2Nd Annual Cyber Resilience for National Security DC/VA, USA 17 September - 19 September 2013 41
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
As much as I like going to industry conferences, enjoying their energy and frenzy, and getting together with old friends, sometimes company events like the BalaBit IT Security one I recently attended in Budapest inspire me even more. Getting to meet so many dedicated security experts and a peek into their everyday work really makes you conscious of the fact that we are all doing our best to "fight the good fight." With that in mind, this is our latest contribution to it, and we hope you'll enjoy it. Mirko Zorz Editor in Chief Visit the magazine website at www.insecuremag.com (IN)SECURE Magazine contacts Feedback and contributions: Mirko Zorz, Editor in Chief - [email protected] News: Zeljka Zorz, Managing Editor - [email protected] Marketing: Berislav Kucan, Director of Operations - [email protected] Distribution (IN)SECURE Magazine can be freely distributed in the form of the original, non-modified PDF document. Distribution of modified versions of (IN)SECURE Magazine content is prohibited without the explicit permission from the editor. Copyright (IN)SECURE Magazine 2013. www.insecuremag.com Researches test resilience of P2P Amsterdam, and tech companies Dell botnets SecureWorks and Crowdstrike has decided to test botnets' resilience to new attacks. While acknowledging that estimating a P2P botnet’s size is difficult and that there is currently no systematic way to analyze their resilience against takedown attempts, they have nevertheless managed to apply their methods to real-world P2P botnets and come up with quality information. They used crawling and sensor injection to detect the size of the botnets and discovered Following increased efforts by a number of two things: that some botnets number over a companies and organizations, the takedown million of bots, and that sensor injection offers on botnet C&C servers is now a pretty regular more accurate results. occurrence and cyber crooks have reacted by decentralizing the communication between With their disruption attacks - sinkholing and bots and their controllers. partitioning - they have discovered that there are weaknesses which could be used to They mostly opted for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) disrupt the Kelihos and ZeroAccess botnets, communication infrastructures, which made and that the Zeus and Sality botnets are their botnets more difficult to disrupt. highly resilient to sinkholing attacks, and say that research on alternative P2P botnet Nevertheless, there are ways of doing it, and mitigation methods is urgently needed. a group of researchers from the Institute for Internet Security in Germany, VU University of www.insecuremag.com 5 Changes to the Java security model The second change has to do with whether unsigned applets are allowed to run. In recent The most significant versions of Java, unsigned applets required change is how signed additional steps on behalf of the user to run. applets are handled. In the past Oracle has suggested This change will make that even more that all websites switch to cumbersome and push developers to always signed applets, advice that sign their applets, something many were loath contradicts to do with the existing security model. This recommendations by change also allows the whitelisting of specific security experts, because web sites and central management of Java signing an applet would also confer privileges security policies, something that has been a to escape the sandbox. significant problem for enterprises so far. In fact, signed applets are the original method The last change relates to certificate of escaping the Java sandbox, and have been validation. In order to verify that an applet has abused by both attackers and security a valid signature, Java needs to walk the auditors for the last decade. Metasploit has a certificate chain, making sure that it ends in a module specifically for this purpose.Oracle is trusted root. This works fine until a certificate changing this model so that signing an applet has been revoked due to a compromise. no longer confers sandbox escape privileges. This is a good thing for security. Taken as a whole, this is good thing for Java, but these changes don’t solve the underlying problem with the Java sandbox itself. Internet-savvy Turkish protesters sights agains social networks again. The turn to anti-censorship apps escalating protests have spurred the country's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to demonize Twitter and social media in general as a "menace to society." Turkish Internet users are anticipating increased censorship and surveillance efforts by the government, and have begun arming themselves with tools to foil them. Anchorfree, the makers of the Hotspot Shield mobile app that allows users to use an untappable virtual private network to connect to sites that are censored by the local government, have said that more than In the months leading up to the current 120,000 users from Turkey have downloaded protests in Turkey, its government has been the app over the first weekend after the censoring content on Twitter and Facebook, protests have started. as well as throttling and blocking access to them, claim sources inside of the country. More and more users are turning to Twitter to get the latest news about the protests, and to After having successfully censored the apps such as Zello and Ustream to majority of the television channels that can be communicate in short distances and record seen in Turkey, the government is aiming its and broadcast videos. www.insecuremag.com 6 Windows 8.1 will allow locking devices such as keyboards and computer folders with a finger mice. Windows 8.1 is scheduled to be released at Users of this Windows version will be able to the end of 2013, and among the various use their fingerprints to seamlessly log into changes that Microsoft aims to implement in it their computer, Microsoft account, apps, and is native support for fingerprint readers, so sign off on online payments. They will also that fingerprint-based authentication becomes have the option of locking (and unlocking) an integral part of the users' experience. private folders with it. So far, Windows has been supporting fingerprint readers only via drivers and software offered by third parties. But, things are about to change as the company is working with PC and equipment manufacturers and is encouraging them to include fingerprint readers in mobile computers (laptops, tablets) as well as input OWASP top 10 web application risks 1) Injection for 2013 2) Broken Authentication and Session Management 3) Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) OWASP has released its 4) Insecure Direct Object References 2013 top 10 list of risks 5) Security Misconfiguration associated with the use of 6) Sensitive Data Exposure web applications in an 7) Missing Function Level Access Control enterprise, and they are as 8) Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) follows: 9) Using Known Vulnerable Components 10) Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards. Net neutrality soon to be on EU's start-ups also suffer. Because they lack agenda certainty about whether their new bright ideas will get a fair chance to compete in the market." Lack of regulation has contributed much to the success of the Internet, and made it a Kroes shared that she will be putting forward hotbed for new ideas. But there are some proposals to the College of Commissioners, things that should be regulated and enforced which will aim to assure that citizens get "the in order for it to remain just that, and net fairest deals, the most choice, the best new neutrality is one of them, says the European services over the fastest networks," keep the Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Internet open, and provide ISPs with Kroes. incentives to improve the infrastructure. "The 2011 study by European regulators showed that, for many Europeans, online services are blocked or degraded – often without their knowledge. For around one in five fixed lines, and over one in three mobile users," she said on Tuesday while addressing at the European Parliament in Brussels . "It is obvious that this impacts consumers, but www.insecuremag.com 7 Smart TVs vulnerable to a host of His own research and that of his collaborators attacks demonstrated that content that is requested by the Smart TV at the time the user changes the channel can be altered by attackers, "Until now, most of the security researchers allowing them thusly to make the URLs within working with connected TVs focused on the DVB stream to point to servers with their security vulnerabilities related to physical (potentially malicious, or simply annoying) access to the device’s USB port or local content. network access," AG researcher Martin Herfur pointed out, adding that a paper published by Some TV stations that are using HbbTV are the researchers from German TU Darmstadt using poorly configured servers which can be addressed mostly privacy-related issues with compromised to serve malicious content, and the HbbTV standard such as WiFi they are not using SSL secured connections, eavesdropping. which means that attackers can again lead users to malicious content by deploying a Man in the Middle attack. Other attacks can lead into the TVs becoming roped into a Bitcoin mining botnet, users seeing fake news on the news ticker (the "moving stripe" on the screen that offers headlines and stock information), and being subjected to viewing unwanted content. ISC-CERT warns about medical and protect their hospital system by restricting devices with hard-coded passwords unauthorized access to the network and networked medical devices, keeping