Phishing
is the attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
I dumped some recent samples onto
pastebin
You'll see plays on topics like
- target credit card breach
- Facebook
- linked in
- Medicare
- Job postings
- credit reports
- your bank
- UPS shipments
- FedEx shipments
- so many more....
Protecting yourself is simpler than you think. Here are some simple steps I recommend ...
- If you were not expecting the email be extra cautious
- even if you were expecting an email still check the basics below
- hover over the email or click reply and verify the sender is a legit address
- hover over or copy and paste links and verify they are legit
- better yet resist clicking on any link at all, instead manually type the URL you want and go to the site on your own terms
- don't open attachments, legit websites won't send them ... If you are waiting on something , manually go to the website , login, and check there
Also keep in mind the same topics are starting to apply to text messages too. Don't click on links.
What's the worst that could happen? Think ...
- virus on your PC
- virus on your phone
- identify theft
- stolen password
- stolen credit card
- bad bad things ...
Stay safe out there !
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Security as a Career
Career and soul searching ? In high school and just starting to think about college? In college for computer science but not sure what you want your first job to be? Been working in IT for many years but looking for something else?
Security has quickly become a viable option with a promising outlook. From my experience I see this arena as wide open and struggling to find strong talent with a dedication to security.
With all the news about Heartbleed, Shellshock, Samdworm, and Poodle ... Plus all the stories about Russian espionage , Chinese hacktivism, Retail outlet POS breaches, etc .., it's clear to me that when looking at the industry as a whole the bad guys are winning.
Thus we need you to step up and help build and and strengthen the army of good guys!
If your concerned about where or how you'd fit in, don't be. The good news is I am certain no matter what your area of expertise is, there is a need for you to step up and solidify the security in that area.
Security can be a daunting task, because the landscape is constantly changing. The required skillset is ever growing. You need to know about and manage all network types, all applications, all operating systems, etc.
Whatever your skill or background, as long as you're willing to get excited about security, be energetic, and have a desire to learn ... then consider making Security a career choice. The industry as a whole needs you.
If you're not up for the move quite yet, at a minimum you should learn security and start using it daily in your current role. Start writing more secure code. Start closing the wholes in your network. Start locking down your servers. Start patching your applications. Stay on top of your game and read the security news/blogs. Be that pro-active voice in your team meetings suggesting changes to improve security.
I look forward to seeing your positive contributions in action!
Bonus Blogging!
Wondering where to get started? Here's my tips:
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
Security has quickly become a viable option with a promising outlook. From my experience I see this arena as wide open and struggling to find strong talent with a dedication to security.
With all the news about Heartbleed, Shellshock, Samdworm, and Poodle ... Plus all the stories about Russian espionage , Chinese hacktivism, Retail outlet POS breaches, etc .., it's clear to me that when looking at the industry as a whole the bad guys are winning.
Thus we need you to step up and help build and and strengthen the army of good guys!
If your concerned about where or how you'd fit in, don't be. The good news is I am certain no matter what your area of expertise is, there is a need for you to step up and solidify the security in that area.
- Are you a database guru? Know your SQL inside and out? Great! Nearly all of the industries information that needs protecting is stored in a database, so securing them is crucial!
- Are you a website guru? Know your forms, JavaScript, etc? Awesome! Websites are the prime target for most attacks because of their public exposure to the world. And currently there are too many people building them, many which don't truly understand what they're doing ... They need your help to understand attacks and mitigate them.
- Are you an application guru? Building windows apps, intranet sites, Sharepoint pages, etc? Sweet. That is one of the biggest holes in our industry right now is once you're beyond the firewalls and inside the network. Insider attacks are generally more costly to a company than any other attack ... And in general internal apps are given the Least scrutiny and most lax in terms of security ... so they certainly need your help understand in the basics of secure development !
- Are you a network guru? If you're familiar with routers, switches, and firewalls then it's a pretty logical leap to make to the security realm. Your help would be greatly appreciated!
- Are you a system administrator? Familiar with patching servers, setting up accounts and permissions? Your type of knowledge is greatly needed in the security arena.
- Are you more of the management type? There are lots of opportunities to lead and coordinate Security Incident response events, to perform Risk Management, deal with compliance and auditing. If you like those things your help is needed!
- Are you an Assembly programmer? You could jump right into Malware analysis!
- Are you a help desk/custom service type person? You could get involved in the day to day action of Security Operations!
Security can be a daunting task, because the landscape is constantly changing. The required skillset is ever growing. You need to know about and manage all network types, all applications, all operating systems, etc.
Whatever your skill or background, as long as you're willing to get excited about security, be energetic, and have a desire to learn ... then consider making Security a career choice. The industry as a whole needs you.
If you're not up for the move quite yet, at a minimum you should learn security and start using it daily in your current role. Start writing more secure code. Start closing the wholes in your network. Start locking down your servers. Start patching your applications. Stay on top of your game and read the security news/blogs. Be that pro-active voice in your team meetings suggesting changes to improve security.
I look forward to seeing your positive contributions in action!
Bonus Blogging!
Wondering where to get started? Here's my tips:
- Learn Networking & the OSI model and play with a tool called Wireshark
- Once you're comfortable with that, get VMWare Workstation or Oracle Virtual Box installed
- Download Kali Linux in a VM and experiment with all it's tools such as starting with nmap
- After a while, consider getting other older OS's in a VM, then using Kali Linux's metasploit software against those Old OS's to practice understanding how exploits work
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
What is the 'Input' in Input Validation?
What is the 'Input' in Input Validation?
By Justin C Miller
Posted 9/10/2014
You are a programmer. You've heard of those nasty words like SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and Buffer Overflow. You've learned that a key step to preventing them is to perform Input Validation. You sorta know how to do that with things like ...
