SC: Video Interview: Bankers v hackers

Security professionals can't afford to work in isolated bubbles when the attackers are openly sharing information about system vulnerabilities...

Watch my video interview for SCMagazine here.

Security groups should sit under Marketing, not IT

Ok, so I'm being a little facetious, but I do think that putting Security departments under IT is a bad idea, not because they don't naturally fit well there, but because usually it gives the wrong impression and not enough visibility.

Security is far more wide reaching than IT alone and touches every part of the business. By considering it as part of IT, and utilising IT budgets, it can be pigeonholed and ignored by anyone who wouldn't engage IT for their project or job. Security covers all information, from digital to paper-based and is concerned with aspects such as user education as much as technology.

There is a clear conflict of interest between IT and Security as well. Part of the Security team's function is to monitor, audit and assess the systems put in place and maintained by the IT department. If the Security team sits within this department then there can be a question over the segregation of duties and responsibility. In addition to this, Security departments can end up competing with other parts of IT for budget. How well does this work when project budgets are allocated to one department responsible for producing new features and fixing the vulnerabilities in old ones?

The Security department should answer directly to the board and communicate risk, not technology. It is important that they are involved with all aspects of the business from Marketing, through Procurement and Legal, to the IT department. You will, more often than not, get a much better idea of what the business does and what's important to it by sitting with the Marketing team than with the IT team. Hence the title of this post.

The Disconnect between Security and Senior Management

There is often a fundamental disconnect between security professionals and senior management. As I have stated in a previous post about slips, mistakes and violations, if senior management don't 'buy in' to security then nor will the rest of the organisation and ultimately it will fail. Middle management want to be senior management and will model themselves on them, often seeing the breaking of rules as a mark of status. So, it is vital that senior management lead by example.

Unfortunately, it is often very hard to get senior management to 'buy in' to this concept and not have a 'them-and-us' attitude of there being those rules that apply to the rest of the organisation and those that apply to them. This is as much the fault of the security professionals as senior management though. Security professionals have spent so long saying "no" to everyone and stalwartly refusing to budge or see someone else's point of view that people have stopped listening and taking note. To be honest, rightly so.

If you want someone to change their point of view or come round to your way of thinking, by far the easiest way is to sell it to them as a positive thing that will be beneficial to them and 'bring them with you' rather than dictate. Saying "no" all the time is not positive and will ultimately fail as people will stop listening. Make it personal to them and put it in terms they understand. Relating security to risk and money will usually be more successful.

Web Hosting Security Policy & Guidelines

I have seen so many websites hosted and developed insecurely that I have often thought I should write a guide of sorts for those wanting to commission a new website. Now I have have actually been asked to develop a web hosting security policy and a set of guidelines to give to project managers for dissemination to developers and hosting providers. So, I thought I would share some of my advice here.

Before I do, though, I have to answer why we need this policy in the first place? There are many types of attack on websites, but these can be broadly categorised as follows: Denial of Service (DoS), Defacement and Data Breaches/Information Stealing. Data breaches and defacements hurt businesses' reputations and customer confidence as well as having direct financial impacts.

But surely any hosting provider or solution developer will have these standards in place, yes? Well, in my experience the answer is no. It is true that they are mostly common sense and most providers will conform to many of my recommendations, but I have yet to find one that, by default, conforms to them all.

Site Categorisation

There are several different categories of hosting and several different ways to categorise sites, with different requirements. However, in my opinion, sites should be categorised based on the information that they contain and the level of interaction allowed. Sites should then be logically and physically separated into their categories.

Sites can be categorised as brochure sites if they have static content or do not collect information. These sites can then further be categorised into public or private depending on whether the data that they contain is public or not. Sites within these categories may be co-hosted with other sites in the same category, but the two categories should be segregated.

Sites can be classed as data collection apps if they collect sensitive or personally identifiable information (PII) from the user. Sites within this category should be hosted on their own servers with no co-hosting and be segregated from all other sites. The data must be stored on separate segregated database servers that are secured and firewalled off.

Finally, any site with even more sensitive data on it or company secrets should be hosted internally if you have the expertise in house.

Hosted Environment

The following list is an example of the requirements for secure web hosting. It is not necessarily complete, but if you do not have the following then you may have issues in the future. All websites and web applications must:

• be hosted on a dedicated environment - the hosting machine may be virtual or physical, but must not be shared with any 3rd parties. Multiple websites and applications from the same company may be hosted on the same machines according to the categories above
• have DDoS protection in place
• have AV running and configured properly on the server along with appropriate responses and reporting
• be hosted behind a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect against common attacks, plus allow the ability to configure it for specific services
• be hosted on security hardened Operating Systems (OS) and services to an agreed build standard
• be subject to regular and timely patching of the OS and services
• be subject to regular security testing and patching of any Content Management System (CMS) in a timely manner if used
• be subject to active monitoring and logging by the provider for security breaches and reporting to/from the organisation
• have formal incident management processes for both identifying and responding to incidents
• not be co-hosted with additional public services beyond HTTP/HTTPS (e.g. no public FTP)
• not allow DNS Zone Transfers
• use proper public verified SSL certificates - with a preference for Extended Validation (EV) certificates
• ensure that management services and ports are on different IP addresses and domain names preferably, but must not be available through the normal login or visible on the website
• ensure that administrative interfaces and services are restricted to certain IP addresses at least, but make use of client-side certificates or two factor authentication (2FA) if possible
• ensure staging servers are available for test and development, which must not be shared with live sites and should be securely wiped at the end of testing as soon as the site is deployed live
• ensure staging and test environments are not available on the public Internet or, if there is no alternative, they must be devoid of branding and sensitive information in all ways and restricted as above
• be built on a tiered architecture, or at least the database (DB) server must not sit on the same server as the web front end, must not be accessible from the Internet and must be securely segregated from the front end
• use encrypted storage for all sensitive information, (e.g. passwords and sensitive information)

