symptoms

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

As a small-business person, you might bemoan the fact you don't have 24/7 IT support like your larger-scale competitors. Don't panic. You can solve many of the most common computer problems yourself. Here are some snafus you can tackle on your own, thanks to the advice of the support staff at several major hardware and software vendors:

Not Your Father's Data Breach

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:37:59 +0000

I am surprised this doesn't happen more often, or become public when it does happen, and I suspect it will:

Corporate custodians of confidential medical data should be closely monitoring events connected to a nightmarish computer security breach in the St. Louis region.

Express Scripts is one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits managers. The company, with headquarters in St. Louis County, handles approximately 500 million prescriptions per year for 50 million workers at 1,600 American companies. Early in October, it received an extortion letter, the details of which it released on Nov. 6.

The letter included personal information on about 75 Express Scripts clients — Social Security numbers, dates of birth and, in some cases, information about prescription medications. Whoever sent the letter demanded money from the company — the amount has not been disclosed — and threatened to use the Internet to reveal personal and medical information about millions of people if the demands were not met.

...

Beyond the scale of the problem for Express Scripts — and the potential impact on the company is enormous — the issue extends well beyond the mounting concerns about identity theft, a phenomenon with which most people have become at least somewhat familiar.

The greater problem is the unique nature of personal medical records, the importance of moving to computerization of such records to improve health safety and reduce costs and the irreversibility of the damage people can suffer if confidential medical information becomes public. The stakes are so high that a federal law establishes strict standards for maintaining the privacy of medical information and stiff fines for failing to do so.

Medical records of all kinds — paper and, especially, electronic — must be protected with the most sophisticated kinds of security systems available, including backup protections and automatic alerts of security violations. Yet Express Scripts learned of this breach in the “worst way,” as InformationWeek.com security correspondent George Hulme put it in an online report: “via an extortion letter.”

The Express Scripts breach raises many questions for all elements of the health industry: hospitals, clinics and doctors’ practices, benefits management firms, insurance companies, pharmacies, employers and government agencies:
Are they using the most advanced information security technology possible? Do they minimize the amount of data they collect and keep it only as long as necessary? Do they have strict protocols governing access to personal and medical data — and systems to enforce those protocols? If criminals were to hack into their systems, how would the companies know? How soon? And are the systems capable of instantly cutting off illegal access as soon as a breach is discovered?

Confronted with a grave breach of electronic security, Express Scripts has responded by contacting law enforcement, establishing an informational website, offering a substantial reward and hiring a private consulting firm to help clients who have privacy concerns and investigate situations that “appear to be tied to identity theft” and provide “identity restoration services.” There is no question that the company is taking the situation extremely seriously.
Given the ongoing criminal situation, information about how Express Scripts’ data systems were compromised — and whether it could have been avoided — has yet to be disclosed. But the American people have the right to expect that their sensitive personal and medical information is zealously protected and kept secure — not only by Express Scripts but also by every person or company entrusted with it.

The reason I am surprised this doesn't happen more often is that many Fortune 500 companies have oceans and oceans of personal data. Almost the only companies that have even tried to get to a medium level assurance are financial companies, yet many of the other companies have as much or even more data, with lower assurance. All that was lacking in the mix was an incentive and a bit of creativity and risk taking by the bad guys.

I posted this to the security metrics list and Andy Jaquith quoted it in his great book Security Metrics:

"Customers and customer relationships...have tangible measurable value to businesses, and their value is much easier to communicate to those who fund projects. So in an enterprise risk management scenartio, their vlaue informs the risk management process...[For example, consider] a farmer deciding which crop to grow. A farmer interested in short term profits may grow the same high yield crop every year, but over time this would burn the fields out. The long term focused farmer would rotate the crops and invest in things that build the value of the farm and soil over time. Investing in security on behalf of your customers is like this. The investment made in securing your customer's data build current and future value for them. Measuring the value of the customer and relationships helps to target where to allocate security resources."

Of course this is the opposite of how most organizations do risk management and security architecture, and now, the fields have turned brown.