- Strongly Typed data
- Whitelisting
- Regular Expressions
- Max and Min length checks
You might even be a bit further ahead in the game and know about Security focused encoding libraries like WPL, Coverity Security Library, or the OWASP Reform library.
But an even more important question that I think a lot of developers overlook is the "What INPUT do I apply this validation to?"
The simple answer is ALL INPUT.
The more complicated question becomes, "What is input?"
You always validate the input of a TEXTBOX. If you are a web developer you probably also know that people like to tinker with QUERY STRING PARAMETERS so you validate them. Is that it? Are we done? Is my application safe?
Hopefully your school, or your PCI auditor, or your teammates taught you better. There's a lot more work to do.
Some of the simpler ones to remember involve websites. COOKIES for example are easy to modify (for Internet Explorer all you need is Notepad) so you better validate them. URLS themself should also be validated before used since they're freely modifiable by any user in the address bar of their browser. Why validate? Imagine if I used a cookie value to query the database for a user record. Sounds ripe for SQL Injection. Or imagine if I displayed the current Url onto the screen of an error page. Sounds like a chance for using XSS to inject an iframe.
If you've ever heard of tools like TamperData, Burp, or Fiddler you'll know that HIDDEN FIELDS on your website can also be modified so you better validate them. And those tools let you modify HTTP HEADERS like REFERRER and USER AGENT so you better validate them before they're used. Not convinced its necessary? Imagine you base a SQL query off a hidden field or recording the referrer in a table for analytics. Sounds like SQL injection is in play. Are you checking the user agent to validate what browsers you support and then displaying the user agent if you rejected them? Sounds like XSS could occur.
Other ones that might get overlooked include CHECKBOXES, RADIO BUTTONS, and DROP DOWNS. Client side it kinda seems like these are non-editable. But truth is if you have any of those free tampering tools, you can change the values. Why care? I'm guessing you are querying the database based on their values so SQL injection is in play and this you better validate them.
In a Windows Form application you might need a DATAGRID that gives the user the feel they are directly editing a SQL table. You better perform input validation here since you touching the database.
VIEW STATE on a web page can be messed with thus you better validate and treat it as input to prevent attacks.
I also would not trust SESSION STATE data. Who knows where it came from or how it got filled. If you're querying you database based on information you had saved in the session, I'd be sure to validate it and prevent SQL Injection.
Another crazy one I've seen before that is worth considering is HTML CONTROL ATTRIBUTES. For example, if you're writing any of your code's logic based on what is in the control's CLASS attribute, be careful ... you might open the door to one of these attacks and this you better validate and treat it as input.
Another one I've seen that is commonly overlooked is WEB SERVICE REQUEST PARAMETERS, XML, etc. To me a call to a web service is the equivalent of a user filling in a bunch of textboxes and hitting submit, thus you better validate it to prevent attacks. Otherwise an attacker may try to cause a buffer overflow and get their malicious code to run on your server.
I've been talking a lot about websites, but there are reasons to be concerned with internal attacks by employees or attacks that can occur once the bad guy got inside your network or even attacks coming in from 3rd parties and their system integrations. Some examples of where this comes into play include a DATA IMPORT you might do from a CSV, or from an FTP'd file, or from data brought in by a job or SSIS package. Imagine if the feed you received and saved into your database table was information you displayed on your e-Commerce product page of your website. Sounds like a ripe opportunity to perform some XSS and inject and iframe to my evil site. Better validate!
s What if your program queries a user-accessible folder and READS IN FILES it finds? I wouldn't trust that data ... It could be used cause a buffer overflow and write over the program counter and execute malicious code.
If you are into writing scripts and command line programs don't forget to validate the COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS and FLAGS because they could be used for buffer overflows.
Have an open mind and remember that input comes in many forms, all of which should be validated. Remember all applications including Web apps, Windows apps, scripts, web services, and many more all require input validation. Remember when coding that no user can be trusted, not a guest, not an employee, not IT staff, not an administrator ... So validate all their input every time! Remember also that no data should be trusted, doesn't matter if it was inputted on a screen, read in from a CSV file, or is sent to you as XML in a nightly job ... It should all be validated.
In summary here is a good start to a list of what input requires validation and protection against things such as SQL Injection and XSS and Buffer Overflow
- Form data such as:
--- Textbox
--- Checkbox
--- Radio button
--- Drop down
--- Data Grids
- Hidden Fields
- Script Parameters
- Command Line Arguments
- Data from a file (e.g. CSV)
- Data from another source
- Data Imported (e.g. SSIS packages)
- Website specifics such as:
--- URLs
--- Query Strings
--- Cookies
--- Session State
--- View State
--- Http Headers such as:
------ User agent
------ Referrer
--- Html attributes such as:
------ Class
------ Style
- Web Service request parameters
Happy coding!
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
By Justin C Miller
Posted 9/10/2014
You are a programmer. You've heard of those nasty words like SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and Buffer Overflow. You've learned that a key step to preventing them is to perform Input Validation. You sorta know how to do that with things like ...
- Strongly Typed data
- Whitelisting
- Regular Expressions
- Max and Min length checks
You might even be a bit further ahead in the game and know about Security focused encoding libraries like WPL, Coverity Security Library, or the OWASP Reform library.
But an even more important question that I think a lot of developers overlook is the "What INPUT do I apply this validation to?"
The simple answer is ALL INPUT.
The more complicated question becomes, "What is input?"
You always validate the input of a TEXTBOX. If you are a web developer you probably also know that people like to tinker with QUERY STRING PARAMETERS so you validate them. Is that it? Are we done? Is my application safe?