Hosting Services

It is up to the hosting provider and third party developers, but should be backed up by specific contractual clauses, to ensure that:

• the site is backed up regularly off site in a secure location using encrypted media where the keys are stored separately from the media and able to be restored in a reasonable time frame with a suitable rotation and retention policy
• hardware and media that has reached the end of its life is securely destroyed
• all sites are made available for pentesting prior to going live and at regular intervals
• all vulnerabilities considered of medium risk and above should be remediated prior to go-live
• all sites are available for on-going regular automated Vulnerability Assessments
• domain names, code and SSL certificates are registered to the company and not a third party
• there are agreed processes for identifying approved personnel to authorise changes
• change management processes that track all changes are in place along with rollback and test plans
• capacity and bandwidth are actively managed and monitored
• all management actions are accountable (unique accounts allocated to individuals)
• all management should be through secure ingress from trusted locations
• egress filtering should be in place to block all non-legitimate traffic

Here come the Security Police

Security teams often attract antagonism from the business that they are supposed to serve, appearing as self-appointed policemen in a police state. This is unhelpful and not what we are or should be aiming for. Security departments should be providing a secure environment in which business users are free to do what they want. Obviously this environment will have boundaries, but they must be agreed with the business and not just imposed arbitrarily.

Take an example from children's play areas, children should be safe within the confines of the soft play area and not too much harm will come to them. They can run around and play whatever game they like as long as they stay within the boundaries. Children can't wear shoes in a soft play area as they may hurt another child, but this doesn't stop them from doing what they want as the play area has been engineered so that they don't need shoes to stop them from hurting their feet or getting wet and dirty.

The same principles can be applied to security. If we build a safe and secure environment that has everything that people need within it already then they are free to do what they want and need, and are far less likely to break the rules or circumvent security controls. The architecture has to be secure and services should be tailored to the business functions and not just imposed by the security teams. A good example is to provide a Choose Your Own device (CYO) offering to avoid the problems of Bring Your Own (BYO) or the restrictions of imposing a single device. It is possible to support a range of devices and then even offer a restricted service on some further devices, but allow the users choice.

In the end there will always be a certain amount of policing required, but if, as a security professional, you are spending most of your time in that role then your network, architecture and attitude are wrong.

3M Privacy Filters Update

I have blogged about 3M's privacy filters before and their gold filter still remains, in my opinion, the best privacy filter on the market. If you want to find out more about that one and why you need a privacy filter, see my previous blog post "Why do I need a privacy filter? (3M's new Vikuiti Gold Privacy Filter)". I also blogged about their mobile phone privacy filter.

The problem with their mobile phone privacy filter last year was that it was only available in their standard grey louvered filter, so didn't work well with accelerometer phones that can be used in portrait or landscape modes - you had to pre-select which orientation you wanted to use your smartphone in. Also, the light transmission wasn't as good as the gold filter nor was the touch quite as good after applying it.

Well, they've addressed this and lanuched a new filter for mobile phones and slates at InfoSecurity Europe. The filter is now significantly thinner with excellent touch response and better light transmission - they also have a clarity measure which makes the screen easier to read with the filter (it does kind of work, having seen an iPad with only half the screen covered). They also have (in the lab) a grey louvered filter in two planes. This stops people from being able to read the screen if they aren't directly in front of it and deals with mobile phones and slate devices that can be used in the two orientations. This filter isn't available yet, but 3M told me that they were targeting the end of this year for these new filters. 3M also assured me that the new filter with double-louvers will be no thicker than the current one. This, combined with 3M's great adhesive that allows for a simple application, will make 3M's new privacy filters for mobile phones and slates the one to have, especially as they double as screen protectors.

Unfortunately they only do pre-cut versions for iPhones, iPads and HTC phones at the moment. If you don't have one of these then you will have to either cut it yourself or get a third party to cut one for you.

InfoSecurity Europe 2011

InfoSecurity Europe is over for another year. Once again there were several interesting companies and sessions worth noting. The 'themes' (if they can be called that) or 'hot topics' were cloud security again, social media and mobile access/the consumerisation of IT. The big difference seemed to be in the attitudes of people - more 'how can we reduce the risks to an acceptable level?' rather than 'we can't secure it, so we won't allow it!'

We are seeing a shift in the types of systems end users are accessing the corporate network from. The IT department are no longer dictating what will or will not be allowed. More and more users want to use their own personal devices, such as iPhones or iPads, on the network. In the past IT departments have resisted this and said no to the users. However, this attitude is beginning to change and there were a raft of organisations with solutions to help secure these devices and manage the data they contain. However, an awareness of risk and what it means to consumer devices and ownership must be understood beforehand.

With cloud security a big issue, and still stopping some organisations from adopting cloud services, I decided to speak to some of the cloud services providers about their security. Many of them couldn't give me the real technical details, but some of them did have some reassuring things to say. Unfortunately, not all services are equal and organisations are still going to have to do a lot of research on the providers and make sure that they ask to see independant reports on the security of any potential provider. Make sure you ask them the difficult technical questions and only use their service if you are happy with their answers. Again, always remember that you can't outsource risk, so think carefully about what you want to use the cloud for.

Social media is still an issue that some organisations are solving by blocking it and others are ignoring. With the latest generation of products, again we can be quite granular with the level of access granted to social media, so a default blocking isn't necessary in all circumstances. The (ISC)² have conducted a very interesting survey on security that shows some interesting trends, not least of which is that 49% of organisations block Facebook and around 20% don't monitor social networks at all. As social engineering and backdoors through user activity are some of the main causes of problems, this is worrying. Indeed, the survey showed that security professionals put education and policy mechanisms as the top 6 security security solutions required, with software and technologies coming in 7th and 8th respectively.