(Thanks to Chris for pointing me to this story)

The Economics of Finding and Fixing Vulnerabilities in Distributed Systems

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:47:55 +0000

The Economics of Finding and Fixing Vulnerabilities in Distributed Systems

Quality of Protection Keynote

Alexandria, VA

October 27. 2008

Gunnar Peterson

Managing Principal, Arctec Group

Blog: http://1raindrop.typepad.com

When Andy Ozment asked me over the summer to do this talk at QoP, I knew back in August that the topic I wanted to address was security and economics. So to that end I would like to start by thanking all of our friends on Wall Street and here in Washington DC for providing such a rich tapestry of recent events that I can speak to.

Like many people in this industry, my focus on security was fundamentally altered by Dan Geer's speech "Risk Management is Where the Money Is"[1], there are not many people who can call a ten year shot in the technology business, but Dan Geer did. The talk revolutionized the security industry. Since that speech, the security market, the vendors, consultants, and everyone else has realized that security is really about risk management.

Of course, saying that you are managing risk and actually managing risk are two different things. Warren Buffett started off his 2007 shareholder letter [2] talking about financial institutions' ability to deal with the subprime mess in the housing market saying, "You don't know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out." In our world, we don't know whose systems are running naked, with no controls, until they are attacked. Of course, by then it is too late.

So the security industry understands enough about risk management that the language of risk has permeated almost every product, presentation, and security project for the last ten years. However, a friend of mine who works at a bank recently attended a workshop on security metrics, and came away with the following observation - "All these people are talking about risk, but they don't have any assets." You can't do risk management if you don't know your assets.

Risk management requires that you know your assets, that on some level you understand the vulnerabilities surrounding your assets, the threats against those, and efficacy of the countermeasures you would like to use to separate the threat from the asset. But it starts with assets. Unfortunately, in the digital world these turn out to be devilishly hard to identify and value.

Recent events have taught us again, that in the financial world, Warren Buffett has few peers as a risk manager. I would like to take the first two parts of this talk looking at his career as a way to understand risk management and what we can infer for our digital assets.

Warren Buffett's evolution as an investor can be broken up into two parts. He began his career very much influenced by Ben Graham, who sought to buy "cheap stocks", comparing the price of the stock to value of the company's assets, and placing many, diversified bets on companies whose share price was below the total assets. Note that the businesses may have been of unremarkable quality, but when the price was right Graham would buy in, wait for it to rise and then sell. This was the dawn of value investing.

Buffett's later career departed from Graham's strict, statistical measures, where he sought to buy into companies that were selling at a fair price, but were also high quality businesses. We will examine high quality in Part 2 of this talk, but first we go to Part 1 which is asset value.

Why does a talk on finding and fixing vulnerabilities start with valuing assets? The reason is that vulnerabilities are everywhere, we are literally marinating in them. Interesting vulnerabilities are attached to high value assets. In a world that quite literally presents us with too much information, we need screens to sift out what is worth paying attention to. You can run your vulnerability assessment tool of choice on your system, and come back with hundreds or thousands of vulnerabilities, but which ones should you pay attention to and act on? The first part of answering this question is asset value.

When Warren Buffett was 19 years old studying at the University of Nebraska, he read Ben Graham's book "The Intelligent Investor", Buffett said he thought it was the best book on investing he has ever read and still feels that way today. In the Intelligent Investor Graham lays out the framework of value investing. Specifically, Graham talks about three concepts - Mr. Market, a stock is a piece of a business, and Margin of Safety.

Mr. Market is a fictional, teaching device invented by Graham. You imagine that you have a somewhat manic depressive business partner called Mr. Market. Every day, Mr. Market comes into the office and offers you quotes on companies, some days he is in a good mood and the prices are high, other days he is gloomy and prices are low. The market is a quote machine, for quoting prices, not a value assessment machine. Your job is to wait for the right price, and you are free to take as many passes and be as patient as you would like, Mr. Market will just show up the next day and throw out a new price.

Graham used Mr. Market to teach us the separation between a price of a stock, and the value of a company. The second big concept from Intelligent Investor is that buying a stock is buying a small piece of the underlying business. You are not buying a roulette chip, or a number that fluctuates in the newspaper every day, rather you are buying a piece of the company's existing and future cash flow. What the stock market says General Electric is worth yesterday, today or tomorrow is separate from GE's actual ability to generate cash flow.

The last big concept in "The Intelligent Investor" and the one seemingly most applicable to information security is the Margin of Safety. Graham's margin of safety involved calculating the intrinsic value of a business and then buying stock where the market cap of a company is less than its intrinsic value. So if a company has $100 million in assets and a market capitalization of $75 million, then an investor would get a 25% margin of safety. Ideally, Graham wanted to buy stocks that were selling for one half of their book value, i.e. with a 50% margin of safety. Graham said that buying stocks without a margin of safety, above their book value, speculation, not investing.

