U.S. Offers $ 3 Million Reward for Russian Sought in Bank Hack

Washington – The United States on Tuesday offered a $ 3 million reward for information to apprehend a Russian national sought in a major hacking enterprise that stole some $ 100 million.

The State Department made the announcement of the reward for information on Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, believed to be the administrator of the group that created the “GameOver Zeus” malware that enabled thieves to break into bank accounts in 12 countries.

Bogachev is already on the FBI “cyber’s most wanted” list and is believed to be living in Russia.

“This reward offer reaffirms the commitment of the US government to bring those who participate in organized crime to justice, whether they hide online or overseas,” a State Department statement said.

Bogachev was charged last year with 14 counts including conspiracy, computer hacking, bank fraud and money laundering, after the FBI said it dismantled the operation with the help of technology companies such as Microsoft and Symantec.

According to investigators, the scheme used emails to infect up to one million computers, which could then be controlled by the hackers to gain bank login credentials to steal funds.

Some security experts said the malware re-emerged shortly after the FBI action.

Related: Gameover Zeus Most Prevalent Banking Trojan of 2013: Dell SecureWorks

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For a period of several months, Lenovo shipped numerous laptop models with a piece of adware that broke HTTPS browsing and put users at risk. Now, the company has apologized to customers and provided them with instructions on how to remove the application.

Lenovo preloaded the WindowShopper browser add-on from Superfish thinking that customers would enjoy its features. However, many users were annoyed by it and started complaining on the Chinese manufacturer’s forums. After security researchers analyzed the software, they realized that it poses serious risks.

The adware injects ads into web pages by using a local proxy and a self-signed root certificate. Superfish actually replaces legitimate certificates with its own, making connections that should be secure untrusted.

Even more worrying is the fact that researchers have managed to extract the certificate’s private key. The private key can be used to sign potentially malicious websites and software that would be trusted on affected Lenovo notebooks.

Industry professionals pointed out that Lenovo should have known better not to install such software on its computers. Experts also noted that while this is a common practice, they hope that manufacturers will learn from the Superfish incident.

And the feedback begins…

Martijn Grooten, Editor at Virus Bulletin:

“Like most people working in security, I’m not very keen on the idea of ads in general and running third-party code on your computer or inside your browser in particular. But then, I accept that ads are part of the ecosystem and that pre-installing software that, as it is euphemistically called, “enhances user experience” makes laptops significantly cheaper.

Now injecting ads into a browser is bad enough, doing so by running an HTTPS proxy on the machine is a lot worse. HTTPS shouldn’t be touched unless it is for a very good reason – inserting ads is never a good reason.

But what makes it still orders of magnitude worse than that, is that their proxy uses the same certificate on all affected (or, perhaps more accurate, infected) PCs. Hence anyone can obtain the private key of the certificate – which, as people have already showed, isn’t rocket science – and use this to man-in-the-middle HTTPS traffic without the Lenovo user being aware.

The industry of bundled apps and programs is a complicated one and finding out what all the programs installed on the PCs you sell are up to might not be as easy as security researchers may suggest. But Lenovo should have been able to detect Superfish adding a SSL root certificate to the computer, as well as it running an HTTPS proxy on the local machine.”

George Baker, Director of Professional Services at Foreground Security:

“This was clearly a questionable design decision by Lenovo. Trusted manufacturers should know that building in a ‘man-in-the-middle’ feature is just that… highly questionable, regardless of the claimed benefit. And weak protection on the Superfish software’s own private key further undermines the system’s root of trust. If the software is present and trusted by the operating system, a knowledgeable attacker can exploit it at will.

That said, it’s good that it was caught early, after four months of production, and that Lenovo is taking some action. That should at least limit the number of users – and the amount of their private data – who are exposed.”

ThreatStream CTO Greg Martin:

“The latest Superfish debacle highlights the current strategy for device manufacturers across the electronics ecosystem looking to get their slice of the billion-dollar advertising revenue market that has made Google and others so successful. Unfortunately, like the case with Lenovo and many others, users’ privacy and security are compromised – often in secret – leaving them extremely vulnerable to malicious hackers who leverage the this type of tracking technology against them.

Unfortunately this won’t be the last we see of this type of story, but hopefully the publicity from Superfish will be enough to warn other like-minded manufacturers to take a more transparent approach and offer their users opt-out capabilities on future products that include embedded ad-tracking tech. Because Superfish was developed and licensed to Lenovo, it will be interesting to find out which other manufacturers are leveraging the Superfish technology in their products.”

Patrick Belcher, Director of Security Analytics, Invincea:

“The Lenovo and Superfish unwanted software debacle should serve as notice that there are dozens of ad companies that push spyware and toolbars, many of which exhibit rootkit-like properties and siphon off local user information to sell to advertising companies.

These programs are delivered like Trojan horses, bundled into innocuous applications with the sole intent of spying on and generating revenue at the expense of the user’s privacy. The ad companies purchase this siphoned data to deliver targeted advertising, and sometimes, malvertising to specific groups of users of the Internet.”

Ian Amit, Vice President at ZeroFOX:

“The Lenovo laptops that shipped with “Superfish” adware capable of snooping through the user’s encrypted web traffic are a very tangible threat to consumers and companies. People posting about their new Lenovo laptop on social media makes it easy for attackers to find them. Consequently, mapping those users’ home, work, and local coffee shops enables attackers to confidently launch man-in-the-middle attacks by abusing how Superfish allows snooping of encrypted web traffic (i.e. online banking, shopping, email, VPNs, etc).

We recommend that companies ensure their threat intelligence provide contextual data on their exposure as related to this vulnerability (employees, partners, locations, etc).”

Simon Crosby, CTO and co-founder of Bromium:

“It is high time for PC OEMs to accept that adware and other junk software installed in consumer devices is precisely the opposite of what their customers want, and that delivering a secure, non-intrusive, high quality product is valued by consumers. The Microsoft Surface Pro 3 is perhaps the antidote to the foolish behavior of PC vendors. It delivers the best that Microsoft offers, with no hidden scams.”

Grayson Milbourne, Webroot Security Intelligence Director:

“Sadly this is common practice in the industry. Customers aren’t informed this type of software is installed, leaving many users wondering how they have an infection on their brand new laptop when an anti-virus program picks it up. Consequently, this breeds a level of mistrust between the offending company and its customer base. In this case, users have aired their frustrations over social media channels – and it’s completely distracting from the quality products Lenovo manufactures.

In the past couple weeks, Lenovo has been forced to expend valuable time and resources managing backlash from the security community and customers. Undoubtedly, this is hurting the company’s bottom line and opening the door for competitors to claim privacy superiority.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that this story will be a wake-up call for consumers. Whether its unwanted adware from the manufacture or hackers using malicious apps, they need to take precautions to know who is watching them on their own device.”

Steve Lowing, Director of Product Development at Promisec:

“Preinstalled software, such as adware like Superfish, must go through the same scrutiny as the shipping company (in this case Lenovo) would do for their own software in order to prevent these kinds of brand impacting missteps from happening. While it’s not exactly uncommon to see adware or promotional-ware software on new laptops these days, the times have changed where these once opt-in based services are not forced on us by default.

