By now people are starting to hear that RSA has been hit with an attack.  Reports are vague at best, and we have very little idea how this may affect RSA customers and security in general.  But I’d like to opine about a few points.

First, we, in the profession of information security, are still not taking malware seriously enough.  Oh, sure, most people are running antivirus software.  But we don’t really study and understand the topic.  Malware gets extremely short shrift in any general security textbook.  Sometimes it isn’t mentioned at all.  Sometimes the descriptions are still based on those long-ago days when boot-sector infectors ruled the earth.  (Interesting to see that they are coming back again, in the form of Autorun and Autoplay, but that’s simply another aspect of Slade’s Law of Computer History.)  Malware has gradually grown from an almost academic issue to a pervasive presence in the computing environment.  It’s the boiling frog situation: the rise in threat has been gradual enough that we haven’t noticed it.

Second, we aren’t taking security awareness seriously enough.  These types of attacks rely primarily on social engineering and malware.  Security awareness works marvelously well as a protection against both.  RSA is a security corporation: they’ve got all kinds of smart people who know about security.  But they’ve also got lots of admin and marketing people who haven’t been given basic training in the security front lines.  For a number of years I have been promoting the idea that corporations should be providing security awareness training.  Not just to their employees, but to the general public.  For free.  I propose that this is not just a gesture of goodwill or advertising for the companies, but that it actually helps to improve their overall security.  In the modern computing (and interconnected communications) environment, making sure somebody else knows more about security means that there is less chance that you are going to be hit.

(Third, I really hate that “APT” term.  “Advanced Persistent Threat” is pretty meaningless, and actually hides what is going on.  Yes, I know that it is embarrassing to have to admit that you have been tricked by social engineering [which is, itself, only a fancy word for "lying"] and tricked badly enough that somebody actually got you to run a virus or trojan on yourself.  It’s so last millennium.  But it’s the truth, and dressing it up in a stylish new term doesn’t make it any less so.)

While at CanSecWest, I was noting a news story about how somebody had, yet again, defrauded the US government and military by selling them a terribly sophisticated computer algorithm that promised to find secret information about enemies and/or terrorists, but actually didn’t work.  I suspect that this will be a complex case, since the vendor will undoubtedly claim that his work is so sophisticated and complicated that it does work, it’s just that the users didn’t understand it.

In view of this, I found it really interesting to note a very similar case, just a few days later.  Computerized Voice Stress Analyzers (CVSAs) have been promoted and sold for a least 25 years now.  This despite the fact that, four years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice did a study and concluded that “VSA programs show poor validity -neither program efficiently determined who was being deceptive about recent drug use. The programs were not able to detect deception at a rate any better than chance … The data also suggest poor reliability for both VSA products when we compared expert and novice interpretations of the output.”

In a sense the CVSA case is much worse, because, since it is a private company selling to private companies, there is nobody to say that these people are a) wasting money, and b) making poor hiring decisions based on what is essentially a coin flip.

Reading Leviticus today.  Chapter 19.  “⁹ When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰ Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.”

A rather interesting instruction.  Why are we not to be as efficient as possible?  Yes, in that immediate passage there is a reason given: charity.  “Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.”  But there are other, similar injunctions against efficiency, and even technology.  (Have a search for passages about cisterns, etc.)

Our society, of course, makes a god (and idol?) of efficiency.  We see whole businesses built on being just that much more efficient than somebody else.  That seems to be the whole idea behind outsourcing, for example.  But another example is Enron.  Businesspeople seem to think they can shave the margins just a little bit more, and make fortunes in the process.  There are lots of examples in the financial world, most of them bad.  Stock markets, and crashes.  Derivative instruments, and bank failures.

Now, we like efficiency in the technical realm.  In fact, we assume (as an unexamined article of faith, if you will) that we are making everybody more efficient.  (This is why Microsoft is currently trying to promote the use of Windows 7 on smartphones with a series of ads showing people being frustrated and sometimes fatally distracted by their smartphones.)  (No, I don’t understand it, either.)  I could, I suppose, go on with a series of examples of how social networking is making people waste much more time than ever before.

But that’s not my point.  The point I’m working towards is that we, in technology, are actually very wasteful.  We get newer and more powerful machines, and then put more bloated and inefficient programs on them.  (On a laptop, I once found that, simply by switching from the newest level of graphical user interface to an older, less colourful, but still perfectly usable interface, I could double the battery life.)

Going deeper than than, nobody does code optimization anymore (other than turning on the optimization switch on the compiler).  We are running larger, and slower, programs.  Partly because we are running larger programs, and nobody wants to spend the time doing optimization on that volume of code.

But optimization can be a very bad thing, too.  Larry Wall, who has quite a gift for the apt observation, notes that “[o]ptimizations always bust things, because all optimizations are, in the long haul, a form of cheating, and cheaters eventually get caught.”  You want a second opinion?  How about William A. Wulf: “More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency than for any other single reason–including blind stupidity.”