So price is readily available, but how do we calculate intrinsic value so that we can ascertain the margin of safety? Graham used quantitative statistical measures, relying heavily on the company's book value, like its hard assets. What would it take for a competitor to reproduce the company's assets - its factories, distribution system, and so on. The difference between the book value of the assets and market cap is the margin of safety.

What can we learn in information security from this quantitative approach? Where price and value are readily ascertainable we should build countermeasures and eliminate on vulnerabilities that give our assets a wide margin of safety. Since budgets are not unlimited we should prefer vulnerabilities that are cheap to find, cheap to fix.

First to the asset question, information security budgets like all IT budgets are crufty, they are not a reflection of today's top issues and priorities so much as an accumulating snowball of decisions, legacy contracts, and solution attempts to yesteryear's problems. Today the normal Information Security budget is just a legacy artifact from bygone years when the network was the purported greatest vulnerability. If you were around in 1995, you remember the great gnashing of gears as the enterprises opened up their networks, connected their back ends to the Web and began to transact business in the giant virtual space.

The security people huffed and puffed that it was dangerous but there was simply too much money to be made, so businesses went ahead. The security people would not go down without a fight and insisted on countermeasures. They got two - the network firewall and SSL. The firewall was used to separate the average Fortune 500s network of hundreds of thousands of machines, employees, consultants, and partners from the web at large. SSL was used to protect the network channel between the web server and the client browser. so the network firewall separated the network segments, and SSL in effect encrypted the last mile of many million complex transactions and computations.

In 1995, this seemed like a good security architecture. When we built out these security architectures, the eCommerce market was derided as a toy. Amazon famously lost money for years - losing a little on every transaction but making it up in volume. When the market is nascent, a quaint security architecture offers cost effective protection. But what about 2008? Those cute little eCommerce buggers have grown they even make profits now - market caps measured in the tens of billions, accumulating large cash hordes, no debt, and the largest ones are in better financial shape than the financial services players that kicked sand in their face in the dotcom era.

And its not just eCommerce, the "real" economy Fortune 500 types are all connected as well. Directly and indirectly the Web is seeping into all businesses. Major changes from when the security architecture of the web was built out. But has the security architecture changed to reflect these new business realities? Not a bit of it!

We can use the book value of the IT budget investments and the book value of the Information Security investments to see what kind of Margins of Safety Information Security groups are engineering.

Let's look at some market data, Gary McGraw reviewed the numbers [2] in software security for 2007, breaking down software security sectors like tools and services. Here is a summary of his findings on software security tools:

"One of the most important developments in the software security market can be seen in the tools space which, combined, almost doubled to $150-180 million. Top of list are two major acquisitions that closed in 2007: Watchfire's purchase by IBM (somewhere in the range of $120-150 million on 2006 revenue of $26 million) and SPI Dynamics's purchase by HP (for around $100 million on 2006 revenue of $21.2 million).

...

The black box space was flat in 2007, with IBM/Watchfire checking in at $24.1 million and HP/SPI Dynamics earning $22.3 million. Smaller companies in the space, including Cenzic, Codenomicon, WhiteHat and the like had combined revenues around $12.5 million (a growth of 25%, though Cenzic grew 16% and WhiteHat 52%). Most of the growth "hiccup" in the black box market can be attributed to the serious challenges posed by any acquisition. So far 2008 looks to be back on track from a growth perspective in the black box testing space. The global reach that IBM and HP offer are already making a big difference.

On a more positive note, static analysis tools for code review grew at a healthy clip in 2007 into a $91.9 million dollar market. Fortify was up 83% to $29.2 million. Klocwork grew over 60% to $26 million. Coverity grew over 50% to $27.2 million. Ounce Labs tripled their revenue to $9.5 million."

These are very nice growth numbers, what company doesn't want 83% growth? However, the let's look at the total picture and compare the software security countermeasures against other security mechanisms. Gary McGraw's estimate shows the software security space coming in at $150 Million total, yet we see a company like Checkpoint that won the network security war in 1995 with earnings of around $900 Million! One single network security vendor is 6 times bigger than the entire software security space, in what alternate universe does this make sense?