InfoSecurity Europe 2010

Once again InfoSecurity Europe was an interesting place to visit. Lots of good sessions and interesting people to talk to. Most of the usual protagonists were there and the organisers have increased the educational part of the exhibition as well, which is good.

I thought I would put down a few things that I thought were noteworthy from the exhibition. I've already blogged about the GrIDsure anti-phishing sender verification and the new 3M mobile phone privacy filters, but there were a few other things I want to mention.

The first one is Panda Security's new Panda Cloud Internet Protection. This is a cloud-based service that provides consistent security and access policies to all machines within an organisation. The key thing is that it will protect mobile machines that are outside the corporate network with the same policies as those within the network. Protecting corporate machines when mobile is a big concern and a good way to reduce malware or hacking problems on the main network.

The usual problem is that mobile devices connect to public, unsecured (or badly secured) networks and either pick up some malware that they bring back with them, or they connect back remotely and open a soft doorway into the corporate network. By securing machines with this cloud service, it should stop them from being a soft target and weak link in your security chain. If you already do something similar by allowing VPN access into the corporate network and allowing them to create connections out, you are using additional bandwidth for this traffic and having to open a VPN connection, which isn't always wise.

Another topic talked about (mainly by Sophos) was the security, or lack thereof, when using social media. Graham Cluley gave a really good talk on the subject on the Sophos stand including the use of SPAM avatars on sites such as Twitter. The attack is centred around the fact that anti-SPAM filtering finds it hard to scan the content of images, e.g. by doing Optical Character Recognition (OCR). So, people have been putting written messages in their ID picture to get past any filtering. You can find out more from his blog.

The final mention has to go to Ian Mann from ECSC. He, once again, talked about several Social Engineering techniques to get past security. He stated that he always likes to see security guards when trying to gain unauthorised access, as it usually makes the system much less secure. He gave a talk in one of the main theatres as well as several talks on the ECSC stand, all of which were interesting. He has written a book called Hacking the Human, which is worth a read if you want to find out more.

Beyond that, most of the usual suspects were there and many things were as before with incremental changes and updates. There didn't seem to be a central theme or message from all the vendors or industry in general. Everyone seemed to be concentrating on their own topics and products. One new addition to the exhibition was the University Pavilion. I think this could be put to good use to show people what's coming over the horizon or how these technologies that the vendors are pushing actually work.

3M's Mobile Phone Privacy Filter

At this year's InfoSecurity Europe I visited the 3M stand again to see what developments they had for their privacy filters. They had their excellent Gold filter there of course, which is now properly on sale in the UK and the best on the market in my opinion. I previously blogged about this filter in my post "Why do I need a privacy filter? (3M's new Vikuiti Gold Privacy Filter)".

So what's this blog post about? Well, they have now produced privacy filters for mobile phones. Let's add a bit of context to this decision. How many businesses provide mobile devices to their employees that are connected to the corporate network with access to email, contacts, calendars and corporate documents? If you were reading an email from a client or reviewing a sensitive document would you be happy for someone to peer over your shoulder? Maybe you're paranoid like me and try to avoid reading emails in public places and stand with your back to the wall, shielding the screen when you have to read something urgently (Note: you shouldn't really store sensitive documents on a mobile phone in the first place, but that's another topic). However, 3M have made the whole thing a bit easier and allowed people to look a bit more normal than I do when using email in a public place.

I had a bunch of questions that I wanted to ask 3M about this new filter and I got some answers that I will share with you here. Firstly, I'll give you a brief introduction to their product, which can be seen in the image below. This is basically a screen protector with the privacy filter combined. It uses the standard matte grey louvered filter that gives privacy in one plane (I'll explain this in a bit and the problem with it). It uses the matte film as reflective films would get scratched with the type of use that a mobile gets according to the guys on the stand. The film is self-adhesive, using 3M's Post-It note glue, so it should come off with no residue and be easy to fit. This is effectively a replacement for your standard screen protector with the added benefit of including the privacy filter.



Now to some of the questions I had:

• Does it work with touch screens? - Yes it does. They had an iPhone there and it worked perfectly.
• Does it work with a stylus? - Yes it does. They had an Windows Mobile-based XDA there, which also worked with no problems.
• Does it make the mobile hard to use? - No, the dimming of the screen caused by the filter is not too much of a problem. With the backlight off you pretty much can't read the screen, but how many people use their mobile with the backlight off? There is some drop in brightness, but you can increase the brightness of the screen to compensate. However, this does have the big side-effect of reducing battery life - a major problem on smartphones.
• What if I have a mobile that I can use in landscape as well as portrait, like an HTC or iPhone? - Well, you have a problem. It comes back to what I said above: the filter only works in one plane. The filter has vertical louvres so that as you move to the side they overlap and block out the screen, like vertical blinds. However, vertical movement doesn't change the overlap of the louvres, so there is no blocking of the screen in this plane. So, you have to decide which way you want the filter, portrait or landscape - it will only provide privacy in one plane. Now, this isn't a problem for a lot of phones, particularly the majority of Blackberries, which are still the preferred business machine by many organisations. It is a problem, however, for iPhones (which aren't business phones in my opinion) and many Windows Mobile phones with the iPhone-esque interface.
• Couldn't we have the Gold filter on a mobile to sort this problem? - Unfortunately, not yet, but they are working on it. There are a few technical difficulties apparently. Firstly, there is the point I made earlier, that mirror finished filters would scratch too readily on a mobile device that is thrown in a bag or stuffed into a pocket with other things. Apparently, they have a matte version of the Gold Filter in the lab, but it isn't available yet or in the near future. There is a second problem. Apparently, the Gold Filter doesn't take to being glued so easily as the grey filter. However, they are working on this as well and hope to have a solution soon.
• Do they come pre-cut to my mobile? - Yes and no. If you have a Blackberry or iPhone then yes, otherwise no. You buy a sheet and cut it yourself. I believe that there are other companies, such as wrappz.com, that will be able to cut one for your device in the future. I think this is a must for the uptake of the filter. How many business executives are going to sit down with a craft knife and straight-edge to cut their filter to the exact shape and size of their phone as well as the holes for the buttons, cameras, speakers, microphones, etc.? The problem for 3M is that mobiles come in all shapes and sizes, with absolutely no standardisation. Laptops and monitors, on the other hand, do have standard sizes.