Hopefully your school, or your PCI auditor, or your teammates taught you better. There's a lot more work to do.
Some of the simpler ones to remember involve websites. COOKIES for example are easy to modify (for Internet Explorer all you need is Notepad) so you better validate them. URLS themself should also be validated before used since they're freely modifiable by any user in the address bar of their browser. Why validate? Imagine if I used a cookie value to query the database for a user record. Sounds ripe for SQL Injection. Or imagine if I displayed the current Url onto the screen of an error page. Sounds like a chance for using XSS to inject an iframe.
If you've ever heard of tools like TamperData, Burp, or Fiddler you'll know that HIDDEN FIELDS on your website can also be modified so you better validate them. And those tools let you modify HTTP HEADERS like REFERRER and USER AGENT so you better validate them before they're used. Not convinced its necessary? Imagine you base a SQL query off a hidden field or recording the referrer in a table for analytics. Sounds like SQL injection is in play. Are you checking the user agent to validate what browsers you support and then displaying the user agent if you rejected them? Sounds like XSS could occur.
Other ones that might get overlooked include CHECKBOXES, RADIO BUTTONS, and DROP DOWNS. Client side it kinda seems like these are non-editable. But truth is if you have any of those free tampering tools, you can change the values. Why care? I'm guessing you are querying the database based on their values so SQL injection is in play and this you better validate them.
In a Windows Form application you might need a DATAGRID that gives the user the feel they are directly editing a SQL table. You better perform input validation here since you touching the database.
VIEW STATE on a web page can be messed with thus you better validate and treat it as input to prevent attacks.
I also would not trust SESSION STATE data. Who knows where it came from or how it got filled. If you're querying you database based on information you had saved in the session, I'd be sure to validate it and prevent SQL Injection.
Another crazy one I've seen before that is worth considering is HTML CONTROL ATTRIBUTES. For example, if you're writing any of your code's logic based on what is in the control's CLASS attribute, be careful ... you might open the door to one of these attacks and this you better validate and treat it as input.
Another one I've seen that is commonly overlooked is WEB SERVICE REQUEST PARAMETERS, XML, etc. To me a call to a web service is the equivalent of a user filling in a bunch of textboxes and hitting submit, thus you better validate it to prevent attacks. Otherwise an attacker may try to cause a buffer overflow and get their malicious code to run on your server.
I've been talking a lot about websites, but there are reasons to be concerned with internal attacks by employees or attacks that can occur once the bad guy got inside your network or even attacks coming in from 3rd parties and their system integrations. Some examples of where this comes into play include a DATA IMPORT you might do from a CSV, or from an FTP'd file, or from data brought in by a job or SSIS package. Imagine if the feed you received and saved into your database table was information you displayed on your e-Commerce product page of your website. Sounds like a ripe opportunity to perform some XSS and inject and iframe to my evil site. Better validate!
s What if your program queries a user-accessible folder and READS IN FILES it finds? I wouldn't trust that data ... It could be used cause a buffer overflow and write over the program counter and execute malicious code.
If you are into writing scripts and command line programs don't forget to validate the COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS and FLAGS because they could be used for buffer overflows.
Have an open mind and remember that input comes in many forms, all of which should be validated. Remember all applications including Web apps, Windows apps, scripts, web services, and many more all require input validation. Remember when coding that no user can be trusted, not a guest, not an employee, not IT staff, not an administrator ... So validate all their input every time! Remember also that no data should be trusted, doesn't matter if it was inputted on a screen, read in from a CSV file, or is sent to you as XML in a nightly job ... It should all be validated.
In summary here is a good start to a list of what input requires validation and protection against things such as SQL Injection and XSS and Buffer Overflow
- Form data such as:
--- Textbox
--- Checkbox
--- Radio button
--- Drop down
--- Data Grids
- Hidden Fields
- Script Parameters
- Command Line Arguments
- Data from a file (e.g. CSV)
- Data from another source
- Data Imported (e.g. SSIS packages)
- Website specifics such as:
--- URLs
--- Query Strings
--- Cookies
--- Session State
--- View State
--- Http Headers such as:
------ User agent
------ Referrer
--- Html attributes such as:
------ Class
------ Style
- Web Service request parameters
Happy coding!
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
You Can't Protect What You Don't Know
You Can't Protect What You Don't Know
By Justin C Miller
Posted 9/3/2014
Imagine you're placed into a crowd of people at a park and asked to make sure that none of the peoples' PII they have on them escapes the park. The problem is you don't know which people have PII with them and which don't. And you also don't know what types of PII they might be carrying (drivers license? Credit card? Medicare card? Social security card? A post-it note with their bank pin #?). And you don't know where they've stored their PII (in a purse? On their iPhone? Rolled up in a ball in their pocket?). And for that matter of the people in the crowd you don't even know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
Welcome to the world of information security! Protecting stuff you don't know or understand is messy, perhaps impossible.
In order to protect your environment you need to know it inside and out, better than any other person or department in your company. You need the big picture understanding of what you have, how important each thing you have is, and how at risk each item is.
I've built a starter list of 10 lists of things to know in order to protect adequately protect your environment. I encourage you to dig deeper and collect even more information, but this should be a good start for you ... Also it's worth noting that if you're doing ITIL and Change Management correctly then you should already have a beautiful CMDB that has a lot of this information. But if you don't, here are some places to start ...
1.) Subnets - what does your network topology look like?
2.) Servers - in each subnet what servers exist?
3.) Applications - what is each server used for, what applications are running?
4.) Network devices - what devices exist that allow your servers to talk?
5.) Workstations - what user devices exist
6.) Users - what users login to your systems?