Going back to the example of code optimization, if you do it, your source code no longer truly represents the executable code.  And, whatever you did to shave ten cycles off the operation, or a hundred bytes off the file size, it’s going to be more complex for someone to figure out (and very possibly leaves a hole that someone can exploit).

In the malware field, back in the simple old days when we only had to worry about boot sector infectors and file infectors, most file infectors would attach themselves to the beginning or end of the infected program.  So, if you were a virus scanner vendor, and you wanted to win the speed race, you would only check the beginning and the end: top and tail scanning.  Trouble is, while most file infectors attacked there, that wasn’t the only place viruses could get in.  So, optimizing for speed, you sacrificed protection and accuracy.

Are we doing the same things in other areas of security?  Yes, we always have to do our cost/benefit analysis, and try to make sure that we are giving the best protection for the resources available.  But are we, for example, pursuing certain “metrics,” and forgetting some aspects of the larger picture?

I seem to be back on the air.

A few observations over this whole affair:

(Sorry, I’ve not had time to put these in particular order, and some of the point may duplicate or relate …)

1) I still have absolutely no idea why Shaw cut me off.  They keep blaming Spamhaus, but the only links they offer me as evidence clearly show that there is no “bad reputation” in the specific IP address that I am currently using, only a policy listing showing one of Shaw’s address ranges.

2) I got absolutely no warning from Shaw, and no notice after the fact.

3) Shaw’s spam filtering is for the birds.  Today I got two messages flagged as spam, for no clear reason I could see.  They were from a publisher, asking how to send me a book for review.  The only possible reason I could see was that the publisher copied three of my email addresses on the same message.  A lot of people do that, but it usually doesn’t trip the spam filter.  Today it did.  (Someone else with Shaw “service” tried to send out an announcement to a group.  Since he didn’t have a mailing list server, he just sent out a bunch of messages.  Apparently that got *his* account flagged as spamming.)  I also got the usually round of messages from security mailing lists tagged as spam: Shaw sure has something against security.  And at least one 419 scam got through unflagged today, despite being like just about every other 419 in the world.  (Oddly, during this period I’ve noted a slight uptick in 419s and phishing in general.)

4) Through this episode I had contact with Shaw via email, phone, “live chat,” and Twitter.  I follow ShawInfo and Shawhelp on Twitter.  On Twitter, I was told to send them a direct message (DM).  I had, in fact, tried to do that, but Shaw doesn’t accept direct messages by default.  (Since I pointed that out to them, they now, apparently accept them from me.)  They sent me public messages on Twitter, and I replied in kind.  Through the Twitter account they also informed me that error 554 is “poor reputation” and is caused by sending too many emails.  They didn’t say how many is too many.  (Testing by someone else indicated something on the order of 50-100 per hour, and I’ve never done anything near that scale.)

5) The “live chat” function installs some software on your (the client) machine.  At least two of the pieces of software failed the digital signature verification …

6) The “information” I got from Shaw was limited.  The first (phone) support call directed me to http://www.senderbase.org/senderbase_queries/detailip?search_string=70.79.166.169  If you read the page, the information is almost entirely about the “network” with only a few (and not informative) pieces about the IP address itself.  (I did, separately, confirm that this was my IP address.)  The bulk of the page is a report on addresses that aren’t even in the same range as I am.  About halfway down the right hand side of the page is “DNS-based blocklists.”  If you click the “[Show/Hide all]” link you’ll notice that four out of five think I’m OK.  If you click on the remaining one, you go to http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=70.79.166.169  At the moment, it shows that I’m completely OK.  At the time I was dealing with Shaw, it showed that it’s not in the SpamHaus Block List (SBL) or the XBL.  It was in the PBL (Policy Block List), but only as a range known to be allowed to do open sending.  In other words, there is nothing wrong with my IP address: Shaw is in the poop for allowing (other) people to send spam.

7) The second (live chat) support call sent me to http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3a70.79.166.169+  Again, this page showed a single negative entry, and a whole page of positive reports.  The single negative entry, if pursued, went to the same Spamhaus report as detailed above.

At the time, both initial pages, if followed through in terms of details, led to http://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/query/PBL164253 giving, as the reason, that “This IP range has been identified by Spamhaus as not meeting our policy for IPs permitted to deliver unauthenticated ‘direct-to-mx’ email to PBL users.”  Again, Shaw’s problem, not mine.  However, that page has a link to allow you to try and have an address removed.  However, it says that the “Removal Procedure” is only to be used “If you are not using normal email software but instead are running a mail server and you are the owner of a Static IP address in the range 70.79.164.0/22 and you have a legitimate reason for operating a mail server on this IP, you can automatically remove (suppress) your static IP address from the PBL database.”  Nevertheless, I did explore the link on that page, which led to http://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/removal/  Again, there you are told “You should only remove an IP address from the PBL if (A) the IP address is Static and has proper Reverse DNS assigned to your mail server, and (B) if you have a specific technical reason for needing to run a ‘direct-to-MX’ email service, such as a mail server appliance, off the Static IP address. In all other cases you should NOT remove an IP address from the PBL.”  This did not refer to my situation.  Unfortunately, THESE TWO PAGES ARE INCORRECT.  If you do proceed beyond that page, you get to http://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/removal/form  This page does allow you to submit a removal request for a dynamic IP address, and, in fact, defaults to dynamic in the form.  It was only on the last part of the second call, when the Shaw tech gave me this specific address, that I found this out.  For this I really have to blame Spamhaus.