What's my verdict? Another good product from 3M. I think this would be very good for executives with the Blackberry-type device and still help those with touchy-feely, accelerometer-driven interfaces, as long as they remember to only access sensitive information in one plane. They will have a great product when they get the matte Gold filter stuck to the mobile.

Proposed Pseudo-Code for Hacking Process

It is quite common in Information Systems to use pseudo code to describe a process. I have often thought that the same principle can be applied to the process of hacking an organisation, which may help people understand the process and how to protect themselves. Below is my proposal for this pseduo-code for the hacking process. This is very much a work in progress. I would welcome feedback on it and I will update it as suggestions are made or as I feel it needs revising.

organisation = proposed target
organisation.footprint(value, effort, risk)
profit = value - (effort * risk)
if profit > 0 then
  organisation.enumerate()
  select attack_type
    case DoS
      engage_botnet(myBotnet)
      myBotnet.launchDDoS(organisation)
    case Access
      organisation.gainAccess(myAccount)
      myAccount.Elevate()
      organisation.installBackdoor(myAccount)
      organisation.cleanUP()
  end select
else
  exit
end if

This highlights the fact that we only need enough security to make it not worthwhile attacking, i.e. it will cost the attacker more to compromise our system than they will gain. Who would spend £1m to get £10 worth of information? We don't need (indeed cannot have) absolute security, just enough to protect our system. It also highlights another interesting point. Perhaps we should make our countermeasures public - not the actual implementational details or versions, but the fact that they are in place, e.g. that we have an IDS. Consider blatant versus hidden CCTV cameras. Cameras in plain sight deter most criminals, whereas hidden cameras spy on criminals while they perpetrate their crime.

We want to make the risk of being caught/prosecuted value high, so that hackers require a higher value:effort ratio, which we won't give them. Given two identically protected organisations with the same value, would you attack the one that doesn't monitor activity or the one that does?

Obviously, the above is very vague and doesn't provide methods to complete these tasks, but that is not the point of this post. Backdoors and Trojans are usually relatively easy to install if you have the right level of access to the system, so much of your security is going to hang on stopping a hacker from gaining access. Gaining access to an organisation is usually performed in one of four main ways:

• Malware
• Sniffing
• Direct Attack
• Social Engineering

There are ways to protect yourself, up to a point. Some of the most critical are:

• Installing Antivirus/Antispyware
• Latest OS and Application Patches
• Enterprise-level firewall, with IDS/IPS, AV, etc.
• Personal firewalls on all mobile devices
• Secure, hardened configurations
• Browser lock-down
• Encrypted communication (e.g. SSL/TLS, VPN, etc.)
• User Education!

The last point is often overlooked as a critical security practice. Please feel free to comment.

Telephone and Fax Services Security

In this day of doing everything online, we still rely heavily on services delivered over POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Banks and credit card companies still require the telephone to make certain changes, queries and security checks, even though most functions can be performed online. Medical records, bank details, security key order requests, etc., are routinely transferred by facsimile. However, are these secure? Are they more or less secure than doing the same thing online?

I'm not going to talk about the underlying security of POTS, but concentrate on a couple of easy attack vectors on the end device of the user that I have recently observed. A couple of weeks ago, I needed to amend something on one of my credit card accounts (I would tell you which bank, only it's my personal credit card and I don't want phisers knowing which banks I have accounts with). This bank has an automated telephone answering system to make things more efficient and reduce staff required - pretty standard. So I made sure that I was in a room on my own, to prevent eavesdropping my conversation, and dialled the number. The automated system asked me to type in my full credit card number on the keypad.

The problem with doing this is that the telephone will remember these digits as part of the last number dialled. Therefore, all someone would have to do is to recall the last number dialled and read off the credit card number. If they actually dial it they would be put through as the legitimate card holder. Now, admittedly they will probably ask some security questions on the other end before making any changes, but these may consist of simply asking for a date of birth, which is fairly easy to find out. Even if you don't know this information, other information may be given away in the mean time (e.g. who the card holder is as they normally use your name in any greeting). The problem is compounded if you make a call from work, where you will probably be using an exchange. Exchanges will store all the numbers dialled, including any options or credit card numbers entered on the phone's keypad. This log can simply be printed out and your details read off. Of course the number dialled will show which bank you are using as well, although this can also be gleaned from the first 6 digits of your credit card number.

Things can potentially get worse if you use facsimile or fax machines. There are different types of fax machines that work in different ways. Most will keep a log of calls and faxes sent and received. This may or may not be a problem, depending on the level of detail of the log and whether you're typing in credit card details during a phone call made on the machine. However, some fax machines use rolls of pigment on acetate (or similar) to print the fax out when received. The problem here is that these rolls are wound through during printing and that part is never reused (otherwise you will get gaps in your printing). However, what this means is that when you come to throw the roll away once used, it will have a perfect facsimile of everything printed on the machine since the roll was put in, only in negative. To get round this, you must shred, or otherwise destroy, the used roll, not just throw it in the bin.