This is where we begin to see that decisions in the People's Republic of Information Security have no real risk management thinking, they truly are swimming naked and hoping the tide doesn't go out.

Let's look at network assets. Obviously Cisco is the biggest, they earned $39.5 Billion last year. Pretty stellar. So spending $900 Million (Checkpoint) to defined $39.5 Billion seems like a pretty good deal.

Except, let's compare software security spending - last year Microsoft earned $60 Billion, SAP $16 billion, and Oracle $22 Billion. So that is about $98 Billion in just three vendors and you are going to "defend" that with allocating $150 Million worth of software security tools?

On the network side we are buying $900 million of security countermeasures (Checkpoint firewalls) to protect $39.5 billion worth of Cisco gear, about 2.3% of the network investment goes to security.

On the software side, we are buying $150 million of security countermeasures (like static analysis and black box scanners) to protect $98 billion of software (you know the stuff that runs the whole business), roughly coming to about 0.2% of the software budget goes to security.

This is very disturbing. From a prioritization standpoint The People's Republic of Information Security is misaligned by an order of magnitude at least. Next time you read about a data breach, or see an auditor's report with thousands of findings you won't have to wonder how it happened. It happened because Information Security doesn't have its eye on the ball, it invests in network security not because those controls have greater efficacy (the whole point of networks is they are dumb), no, they invest in network firewalls because they bought a bunch in 1995, some more in 1998, and heck they just kept buying them, the Checkpoint rep kept showing up and taking CISOs out to play golf, contracts got renewed, and poof - there goes the security budget.

Consider that software security tools could grow 50% a year for five years and still be half of where Checkpoint is today.

The optimistic way of looking at all this data is that there is major room for growth for software security, if you take network security as a target for a mature industry and assume that 2.3% is a reasonable margin of safety, then the software security space should evolve to around 2% of the software space meaning that it should evolve into a $2 billion space around fifteen times larger than it is today. Unprotected assets will either be protected or will cease to be assets, VCs get your check books ready.

My friend Brian Chess has a nice way of looking at this he says 2007 was the turning point - "the first year there was a bigger market for products that help you get code right than there was for products that help you demonstrate a problem exists."

Now I am not suggesting that Information Security budgets have to be aligned with IT budget one for one, but I do think that looking at the overall IT budget is the starting point. If Information Security has a more cost effective security mechanism they should deploy it, but the starting point should be aligned to the business. Businesses spend most of their money on software, and there are very good reasons - competitive advantage, increased revenues and lower costs. Information Security spends most of its money on network security, and there is no good reason why, except that it was a seemingly good idea in 1995. You really don't have to go beyond the book value of IT investment as a whole versus Information Security to see a stunning disparity. Information Security's job is to deliver a Margin of Safety to the business, but they are not.

To deliver a real Margin of Safety to the business, I propose the following based on a defense in depth mindset. Break the IT budget into the following categories:

- Network: all the resources invested in Cisco, network admins, etc.

- Host: all the resources invested in Unix, Windows, sys admins, etc.

- Applications: all the resources invested in developers, CRM, ERP, etc.

- Data: all the resources invested in databases, DBAs, etc.

Tally up each layer. If you are like most business you will probably find that you spend most on Applications, then Data, then Host, then Network.

Then do the same exercise for the Information Security budget:

- Network: all the resources invested in network firewalls, firewall admins, etc.

- Host: all the resources invested in Vulnerability management, patching, etc.

- Applications: all the resources invested in static analysis, black box scanning etc.

- Data: all the resources invested in database encryption, database monitoring, etc.

Again, tally each up layer. If you are like most business you will find that you spend most on Network, then Host, then Applications, then Data. Congratulations, Information Security, you are diametrically opposed to the business!

Its not just about alignment for alignment's sake, its about applying controls as a way to have a Margin of Safety properly placed so that when not if there is a failure on a higher value asset you are relatively better positioned to deal with it.

The pure statistical approach can only take us so far. Buffett said he would be a lot poorer if all he did was listen to Ben Graham. Book value is great to see the diametric opposition mentioned above, but it doesn't really tell us much about the efficacy of the security mechanisms.

What we do get out of this statistical approach is a screen. The asset value screen filters out subjective opinion and narrows the field for where we need to dig in to do the high value, time consuming analytical work.