9) In trying to determine if, by some weird mischance, my computer had become infected, I used two AV scanners, one spyware scanner, and two rootkit scanners.  (All results negative, although the Sophos rootkit scanner could have been a bit clearer about what it had “found.”)  Of course, I’ve been in the field for over two decades.  How would the average user (or even a security professional in a non-malware field) even know that there are different types of scanners?  (Let alone the non-signature based tools.)

Well, multiple scanners say I have no malware, no spyware, and no rootkits.

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3a70.79.166.169+ says I’m clean except for Spamhaus.

Spamhaus shows that http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=70.79.166.169 I’m clean and it’s Shaw that’s dirty.

Shaw’s support is as inane as ever:

GoToAssist (11:43:33):
Your representative has arrived.

Stephen – 6685 (11:43:37):
Thank you for choosing Shaw Internet Chat Support, my name is Steve.  I will be happy to help you today.Before continuing, would you please confirm your home telephone number and address so that I can bring up your account information?

[If you don't mind, I've elided this, but it's the only change I've made - rms]

Stephen – 6685 (11:44:57):
Thank you, one moment please
Stephen – 6685 (11:48:07):
from what we see on the notes, it looks like your email is being blocked to due a poor reputation which means its being blocked by spam protection companies,  im just looking into this a little further for you.

Rob Slade (11:49:16):
Do you have any idea of what that means?  When I talked to “Rowell” yesteerday, he did not know anything about anti-spam technology, and just kept handing me bafflegab.  If you do not have any knowledge in thsi area, please hand me to someone who does.
Rob Slade (11:49:46):
I should let you know that I *do* know what I’m talking about: look up “Robert Slade” on Wikipedia.

Stephen – 6685 (11:49:48):
your being blocked by spamhaus
Stephen – 6685 (11:50:02):

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3a70.79.166.169+

Rob Slade (11:50:18):
I’ve written two books on viruses and malware, the first book on software forensics, and a dictionary of information security.
Rob Slade (11:50:38):
I do know what spam is, and I am well aware of antipsam technology.
Rob Slade (11:51:08):
Per looking at senderbase yesterday, my specific IP address has nothing on it.  Just Shaw’s domain range.

Stephen – 6685 (11:52:03):
you would need to go here   http://www.spamhaus.org/lookup.lasso   type in your ip address to lookup, then  click the document it shows under the listed in red, and follow the steps to get it removed from spamhaus

Rob Slade (11:52:29):

http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=70.79.166.169

Rob Slade (11:53:04):
See that it is only listed in the PBL, and if you look up the detail on that you will see that it is only the Shaw /22 range, and not my address.
Rob Slade (11:53:49):
Going back to your original list, you will see that it is *only* listed on Spamhaus (and therefore only on the PBL), and that *all* the other sites give me a clean bill of health.
Rob Slade (11:54:19):
In addition, why did I get absolutely no warning or notice from Shaw, just had my ability to send cut off without warning?

Stephen – 6685 (11:54:27):
its not blocked by us
Stephen – 6685 (11:54:31):
thats why we couldnt give warning
Stephen – 6685 (11:54:37):
its blocked by spamhaus

Rob Slade (11:54:49):
It is your SMTP server that refuses the connectionh.
Rob Slade (11:55:00):
You can’t blame Spamhaus.

Stephen – 6685 (11:55:14):
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3a70.79.166.169+   please review this,  it will show you based on a search of your ip address, its listed by spamhaus-zen….

Rob Slade (11:55:52):
That is the same list as before.

Stephen – 6685 (11:56:19):
yes it is

Rob Slade (11:56:36):
As I told you, it gives me a clean bill of health, except for Spamhaus, and Spamhaus only lists the Shaw /22 range in the PBL, not my IP address specifically.