As to whether this is more or less secure than an online transaction is a difficult question to answer. On the one hand, you often need physical access to the phone or fax machine to get to the logs, although telephone exchanges are often online. Also, sifting through a bin outside a premises isn't that hard and can often be very rewarding. On the other hand, transactions online are encrypted and people are more aware of the security implications in general. However, malware and man-in-the-middle attacks can still thwart this type of transaction, but it does require more skills than sifting through a bin.

Not all data leakage comes from computers, pen drives, etc. Sometimes a seemingly innocuous device can betray your information and breach your security. Unfortunately, you have to think of all possible attack vectors and mitigate the risks. This is why a full information policy that covers all forms of data is required.

Human Factors in Information Security - Errors & Violations

Human failures are often described as Slips, Lapses, Mistakes and Violations. These are grouped into two categories: Errors and Violations. The difference here is the intent - violations result from conscious decisions to disregard policies and procedures, whereas errors have no malicious intent. Also, violations often involve more than one form of misconduct, whereas errors are often isolated.

Don Turnblade has stated that in his experience "well trained staff had a 3.75% unintentional non-compliance rate; they did not realize that installed software compromised data security. About 0.4% of end users were intentionally non-compliant, generally willful persons with strong technical skill or organizational authority who were unaccustomed to complying with computing restrictions."

So what are the different types of error? Dealing with each in turn, we have Slips, Lapses and Mistakes.

• Slips - actions not carried out as intended, e.g. pressing the wrong key by accident. Slips usually occur at the task execution stage.
• Lapses - missed actions or omissions, e.g. forgetting to log out, or a step in a configuration process.
• Mistakes - occur due to an incorrect intention, whilst believing it to be correct, i.e. they are deliberate actions with no malicious intent, e.g. misconfiguration of a firewall. Mistakes usually occur at the planning stage.

So who causes the error or violation and how do we combat them? Slips and Lapses are usually the fault of the user, but can be mitigated by making it more difficult for the user to make the error, e.g. by having confirmation dialogs for slips and better training for lapses. Mistakes tend to be the fault of designers and are slightly more difficult to combat as designer education is required or outside technical expertise needs to be brought in. However, this doesn't always solve the problem if they don't have the skills and knowledge required. Finally, violations can often be laid at the door of the managers. It is often the case that a culture of violations is accepted by senior management, who fail to impose proper sanctions or take the threat seriously.

All of these have to be dealt with to have a secure system and most of it boils down to having proper user education and training in place.

Personal Mobile Devices Violate Compliance

Computer Weekly recently conducted a survey via Twitter on how many organisations allow their users access to corporate email from their own private phone. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any results from this survey as yet, but it made me think about organisations that do allow private devices to attach to the network, not just mobile phones. I have also had many comments on my blog post entitled 'Mobile Device Data Breaches', which have fed into this post.

In one of those comments, someone pointed out that in their experience users are often a weak link. Isn’t it always the case that users are the weakest link? A poorly educated/trained user can compromise the best security. Unfortunately, I have seen so many organisations that do not adequately train their users or make them aware that there are policies, let alone what they mean to their daily usage of the corporate systems. I have also come across one organisation where a top executive had all the system passwords stored, unencrypted, on his PDA. He didn’t see a problem with this as he always carried it with him!

How many organisations these days have push email onto a mobile? How many of those organisations send sensitive documents around via email? Do they have encryption and password access on those devices? Not many that I’ve seen. The typical Blackberry users that I see have no password or PIN access to their phone, but it does have full access to the corporate mail exchange. These devices also have the ability to store, and even sync, corporate documents. What policies do you have to cover them?

Quoting from ISO-27002:2005 11.7.1: A formal policy should be implemented, and appropriate security measures adopted, for mobile computing and communications activities. Controls should apply to laptop, notebook, and palmtop computers; mobile phones and "smart" phone-PDAs; and portable storage devices and media. Controls include requirements for:

• physical protection;
• data storage minimization;
• access controls;
• cryptographic techniques;
• data backups;
• anti-virus and other protective software;
• operating system and other software updating;
• secure communication (e.g., VPN) for remote access; and
• sanitization prior to transfer or disposal.

The problem is that most organisations do not have adequate policies covering mobile devices. Moving away from mobile phones, are you allowed to plug a USB device into your corporate machine? Many of these devices can store sensitive data and even access the Internet themselves. What about an insecure iPhone connecting to the Internet and leaking data? Most organisations aren't even aware that you can lock down USB usage via tools, but policies should definitely be in place. Alan Goode, from Goode Intelligence, said the following:

"I feel that you can lock down with security policy and tools but this is a complex problem as the combination of mobility and technology diversity, e.g. I can use my iPhone to connect to the enterprise network and store sensitive data on it, is creating a major headache for infosec professionals. As well as the problem with laptops and USB drives we are also seeing a growing use of employee-owned mobile devices, netbooks, games consoles, smart phones, all having IP and WiFi capabilities and all capable of picking up enterprise data and email."

There are a number of things we can do to stop these devices from compromising the network by blocking their use. We can block USB devices from being able to connect unless they are a managed resource, so that users can't just plug anything they bring in from home. All USB devices have an ID, which can be registered with a central authentication server to check before a computer allows it to be used. Of course this needs third-party software, but can be done quite easily. We can also block devices from being able to obtain an IP address or connect to the corporate network in the first place. We shouldn't have a free-for-all attitude on the network. It should be locked down to approved devices only. Only managed devices can connect and they will have to authenticate.