The second part of Warren Buffett's career and the second part of this talk leave behind pure statistical measures. In Warren Buffett's case he was joined by a guy named Charlie Munger who talked him out of the pure Ben Graham approach. Charlie Munger has a saying - "a great business at a fair price beats a fair business at a great price." Where Graham was focused on price and margin of safety, Munger wants a fair price but also a high quality business. This lead to Warren Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway investing in companies like Coca Cola, Wells Fargo, and American Express, where the prices were far from dirt cheap (as Graham would have wanted), but the long term returns were outstanding.

In our world of Information Security, we start by aligning our priorities with the business using the thumbnail defense in depth approach, but then we would like to invest in high quality, effective controls.

To get at the notion of control quality and effectiveness, I am going to start part 2 of this talk with a brief history of software. The first web software was just static HTML, but web software really got interesting when developers started creating dynamic websites using CGI an PERL.

Once websites were hooked up to company databases and were not just serving static content, the security people realized they needed a security architecture, and they sprung into action. What they came up was was model that divided the world into "good stuff" which was comprised of all their networks, systems, and data; and then there was everything else the "bad stuff" on the Internet. So job one of the early days Internet security architecture was to separate all your good stuff (i.e. your network) for the bad stuff (the Internet). To do this the security people used a sophisticated tool called Visio to draw a flaming brick wall on the network diagram, and this flaming brick wall was supposed to keep the good stuff and the bad stuff separate.

The security people also realized that the data and session tokens that they served up from their Web server would have to traverse the "bad" neighborhood called the Internet, so they added one more security mechanism to secure the last mile of the transaction - SSL between the browser and the Web server.

And this was the state of the art security architecture used circa 1995 to protect the earliest dynamic web applications.

What happened next was that the dotcom boom started to happen and businesses realized they could make some real money on the Web, the web apps started to get more sophisticated, more personalization, richer session experiences and so on. This led the Java people to create JSP and the Microsoft people to create ASP, and of course the PERL people to create even greasier PERL scripts, all of this in the effort to pooling resources and sessions on the Web server. The security people defended this new application programming model with network firewall and SSL.

Around 1998, developers began building out more distributed N tier or 3 tier applications that separated the business logic layer, the presentation layer and the data access layer. Among other things, your web application could seamlessly integrate data from multiple back ends systems. Let's say you have pricing data in Oracle, order data in SAP, and customer data in a Mainframe. You write separate data access objects, apply business logic in the middle tier and then you tie it all together in a friendly user interface. At this point the web applications are beginning to integrate across departments and geographic boundaries, huge critical chunks of the business are now connected to the web. How did the security people defend this part of the business? They applied the same 1995 security architecture - network firewall and SSL.

Around 1999-2000 timeframe businesses relied on web applications for major parts of the revenue, and the apps were built in different technologies like Java and Microsoft technologies, but the customer didn't care (still doesn't), the customer wanted (and still wants) data access and functionality. So to integrate the disparate technologies, SOAP and XML were deployed so that Microsoft could talk to Java and so Websphere could talk to Weblogic and so on. And, oh yes, SOAP and XML were used to connect B2B networks so partners in a supply chain and business process can exchange data and interoperate. SOAP and XML present a fundamentally new programming model based on a message document style integration, where XML is used to mesh together data and functionality across platforms. SOAP and XML have no security model by default for authentication, authorization, and confidentiality. How did the security people deal with this? They kept the security architecture the same as they had in 1995 - network firewalls and SSL.

The software world did not stop innovating in 2000 of course, in the last few years we have seen Web services and XML form the basis of baroque and powerful SOAs and simple REST applications. We have seen Web 2.0 come on the scene, and entirely new networked applications built on top of that.

What we have not seen, is a single meaningful change in security architecture in 13 years. Developers have evolved, businesses have increasingly bet their entire business models on the web and they have increased security budgets. But what has the security architecture as its deployed in the field got to show for all of this? More firewalls and more SSL connections.

Since Information Security has proven incapable of evolving, it is time to learn from a discipline that has mastered innovation - software development, and yes, I will step back in case the lightning bolts hits.

What does software development focus on these days? Well, let's look at Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), all hype aside I look at SOA as a set of technologies that delivers three things:

Virtualization: we want Beijing, Bangalore and Boston to communicate.

Interoperability: we want our .Net stuff to talk to our java stuff.

Reusability: how many order/claim/pricing/customer systems does one company need?