Stephen – 6685 (11:56:37):
if you look at the top.. spamhaus-zen  to the right of that it shows as listed  which means its blocked by them
Stephen – 6685 (11:57:00):
its still being listed by them, otherwise it would come up saying OK  next to spamhaus
Stephen – 6685 (11:57:16):
if you login to webmail  and try sending an email out from there, it will work because its not associated with your computer
Stephen – 6685 (11:57:30):
its not working on your computer because your ip  address is blocked by spamhaus

Rob Slade (11:57:44):
Yes, and if you look at the detail, you will see that I am *not* lsited in the SBL, *not* listed in the CBL, and *only* listed in the PBL, and if you look at the detail for *that* you will see that it is *Shaw* that violates, not me.
Rob Slade (11:58:37):
Here. chew on these: http://is.gd/VbjOIh http://is.gd/ogefIX

Stephen – 6685 (11:59:31):
im not sure what i am suppose to be seeing in those links..   Error establishing a database connection
Stephen – 6685 (12:00:07):
http://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/query/PBL164253  from there, you will need to follow the steps from clicking on remove an ip from pbl

Rob Slade (12:01:20):
In the meantime, I will be writing up more blog posts on how Shaw has inconsitent spam filtering, does not say what kind of spam filtering it does do, has a weird relationship with the blacklisting outfits.
Rob Slade (12:02:09):
Obviously you have not read the page you sent me.  This is the procedure only if you are running an email server (MTA) yourself.  I don’t.  You guys do.

Stephen – 6685 (12:05:15):
yes, from the report, its showing that its being blocked due to not using smpt authentication, that gets addressed from our side, where we communicate with spamhaus to get that resolved, however also by having you follow the link from the remove my ip address can usaully help get it resolved quicker.
Stephen – 6685 (12:06:12):
it is blocked by spamhaus, not us, which is something that will get looked into, if it was just being blocked by us, we could easily resolve it for you, however because its being blocked by a 3rd party, it will take some time, in the meantime you can use webmail to send and receive emails

Rob Slade (12:06:19):
How so?  I don’t run an SMTP server, so I can’t give them full info in filling out that form.
Rob Slade (12:07:06):
Besides, it’s not a static address.
Rob Slade (12:07:45):
Obviously you do not know what you are talkign about.  Are you going to put me through to someone who does?

Stephen – 6685 (12:08:08):
yes i do know what i am talking about Rob

Rob Slade (12:08:45):
Then how come you are asking em to fill out a form when the instructions specifically state not to do it unless this is a static IP address and I am running my own mail server?
Rob Slade (12:09:36):
http://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/removal/ “You should only remove an IP address from the PBL if (A) the IP address is Static and has proper Reverse DNS assigned to your mail server”

Stephen – 6685 (12:09:37):
i am just looking to see what more we can do on this right now, i will be a couple minutes.

As noted, Shaw is not very helpful with spam.  I’ve been getting spam from Marlin Travel, and from a band of people selling recuriting seminars, for a number of years.  I have been reporting this spam (to Shaw, and their supposedly automated spam filters) on at least a weekly basis for years.  Occasionally they deign to mark one of the messages as spam, but not on anything like a consistent basis.

Spam filtering is not transparent.  You can turn it on, or off.  You can have the spam go to the bit bucket, or get flagged.  There are no other options, and you have no information on how it works (or doesn’t).  (Heck, Vancouver Community Net [formerly Free-Net] does better than that.)

On my non-support call with Shaw, the agent did correctly identify the IP address I am (currently) using.  I have no idea when last it was switched.  Looking it up on senderbase is not supremely informative: there doesn’t seem to be any information on the address itself, other than the fact that it’s not in the SpamHaus Block List (SBL) or the XBL.  It is in the PBL (Policy Block List), but only as a range known to be allowed to do open sending.  In other words, there is nothing wrong with my IP address: Shaw is in the poop for allowing (other) people to send spam.

Meantime I have confirmed that, as I already knew, there is nothing malware or spam related on my machine.  Nothing that MSE detects.  Nothing that Vipre detects.  Nothing that Spybot detects.  At the moment I’m running the Sophos rootkit detector, and F-Secure’s Blacklight.  They haven’t found anything either.  I am, of course, morally certain that Shaw was lying to me about the possibility, but, unlike them, I’m not arrogant enough not to check.  I was right: they are idiots.  And, with their non-support, have cost me a lot of valuable time checking a clean machine.  (Plus not providing the Internet service I’m paying for.)

I have had Internet access with Shaw Cable for a number of years.  I have been using the same system for at least seven years.  I’m a malware researcher, so I check my machines thoroughly and regularly.

I also know that Shaw has a very bad reputation in terms of spam.  There are a number of  systems that I cannot send email to, since Shaw connected computers, apparently, send a lot of spam and viruses.  I also know that I spend a significant amount of time every day trying to tune Shaw’s very crude spam filtering: identifying and sending them messages they have tagged as spam which are not, and sending them messages they have not tagged which are spam.

Today my wife found she couldn’t send email.  When I tried, I couldn’t either.  We are getting a message from the SMTP server #554, which has something to do with poor reputation.

I did manage to send email through Webmail, and so sent a message to Shaw’s technical support.  (Finding out, when I did so, that they changed the technical support email address in December, without telling anyone.)  They responded about three hours later.  Rowell, the person making the call, blamed everything on senderbase.org.  Rowell denied that this had anything to do with blacklisting.  He also denied that he was saying that my computer was sending any spam.  He said that if I did not send any email for the next two days, that would fix the problem.  He refused to say why there was any indication that my computer was in any way at fault, or offer any evidence that I was sending out spam or viruses.  He also refused to escalate the problem to anyone who was either higher up and could do anything, or anyone who had any technical knowledge about the problem.