7.) External Entities - what other applications, users, servers, etc play a role in your environment but exist outside your realm? (Examples: external hosting, cloud services, business partners)
8.) Public Knowledge - recon yourself from the outside and determine what information is already public knowledge (Examples: google search results, public records, externally exposed devices)
9.) Enemies - know who might have a non-positive attitude towards you, including competitors, political foes, past employees, etc
10.) Vulnerabilities - using all the information above such as application versions, server operating systems, and also vulnerability scans of your environment to determine a list what vulnerabilities exist in your environment
Having information like the 10 lists above will become crucial reference points as you attempt to manage your next incident or socialize your next policy or perform your next risk assessment. You can't protect what you don't know ... So get out there and start KNOWING :-)
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
By Justin C Miller
Posted 9/3/2014
Imagine you're placed into a crowd of people at a park and asked to make sure that none of the peoples' PII they have on them escapes the park. The problem is you don't know which people have PII with them and which don't. And you also don't know what types of PII they might be carrying (drivers license? Credit card? Medicare card? Social security card? A post-it note with their bank pin #?). And you don't know where they've stored their PII (in a purse? On their iPhone? Rolled up in a ball in their pocket?). And for that matter of the people in the crowd you don't even know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
Welcome to the world of information security! Protecting stuff you don't know or understand is messy, perhaps impossible.
In order to protect your environment you need to know it inside and out, better than any other person or department in your company. You need the big picture understanding of what you have, how important each thing you have is, and how at risk each item is.
I've built a starter list of 10 lists of things to know in order to protect adequately protect your environment. I encourage you to dig deeper and collect even more information, but this should be a good start for you ... Also it's worth noting that if you're doing ITIL and Change Management correctly then you should already have a beautiful CMDB that has a lot of this information. But if you don't, here are some places to start ...
1.) Subnets - what does your network topology look like?
2.) Servers - in each subnet what servers exist?
3.) Applications - what is each server used for, what applications are running?
4.) Network devices - what devices exist that allow your servers to talk?
5.) Workstations - what user devices exist
6.) Users - what users login to your systems?
7.) External Entities - what other applications, users, servers, etc play a role in your environment but exist outside your realm? (Examples: external hosting, cloud services, business partners)
8.) Public Knowledge - recon yourself from the outside and determine what information is already public knowledge (Examples: google search results, public records, externally exposed devices)
9.) Enemies - know who might have a non-positive attitude towards you, including competitors, political foes, past employees, etc
10.) Vulnerabilities - using all the information above such as application versions, server operating systems, and also vulnerability scans of your environment to determine a list what vulnerabilities exist in your environment
Having information like the 10 lists above will become crucial reference points as you attempt to manage your next incident or socialize your next policy or perform your next risk assessment. You can't protect what you don't know ... So get out there and start KNOWING :-)
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
Monday, September 1, 2014
Security Implications of Agile vs Waterfall
Security Implications of Agile vs Waterfall
By Justin C Miller
Posted 9/1/2014
Projects are a necessity in the corporate world. They provide a means for justification and cost estimation. They give guidance and put standards around big changes. They ensure something is built to be efficient and beneficial and well tested. They provide a means to look back, reflect, and improve for the next time.
Two of the more common methodologies you'll find are Waterfall and Agile.
In waterfall you do things in sequence one after another such as requirements, design, development, testing, and release. In general you end up with large volumes of documentation and a lengthy but thorough process. There tends to also be the risk that you'll build something big only to find out when you pass it off that it's no longer what the business wanted.
In Agile you do all those things, but in small tiny waves. In general you end up with very little documentation but you see results almost immediately. You can eliminate the risk of big surprises because the business is involved during each of those tiny waves.
So, a question you might contemplate is in terms of IT Security, does it matter whether my company is using Agile or Waterfall?
I contend that YES, the choice your company makes for Project Methodology has big implications on your company's IT security. I'll skip the dance and games and get straight to the point ... Agile has become a necessity in the corporate world if you're hoping to ensure your environment is secure.
Agile builds your massively complex software in small tiny waves, perhaps 2-4 weeks at a time.
Here are 5 examples of why Agile promotes a more secure environment than Waterfall ever will ...
1.) In Agile there are fewer features built at a time thus it easier to test, and testing is an important step in finding security vulnerabilities. Imagine being asked to test whether the security groups are configured correctly in your application's 10 administrative screens, each of which have 50 tests cases each. Would you be more likely to get it right if you had to test one of the screens/50 test cases at a time, or if you had to test all 10 screens and 500 test cases at once ? Short and sweet means you can concentrate more and feel less stressed and time constrained and get it right.
2.) There are fewer lines of code to review at a time, thus the peer reviews of the code are going to be done more thoroughly and get a good solid look. I've seen it happen way too many times where in your waterfall project you just get done creating 100's of code files and 1000s of lines of code, and now your code review becomes weak and pathetic ... because you'll NEVER get a developer to review 100's of files and 1000s of lines of code in one shot. But in an Agile scenario it is much more realistic to expect them to view a handful of files and a few lines of code and review it correctly.
3.) One of the key aspects of IT security is code complexity. The simpler the code, the easier it is to secure, the easier it is to understand and the less likely it is to contain a mistake. Thus Agile brings big benefits again because you're writing smaller chunks of code that are less complex and thus by default easier to secure.