Coupling this tactic with poorly designed software that can carry out a “man-in-the-middle” attack on what is expected to be secured data is a potential lawsuit waiting to happen. Companies like Lenovo should know better than to pre-install this kind of software in the first place.”

Mark Parker, Senior Product Manager, iSheriff:

“The practice of pre-installing 3rd party software on PCs delivered to retail establishments, and direct shipped to business customers, presents a considerable risk. Given the choice, most consumers and businesses would choose not to have the 3rd party software installed. In the case of Lenovo and Superfish, we see an indication of exactly how dangerous that can be.

The man-in-the-middle certificate used made it such that every secure session was no longer private. In a day and age where corporate breaches are increasing, we should be seeking ways to limit our exposure, not pre-installing software that can create an attack vector.”

Chris Schweigert, Security Operations Director at EiQ Networks:

“The recent discovery of the Superfish application on Lenovo PC’s brings up the old best practices of installing a known, respectable copy of an operating system on your computer when you take it out of the box. Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications have long been scrutinized by major enterprise environments and you simply cannot trust what you get from a manufacturer.

As a best practice, organizations should have a gold build install of all the authorized software for each new computer that comes in. You have to nuke the manufacturer installed applications and then re-install what you know to be trusted. Another advantage here is the ability to more easily identify changes to that baseline configuration on all your systems.”

Randy Abrams, Research Director at NSS Labs:

“It is disconcerting that virtually no anti-malware products were detecting Superfish, however the difference between malicious adware and acceptable adware is not ‘black and white.’ Not all behaviors are expected to be detected without a level of inspection that is not possible with the amount of malware being released daily. Vendors like Superfish employ teams of researchers to evade anti-malware products.

There are very likely many other adware products performing the exact same activities as Superfish. The primary motivation Superfish has is advertising revenue. This could have gone much worse for Lenovo if theft was the motivation for backdoors in third party software.

It is incumbent upon C-Level IT professionals to make sure there are well-defined processes and procedures for releasing third-party software on any medium. This must include tracking and auditing of third party vendors, monitoring their reputations and malware scanning with multiple products.

Coincidentally, the newly-formed Clean Software Alliance (CSA) will help in preventing this type of adware to go undetected. The CSA is a coalition of antimalware vendors, download bundlers and other members of the ‘adware’ ecosystem that are cooperating to set meaningful standards for ‘adware.’ Superfish’s conduct would preclude CSA approval.”

Muddu Sudhakar, Caspida CEO:

“U.S. computer manufacturers are getting a lot of push back from other countries for their hardware sales after scrutiny from incidents like those tied to the NSA and Snowden. Hardware vendors need to show beyond reasonable doubt that they are shipping high quality, highly secure products, eliminating backdoors in hardware and operating systems.

We need new third party certifications for hardware vendors who ship desktops/laptops or servers such as Lenovo, IBM, HP, and Apple. The third party certification should be robust and should be done independently of vendor companies and independently of government agencies.”

John Hultquist, Senior Manager, Cyber Espionage Threat Intelligence at iSIGHT Partners:

“We have noticed a trend affecting the software supply chain. The places people go to download applications or updates have been compromised on several occasions recently by cyber espionage actors who trojanize the software with their own malware. Chinese and Russian operators have swapped out everything from SCADA software to computer games, targeting very specific users as well as some opportunistic victims.”

John Pirc, Chief Strategy Office and Co-founder of Bricata:

“Based on the information surfacing about Superfish, administrators should inspect for where this application is installed and remove it. If you are using cloud based applications such as Microsoft Office 365 for Business or Google Apps for Work, enabling 2-step authentication offers additional protection in case your log-in credentials have been exposed. In the event someone is able to get your username and password they might try and log-in from another system; 2-step authentication would protect you from becoming further compromised.

This could also complicate matters for the Lenovo install base if they have a significant footprint within the U.S. government or federal contractors. My same recommendations for businesses apply in these sectors. However, I would strongly recommend that anyone in the USG and contractor community who uses a Lenovo PC and is involved with any sensitive projects should have their system checked for Superfish. Having the app installed may not mean they are compromised, but again, the main objective is reducing your risk.

Lenovo is a great company and it is unlikely they would knowingly place ‘malware’ on a system. Lenovo should have caught the Superfish issues earlier, via discussions in their user forums and I’m sure they are addressing the matter. Still, this does not discount the risk facing those who are at risk of a man-in-the-middle attack.”

Greg Hoffer, senior director of engineering, Globalscape:

“We put a lot of trust in technology, but this event is a reminder for everyone: take nothing for granted, and remain ever vigilant with the products you develop, integrate and purchase. There are ample industry standards available for security development and testing, independent security experts available to validate performance, and well-established protocols for production and operations. Assume nothing and put into action the old axiom, ‘Trust, but verify.’”

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During the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University on Friday, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to promote cybersecurity information sharing between private sector companies and the U.S. Government.

The executive order, signed by the President on stage after addressing a large audience, outlines an information sharing framework that would help companies work together, along with the federal government, to more effectively identify and protect against cyber threats.

“This has to be a shared mission,” Obama said during his speech. “So much of our computer networks and critical infrastructure are in the private sector, which means government cannot do this alone. But the fact is that the private sector can’t do it alone either, because it’s government that often has the latest information on new threats.”

Overall, industry professionals applauded the steps by the White House, but indicated this is just a small step in addressing serious threats. An executive order can only go so far and more is needed than just information sharing to combat sophisticated cyber attacks, experts said.

And the feedback begins…

Phil Smith, SVP of Government Solutions and Special Investigations at Trustwave:

“The President’s remarks at today’s summit are a great beginning, especially when he explained today’s threat landscape as a ‘cyber arms race.’ That statement is significant because it puts organizations and individuals on notice that cybersecurity is a national security and public safety issue. Sharing threat intelligence across government agencies, law enforcement and the private sector is a critical component of strengthening data protection however it will not work without safe harbor protections for companies that participate.

An executive order can only go so far. It takes Congressional action to mandate information sharing on a national level that includes liability protection. Without that protection, we will not see the level of participation required for information sharing to be successful.

When organizations share information they produce actionable threat intelligence that helps them stay ahead of the criminals and build defenses to block their next move.”

 Ken Xie, CEO of Fortinet:

“During the White House’s Cybersecurity Summit, there was a lot of great discussion around information sharing. The biggest obstacle is that our industry is extremely shorthanded: it’s estimated we can only fulfillne in every 20 technology positions needed in the cybersecurity space. Who will mitigate the threat? Where and who are the cyber swat teams? Who will train the responders? Answers to these questions remain unanswered, though the conversation is a step in the right direction.”

Nate Fick, CEO of Endgame:

“Much of the talk in the room is about information sharing. In security, the advantage often goes to the team with better, more usable data. So any steps to encourage faster sharing are meaningful progress.”

Tomer Weingarten, CEO of SentinelOne:

“Information sharing is a good start. However, it needs to be handled in a way that preserves the privacy of affected organizations and prevents data from being “leaked”. In the wrong hands, this intelligence would let attackers know that their operation has been compromised, could reveal attack binaries that can be re-used and expose companies that have been breached which may lead to more attacks against them. Also, sharing data and intelligence will do little to mitigate carefully crafted attacks since they often do not demonstrate any previously seen indicators.”