Shaw is now in my dirty words file.

BKEXTDET.RVW   20101023

“Extrusion Detection”, Richard Bejtlich, 2006, 0-321-34996-2,
U$49.99/C$69.99
%A   Richard Bejtlich www.taosecurity.com taosecurity.blogspot.com
%C   P.O. Box 520, 26 Prince Andrew Place, Don Mills, Ontario  M3C 2T8
%D   2006
%G   0-321-34996-2
%I   Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
%O   U$49.99/C$69.99 416-447-5101 800-822-6339 bkexpress@aw.com
%O  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321349962/robsladesinterne
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321349962/robsladesinte-21
%O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321349962/robsladesin03-20
%O   Audience a+ Tech 3 Writing 2 (see revfaq.htm for explanation)
%P   385 p.
%T   “Extrusion Detection:Security Monitoring for Internal Intrusions”

According to the preface, this book explains the use of extrusion detection (related to egress scanning), to detect intruders who are using client-side attacks to enter or work within your network.   The audience is intended to be architects, engineers, analysts, operators and managers with an intermediate to advanced knowledge of network security.  Background for readers should include knowledge of scripting, network attack tools and controls, basic system administration, TCP/IP, as well as management and policy.  (It should also be understood that those who will get the most out of the text should know not only the concepts of TCP/IP, but advanced level details of packet and log structures.)  Bejtlich notes that he is not explicitly addressing malware or phishing, and provides references for those areas.  (It appears that the work is not directed at information which might detect insider attacks.)

Part one is about detecting and controlling intrusions.  Chapter one reviews network security monitoring, with a basic introduction to security (brief but clear), and then gives an overview of monitoring and listing of some tools.  Defensible network architecture, in chapter two, provides lucid explanations of the basics, but the later sections delve deeply into packets, scripts and configurations.  Managers will understand the fundmental points being made, but pages of the material will be impenetrable unless you have serious hands-on experience with traffic analysis.  Extrusion detection itself is illustrated with intelligible concepts and examples (and a useful survey of the literature) in chapter three.   Chapter four examines both hardware and software instruments for viewing enterprise network traffic.  Useful but limited instances of layer three network access controls are reviewed in chapter five.

Part two addresses network security operations.  Chapter six delves into traffic threat assessment, and, oddly, at this point explains the details of logs, packets, and sessions clearly and in more detail.   A decent outline of the advance planning and basic concepts necessary for network incident response is detailed in chapter seven (although the material is generic and has limited relation to the rest of the content of the book).  Network forensics gets an excellent overview in chapter eight: not just technical points, but stressing the importance of documentation and transparent procedures.

Part three turns to internal intrusions.  Chapter nine is a case study of a traffic threat assessment.  It is, somewhat of necessity, dependent upon detailed examination of logs, but the material demands an advanced background in packet analysis.  The (somewhat outdated) use of IRC channels in botnet command and control is reviewed in chapter ten.

Bejtlich’s prose is clear, informative, and even has touches of humour.  The content is well-organized.  (There is a tendency to use idiosyncratic acronyms, sometimes before they’ve been expanded or defined.)  This work is demanding, particularly for those still at the intermediate level, but does examine an area of security which does not get sufficient attention.

copyright, Robert M. Slade   2010     BKEXTDET.RVW   20101023

BKCYWRFR.RVW   20101204

“Inside Cyber Warfare”, Jeffrey Carr, 2010, 978-0-596-80215-8,
U$39.99/C$49.99
%A   Jeffrey Carr greylogic.us
%C   103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA   95472
%D   2010
%G   978-0-596-80215-8 0-596-80215-3
%I   O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%O   U$39.99/C$49.99 800-998-9938 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com
%O  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596802153/robsladesinterne
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596802153/robsladesinte-21
%O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596802153/robsladesin03-20
%O   Audience n Tech 1 Writing 2 (see revfaq.htm for explanation)
%P   212 p.
%T   “Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld”

The preface states that this text is an attempt to cover the very broad topic of cyber warfare with enough depth to be interesting without being technically challenging for the reader.