I think it’s asking for trouble to allow users to connect their own private devices to the network or services. I don’t see how you can comply with any standards or your own security policies when allowing this, as you don’t know what’s connected or how it’s configured. Even if they are secure (a very big IF), by not knowing the configuration or being able to audit it, you are surely in violation of any accreditation or certification that you may have because you cannot test or 'prove' your compliance.

Compliance does NOT Equal Security

Comodo Vision Video Blog

Responsibility for the notorious Heartland Payment Systems data breach late last year has been debated recently, with Heartland’s CEO suggesting that their PCI auditors let the firm down, while the auditors insist they can’t be responsible for checking absolutely everything. This case brings to light the reality that absolute security is an impossible goal, and that audits are only as good as an organization’s vigilance in following proper security procedures after the audit has been completed.

See my second video blog here.

Mobile Device Data Breaches

Comodo Vision Video Blog

Several recent data breaches at major enterprises and governmental agencies stemmed from the loss or theft of mobile computers and USB drives. While encrypting the data on these devices isn’t a bad idea, the larger question is why was sensitive personal information stored on the mobile device in the first place?

See my first video blog for Comodo Vision here.

ATM & Bank Card Security

I recently read an article in New Scientist entitled "Want to clone bank cards? Just press 'print'". They state that it has been discovered that

"... a devious piece of criminal coding that has been quietly at work in a clutch of cash machines at banks in Russia and Ukraine. It allows a gang member to walk up to an ATM, insert a "trigger" card, and use the machine's printer to produce a list of all the debit card numbers used that day, including their start and expiry dates - and their PINs. Everything needed, in fact, to clone those cards and start emptying bank accounts."

This is possible because ATM Terminal vendors have succumbed to financial pressures, and the demand for greater functionality, and moved to using standard modular PC architectures and off-the-shelf operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Linux. These ATM devices then become vulnerable to similar malware as their desktop counterparts.

SpiderLabs, part of Trustwave, identified that in this case a new version of the 50KB lsass.exe Windows XP file is loaded onto the system via a compromised Borland Delphi installer utility, isadmin.exe (note, that's LSASS.EXE, not 1SASS.EXE as some have reported). You can view the full report from Trustwave as a PDF here. The legitimate lsass.exe executable is used to cache session data in Windows, so that users don't have to re-enter passwords when receiving new emails or returning to a website, which is essentially what the malware developers want to do with the card data. Actually, this has no place on an ATM, but may not be picked up, due to the fact that it is, by default, on most Windows XP installs.

If a trigger card is not detected, the malware stores the transaction data to a file called tr12 and key or PIN data to a file called k1 in the C:/WINDOWS directory. If a trigger card is detected, then a menu of 10 options is displayed for 10 seconds, with functions including: uninstalling, deleting logs, printing logs via the built-in printer encrypted with DES and possibly the ability to export the data onto the trigger card. This particular malware only works on transactions in US dollars, Russian Rouble or Ukrainian Hryvnia. It is also said that chip-and-PIN cards across Europe are not vulnerable to this malware as the PIN is encrypted in the secure PIN pad.

It has been speculated that deploying the malware was either an inside job or the result of bribes and threats; the reasoning being that an attacker would have to have physical access to the ATM to deploy the malware. However, the ATMs and banking network, although separate from the Internet, have not necessarily been hardened enough. Back on 25th November 2003 the first known case of a worm (Welchia) infecting Windows XP based ATM machines was reported, which used the closed financial network to propagate. This was possible because the ATMs weren't patched by the financial institutions in question. This brings on the whole problem of patch management on ATMs as well as placing greater restrictions on the financial networks. How long will it be before keyloggers are available for chip-and-PIN cards as well?

IPICS Risk Assessment Slides

These are my slides on Information Security Risk Assessment, presented at the Intensive Programme on Information and Communication Security (IPICS). The topics covered are: the System-Holistic Approach to ICT Security; Risk Assessment approaches, strategies & terminology; Three Card RAG / Obstacle Poker; OCTAVE^® - Operationally Critical Threat, Asset and Vulnerability Evaluation.

A PDF of the slides can be downloaded from here. (updated)

I will publish more information on the topics covered in due course (and if anyone asks). However, more information on Three Card RAG / Obstacle Poker can be found in a previous blog post.

User-Friendly Multi-Factor Authentication with GrIDsure

I have been tasked with rolling out a trial multi-factor authentication system that must be user-friendly, secure, low-cost and have zero impact on the existing network and users who won't be on the trial. That should be simple!

A trawl round the InfoSecurity Europe show always helps, as you can get the latest state of play from all the major vendors. This year there were the obvious keyring tokens, SmartCards, USB tokens, SMS solutions and some innovative software solutions, including GrIDsure. Before making any decisions about the solution to go for, several things need to be decided, among which are: how much security is required? What is considered user-friendly to a normal, non-technical user? What metrics should we use for authentication?

To answer these we need to look at what authentication is first: Authentication is the binding of an identity to a subject. The subjects we're talking about in this case are users and we're trying to bind their digital identity, i.e. user ID, to them as an individual. There are four metrics we can use to query identity, namely:

• What they know - e.g. password, PIN, secret/personal information, etc.


• What they have - e.g. token, SmartCard, phone, etc.


• What they are - i.e. biometrics


• Where they are (in space and time) - e.g. particular terminal, logon hours, etc.

The most common form of authentication is username/password, but this is outdated, insecure and, usually, fairly easily cracked (but that's another post). The problem is that each of these on their own is not very secure (yes, even biometrics are not that secure used on their own in a large environment). If we use a combination then we can obtain secure, strong authentication (by strong authentication we mean that we are sure about the identity of this subject as it would be very hard to have all the required metrics otherwise). RSA-type tokens and SmartCards combined with a PIN or password are easy and obvious choices to deploy, but they have issues. They are expensive to deploy, as you have hardware costs as well as the authentication servers. From a user perspective, they have to carry round something else with them. That's not usually too much of a problem, as these are small devices or credit-cards, but you have to have a reader for a SmartCard. Lost or damaged hardware (or tokens that have run out of battery) have to be replaced at a cost.