To build out their SOA, developers separated the application interface from its implementation. So you can host the interface in a variety of locations, but its separate from the application logic and data.

This is also a useful trick for putting services like SOAP through the firewall. SOAP was designed as a firewall friendly protocol. When SOAP first came out, Bruce Schneier said calling SOAP a firewall friendly protocol is like having a skull friendly bullet. Which is a great line and explains why his books fly off the shelves, it does not explain, why security people think an architecture designed in 1995 is the one we should be using today. Maybe the problem is not that the developers figured out how to go through the firewall to get the data their customers want, maybe the problem is that the firewall is the sum total of the security architecture, and it never adapted.

A big part of this problem is that we have left Newton's world behind and entered Einstein's universe. Mainframes are Newton’s world, we have THE computer, THE price, THE record and so on.

As Pat Helland explained [4,5], Mainframes are Newron's world, but Distributed computing is Einstein’s world. More specifically in the Einstein world of distributed computing - "Computers don’t make decisions, computers try to make decisions." Our computers don't really make a decision, they say you can buy this book from Amazon at this price, we have it in stock and will deliver on such and such a date. But the warehouse runs out, the pallet gets dropped in the warehouse, your boo is crushed, and the package is stolen off your front step. The computer confirmed your transaction, but the real world intervened.

So we don't have iron clad decisions, instead its all about Memories (last time I checked your book was in stock), Guesses (we should be able to ship on this date) and Apologies (sorry the forklift ran over your book)

Translating this into security, security mechanisms don’t make policy-based decisions, security mechanisms try to make policy-based decisions

Some examples of memories, guesses and apologies in security

Memories

Security Policies - for example Triple A policy

Triple A policies can memorize a map of subjects, objects, and roles. They can even replicate these memories and play them back at runtime to try to make policy enforcement decisions.

Guesses

Security Policy Enforcement Decision

Unfortunately, while the policy enforcement decisions can be based on memorized logic, the decision itself is still a guess, even in the case of Triple A. Any guesses why? Because, the authentication process itself is a guess. It happens to be a guess that you then bind to a principal so it looks very official once you bind your guess to a Kerberos ticket or SAML assertion, but it still a guess.

Apologies

Giant Global Bank is sorry your account was compromised!

And this leads to lots and lots of apologies by companies with poor access control models.

Some additional examples of information security memories, guesses and apologies.

Example Memories - Triple A Security Policies, Audit logs, User account information , Authorization Logic - concrete mapping Subject, Resource, Condition, Action

Example Guesses - Security Policy Enforcement Decision Points, Authentication Logic, Monitoring, detection, fraud response

Example Apologies - Identity Management tools - provisioning, deprovisioning, Reimburse customer for fraud losses, Compensating Transaction - Giant Global Bank is still sorry your account was compromised!

The point of this is that security memories, guesses and apologies utilize different processes, different people, and different capabilities to be effective.

What trends can we identify to lead us toward better qualitative analysis based on the best practices of virtualization, interoperability and reusability.

Virtualization

Finding Vulnerabilities in a Virtualized World is a problem because applications are more configured than coded. Runtime behavior and structure not apparent due to weak typing and inversion of control.

Result - finding bugs becomes harder. Action - use screens to target finding time and resources

Fixing Vulnerabilities in a Virtualized World is a problem because how do I locate the controls when interfaces run in Beijing, Bangalore and Boston?

Result - synchronization and/or replication of security policy is problematic. Action - decentralized policy enforcement points and policy decision points.

Interoperability

Finding interoperable vulnerabilities

XSS - Javascript is an equal opportunity offender - interoperability for developers and attackers alike.

Fixing interoperable vulnerabilities

App servers, ESBs, and services are the attacker’s red carpet to your enterprise, right into your book of business. Interoperable access control can be leveraged across the enterprise.

Use XML signature for authentication and integrity

…

Use XML encryption to protect sensitive data, don't pass sensitive data in the clear

My Credit Card Number

Encrypt the data

…

XNQ0a4legiie5mWFxO6CQkk2hhldYNnKroObue/LXS/VYtvaTgMbCujhGExDi+vlkU//Qc2/T6mx0WVTmBMT3z8rogha8jD+nS9Zr2Bc3CwoTh2lh8wL3D0DEu91iwJT9JByLGXvt7v9lyuxK0ooDOYEClsH974CPmTs3tBC+GQ=

To ensure that these controls are applied use automated tools like static analysis to scan for security mechanism use and coverage.