Chapter one provides examples of cyber attacks (mostly DDoS [Distributed Denial of Service]), and speculations about future offensives.  More detailed stories are given in chapter two, although the reason for the title of “Rise of the Non-State Hacker” isn’t really clear.  The legal status of cyber warfare, in chapter three, deals primarily with disagreements about military treaties.  A guest chapter (four) gives a solid argument for the use of “active defence” (striking back at an attacker) in cyber attacks perceived to be acts of war, based on international law in regard to warfare.  The author of the book is the founder of Project Grey Goose, and chapter five talks briefly about some of the events PGG investigated, using them to illustrate aspects of the intelligence component of cyber warfare (and noting some policy weaknesses, such as the difficulties of obtaining the services of US citizens of foreign birth).  The social Web is examined in chapter six, noting relative usage in Russia, China, and the middle east, along with use and misuse by military personnel.  (The Croll social engineering attack, and Russian scripted attack tools, are also detailed.)  Ownership links, and domain registrations, are examined in chapter seven, although in a restricted scope.  Some structures of systems supporting organized crime online are noted in chapter eight.  Chapter nine provides a limited look at the sources of information used to determine who might be behind an attack.  A grab bag of aspects of malware and social networks is compiled to form chapter ten.  Chapter eleven lists position papers on the use of cyber warfare from various military services.  Chapter twelve is another guest article, looking at options for early warning systems to detect a cyber attack.  A host of guest opinions on cyber warfare are presented in chapter thirteen.

Carr is obviously, and probably legitimately, concerned that he not disclose information of a sensitive nature that is detrimental to the operations of the people with whom he works.  (Somewhat ironically, I reviewed this work while the Wikileaks furor over diplomatic cables was being discussed.)  However, he appears to have gone too far.  The result is uninteresting for anyone who has any background in cybercrime or related areas.  Those who have little to no exposure to security discussions on this scale may find it surprising, but professionals will have little to learn, here.

copyright, Robert M. Slade   2010     BKCYWRFR.RVW   20101204

BKCVAOMS.RVW   20100607

“Computer Viruses and Other Malicious Software”, Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development, 2009, 978-92-64-05650-3
%A   Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
%C   2 rue Andre Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France
%D   2009
%G   978-92-64-05650-3 92-64-05650-5
%I   OECD Publishing
%O   oecdna@turpin-distribution.com sourceoecd@oecd.org
%O  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9264056505/robsladesinterne
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/9264056505/robsladesinte-21
%O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/9264056505/robsladesin03-20
%O   Audience i- Tech 1 Writing 1 (see revfaq.htm for explanation)
%P   244 p.
%T   “Computer Viruses and Other Malicious Software”

The executive summary doesn’t tell us much except that malware is bad, and that this report is seen as a first step in addressing the issue in a global, comprehensive manner.

Part one, entitled “The Scope of Malware,” is intended to provide background to the problem.  Chapter one, as an overview, is a random collection of technical issues, with poor explanations.  Although it is good to see that the malware situation is defined in terms that are more up-to-date than those in all too many security texts, the lack of foundational material provided by the authors will necessarily limit the perception of the issue for those readers who have not done serious research themselves.  Various stories of attacks and payloads (not all related to malware) are listed in an equally disjointed manner in chapter two.  There are numerous errors, including in simple aspects like arithmetic.  (20 million is not “5 times” one million.)   The explanation of why we should be concerned, in chapter three, boils down to the fact that the net is important, and malware imposes costs.

Part two turns to the economics of malware.  Chapter four, while it promises to deal with cybersecurity and economic incentives, merely states that security is hard.  Chapter five does deal with economic factors influencing decisions of key players on the Internet, but does so only on the basis of an opinion survey, rather than any measured costs or benefits.  Descriptions of different types of economic situations are given in chapter six, but a final set of “findings” doesn’t seem to have much background support.

Part three is supposed to contain recommendations about actions to take, or policies to follow, to address the malware issue.

Unfortunately, this work does not have sufficient technical depth on areas of malware to contribute to the literature.  The concept of addressing the economic aspects is interesting, but is not sufficiently fulfilled.  Overall, this text has nothing to add to existing information.

copyright, Robert M. Slade   2010     BKCVAOMS.RVW   20100607

So, SANS has set it’s InfoCon level to yellow to increase the visibility of this update, and hopefully to encourage people to patch it sooner rather than later. All I can say is that I hope that it does actually get people to apply this patch quickly.

Apparently MSFT are aware of “active attacks”, which begs the question as to why is this only rated as an “Important” patch? I’m sure they have their reasons though, but if you are running any web applications, you are really advised to patch sooner rather than later on this one.

The details of the patch, taken from Microsoft’s website are the following:

—————————–

Executive Summary

This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability in ASP.NET. The vulnerability could allow information disclosure. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could read data, such as the view state, which was encrypted by the server. This vulnerability can also be used for data tampering, which, if successfully exploited, could be used to decrypt and tamper with the data encrypted by the server. Microsoft .NET Framework versions prior to Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 are not affected by the file content disclosure portion of this vulnerability.

This security update is rated Important for all supported editions of ASP.NET except Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 Service Pack 3. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.

The security update addresses the vulnerability by additionally signing all data that is encrypted by ASP.NET. For more information about the vulnerability, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection for the specific vulnerability entry under the next section, Vulnerability Information.

This security update also addresses the vulnerability first described in Microsoft Security Advisory 2416728.

Recommendation. Microsoft recommends that customers apply the update at the earliest opportunity.

———————-
As always people, be safe and patch asap, the Internet is a dangerous place….