Mike Brown, VP and GM Public Sector for RSA:

“It isn’t just information sharing that is needed. We have some valuable avenues to share information. What we need is liability relief and clarity about the type and format of information that needs to be shared. That is also critical so that information that is shared is actually actionable.”

Tal Klein, CMO for Adallom:

“The fact that the President is addressing the issues of cyber security is a good thing – we definitely need more awareness. That stated, I am less excited about specific directives that may offset the financial incentive for companies to be in the business of cyber security. Information sharing is good, but if a security company makes their money researching threats and then is expected to turn over their research to the public domain as soon as its complete, then the value of that research diminishes.

 

I don’t think the government should be in the business of regulating the information security industry. What I suspect is that we are close to the age of the “cyber lobby” (dare I say “cyber subsidies”) – and I’m not sure that will benefit anyone other than the companies that pay to influence policy. So, I would prefer the President’s agenda would begin and end with “awareness” and avoid tinkering with the economic  dynamics of the information security market.”

Ivan Shefrin, VP of Security Solutions at TaaSera:

“Voluntary sharing of cybersecurity intelligence can be an important step – provided it’s accompanied by appropriate liability and privacy constraints. The benefits are clear: last year’s United Parcel Service breach was in fact discovered as a direct result of threat intelligence sharing between the government and private sector.

 

Sharing cyber intelligence can have a positive impact if information sharing is made actionable. To accomplish this, security professionals should assume they’re already compromised, and implement policies, tools and budgets to balance breach prevention with pre-breach detection and response.”

Marc Gaffan, CEO & Co-Founder of Incapsula:

“President Obama is taking a bold stance be visiting with tech companies in silicon valley this week to talk about his proposed cybersecurity legislation, right on the heels of his cybersecurity agency announcement earlier this week. In the past, the sale and use of botnets, which have the potential to overwhelm a site or network with malicious activity, was surrounded by legal ambiguities and grey areas. Obama’s new legislation removes all ambiguity so for the first time companies can prosecute the so-called “bot-herders” that try to do them harm.”

Ron Gula, CEO, Tenable Network Security:

“It’s important to applaud this administration for its attention to cyber security. It’s been long overdue and at the rapid pace technology is evolving, we are already behind the curve. Executive orders such as this, while not a substitute for good security practices, raise awareness for the need to invest more heavily when it comes to cyber security.

Information sharing won’t solve the bigger problems we face in the industry, but it’s a good place to start. Everyone in IT is realizing the scale and saving from centralizing command and control. Once consolidated, the information shared will provide greater context, allowing for organizations to be more agile in mitigating sophisticated attacks.”

Ryan Shaw, Director of Research and Development at Foreground Security:

“The President’s intention to issue an Executive Order (EO) promoting government and private sector cybersecurity information sharing is an important acknowledgement of the current deficiencies in our country’s current cybersecurity defense capability. Unfortunately, EOs and new agencies will not be able to resolve the sharing challenges that have existed for years.  These challenges include:

· Lack of trust between the parties involved

· COTS cybersecurity tools (e.g. SIEM, NSM, Web Proxies, ID/PS, Next-gen Firewalls) that are ill-equipped to deal with large quantities of multi-source, non-normalized threat indicators

· Shortfall of skilled cyber-threat analysts or source-agnostic platforms to manage the deluge of threat indicators

· Multiple sharing vehicles and taxonomies (these are a portion of the Voluntary Standards for ISAOs that the President will speak of)”

John Dickson, principal at software security firm Denim Group:

 “There is no mention of increased liability protection for companies in the today’s briefing sheet.  Absent of increased protection, or at least clarity, for the corporate liability question will likely result in a lukewarm reception from industry.  Couple that with remaining post-Snowden doubts that remain over working with government and law enforcement, then you have a potential non-starter here.

The focus on strong privacy and civil liberty protections misses the point here – that’s not hurdle in more information sharing, liability protection is. Cooperation with the Congress is an imperative. My contacts in the US Capitol say these initiatives are coming out with little consultation with Congress, which also brings up the question of the measures’ ultimate implementation.”

Jeff Williams, CTO, Contrast Security:

 “I’m encouraged by all the talk about public-private partnerships that bring security to the forefront for government, large businesses, small businesses, and consumers. The panelists were right about the problems of speed and scale that cybersecurity involves.  I was thrilled to see that there is awareness of the complexity and importance of the problem at the highest levels of government and business.

 

However, the overwhelming theme of the summit was that the way forward is to focus on the threats and that communication will enable us to stop attacks.  I have serious doubts as to whether chasing the threat will have any effect whatsoever – the attribution problem is so significant in cyberattacks that after months we still have no resolution to the Sony attack, much less Anthem or others.

The worst part is that spending all this effort chasing our tails takes away from time we should be focused on building secure code and strong defenses. The fact that we are still producing code with SQL injection after almost two decades is embarrassing. The government can and should play a role in encouraging the software market to produce secure code. But with a confusing patchwork of agencies, agendas, and responsibilities, government has fallen far behind the financial industry in their ability to secure their own house.”

Jason Lewis, Chief Collection and Intelligence Officer of Lookingglass Cyber Solutions:

 “The White House is pushing a lot of recommendations that don’t seem to have gone through a vetting process by experienced technologists. The effort to weaken encryption will ultimately have the opposite of the desired effect. There are new rules that impact security researchers and will lead to less secure systems, because it will be illegal for researchers to test those systems.

 

The positive results will be the increased visibility and discussion about these issues. For me, if the US government really wanted to improve security they would be at the forefront of data sharing and making it easier for researchers to contribute, not harder.”

Dan Waddell, Director of Government Affairs, (ISC)2:

“It’s important that the American public put this issue into perspective.  As mentioned by Lisa Monaco, the White House’s top aide for counterterrorism and homeland security, the cyber threat is becoming more diverse, sophisticated and dangerous. The actions of cyber attackers, while seldom seen played out online, are potentially as egregious on many different levels including economically, militarily, and in regards to the public’s day-to-day safety.

Overall, I think it’s a positive sign that we’re having these discussions at the highest levels of both the public and private sectors as well as academia.  CEOs, CISOs, government leaders and educators are all saying the same thing – cybersecurity is an absolute necessity to help protect our nation’s interests. It has an impact on every aspect of our lives – from homeland security, to defense, to the economy, to energy and critical infrastructure, to health, etc.  Everyone shares a common interest: We need to secure information of the people, for the people.”

Chris Wysopal, CTO & co-founder at Veracode:

 “The challenge for the tech industry is they need to retain the trust of their users or they can’t grow their businesses which require more and more intimate data be stored and processed by them.  That is why after many years of security professionals complaining of the lack of SSL usage by majo7r tech companies it wasn’t until the Snowden revelations that it was finally enforced by the big players.  

 

“The federal government has to convince the people using Google, Yahoo, Apple, etc., not the executives from those companies, that their data is safe from wholesale snooping or the information sharing they want is going to be a struggle.” 