In terms of reusability findings and fixes consider two bug findings

Session management bug: session state is passed around to every component, service and user. Makes for many high priority findings in audit report, also the fix is required on virtually every program

Data validation bug: Data access object (DAO) has a SQL injection hole. One major high priority finding in report. DAO used by many business logic classes, one fix location serves many classes

To bring these factors together, I generally use a scorecard index [6], so you can measure such things as transport security, message security, threat protection and so on. The hard work in developing the index is developing a useful scale. A scale for XML tokens could use the following

0: no token

1: hashed token

2: hashed and signed token

3: hashed and signed token from standard authoritative source

An example scale for XML validation could use:

0: no validation

1: schema validation

2: schema validation against hardened schema

3: schema validation against standard, hardened schema

These indexed scales are used to show maturity across the factors in the scorecard. The first part of the talk described value, the value assessment is used to focus time and effort on high value assets. The value assessment can be determined quantitatively. There is hard analytical work to qualitatively determine the scorecard, index, and scales, the quantitative value assessment is used to screen out high value targets for these endeavors. The scoring index is used to track progress and improve quality over time. In the best case scenario, automated tools are used to perform the checks described in the index, and once security is automated just like software developers we may see security innovation make progress in years not decades.

Thank you for your time.

1 "Risk Management is where the Money Is" by Dan Geer, http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.06.html

2 Berkshire Hathaway 2007 Shareholder Letter by Warren Buffett, http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2007ltr.pdf

3 "Software [In]security: Software Security Demand Rising, by Gary McGraw

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1237978

4 "SOA and Newton's Universe" by Pat Helland, http://blogs.msdn.com/pathelland/archive/2007/05/20/soa-and-newton-s-universe.aspx

5 "Memories, Guesses and Apologies" by Pat Helland, http://blogs.msdn.com/pathelland/archive/2007/05/15/memories-guesses-and-apologies.aspx

6 "Web Servicres Security Checklist" by Gunnar Peterson, http://arctecgroup.net/pdf/WebServicesSecurityChecklist.pdf

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!

Dissecting the Latest Koobface Facebook Campaign

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:08:12 +0000

The latest Koobface malware campaign at Facebook, is once again exposing a diverse ecosystem worth assessing in times of active migration to alternative ISPs tolerating or conveniently ignoring the malicious activities courtesy of their customers. The -- now removed -- binaries that the dropper was requesting were hosted at the American International Baseball Club in Vienna, indicating a compromise.

us.geocities .com/adanbates84/index.htm
lostart .info/js/js.js (79.132.211.51)
off34 .com/go/fb.php (79.132.211.51)
youtube-spyvideo .com/youtube_file.html (58.241.255.37)
ahdirz .com/movie1.php?id=638&n=teen (208.85.181.69)
top100clipz .com/m6/movie1.php?id=638&n=teen (208.85.181.67)
hq-vidz .com/movie1.php?id=638&n=teen (208.85.181.68)

The dropper then phones back home to : f071108 .com/fb/first.php (79.132.211.50) with the binaries hosted at a legitimate site that's been compromised :

aibcvienna.org/youtube/ bnsetup24.exe
aibcvienna.org/youtube/ tinyproxy.exe

Related fake Youtube domains participating :
catshof .com (79.132.211.51)
youtube-spy .info (94.102.60.119)
youtubehof .net (218.93.205.30)
youtube-spyvideo .com (58.241.255.37)
yyyaaaahhhhoooo.ocom .pl (67.15.104.83)
youtube-x-files .com (94.102.60.119)

The development of cybercrime platforms utilizing legitimate infrastructure only, has always been in the works. With spamming systems relying exclusively on the automatically registered email accounts at free web based providers, to the automatic bulk registration of hundreds of thousands of domains enjoying a particular domain registrar's weak anti-abuse policies, it would be interesting to monitor whether marginal thinking or improved OPSEC relying on compromised hosts will be favored in 2009.