4.) Waterfall projects have a history of lasting months if not years from inception till completion. If you've been paying attention to the current state of IT security then you know that things change much quicker than that in our arena. Therefore if you start a project on a certain version of software using certain defense techniques, by the time the project is complete the vendor has probably released numerous software updates, security patches, and even the techniques used to prevent and mitigate vulnerabilities may have changed. Thus by the time a Waterfall project is deployed it's likely already old and out of date and needing an upgrade. Agile on the other hand is pushing out fixes every few weeks and by definition allowing for changing requirements, not just changing business requirements but also changing security requirements. If a patch or vulnerability needs a quick fix, you're able to toss it into the backlog as a feature on the next wave. With Waterfall you'll have a nightmare of a time trying to work it in, and things that get pushed to the backlog in Waterfall typically wait until the project is completely over. Too long in our world.
5.) The biggest, and perhaps least obvious advantage that Agile brings to the table over waterfall is a mindset. You go from moving slow, turning the Titanic, to moving swiftly, piece-mealing it to get the job done quickly. I've seen it many times already where those companies stuck in the mindset of Waterfall are the same companies that struggle to get security patching done because they want to plan it for a month, test it for another month or two, then deploy after a few weeks of Change Advisory board discussions. This of course leaves your company open and vulnerable while you're waiting for the process to play out. The Waterfall mindset also leads to end-of-life software hanging out there because the project is just too large and intense to upgrade ... which obviously is a huge security risk. The Waterfall mindset also leads to known risks being pushed off, delayed, or kicked down the road into the next project. That mindset is just not acceptable in this day and age.
IT projects are just like IT Security ... they're too big and complex to bite off in one chew. The only way you're going to succeed is to cut them up and tackle them as smaller pieces of the puzzle. Get your head wrapped around the idea that the IT world moves quickly and you have to choose a project methodology that matches that pace. Agile is the clear front runner of project methodologies when you're discussing the implications it makes to IT security.
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
By Justin C Miller
Posted 9/1/2014
Projects are a necessity in the corporate world. They provide a means for justification and cost estimation. They give guidance and put standards around big changes. They ensure something is built to be efficient and beneficial and well tested. They provide a means to look back, reflect, and improve for the next time.
Two of the more common methodologies you'll find are Waterfall and Agile.
In waterfall you do things in sequence one after another such as requirements, design, development, testing, and release. In general you end up with large volumes of documentation and a lengthy but thorough process. There tends to also be the risk that you'll build something big only to find out when you pass it off that it's no longer what the business wanted.
In Agile you do all those things, but in small tiny waves. In general you end up with very little documentation but you see results almost immediately. You can eliminate the risk of big surprises because the business is involved during each of those tiny waves.
So, a question you might contemplate is in terms of IT Security, does it matter whether my company is using Agile or Waterfall?
I contend that YES, the choice your company makes for Project Methodology has big implications on your company's IT security. I'll skip the dance and games and get straight to the point ... Agile has become a necessity in the corporate world if you're hoping to ensure your environment is secure.
Agile builds your massively complex software in small tiny waves, perhaps 2-4 weeks at a time.
Here are 5 examples of why Agile promotes a more secure environment than Waterfall ever will ...
1.) In Agile there are fewer features built at a time thus it easier to test, and testing is an important step in finding security vulnerabilities. Imagine being asked to test whether the security groups are configured correctly in your application's 10 administrative screens, each of which have 50 tests cases each. Would you be more likely to get it right if you had to test one of the screens/50 test cases at a time, or if you had to test all 10 screens and 500 test cases at once ? Short and sweet means you can concentrate more and feel less stressed and time constrained and get it right.
2.) There are fewer lines of code to review at a time, thus the peer reviews of the code are going to be done more thoroughly and get a good solid look. I've seen it happen way too many times where in your waterfall project you just get done creating 100's of code files and 1000s of lines of code, and now your code review becomes weak and pathetic ... because you'll NEVER get a developer to review 100's of files and 1000s of lines of code in one shot. But in an Agile scenario it is much more realistic to expect them to view a handful of files and a few lines of code and review it correctly.
3.) One of the key aspects of IT security is code complexity. The simpler the code, the easier it is to secure, the easier it is to understand and the less likely it is to contain a mistake. Thus Agile brings big benefits again because you're writing smaller chunks of code that are less complex and thus by default easier to secure.
4.) Waterfall projects have a history of lasting months if not years from inception till completion. If you've been paying attention to the current state of IT security then you know that things change much quicker than that in our arena. Therefore if you start a project on a certain version of software using certain defense techniques, by the time the project is complete the vendor has probably released numerous software updates, security patches, and even the techniques used to prevent and mitigate vulnerabilities may have changed. Thus by the time a Waterfall project is deployed it's likely already old and out of date and needing an upgrade. Agile on the other hand is pushing out fixes every few weeks and by definition allowing for changing requirements, not just changing business requirements but also changing security requirements. If a patch or vulnerability needs a quick fix, you're able to toss it into the backlog as a feature on the next wave. With Waterfall you'll have a nightmare of a time trying to work it in, and things that get pushed to the backlog in Waterfall typically wait until the project is completely over. Too long in our world.
5.) The biggest, and perhaps least obvious advantage that Agile brings to the table over waterfall is a mindset. You go from moving slow, turning the Titanic, to moving swiftly, piece-mealing it to get the job done quickly. I've seen it many times already where those companies stuck in the mindset of Waterfall are the same companies that struggle to get security patching done because they want to plan it for a month, test it for another month or two, then deploy after a few weeks of Change Advisory board discussions. This of course leaves your company open and vulnerable while you're waiting for the process to play out. The Waterfall mindset also leads to end-of-life software hanging out there because the project is just too large and intense to upgrade ... which obviously is a huge security risk. The Waterfall mindset also leads to known risks being pushed off, delayed, or kicked down the road into the next project. That mindset is just not acceptable in this day and age.