Ken Westin, Security Analyst Tripwire:

“This Order and the informatPion sharing initiatives are a step in the right direction, however the challenge will be in the implementation where citizens’ privacy and civil liberties are protected, as well as making any intelligence gathered through these initiatives relevant and actionable for government agencies as well as private industry. In order to make these initiatives effective, secure and manageable, will require strong oversight and properly allocated resources to implement, not just initially, but also over the next few years as the program evolves. There needs to be constant vigilance and review of processes, data collected and effectiveness of the program in order to ensure agencies do not overreach and that the program itself remains useful to industry and agencies alike.

The devil is truly in the details, although I believe the spirit and intentions of the Order is good, it will be critical that there is transparency and oversight regarding its implementation. The government is breaking new ground and it is important to tread carefully, as there is a lot to learn in the process of developing a system of this scale and depth. I sincerely hope that the government will be involving not just law makers and political thinkers, but also technologists and security experts from both private industry and the government to ensure the program is implemented efficiently, securely and meets established requirements for the program.” 

*Additional reporting by Eduard Kovacs

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Security experts weigh in on what they would like to see in 2015 to make their jobs wrangling users, infrastructure, and data easier.

The new year ahead is a good time to reflect on what infosec professionals need to keep users and data safe—before the inevitable race to stay ahead of the crises and firefighting begins in earnest. In previous years, SecurityWeek asked experts to talk about their security resolutions. This year, security experts weigh in on their 2015 wish list—things they would like to see happen in their organization and the security industry as a whole.

Information security is a tough job. There is an element of fortune telling to figure out where the next threats will come from, as well as continuous gate keeping to monitor everything that comes in and out of the organization.

Intent and motives matter, since the same action can be malicious, negligent, or benign based on the circumstances. Locking things down annoys users, so there has to be controls in place to let users do what they want while still maintaining a certain level of protection. When something goes wrong, such as the case of a failed compliance audit, regulatory investigation, data breach, cyber-attack, or data theft, there is always finger pointing and recriminations.

Faced with these challenges, what do CSOs/CISOs, information security practitioners, and other experts wish for? The gamut of responses ranged from the serious (implementing new controls) to humorous (a time machine). At the heart of all the responses was the recognition that security is visible and their jobs are on the line when things go wrong.

“If I was a practicing CISO right now, the very first thing on my wish list would be a ‘keep me from getting fired’ gift card,” said Eric Cowperthwaite, vice-president of advanced security and strategy at Core Security and the former CISO of Provident Health and Services. The card would be something CISOs can hand to the CEO after the inevitable attack, breach and theft of critical assets and say, “can’t fire me this time,” he said.

CISOs should demand access to the CEO and support of the senior executives in the company to define and protect the crown jewels, said Renee Guttmann, vice president of information risk management and member of the Accuvant Office of the CISO. Most CISOs want more attention and funding from the executive team—and a seat at the executive table to provide updates periodicall, said Guttmann, who formerly served as CISO at Coca-Cola. CISOs also want to be recognized as playing as critical a role within the organization as the CFO or COO.

“In 2015, CISOs will be asking for a corner office, with a view,” said Michael Daly, the CTO of Cybersecurity & Special Missions at Raytheon.

Talking to a Board Which ‘Gets’ Security

Most CISOs would love to switch the conversation with the board of directors from the whys of security to the hows. Even after the past year of almost non-stop breaches, it’s clear that the need to proactively implement good security is poorly understood—or simply ignored—at the highest levels of business, said Geoff Webb, senior director of solution strategy at NetIQ.

“If I could give every CISO on the planet a New Year’s wish, it would be to have that conversation changed from ‘Why should I invest in security’ to ‘How do we get the job done,’” said Webb.

CISOs want the support of their executive management to put in place the level of security consistent with the amount of risk the organization is willing to accept, said Marc Maiffret, CTO of BeyondTrust.

> Request an Invitation to the 2015 CISO Forum

Having the Industry Step Up

Several of the experts expressed their frustration on the state of the information security industry. “It’s clear that after Target, JPMC, Sony and many other highly publicized, massive attacks perpetuated in 2014, the industry needs new tools to find these attackers before they are able to successfully complete their damage,” said Mike Mumcuoglu, CTO and co-founder of LightCyber.

For years, CISO have been promised more effective security technology was on the way, and that they just needed to spend “just a little bit more” to significantly improve their security. “It hasn’t quite worked out the way it’s been promised,” said Ken Levine, CEO of Digital Guardian. CISOs should be asking for technology that works better than what’s been delivered to date for a price that reflects its actual value, he said. And that doesn’t mean yet another piece of technology blasting millions of alerts since it’s not possible to process them all.

“Memo to the security industry, giving me hundreds of thousands, if not millions of alerts is about as effective as giving me none,” Levine said. “Will you please tell me which alerts I need to worry most about!”

There is a lot of conversation about security analytics, but it’s still just a lot of promises and not enough reality. “This is all vendor hype as none of the technologies integrate enough of the products in my environment to make the data useful without me having to put asterisks next to the data in my presentations,” said Mike Davis, CTO of CounterTack.

It would be nice to have security reports that show the state of the organization that “don’t put people to sleep,” said Gil Zimmermann, CEO and co-founder of CloudLock.

It’s not just technology that needs to change—the way the industry treats standards also need to change as well, so that standards are actually treated as something that works across platforms and organizations. “Too many standards that aren’t interoperable between products prevents me from deploying different tools,” Davis said.

Along with standards, the industry needs to define security and risk metrics for making informed decisions and managing a security program. Other c-level executives have a set of metrics they can use to explain what they are doing and what the effects to the business are. At the moment, there is no consensus on key performance indicators or a widely adopted set of quantifiable metrics, so cyber-security decisions are “perceived as mere guess work by boards of directors and other corporate executives,” said Jonathan Trull, CISO of Qualys and former CISO of Colorado. The lack of trust in CSOs and security community as a whole is a major barrier to obtaining additional funding and resources.

“CISOs must be able to answer the question: For x amount of money spent on cyber security, what will be the return?” Trull said.

Cool Tools That Need to Exist

Along with asking for better security technology to make the day-to-day operations as well as overall risk management possible, security professionals have their own list of products that would make their jobs easier—and more fun.

Zimmerman said a “one-year paid membership to tech gadgets of the month club” would be a good thing for a CISO to have.

“A time machine so I can go back in time and make a bunch of different investment choices,” said Core Security’s Cowperthwaite.

“’X-Ray Data Goggles’ to give me a deep look into the network to determine where my critical or sensitive data is, what assets support the data, and what controls keep the data safe,” said Arlie Hartman, a consultant at Rook Security.

“’Information Security Pocket Translator’ to refine my message to the board, to speak their language, and enable the business to work within acceptable risks,” said Randy Wray, a consultant with Rook Security.

Having Necessary Tools on Hand

CISOs want to be able to proactively track specific adversaries as they “walk” their way through the network, said Rick Howard, CSO of Palo Alto Networks. By identifying indicators of compromise as part of an attack, CISOs will be able to determine their response. “In my perfect fantasy world, I would like to be able to track adversaries — criminals, spies, hacktivists, and ankle biters — by watching for sets of Indicators of Compromise at every link in the Kill Chain,” he said.