Stuxnet is a worm that focuses on attacking SCADA devices. This is interesting on several levels.

First, we get to see all of those so-called isolated networks get infected, and wonder how that happened (here’s a clue: in 2010, isolated means in a concrete box buried underground with no person having access to it).

Then, we get to see how weak SCADA devices really are. No surprise to anyone who has ever fuzzed one.

After that, we get to theorize on who’s behind it and who is the target. What’s your guess?

If you’re at all interested in Social Engineering as I’m sure that most of our readers are, then you will probably be very interested in the report over at the Social-Engineer.org site.

At DEFCON 18 this year, held in Las Vegas there was a Social Engineering Capture The Flag event held. This proved to be quite a success, well more so for the participants, than the actual companies targeted, but hey. All’s fair in love and war.

Some of the rules for this event were the following:

- Contestants may not ask for or obtain financial data, passwords, or personal identifying information such as social security numbers or bank account numbers;
- Contestants may not attempt to falsify or falsify employment records;
- The list of target organizations will not include any financial, government, educational, or health care organizations;
- Contestants must keep it clean, for example, use of any pornography is banned.

Even the FBI were extremely weary of this contest and contacted the organizers beforehand, so this was getting a lot of press coverage. I am also aware that quite a few companies sent out internal communications about this event to their employees, warning them not to give out any sensitive information.

I’d personally just like to thank the team over at Social-Engineer.org for doing so much to bring social engineering into the public’s eye, and also for all the hard work they’ve put into SET and the Social Engineering Framework. Keep up the amazing work guys!
So without further ado, you can read the full report here.

For those of you who have never used the Social Engineering Toolkit (SET), you really are missing out on an amazing tool, and one that is guaranteed to make your lives simpler in the social engineering realm.

SET was written by David Kennedy a.k.a ReL1K, and you can find this amazing tool in either the BackTrack Linux distro, or you can get it via svn directly from Dave’s site. Full info on how to download this via svn can be found here.

SET is also tightly integrated with the Metasploit Framework, so you can easily make use of all the exploits within MSF to perform some really technical social engineering attacks.

I’m guessing that if you’ve never heard of SET before, you’re probably wondering what it can do, well, let’s put it this way, in the context of social engineering, what can’t SET do?

I would say that the best way to familiarize yourself with SET and all it’s features would be to download it and have a play with it. Then to go through some of the many tutorials available online.

There is now a section dedicated to SET over at Offensive Security‘s free Metasploit Unleashed training page, which you can find here.

Dave has also kindly put up a load of tutorial videos to walk you through the basics, and then some on his site. To check these out just head over to the Tutorials section on his site.
If you’d like to see a video of all the new features in SET 0.7, then have a look here.

Ever since I first became aware of Foursquare I thought that it was a bad idea, and that it wouldn’t last long. Well I still think that it’s a really bad idea, but I was definitely wrong about how long it would last.

I have to wonder about people.

I know that security folk are more paranoid than most other people. I also know that comes with the territory, but who ever though that it would be a good idea to advertise where you are at any given point in time? Now Facebook has gone and launched Places, which does pretty much the same thing as Foursqaure.

Call me extremely paranoid, but when your average user publishes personal details on Facebook, such as their home address, where they work, their work and home e-mail addresses, photo’s of themselves and their family (sometimes including photo’s of their home and car), do they really need to let the world know exactly where they are at any given point?

I am also betting that it’s some of these very same people that tend to get all up in arms, when someone reads over their shoulder on the tube, or stands at their desk waiting for them to finish their phone call. The same people that will complain about having their privacy violated!

Now imagine the following scenarios:

1. You’ve just arrived at the office, so you decide to “check in” to one of these applications, so that everyone knows that you’re at work. You’ve also just given out the exact location of where you work. In some cases this can be a major risk, if you work in an unmarked building for example, where the location of the building is supposed to not be that easily known, well now everyone knows. This also lets any would be breaking and entering specialist know that you are now no longer at home, or that your wife and kids are now home alone.

2. You call in sick for the day, and forget that you happened to befriend your boss on Facebook, you then take a nice trip to some art gallery, or to a shopping mall to catch that newly released film, and you “check in” (Yes, I’ve seen this happen!). Then you’re all shocked when you get called into your bosses office because he knows that you weren’t really sick, you were out having fun on company time. I’ve got no problem with people taking a day off, but if you’re going to be stupid about it, then you deserve what you get.

3.From a social engineering perspective, this is amazing, as if I’m going to target someone working for a company, it means that I get to see where they hang out, what type of things that they’re into, when they’re in the office or out of the office. Picture this, the head of IT security is using Facebook Places, he checks in when he reaches the station on his way to work, then he updates his Twitter status to say that the train is running an hour late. This means that I now have the perfect opportunity to phone the company helpdesk, and impersonate him, and get my remote login password reset. Then voila, I have all the access that he does, I also know that I have about an hour to grab whatever information I please, before I need to log off. Once he gets into the office, he’ll have some password problems, phone the helpdesk and get it reset, and be none the wiser.