IT projects are just like IT Security ... they're too big and complex to bite off in one chew. The only way you're going to succeed is to cut them up and tackle them as smaller pieces of the puzzle. Get your head wrapped around the idea that the IT world moves quickly and you have to choose a project methodology that matches that pace. Agile is the clear front runner of project methodologies when you're discussing the implications it makes to IT security.
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
4 Reasons Why ITIL = Security
4 Reasons Why ITIL = Security
By Justin C Miller
Posted 8/31/2014
I would like to propose that ITIL done right can improve your company's security and increase your IT security team's efficiency and effectiveness. How you ask? I'm about to tell you.
Skeptical and concerned about your own team being drown in paperwork every time you want to introduce a new fun security tool into your production environment? Get over it ... the benefits far out weigh any hassle you may dream up. I'd argue you need to set a good example and document your activity anyways.
So let's get to the goods. How is it that your company adopting ITIL will make your security team look amazing?
Here's 4 key concepts I think prove my point ...
#1 - ITIL builds an amazing and powerful CMDB that gives you an accurate blueprint of what services, applications, users, and devices your company has. Sweet, you've just been handed a list of what you have to protect and somebody else is going to maintain it for you! Need I say more?
#2 - ITIL gives you this amazing concept of Change Management. Every time anything in your production environment is about to change, you are given a set of documents showing what is changing, why, when, by whom, and how they'll back it out if it fails. Even better, your advisory board meetings give you a chance to review these changes and voice your opinion on them before they go live. Now do this in parallel with file integrity monitoring and suddenly you're able to immediately without a doubt identify if made to a Production environment are suspicious or expected.
#3 - ITIL gives you day-to-day Incident management. Why is this good? You suddenly have your entire company monitoring your environment for abnormalities and documenting what they've seen. This can come in real handy when identifying and trying to correlate events because somebody will have noticed something and documented it.
#4 - ITIL goes one step beyond Incident management. It moves you into the awesome realm of Problem Management. Why do you care? Because problem management means things are going to get researched and dug into until a root cause is found. No more sweeping things under the rug or putting out the fire without determining who started the fire in the first place. This is extremely useful because you'll learn when an Incident was caused by a technical issue or if it heaven forbid the root cause traces back to some sort of security breach.
ITIL done wrong is a money sucking train wreck. But ITIL done right is amazing. Your IT security team should embrace it and champion it, get everybody on board and make it a success!
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
By Justin C Miller
Posted 8/31/2014
I would like to propose that ITIL done right can improve your company's security and increase your IT security team's efficiency and effectiveness. How you ask? I'm about to tell you.
Skeptical and concerned about your own team being drown in paperwork every time you want to introduce a new fun security tool into your production environment? Get over it ... the benefits far out weigh any hassle you may dream up. I'd argue you need to set a good example and document your activity anyways.
So let's get to the goods. How is it that your company adopting ITIL will make your security team look amazing?
Here's 4 key concepts I think prove my point ...
#1 - ITIL builds an amazing and powerful CMDB that gives you an accurate blueprint of what services, applications, users, and devices your company has. Sweet, you've just been handed a list of what you have to protect and somebody else is going to maintain it for you! Need I say more?
#2 - ITIL gives you this amazing concept of Change Management. Every time anything in your production environment is about to change, you are given a set of documents showing what is changing, why, when, by whom, and how they'll back it out if it fails. Even better, your advisory board meetings give you a chance to review these changes and voice your opinion on them before they go live. Now do this in parallel with file integrity monitoring and suddenly you're able to immediately without a doubt identify if made to a Production environment are suspicious or expected.
#3 - ITIL gives you day-to-day Incident management. Why is this good? You suddenly have your entire company monitoring your environment for abnormalities and documenting what they've seen. This can come in real handy when identifying and trying to correlate events because somebody will have noticed something and documented it.
#4 - ITIL goes one step beyond Incident management. It moves you into the awesome realm of Problem Management. Why do you care? Because problem management means things are going to get researched and dug into until a root cause is found. No more sweeping things under the rug or putting out the fire without determining who started the fire in the first place. This is extremely useful because you'll learn when an Incident was caused by a technical issue or if it heaven forbid the root cause traces back to some sort of security breach.
ITIL done wrong is a money sucking train wreck. But ITIL done right is amazing. Your IT security team should embrace it and champion it, get everybody on board and make it a success!
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
10 Tips for Building a Strong IT Security Team
10 Tips for Building a Strong IT Security Team
By Justin C Miller
Posted 8/30/2014
My mind has been digging into the question of what makes a good IT security team? If you're managing, building, or have a say in your company's IT security team, I hope the list below gets your brain churning and helps provide an advantage to the white hats.
Tip #1 - BREADTH OVER DEPTH - You cannot succeed with a team of network administrators who know everything about Firewalls, IDS, VPNs, and switches but no nothing about administering a server or securing an application. You cannot succeed with a team of server administrators who could harden a server in their sleep but know nothing about putting up a firewall or securing an application. Deep understanding of concepts is important, but what's more important is Defense-In-Depth, security at every layer, and the ability to speak the language of anybody in the company. That that means is your team needs BREADTH: for example somebody good at networks (administrator), somebody good as servers (administrator), somebody good at applications (a developer), somebody who is good at desktops (former help desk), and somebody who speaks the language of the business (perhaps a business analyst).
Tip #2 - EMPOWER DON'T DICTATE - You cannot have staff that just tell teams what they're doing wrong and what they must do to fix it. Your team will fall flat on your face eventually, and you're going to make enemies which makes life miserable. The better solution lies more in the concept of social engineering. You know what's right, what's the secure way to do it, but don't just slam your fist down on the conference room table and say it's my way or the highway. Instead you need to work with your team on getting their way through the power or empowerment. In every scenario where you need to convince somebody to do something the 'right way' ... you need to do your legwork, lay out the options, outline the risks, and empower them to make the decision. Get the other teams to believe they are making the decision not you, EMPOWER DON'T DICTATE.