CISOs need the attacker profile, not the actual identity. If the attacker is a spy out to steal mergers and acquisitions documents, and those documents are on the organization’s network, then the internal security team should be on high alert. Otherwise, the team can deal with the threat without turning this into an emergency firefighting situation, he said.

Failing that perfect scenario, CSOs and CISOs should have technology configured correctly—oftentimes organizations discover too late the settings they thought they were getting weren’t turned on when the technology was initially turned on. “We spend gazillions of dollars to buy the latest and greatest, and yet fail to squeeze as much efficiency out of it as possible,” said Howard. While it may be more interesting to talk about nation-state attacks, CSOs need to focus on device configuration. “We should at least get that right before we move on to the sexy stuff.”

Target has set a very public precedent for financial liability in the case of a targeted attack on personal financial information. As a result, every major financial, retail, and online entity will be looking into cyber-insurance, said Mike Mumcuoglu, CTO and co-founder of LightCyber. Cost-effective data breach insurance will be on many CISO wish lists this year, he said.

Effective Collaboration With Others

Security is much more visible in that people are more aware and pay attention when something goes wrong, but it’s not yet viewed as a joint effort. There is still the sense that users do their own thing while the security folks in the backroom keep things humming. There needs to be formal agreements between business, IT, and security teams to integrate information security into the process instead of treating it as an add-on commodity, said Chris Blow, a consultant with Rook Security.

“It would be nice to have an IT team and user base that cares about security as much as the security team,” Zimmermann said. “Or being included in conversations about new technology developments, purchases, or deployments before final decisions are made.”

It would also help the CSO to have “better clarity from legal on what a breach is, what an incident is, and what we can safely ignore,” Davis said.

IT should “actually follow the security guidelines we built instead of always getting a risk waiver,” added Davis. The waiver means IT essentially says it understands the risks and doesn’t have to implement the proper controls or take specific tasks to resolve an issue. This doesn’t help the organization’s overall security. Vendors also need to think about security—whether it’s in their software development cycle, the patching system, or even maintaining their cloud infrastructure. “Tired of getting vendor software that isn’t secure and I can’t make secure,” he said.

Speaking of software development, proper tools are critical. All developers should have security training so that they think about security right from the design phase, said Steven Lipner, chairman of SAFECode and partner director of program management at Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group. Each developer in the organization should receive a full toolbox for static analysis, current compilers, and fuzzing tools to build code that contains even fewer vulnerabilities, and make it even harder to exploit any that remain, he said.

Legions of Experienced Folks

The biggest challenge for CISOs is not fighting for the ideal infosec budget, but finding and hiring employees with necessary skills and experience. CISOs want a “proper staff” of experienced and knowledgeable security professionals and are looking for the right people to handle the security fundamentals, Maiffret said.

CISOs want to hire staff who are focused on analytics and risk, not just running firewalls, Cowperthwaite said. This echoed CounterTack’s Davis, who noted that universities tend to focus on network security, not realizing that network security is not the same as IT security.

“It is only one slice of the problem,” Davis said.

Turning Wishes into Reality

As the old saying goes, “If wishes were horses…” CISOs may have a long list for what they would like to see, but they can’t just sit back and wait for their wishes to be granted. CISOs should make a New Year’s resolution to become a corporate business leader, said Trull. CISOs need to become more integrated into c-suite conversations, focus on the integration between DevOps and security teams, learn the business and understand the financials, and learn to speak the language of other executives including the ability to calculate and demonstrate a return on investment for cybersecurity spending.

Security leaders must align themselves more closely to business strategy and “operationalize on the fundamentals of good IT,” said Rafal Los, director of solutions research and member of the Accuvant Office of the CISO. The goal is to get business leaders to see security as a strategic asset and not a drag on the budget.

CISOs must “resolve to be more than a technical security professional and to take responsibility for making difficult risk-benefit decisions that drive the business forward,” Trull said.

All of these wish list items sounded reasonable, but there was a sense of frustration among security experts about the obstacles in their way. The technology was not available, other C-suite executives and the board remained uninterested, or the integration with IT was too tense. Would 2015 be the year when information security professionals would get a seat at the table and be able to work with the organization to improve security?

If the wish list items were too much to ask for, “would you consider coming up with some sort of solution that would allow CISOs to take Sundays off?” Levine said.

Related Event: Request an Invitation to the 2015 CISO Forum

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• NEWS & INDUSTRY
• Risk Management
• Security Infrastructure
• Management & Strategy

The United States imposed new sanctions Friday on North Korea in retaliation for a cyber attack on Hollywood studio Sony Pictures.

In an executive order President Barack Obama authorized the US Treasury to place on its blacklist three top North Korean intelligence and arms operations, as well as 10 government officials, most of them involved in Pyongyang’s arms exports.

Obama said he ordered the sanctions because of “the provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies of the Government of North Korea, including its destructive, coercive cyber-related actions during November and December 2014.”

The activities “constitute a continuing threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” he added, in a letter to inform congressional leaders.

“The order is not targeted at the people of North Korea, but rather is aimed at the Government of North Korea and its activities that threaten the United States and others,” Obama added.

The sanctions come after hackers penetrated Sony’s computers in late November, stealing and releasing over the Internet employee information, unreleased films and an embarrassing trove of emails between top company executives.

The hackers — a group calling itself Guardians of Peace — then began to issue threats against the company over the looming Christmas release of the comedy film “The Interview”, which depicts a fictional CIA plot to kill North Korea’s leader.

The threats led first to worried movie theater owners dropping the film and then Sony cancelling the public debut altogether, before releasing it online.

After the hackers invoked the 9/11 attacks in their threats, the White House branded it a national security threat, and an investigation by the FBI said North Korea was behind the Sony intrusion.

Pyongyang repeatedly denied involvement, but has applauded the actions of the shadowy Guardians of Peace group.

‘Proportional’ response

The White House stressed Friday that its response will be “proportional”, but also that the sanction actions were only “the first aspect of our response.”

“We take seriously North Korea’s attack that aimed to create destructive financial effects on a US company and to threaten artists and other individuals with the goal of restricting their right to free expression,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

In parallel with the White House announcement, the Treasury named the first targets of sanctions in the Sony case.

They included the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the government’s main intelligence organization, and two top North Korean arms exporters: Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID) and Korea Tangun Trading Corporation.

The individuals named included agents of KOMID in Namibia, Russia, Iran and Syria, and other representatives of the government and the sanctioned organizations.

An administration official, briefing reporters, said that they remain “very confident” in their assessment that Pyongyang is behind the attack on Sony, amid doubts raised by security experts.

The official said the three organizations had “no direct involvement” with the hacking. “They’re being designated to put pressure on the North Korean government,” the official said.

It was the first time the Treasury sanctions mechanism had been invoked due to a threat to a private company, the official acknowledged.

The sanctions forbid US individuals and companies from doing business with those blacklist, and freezes any assets those blacklisted might have on US territory.

A particular aim of such sanctions is to limit their access to international financial services by locking them out of the US financial system.

All three of the organizations blacklisted in the Sony case are already under US sanctions for the country’s persistence with its nuclear weapons program, its alleged provocations on the Korean peninsula, and other “continued actions that threaten the United States and others,” as Obama said in his letter.