C’mon people, please all I’m asking for is that you have some common sense, if you need people to know where you’re going, let them know, don’t tell the whole world and his dog.

I know, I know, I’m a couple of days late in publishing this one, so apologies to all.

If you haven’t seen the latest Microsoft security patches though, then this will be an interesting read to you. Hopefully you’re already in the midst of rolling out these patches though, but if not, have a look below at the nice new patches that you have to look forward to implementing across your estates.

This month there are a total of 15 patches, 9 Critical and 6 Important.
MS10-046 Vulnerability in Windows Shell Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2286198)

This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Windows Shell. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if the icon of a specially crafted shortcut is displayed. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Yes

Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-049 Vulnerabilities in SChannel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (980436)

This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability and one privately reported vulnerability in the Secure Channel (SChannel) security package in Windows. The more severe of these vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user visits a specially crafted Web site that is designed to exploit these vulnerabilities through an Internet Web browser. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force users to visit these Web sites. Instead, an attacker would have to convince users to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or in an Instant Messenger message that takes users to the attacker’s Web site.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Yes

Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-051 Vulnerability in Microsoft XML Core Services Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2079403)

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft XML Core Services. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user viewed a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker would have no way to force users to visit these Web sites. Instead, an attacker would have to persuade users to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or Instant Messenger message that takes users to the attacker’s Web site.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Yes

Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-052 Vulnerability in Microsoft MPEG Layer-3 Codecs Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2115168)

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft MPEG Layer-3 audio codecs. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted media file or receives specially crafted streaming content from a Web site or any application that delivers Web content. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Maybe, dependent on configuration
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-053 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (2183461)

This security update resolves six privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Yes
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer

MS10-054 Vulnerabilities in SMB Server Could Allow Remote Code Execution (982214)

This security update resolves several privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker created a specially crafted SMB packet and sent the packet to an affected system. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect networks from attacks originating outside the enterprise perimeter that would attempt to exploit these vulnerabilities.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Yes
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-055 Vulnerability in Cinepak Codec Could Allow Remote Code Execution (982665)

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Cinepak Codec. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted media file or receives specially crafted streaming content from a Web site or any application that delivers Web content. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Maybe, dependent on configuration
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-056 Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2269638)

This security update resolves four privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user opens or previews a specially crafted RTF e-mail message. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Maybe, dependent on configuration
Affected Software: Microsoft Office

MS10-060 Vulnerabilities in the Microsoft .NET Common Language Runtime and in Microsoft Silverlight Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2265906)

This security update resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Silverlight. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution on a client system if a user views a specially crafted Web page using a Web browser that can run XAML Browser Applications (XBAPs) or Silverlight applications, or if an attacker succeeds in convincing a user to run a specially crafted Microsoft .NET application. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights. The vulnerabilities could also allow remote code execution on a server system running IIS, if that server allows processing ASP.NET pages and an attacker succeeds in uploading a specially crafted ASP.NET page to that server and executing the page, as could be the case in a Web hosting scenario.

Rating: Critical

Restart Required: Maybe, dependent on configuration
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows, Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Silverlight

MS10-047 Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (981852)

This security update resolves several privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker logged on locally and ran a specially crafted application. An attacker must have valid logon credentials and be able to log on locally to exploit these vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities could not be exploited remotely or by anonymous users.

Rating: Important
Restart Required: Yes
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-048 Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (2160329)

This security update resolves one publicly disclosed and four privately reported vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel-mode drivers. The most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker logs on to an affected system and runs a specially crafted application. An attacker must have valid logon credentials and be able to log on locally to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerability could not be exploited remotely or by anonymous users.

Rating: Important
Restart Required: Yes
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-050 Vulnerability in Windows Movie Maker Could Allow Remote Code Execution (981997)

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Windows Movie Maker. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sent a specially crafted Movie Maker project file and convinced the user to open the specially crafted file. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Rating: Important
Restart Required: Maybe, dependent on configuration
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-057 Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2269707)

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Office. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the logged-on user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Rating: Important
Restart Required: Maybe, dependent on configuration
Affected Software: Microsoft Office

MS10-058 Vulnerabilities in TCP/IP Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (978886)

This security update resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The more severe of these vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege due to an error in the processing of a specific input buffer. An attacker who is able to log on to the target system could exploit this vulnerability and run arbitrary code with system-level privileges. The attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Rating: Important
Restart Required: Yes
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows

MS10-059 Vulnerabilities in the Tracing Feature for Services Could Allow an Elevation of Privilege (982799)

This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability and one privately reported vulnerability in the Tracing Feature for Services. The vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker runs a specially crafted application. An attacker must have valid logon credentials and be able to log on locally to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerability could not be exploited remotely or by anonymous users.

Rating: Important
Restart Required: Maybe, dependent on configuration
Affected Software: Microsoft Windows