OK, so we could use SMS, whereby a text message is received by the user containing a one-time password. This is often done by sending one on-demand to the user when they start the login process. What if the network is down? What if there are delays on the network? Well, we can deliver the password up front, i.e. when they log off we can send them the password to use next time they want to login, but then it's hanging around on their phone, which they might lose. So what's the solution? Well, I saw two products that are noteworthy: Swivel Authentication Solutions and GrIDsure.

Swivel's solution relies on either secure SMS or a Turing image (one that is human-readable but not computer-readable). The Turing image will show two rows of numbers, the first is 0 to 9 and the second is the numbers in a random order. The idea is that you have a PIN number that you remember and you read off a one-time PIN from the image. So, if your PIN was 2468 then your one-time PIN for this login attempt would be 7193 from the image below. If someone uses a keylogger, then it will be defeated by this, as that PIN won't be valid next time and it hasn't revealed the base PIN number that you remember. However, if someone uses keylogger and screen capture malware, then it could be read off and deduced - possibly a big ask. However, you could shoulder-surf the pattern as well. That being said, this is very easy to deploy and relatively cheap. Users find it fairly simple to use as well, and it has to be better than a static PIN.

However, there is another solution - GrIDsure. With GrIDsure, you choose a pattern on a grid to remember. The grid size and pattern length is configurable, but the standard is to have a four square pattern on a 5x5 grid. You remember this pattern and then, when you attempt to login, you will be presented with a 'random' grid of numbers. You then read off the numbers in your pattern. For example, if your pattern is the tick that GrIDsure use as their demo and you are presented with the grid shown below, then your one-time PIN number would be 0649. This would change every time you log in. This now defeats keyloggers and shoulder surfing, as each digit will appear more than once. So, even if you see or log the grid and someone typing 0649, there are 81 patterns that would result in this PIN on the grid shown below. It is important to remember that you do not type or click the grid. The grid is just an image; you type the PIN in on a standard keypad.

This can be made more secure by deploying the grid on your mobile phone as a Java applet rather than in the web page, thus defeating screen capture. The grids, in this instance, are seeded from the phone's unique ID, so someone else has to have your actual phone, not just the applet running on their phone. This is true multi-factor authentication, as it requires the physical phone and a pattern that the user knows, without both you cannot authenticate. Also, this is a cheap to deploy solution as most users will already have a mobile phone, and those that don't can drop back onto the single-factor one-time passcode by displaying the grid in a browser. Users also find this very simple to use, as many people already remember their PIN numbers as a pattern anyway. This also 'plays nicely' with other authentication, i.e. you can still use username and password for some users and GrIDsure for others as the desktop client accepts both. Similarly, the web portal is able to interface with virtually any web-based application as a single-sign-on solution. Of course existing users can still hit the services direct and use traditional authentication until this has been deployed to all.

Obstacle Poker for Security Assessments

I was talking to Vic Page, a colleague of mine, today about various things and he told me about one of his PhD deliverables on 'Three Card RAG' or 'Obstacle Poker' - very interesting concept that he has come up with. During our discussion, we came up with an embryonic idea for using his concept to aide security assessments of organisations. Before I can describe it I need to extract a few concepts from his 10-page paper in the BT Technology Journal entitled "Security risk mitigation for information systems".

In the paper he describes the Security Obstacle Mitigation Model (SOMM) for developing trustworthy information systems. He also defines some terminology - a subset of which I have reproduced here (his paper is an interesting read):

• mitigation - a mitigation is a procedure that will counter the effect of an obstacle


• obstacle - an obstacle is something that, should it occur, will obstruct a trust assumption and affect the CIAA security requirements - obstacles are caused by malicious or inadvertent use of the operational information system


• RAG code - RAG codes form an intuitive 'traffic light' approach to ranking the ability for load-bearing and the vulnerability of a trust assumption (RAG is an acronym for Red, Amber and Green). R signifies stop and mitigate, A signifies proceed with caution and G signifies continue with trust

So how is this relevant to security assessments particularly rather than information systems in general? Well, it is the way he is applying it that becomes interesting for the security assessment arena. He has moved this concept into the field of agile development and taken the Scrums process of planning poker and made it more accessible for other fields.

Now a quick background to the security assessment field is in order. The majority of security assessment strategies are technology focused and concentrate on system evaluation and tactical issues. This can lead to point solutions and, therefore, gaps between countermeasures. Obviously we need the vulnerability assessments and information system audits, but these should follow an Information Security Risk Evaluation. Schemes like Octave, although big, do follow an organisational evaluation, focused on security practices and strategic issues. The top down approach is driven by business issues and objectives leading to protection of what needs it and awareness of risk. Most other bottom up security practices start with individual components and computing infrastructure, seeking the technological 'silver bullet', which leads to protecting what can be protected rather than what needs to be protected. Of course this is an ongoing cyclical process.

So, what is obstacle poker and how do we incorporate it into an information security risk evaluation? Well, the principle is that representatives of all roles must be included in an information security risk evaluation for it to meet the needs of the organisation. Too often security assessments are left to the ICT departments and technologists, who don't necessarily know the business processes at play. Unfortunately, the people working in the organisation who aren't part of the ICT team usually have little or no knowledge of the technical landscape or what's possible/feasible. It needs everyone at the table and they need to speak a common language. Interpreters, i.e. consultants, can be brought in to help, but there still needs to be a simple way to converse.