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Welcome back to Feedback Friday! An unclassified computer network at the White House was breached recently and the main suspects are hackers allegedly working for the Russian government.

The incident came to light earlier this week when an official said they had identified “activity of concern” on the unclassified network of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) while assessing recent threats. The official said the attackers didn’t cause any damage, but some White House users were temporarily disconnected from the network while the breach was dealt with.

Experts have pointed out that while the attackers breached an unclassified network, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they haven’t gained access to some useful data, even if it’s not classified. They have also outlined the methods and strategies used by both the attackers and the defenders in such a scenario.

And the Feedback Begins…

Amit Yoran, President at RSA:

“The breach underscores the constant siege of attacks on our government and businesses. Fortunately — by definition — information with grave or serious impact to national security is classified and would not be found on an unclassified network. That said, there is most likely information on unclassified networks that the White House would not like public or for 3rd party consumption.

As for the profile of the adversary, the White House uses the latest security technologies making them a very challenging target to breach. Top secret clearances are required for access to networks and personnel are continuously and rigorously vetted. As such — and acknowledging that until a thorough investigation is completed, speculation can be dangerous — a standard botnet or phishing malware is a less likely scenario than a focused adversary with time and expertise in developing customized exploits, malware and campaigns.”

Mark Orlando, director of cyber operations at Foreground Security. Orlando previously worked at the EOP where he led a contract team responsible for building and managing the EOP Security Operations Center under the Office of Administration:

“Sophisticated attackers constantly alter their approach so as to evade detection and they will eventually succeed. The best a defender can do in this case is to identify and respond to the attack as quickly and effectively as possible. It isn’t at all unusual for an attack like this one to be discovered only after a malicious email has been identified, analyzed, and distilled into indicators of compromise (subject lines, source addresses, file names, and related data elements) used to hunt for related messages or attacks that were initially missed. White House defenders routinely exchange this kind of data with analysts across the Federal Government to facilitate those retrospective investigations. That may have been how this compromise was discovered and that doesn’t amount to a ‘miss’.

While the media points to outages or delays in major services like email at the White House, this is also not an unusual side effect of proper containment and eradication of a threat like this one- especially if there are remote users involved. Incidents exactly like this one occur all over the Federal government and increasingly in the private sector as well; the only thing different about this attack that makes it more newsworthy than those other incidents is that it occurred at EOP.”

Tom Kellermann, Trend Micro chief cybersecurity officer and former commissioner on The Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency:

“Geopolitical tensions are now manifested through cyberattacks. The enemies of the state conduct tremendous reconnaissance on their targets granting them situational awareness as to our defenses in real time. This reality allows for elite patriotic hackers to bypass our defenses.”

Irene Abezgauz, VP Product Management, Quotium:

“Security, cyber or physical, relies heavily on risk management. With a large operation, it is difficult to secure everything on the same level, priority is often given to the more sensitive networks. In the case of the White House hack, the breached network was unclassified, meaning it probably has slightly different security measures than classified networks.

Government systems are prime targets for hackers. Even if the breached network is unclassified and no sensitive information was exposed, all government network breaches draw attention. In public opinion, attackers gaining access to government computer systems, no matter whether classified or not, reflects badly on the ability of the US to defend itself, especially when foreign nationals are suspected. In addition, availability and integrity must be maintained in systems that involve any kind of government decision making, more than in most other systems.

The bottom line is that high profile targets must maintain a high level of security on all networks. Hackers, private and state-funded, are continuously attempting attacks on these systems. Such attacks must be blocked in order to protect data within as well as assure the public of the ability of the government to protect its cyber systems.”

John Dickson, Principal at the Denim Group:

“Although initial reports emphasize the unclassified nature of the system and networks, security experts know that successful attacks against certain unclassified systems can, in fact, still be gravely serious. Given the fact this concerns perhaps the most high-visibility target in the world – the White House – and you potentially have a genuinely difficult situation.

On one hand, you have the issue of public confidence in our institutions of government. ‘If the attackers can compromise the White House, what else can the possibly get into?’ is a perfectly valid question from citizens who may not recognize the distinction between unclassified and classified systems. Also, sensitive information that is unclassified may traverse these systems and give attackers more context to allow them to put together a larger picture of what’s happening at the White House. Military folks call refer to this term as Operational Security, or OPSEC, and this is always a worry for those protecting the President, the White House, and the operations of the Executive Branch of government.

From a defensive standpoint, when you face a sophisticated attacker with substantial resources you have be constantly vigilant and assume certain systems will fail. It’s far too early to editorialize on theories of ‘what might have happened’ at the White House, but we always recommend a defense in depth approach to application and system design that ‘fails open,’ so that if an attacker compromises one type of defense, it doesn’t compromise the entire ecosystem.”

Ian Amit, Vice President at ZeroFOX:

“Much of the conversation surrounding the recent White House hack centers on the nature of the compromised network. The network is ‘unclassified,’ leading many people to believe the affected information is non-critical or innocuous. It’s important to note however that enough unclassified information, when aggregated and correlated, quickly becomes classified. Isolated data points might not mean much by themselves, but enough time spent passively listening to unclassified chatter can reveal some very sensitive intelligence.

So how much time was the hacker on the network? It’s difficult to tell. Security officials alerted on ‘suspicious activity.’ This phrase doesn’t give us much insight into how long the network was compromised. The hacker could have been active on the network for months without doing anything to sound the alarms. It’s one thing if a hacker is caught in the act of breaking in or stealing data. That kind of event information generally gives a clear indication of the attack timeline. Triggering on passive behavior makes this much more difficult.

With that said, it’s commendable that White House security officials are looking for behavioral cues rather than overt events to detect malicious activity. Soft indicators are much more difficult to detect and means the security officials are using some advanced tools to understand traffic on the network.”

Anup Ghosh, CEO of Invincea:

“The disclosure of breach from the White House this week was remarkable for its differences from a similar disclosure in 2012. It’s clear from recent press releases from security companies, that Russia is the New Black now. In fact, if you get hacked by the Chinese now, it’s almost embarrassing because they are considered less sophisticated than the Russians. So now, every breach seems to be attributed to Russians, though largely without any evidence.

A little more than two years ago in October 2012, the White House acknowledged a breach of its unclassified networks in the White House Military Office (which also manages the President’s nuclear ‘football’). The talking points at the time were: 1. Chinese threat, 2. Non-sophisticated attack method (spear-phish), 3. Unclassified network, so no harm. This week, the talking points are: 1. Russian government threat, 2. Sophisticated attack method (spear-phish), and 3. Deep concern over breach of unclassified network. The similarities between the two breaches are remarkable, but the reaction couldn’t be more different.

Before we indict the Russians for every breach now, it would be great to see some bar set for attribution to a particular group. It would also be great to not use “sophisticated” threat or Russians as a scape goat for not properly addressing spear-phishing threats with technology readily available off the shelf (and shipped with every Dell commercial device).”

Michael Sutton, VP of Security Reasearch for Zscaler:

“The breach of a compromised White House computer reported this week is simply the latest in ongoing and continual attacks on government networks. While such breaches periodically hit the headlines thanks to ‘unnamed sources’, it’s safe to assume that the general public only has visibility into the tip of the iceberg. White House officials admitted that this latest breach was discovered ‘in the course of assessing recent threats’, suggesting that following the trail of breadcrumbs for one attack led to another.