Tip #3 - FOCUS - What is this team here for? Ask that question and know the answer before you start. You are NOT there to maintain a firewall, that's for the network team. You monitor the firewall logs and review the rules. You are NOT there to deploy an anti-virus solution to your enterprise, that is somebody like operations. You are there to monitor virus findings and trends. You are NOT there to run a malware removal tool or re-image workstations, that is also likely operations. You are there to know what malware is and suggest remediation solutions. You are NOT there to run an Identity Management solution, that is also somebody like operations. You are there to monitor login activity and correlate them with other events. I'm sure by now you get the picture. Say 'NO' to the side work. Stop chasing the squirrel (a cute reference to 2009 Disney movie UP). FOCUS on what you're here to do, things such as security policies, monitoring, incident response, and true pro-active security.
Tip #4 - EMBRACE INEXPERIENCE - You already know that a good team is not built with just junior level staff. But keep in mind a good team is also not built on just Senior staff. A strong team is built with the old and the young, the experienced and the youth. Why? Everybody should be in a constant learning cycle, and to promote that you of course need your Seniors to train the juniors, but what's also exciting is the fact that Juniors are excitable. They will bring fresh new ideas and will push your seniors to stay on the cutting edge and play with the new tools. Juniors bring energy which in turn gets the Seniors excited. EMBRACE INEXPERIENCE.
Tip #5 - CARE ABOUT YOUR IMAGE - You don't just want a team of doers. You know, those guys that sit down, put their earbuds in, their hoodie up, and pound out work till they notice it's getting dark out. Your team is going to interact a lot with the rest of the world including IT and Business staff. You team has to be generally liked, be seen as providing a benefit to the company, and also be known to get the job done. The Doers can certainly help out with the last one, but the other 2 get a bit trickier. That is where the communicators and social staff come into play. You know, those ones that have a tendency to talk about the latest news story, and always wants to go out to lunch and hang out. They are going to be the ones that make other teams smile in a meeting, that can sweet talk somebody into getting their way, and that can explain it in terms others will understand. Don't just do, make sure you CARE ABOUT YOUR IMAGE.
Tip #6 - OPEN DOOR - Your team must be approachable. They need their corporate instant messenger enabled. They need to pay attention to their inbox. They need to offer themselves up in meetings with statements like 'Feel free to reach out to me at anytime with questions' or 'I am always available if you need help'. In order to build a successful IT security team, you need to make friends, not enemies ... and an OPEN DOOR policy is a great way to do so.
Tip #7 - DO WHAT YOU DO WELL - You need a team where everybody knows their role and in general sticks to it. The interns and juniors do the dirty work like day-to-day monitoring. The seniors have to think big picture, understand the landscape and playing field, and give guidance to everybody else. But also remember to weave in cross training in both directions. The seniors need to sit down and show the juniors what the best methods are and give the occasional opportunity to step in and fill the big shoes (such as during a common Incident Response event for example). And it goes in reverse, the juniors need to show the seniors how monitoring and day-to-day works, because a Senior will fail at the big picture if they don't understand what the whole team is doing. Build an efficient team by having people DO WHAT YOU DO WELL, but cross train so eventually everybody does everything well.
Tip #8 - SECURITY NEVER STOPS - Your team needs to understand that security is 24/7 365 non-stop. You can't stop monitoring just because it's the weekend. You can't skip today's incident just because it's a holiday. How is that ever going to work? You need to make sure you have some early birds you love their morning cup of coffee at 5am. You need your night owls who can't fall asleep before midnight. You need your consistent friends who are going to be their day in day out Monday thru Friday. And you need those free spirits who like working weekends and holidays just so they can take a random Wednesday off. Remember you need to think about coverage because SECURITY NEVER STOPS.
Tip #9 - KNOW IT ALL - You can't protect what you don't know. Your team will need to be one that sucks in information and never forgets. Know your network topology, your network devices, and your servers, what they are for, how they are configured, and what data they hold. Know your corporate hierarchy and staff, what they do, why they do it, and what applications they need. Know all the applications they use, how they're used, and what data is in them. You absolutely must KNOW IT ALL, otherwise how will you ever realize that something abnormal is occurring?
Tip #10 - PAY ATTENTION - Teams cannot be stuck in their own little fantasy world, thinking about only their company, their projects, and their day to day tasks. A good team must pay attention to everything going on both inside and out. How can we do that? Of course internal log aggregation, change control board meetings, and project statuses will keep you abreast internally. Also consider that a good team needs to get out too ... to conferences, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, subscribing to mailing lists for vulnerabilities and patches ... and being able to PAY ATTENTION to what's going on in the real-world ... because that's where the attackers live.
Props to Ted Demopoulos for inspiring me to write this post with his awesome talk as SANS @ night in Chicago
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
By Justin C Miller
Posted 8/30/2014
My mind has been digging into the question of what makes a good IT security team? If you're managing, building, or have a say in your company's IT security team, I hope the list below gets your brain churning and helps provide an advantage to the white hats.
Tip #1 - BREADTH OVER DEPTH - You cannot succeed with a team of network administrators who know everything about Firewalls, IDS, VPNs, and switches but no nothing about administering a server or securing an application. You cannot succeed with a team of server administrators who could harden a server in their sleep but know nothing about putting up a firewall or securing an application. Deep understanding of concepts is important, but what's more important is Defense-In-Depth, security at every layer, and the ability to speak the language of anybody in the company. That that means is your team needs BREADTH: for example somebody good at networks (administrator), somebody good as servers (administrator), somebody good at applications (a developer), somebody who is good at desktops (former help desk), and somebody who speaks the language of the business (perhaps a business analyst).