The idea of 'Three Card RAG' is that an issue is discussed and then all the members of the team will rate it with the RAG scale given above. This is done by issuing each member of the team three cards - one Red, one Amber and one Green. Each member picks a card and then everyone reveals their cards at once. If everyone agrees, then that is considered the state of play and actions are taken accordingly. If they do not agree then further discussion can be entered into and another round completed. The idea being to come to a consensus between the technical experts and the users of the system quickly and efficiently. Those that are more obvious will be dealt with very quickly, those requiring more discussion will be given a fair hearing.

This principle can be used in information security risk evaluation by identifying the threat ratings and consequences of risks. We all know that a Threat + a Vulnerability = Risk to an Asset, but how can we categorise these when ICT and management departments can be approaching this from very different standpoints? Is the system that seems critical to the ICT department actually critical to the business or not?

Threat ratings have the following defined ranges: Negligible, very low, low, medium, high, very high and extreme. They are quite well defined in terms of how often they are likely to occur, from unlikely, through likely to occur every 6 months or less for medium, to likely to occur multiple times each day for extreme. These threat ratings must be ICT lead, but not exclusively controlled. If everyone holds a green card then it can be classified as very low or negligible. Amber would denote Medium and red would denote very high or extreme threat rating. Mixtures of cards can result in the low or high ratings being used if there is still no total agreement after a few rounds. The consequences are where the ICT department may step back a little. These are defined by the Australian Government's Defence Signals Directorate as:

• insignificant - can be dealt with by normal operations
• minor - could threaten the system’s efficiency or effectiveness but can be dealt with internally
• moderate - does not threaten the system, but could cause major review and modification of operating procedures
• major - threatens the continuation of basic functions of the system and requires senior-level management intervention
• catastrophic - threatens the continuation of the system and causes major problems for the organisation and customers

This is where Three Card RAG really comes into its own. Getting agreement on this scale can be very difficult in organisations. However, with a simple traffic light scheme, everyone understands the system and agreement can be reached much more easily between all the stakeholders. Simply put, if it's red it's a priority, amber is secondary and green can be safely ignored until the next iteration (N.B. not ignored completely or never discussed again, just not dealt with in the current round of the cycle).

InfoSecurity Europe 2009

Well, a couple of weeks ago I went to InfoSecurity Europe 2009 at Earl's Court, as I do every year. If you've never been, but are at all interested in network and information security or are looking for vendors, then I highly recommend visiting. To my surprise, and for the first time I can remember, Microsoft wasn't there. Apart from that, however, all the usual players were there and, to be honest, it was all much the same as before. There was no new emerging technology or hot topic, just new developments of old technologies. A couple of years ago we had the hot topic of 'social engineering' and 'securing the user'; ok, we all knew that the users were our weak link and phrases like "we spend all our time securing the first 2000 miles and forget about the last 2 feet", and "our network would be totally secure, reliable and fully functional if we didn't let users login", have always been commonplace, but there were new mass threats, new education programmes and new tools at the disposal of net admins to deal with them.

However, this year was different; nothing really sprang out. OK, cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has expanded and matured, but other than that we see the same products and services as before. What amazes me is how some vendors and speakers can get it so wrong and don't appear to understand the actual level of security offered or operating environment in which their products will be used. I'm not going to list actual vendors here, but how can an encryption solution for mobile users that doesn't encrypt the data at rest be viable? Encrypting network traffic is commendable, but not the only safeguard required. What if they now lose their laptop, mobile or pen drive? A secure USB pen drive vendor admitted, when questioned, that files were decrypted into the C:\Temp folder while in use, then deleted after encrypting for storage on the drive again. They couldn't tell me if this was a secure delete or a simple removal of the pointer in the file allocation table as normal. Regardless of the deletion process, however, how many applications can read and write to that folder? What's to stop me from writing a very small bit of code to monitor that folder every few seconds and take copies? This might be secure enough if it is on a corporate machine, but why not just store the file on it then and not bother with the drive?

Similarly, email security is always a problematic area, with almost no solution fitting the technology properly. The big advantage of email, and the reason we all use it, is that it is independent of firmware - i.e. it doesn't matter what hardware, OS or email app we use, it still works. Unfortunately, security was never built in to email, so every email is like sending an electronic postcard. However, I would argue that a solution that only allows you to send encrypted email within your organisation is of limited value. What about all your customers and partners? There are also still solutions that store your files on their servers and send a link to the recipient. Why trust your files to them? I asked several vendors how they deal with password transfer, only to be told that they don't. "It's up to the user how they tell the recipient what the password is," was a common reply. We know users are unreliable, why leave it to them? I had to transfer some confidential files to someone via email recently (the only transport method they would accept), only to be told that they didn't want the hassle of decrypting it, so could I send them in plaintext. Having got over that hurdle, they wouldn't give me a mobile phone number so that I could transfer the passphrase via a call or SMS (as people seem to need them written down), asking me to email it to them. I know there are technologies out there to solve these problems, but they aren't without any problems.

This is turning into a bit of a rant and I'm getting off topic, so back to InfoSec. I was pleased to see that there were some voices of caution out there about the wholesale adoption of virtualisation without considering the security implications. One that springs to mind is Steve Moyle who has produced 10 points to consider implementing on his blog here. Virtualisation is a good technology for a number of reasons, but it does bring in new security threats and it must be implemented with these in mind and secured accordingly. I do also think that cloud computing and SaaS could be very important to SMEs (Small to Medium-sized Enterprises) who don't have the in-house expertise or large budget. They can still have large enterprise-level configurability and security, without the overheads. Finally, people seem to be taking information governance and user education seriously rather than just paying lip-service to them. In all, the show was encouraging, but many vendors are not quite there yet, which only goes to highlight that the majority of organisations are not taking the new threat-landscape seriously enough and countermeasures must be lacking.