In September, there were reports of yet another successful attack, this one leveraging spear phishing and compromising a machine on an unclassified network and earlier this month, details of the Sandworm attacks emerged, which leveraged a then 0day Microsoft vulnerability to target NATO and EU government agencies. All of these recent attacks have been attributed to groups in Russia and it’s likely that they’re tied together. All Internet facing systems face constant attack, but the White House understandably presents a particularly attractive target.

While all G20 nations have advanced cyber warfare capabilities and conduct offensive operations, Russia and China have been particularly aggressive in recent years, often conducting bold campaigns that are sure to be uncovered at some point.”

Zach Lanier, Senior Security Researcher at Duo Security:

“U.S. government and defense networks are often the target of attackers — and the White House is without a doubt very high on that list, regardless of the breached network reportedly being ‘unclassified’. Everyone from hacktivists to foreign intelligence agencies have sought after access to these networks and systems, so this intrusion isn’t a huge surprise.” 

Carl Wright, General Manager of North America for TrapX Security:

“When it comes to our military, government and its supporting national defense industrial complex, the American public’s expectation is and should be significantly higher. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) findings in September highlighted how nation-state actors were targeting contractors with relation to the federal government so it is to be expected that actual government bodies are also being targeted.

95 percent of the security market is signature based and thus will not detect a targeted zero-day. We must operate under the notion that networks are already compromised and focus defenses on monitoring lateral movements within data centers and private networks as that is how hackers escalate their attack and access. Unfortunately, existing security technologies focus from the outside in, trying to understand the entire world of cyber terrorists’ behaviors which inundate security teams with alerts and false-positives.

These breaches demonstrate how traditional security tools alone don’t do enough and both enterprises and government organizations need to constantly evaluate and improve their security posture to thwart today’s nation-states or crime syndicates whether foreign or domestic. With the United States President’s intranet being compromised, it truly shows the poor state of our national cyber defense capabilities.”

Nat Kausik, CEO at Bitglass:

“Organizations whose security models involve ‘trusted devices’ are naturally prone to breaches. Employees take their laptops on the go, get hacked at public WIFI networks, and come back to the office where the device is treated as trusted and allowed to connect to the network.

The compromised device enables the hacker to gain a broader and more permanent foothold inside the network. Government entities have long favored the ‘trusted devices’ model and are actually more prone to breaches than organizations that treat all user devices as suspect.”

Greg Martin, CTO at ThreatStream:

“It’s public knowledge that Russia has been very active in sponsored cyber espionage and attacks but have recently turned up the volume since both the Ukranian conflict and given the Snowden leaks which in my opinion have given Russian and China the open door to be even more bold in their offensive cyber programs.

Recent cyberattacks on retailers and financial institutions have been riddled with anti-US propaganda. This makes it increasingly difficult to pinpoint the backers as the activity is heavily blended threats between criminal actors, hack-tivist and state sponsored activity. As seen in the recent reports, Russia APT attacks have been prevalent in targeting U.S. interests including the financial sector.

ThreatStream believes organizations should accelerate their policy of sharing cyber threat information and look at how they currently leverage threat and adversary intelligence in their existing cyber defense strategies.”

Until Next Friday…Happy Happy Halloween and have a Great Weekend!

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• Network Security
• NEWS & INDUSTRY
• Incident Management

The existence of a highly critical vulnerability affecting the GNU Bourne Again Shell (Bash) has been brought to light this week. The security flaw is considered by some members of the industry as being worse than the notorious Heartbleed bug.

GNU Bash is a command-line shell used in many Linux, Unix and Mac OS X operating systems. The vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) has been dubbed “Bash Bug” or “Shellshock” and it affects not only Web servers, but also Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices such as DVRs, printers, automotive entertainment systems, routers and even manufacturing systems.

By exploiting the security hole, an attacker can execute arbitrary commands and take over targeted machine. Symantec believes that the most likely route of attack is through Web servers that use CGI (Common Gateway Interface). There have already been reports of limited, targeted attacks exploiting the vulnerability.

A patch has been made available, but it’s incomplete. Until a permanent fix is rolled out, several organizations have launched Shellshock detection tools. Errata Security has started scanning the Web to find out how many systems are affected, and Symantec has published a video to demonstrate how the flaw can be exploited.

The security community warns that the vulnerability can have serious effects, and points out that it could take a long time until all systems are patched.

And the Feedback Begins…

Ian Pratt, Co-founder and EVP at Bromium:

 “The ‘shellshock’ bash vulnerability is a big deal. It’s going to impact large numbers of internet-facing Linux/Unix/OS X systems as bash has been around for many years and is frequently used as the ‘glue’ to connect software components used in building applications. Vulnerable network-facing applications can easily be remotely exploited to allow an attacker to gain access to the system, executing with the same privilege the application has. From there, an attacker would attempt to find a privilege escalation vulnerability to enable them to achieve total compromise.

Bash is a very complex and feature-rich piece of software that is intended for interactive use by power users. It does way more than is typically required for the additional role for which it is often employed in gluing components together in applications. Thus it presents an unnecessarily broad attack surface — this likely won’t be the last vulnerability found in bash. Application developers should try to avoid invoking shells unless absolutely necessary, or use minimalist shells where required.”

Mark Parker, Senior Product Manager at iSheriff:

 “This bash vulnerability is going to prove to be a much bigger headache than Heartbleed was. In addition to the general Mac OS X, Linux and Unix systems that need to be patched, there are also thousands upon thousands of Internet connected Linux and Unix based embedded devices, such as DVRs, home automation systems, automotive entertainment systems, mobile phones, home routers, manufacturing systems and printers.

Most of these devices will be susceptible because most Linux based devices run bash, it is such an integral part of the Linux OS. I anticipate that we will be continue to see the fallout from this vulnerability for a long time to come.”

Carl Wright, General Manager of TrapX Security:

“We feel that industry will take this very seriously and come out with patches for this vulnerability ASAP. It could take us years to understand how many systems were compromised and how many were used to escalate privileges into systems without this vulnerability. The transitive trust nature of directory architectures and authentications systems could mean we are living with this far beyond patching the current systems if this exploit has been taken advantage of even at a small 1% level.”

Coby Sella, CEO of Discretix:

“This is the second time over the last six months when a key infrastructure component used by billions of connected things across a variety of industries has been compromised. We see this problem only getting worse as more and more unsecured or not adequately secured things are rolled out without any comprehensive security solution that reaches all the way down to the chipset. Real solutions to this problem must cover every layer from the chipset to the cloud enabling companies to remotely insert secrets into the chipset layer via secured connections within their private or cloud infrastructure.”

Nat Kausik, CEO, Bitglass:

“Enterprises with ‘trusted endpoint’ security models for laptops and mobile devices are particularly vulnerable to this flaw.  Malware can exploit this vulnerability on unix-based laptops such as Mac and Chromebook when the user is away from the office, and then spread inside the corporate network once the user returns to the office.”