Related posts:
Fake YouTube Site Serving Flash Exploits
Facebook Malware Campaigns Rotating Tactics
Phishing Campaign Spreading Across Facebook
Large Scale MySpace Phishing Attack
Update on the MySpace Phishing Campaign
MySpace Phishers Now Targeting Facebook
MySpace Hosting MySpace Phishing Profiles

Hosting meets the cloud

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:38:27 +0000

I’m out at The 451 Group Client Conference in Boston, lovely Boston. It’s been over ten years since I lived here, but somehow Boston always has a feel of home.

After meetings and calls, I was finally able to slip into a conference session – just in time to catch uber-smart analysts Rachel Chalmers (The 451 Group) and Dan Golding (Tier1 Research) engage in a lively and not-so-mock debate on “Hosting Meets the Cloud”.

Now this doesn’t cover the entire debate – and part II is coming tomorrow. But what it does cover is the most interesting questions (to me) and paraphrase the points made by the analysts. I thought they both had very interesting points and more similarities than differences in the end; the real difference is how they thought about the issues and through what lens – for Rachel it was the enterprise and for Dan it was managed hosting providers. (image from inmagine)

Question: What is a cloud and why?

Dan: Shared infrastructure leveraged/run by third parties for the benefit of enterprises, developers, etc. This is not a new idea – just recently “rebranded.” Given all the discussion and disagreement over this now, what will the cloud end up looking like?

Rachel: The cloud is “IT infrastructure as a service” down to the level of a server operating system. Take the example of Amazon web services – in this case it’s not just the infrastructure but also the internal processes built around service delivery, e.g., provisioning, that are being exposed as a commodity to external customers.

Dan’s Question for Rachel: In your opinion, how much is the cloud a fad versus CIOs really trying to solve a problem?

Rachel: For the practical, roll-up-your-sleeves types of CIOs – those coming up from the engineering ranks – that I talk to, the cloud is real, as opposed to SOA and middleware.

What about “internal” cloud computing – built and maintained by an enterprise versus a third-party provider?

Dan: Cloud computing is done by providers for customers. Certainly there are enterprises that have made internal computing investments, e.g., for publishing, large-scale phone systems, etc - but they were stupid ideas made by companies that have too much money. A better question here is does it make any sense for an enterprise to create their own cloud? While an enterprise can play at it, they can’t do it cost-effectively, not in a way that a third party provider can do it.

Rachel: Many CIOs have “managed-hoster” envy – for things like chargeback and billing that hosters understand a do better. Of course there has been a rise in automation and virtualization tools in the enterprise which may not be as efficient and built for scalability as a hoster can achieve, but what is important is that they are customized/specialized for that business.

Dan: Can you give a specific example of optimization to make it worthwhile for enterprises to do it themselves?

Rachel: One example is sovereignty. The privacy laws around financial and healthcare information are not the same everywhere. Clouds and their geographically-dispersed data centers don’t necessarily have “national” borders. This is definitely a concern for the CIO that has to comply with regulations in their industry around privacy protection, for instance. Another example is security. Dow Chemical does a lot of work via joint ventures and has a need to provide but lock down desktops given to contractors as corporate workspaces. For their level of security, they need to “own” their computing resources.

Dan: But why can’t someone like SunGard provide that as they do for many other large companies?

Rachel: It comes down to a question of trust.

Do people trust their hosting providers?

Dan: Yes. Whether it’s for a content delivery network or collocation, hosting the customers of hosting providers are some of the largest companies in the world in industries like energy and financial services. Give me a case when there was a major security issue with a hosting company. In fact, managed hosting providers usually provide better security than enterprises are capable of.

And a question provided by an attendee from EMC: A few years ago, this would have been a grid discussion. How is the cloud different?

Rachel: Grid computing ended up being applicable only for niches – which I predicted. The real opportunity for everyone else with the cloud only comes up when you combine the kinds of automation tools (originally developed for grid computing) with x86 virtualization.

Dan: I agree. Grid was a niche play. There were very few orgs that needed it and that the economics worked for. There were very few enterprises for whom it made sense to build their own for. The cloud is shared/leveraged versus grid computing. It economically makes sense in a way grid never did.

Distributed DoS attacks surging in scale, ISPs report

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Massive distributed denial-of-service attacks against Internet service providers and their customers doubled in intensity over the past year, according to a security survey of 66 global ISPs.

Three Ways Internet Crime Has Changed

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Gone are the days when most hackers were looking for fame with a splashy, large-scale attack on a network that made headlines. Today's cybercriminals are quietly taking over vulnerable web sites as part of an elaborate process in the underground economy.