Tip #2 - EMPOWER DON'T DICTATE - You cannot have staff that just tell teams what they're doing wrong and what they must do to fix it. Your team will fall flat on your face eventually, and you're going to make enemies which makes life miserable. The better solution lies more in the concept of social engineering. You know what's right, what's the secure way to do it, but don't just slam your fist down on the conference room table and say it's my way or the highway. Instead you need to work with your team on getting their way through the power or empowerment. In every scenario where you need to convince somebody to do something the 'right way' ... you need to do your legwork, lay out the options, outline the risks, and empower them to make the decision. Get the other teams to believe they are making the decision not you, EMPOWER DON'T DICTATE.
Tip #3 - FOCUS - What is this team here for? Ask that question and know the answer before you start. You are NOT there to maintain a firewall, that's for the network team. You monitor the firewall logs and review the rules. You are NOT there to deploy an anti-virus solution to your enterprise, that is somebody like operations. You are there to monitor virus findings and trends. You are NOT there to run a malware removal tool or re-image workstations, that is also likely operations. You are there to know what malware is and suggest remediation solutions. You are NOT there to run an Identity Management solution, that is also somebody like operations. You are there to monitor login activity and correlate them with other events. I'm sure by now you get the picture. Say 'NO' to the side work. Stop chasing the squirrel (a cute reference to 2009 Disney movie UP). FOCUS on what you're here to do, things such as security policies, monitoring, incident response, and true pro-active security.
Tip #4 - EMBRACE INEXPERIENCE - You already know that a good team is not built with just junior level staff. But keep in mind a good team is also not built on just Senior staff. A strong team is built with the old and the young, the experienced and the youth. Why? Everybody should be in a constant learning cycle, and to promote that you of course need your Seniors to train the juniors, but what's also exciting is the fact that Juniors are excitable. They will bring fresh new ideas and will push your seniors to stay on the cutting edge and play with the new tools. Juniors bring energy which in turn gets the Seniors excited. EMBRACE INEXPERIENCE.
Tip #5 - CARE ABOUT YOUR IMAGE - You don't just want a team of doers. You know, those guys that sit down, put their earbuds in, their hoodie up, and pound out work till they notice it's getting dark out. Your team is going to interact a lot with the rest of the world including IT and Business staff. You team has to be generally liked, be seen as providing a benefit to the company, and also be known to get the job done. The Doers can certainly help out with the last one, but the other 2 get a bit trickier. That is where the communicators and social staff come into play. You know, those ones that have a tendency to talk about the latest news story, and always wants to go out to lunch and hang out. They are going to be the ones that make other teams smile in a meeting, that can sweet talk somebody into getting their way, and that can explain it in terms others will understand. Don't just do, make sure you CARE ABOUT YOUR IMAGE.
Tip #6 - OPEN DOOR - Your team must be approachable. They need their corporate instant messenger enabled. They need to pay attention to their inbox. They need to offer themselves up in meetings with statements like 'Feel free to reach out to me at anytime with questions' or 'I am always available if you need help'. In order to build a successful IT security team, you need to make friends, not enemies ... and an OPEN DOOR policy is a great way to do so.
Tip #7 - DO WHAT YOU DO WELL - You need a team where everybody knows their role and in general sticks to it. The interns and juniors do the dirty work like day-to-day monitoring. The seniors have to think big picture, understand the landscape and playing field, and give guidance to everybody else. But also remember to weave in cross training in both directions. The seniors need to sit down and show the juniors what the best methods are and give the occasional opportunity to step in and fill the big shoes (such as during a common Incident Response event for example). And it goes in reverse, the juniors need to show the seniors how monitoring and day-to-day works, because a Senior will fail at the big picture if they don't understand what the whole team is doing. Build an efficient team by having people DO WHAT YOU DO WELL, but cross train so eventually everybody does everything well.
Tip #8 - SECURITY NEVER STOPS - Your team needs to understand that security is 24/7 365 non-stop. You can't stop monitoring just because it's the weekend. You can't skip today's incident just because it's a holiday. How is that ever going to work? You need to make sure you have some early birds you love their morning cup of coffee at 5am. You need your night owls who can't fall asleep before midnight. You need your consistent friends who are going to be their day in day out Monday thru Friday. And you need those free spirits who like working weekends and holidays just so they can take a random Wednesday off. Remember you need to think about coverage because SECURITY NEVER STOPS.
Tip #9 - KNOW IT ALL - You can't protect what you don't know. Your team will need to be one that sucks in information and never forgets. Know your network topology, your network devices, and your servers, what they are for, how they are configured, and what data they hold. Know your corporate hierarchy and staff, what they do, why they do it, and what applications they need. Know all the applications they use, how they're used, and what data is in them. You absolutely must KNOW IT ALL, otherwise how will you ever realize that something abnormal is occurring?
Tip #10 - PAY ATTENTION - Teams cannot be stuck in their own little fantasy world, thinking about only their company, their projects, and their day to day tasks. A good team must pay attention to everything going on both inside and out. How can we do that? Of course internal log aggregation, change control board meetings, and project statuses will keep you abreast internally. Also consider that a good team needs to get out too ... to conferences, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, subscribing to mailing lists for vulnerabilities and patches ... and being able to PAY ATTENTION to what's going on in the real-world ... because that's where the attackers live.
Props to Ted Demopoulos for inspiring me to write this post with his awesome talk as SANS @ night in Chicago
Copyright © 2014, this post cannot be reproduced or retransmitted in any form without reference to the original post.
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