Steve Durbin, Managing Director of the Information Security Forum:

“The Bash vulnerability simply stresses the point that there is no such thing as 100% security and that we all need to take a very circumspect and practical approach to how we make use of the devices that we use to share data both within and outside the home and our businesses. I have my doubts on whether or not this will lead to a wave of cyber-attacks, but that is not to say that the vulnerability shouldn’t be taken seriously. It is incumbent upon all of us as users to guard our data and take all reasonable precautions to ensure that we are protecting our information as best as we are realistically able.”

Steve Lowing, Director of Product Management, Promisec:

 “Generally, the Bash vulnerability could be really bad for systems, such as smart devices including IP cameras, appliances, embedded web servers on routers, etc… which are not updated frequently. The exposure for most endpoints is rapidly being addressed in the form of patches to all flavors of UNIX including Redhat and OS X. Fortunately for Microsoft, they avoid much of this pain since most Windows systems do not have Bash installed on them.

For vulnerable systems, depending on how they are leveraging the Bash shell the results could be grave. For example, a webserver that uses CGI for example would likely be configured to use Bash as the shell for executing commands and compromising this system via this vulnerability is fairly straightforward. The consequences could be to delete all web content which could mean Service level agreements (SLA)s are not met because of complete outage or deface the site which tarnishes your brand or even to be a point of infiltration for a targeted attack which could mean IP and/or sensitive customer information loss.

The IoT is the likely under the biggest risk since many of these devices and appliances are not under subject to frequent software updates like a desktop or laptop or server would be. This could result in many places for an attacker to break into and lay wait for sensitive information to come their way.”

Jason Lewis, Chief Collection and Intelligence Officer, Lookingglass Cyber Solutions:

 “The original vulnerability was patched by CVE-2014-6271. Unfortunately this patch did not completely fix the problem. This means even patched systems are vulnerable.

 

Several proof of concepts have been released.  The exploit has the ability to turn into a worm, so someone could unleash an exploit to potentially infect a huge number of hosts.”

Ron Gula, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technical Officer, Tenable Network Security: 

 “Auditing systems for ShellShock will not be like scanning for Heartbleed. Heartbleed scans could be completed by anyone with network access with high accuracy. With ShellShock, the highest form of accuracy to test for this is to perform a patch audit. IT auditing shops that don’t have mature relationships with their IT administrators may not be able to audit for this.

 

Detecting the exploit of this is tricky. There are network IDS rules to detect the attack on unencrypted (non-SSL) web servers, but IDS rules to look for this attack over SSL or SSH won’t work. Instead, solutions which can monitor the commands run by servers and desktops can be used to identify commands which are new, anomalistic and suspect.”

Mike Spanbauer, Managing Director of Research, NSS Labs:

“Bash is an interpretive shell that makes a series of commands easy to implement on a Unix derivative. Linux is quite prevalent today throughout the Web, both as commerce platform and as commercial website platform. It happens to be the default script shell for Unix, Linux, well… you get the picture.

The core issue is that while initially the vulnerability highlights the ease with which an attacker might take over a Web server running CGI scripting, and ultimately, ‘get shell’ which offers the attacker the means to reconfigure the access environment, get to sensitive data or compromise the victim machine in many ways.

As we get to the bottom of this issue, it will certainly be revealed just how bad this particular discovery is – but there is a chance it’s bigger than Heartbleed, and that resulted in thousands of admin hours globally applying patches and fixes earlier this year.”

Contrast Security CTO and co-founder Jeff Williams:

 “This is a pretty bad bug. The problem happens because bash supports a little used syntax for ‘exported functions’ – basically a way to define a function and make it available in a child shell.   There’s a bug that continues to execute commands that are defined after the exported function.

So if you send an HTTP request with a referrer header that looks like this: Referer:() { :; }; ping -c 1 11.22.33.44. The exported function is defined by this crazy syntax () { :; };  And the bash interpreter will just keep executing commands after that function.  In this case, it will attempt to send a ping request home, thus revealing that the server is susceptible to the attack.

Fortunately there are some mitigating factors.  First, this only applies to systems that do the following things in order: 1) Accept some data from an untrusted source, like an HTTP request header, 2) Assign that data to an environment variable, 3) Execute a bash shell (either directly or through a system call).

If they send in the right data, the attacker will have achieved the holy grail of application security: ‘Remote Command Execution.’  An RCE basically means they have completely taken over the host.

Passing around data this way is a pretty bad idea, but it was the pattern back in the CGI days.  Unfortunately, there are still a lot of servers that work that way.  Even worse, custom applications may have been programmed this way, and they won’t be easy to scan for.  So we’re going to see instances of this problem for a long long time.”

Tal Klein, Vice President of Strategy at Adallom:

 “What I don’t like to see is people comparing Shellshock to Heartbleed. Shellshock is exponentially more dangerous because it allows remote code execution, meaning a successful attack could lead to the zombification of hosts. We’ve already seen one self-replicating Shellshock worm in the wild, and we’ve already seen one patch circumvention technique that requires patched Bash to be augmented in order to be ‘truly patched’. What I’m saying is that generally I hate people who wave the red flag about vulnerabilities, but this is a 10 out of 10 on the awful scale and poses a real threat to core infrastructure. Take it seriously.”

Michael Sutton, Vice President of Security Research at Zscaler:

 “Robert Graham has called the ‘Shellshock’ vulnerability affecting bash ‘bigger than Heartbleed.’ That’s a position we could defend or refute, it all depends upon how you define bigger. Will more systems be affected? Definitely. While both bash and OpenSSL, which was impacted by Heartbleed, are extremely common, bash can be found on virtually all *nix system, while the same can’t be said for OpenSSL as many systems simply would require SSL communication. That said, we must also consider exploitability and here is where I don’t feel that the risk posed by Shellshock will eclipse Heartbleed.

Exploiting Heartbleed was (is) trivially easy. The same simple malformed ‘heartbeat’ request would trigger data leakage on virtually any vulnerable system. This isn’t true for Shellshock as exploitation is dependent upon influencing bash environment variables. Doing so remotely will depend upon the exposed applications that interact with bash. Therefore, this won’t quite be a ‘one size fits all’ attack. Rather, the attacker will first need to probe servers to determine not only those that are vulnerable, but also how they can inject code into bash environment variables.

The difference here is that we have to take application logic into account with Shellshock and that was not required with Heartbleed. That said, we’re in very much in the same boat having potentially millions of vulnerable machines, many of which will simply never be patched. Shellshock, like Heartbleed, will live on indefinitely.”

Mamoon Yunus, CEO of Forum Systems: 

“The Bash vulnerability has the potential to be much worse than Heartbleed. Leaking sensitive data is obviously bad but the Bash vulnerability could lead to losing control of your entire system.

The Bash vulnerability is a prime example of why it’s critical to take a lockdown approach to open, free-for-all shell access, a practice that is all too common for on-premise and cloud-based servers. Mobile applications have caused an explosion in the number of services being built and deployed. Such services are hosted on vanilla Linux OS variants with little consideration given to security and are typically close to the corporate edge. Furthermore, a large number of vendors use open Linux OSes, install their proprietary functionality, and package commercial network devices that live close to the network edge at Tier 0. They do so with full shell access instead of building a locked-down CLI for configuration.

The Bash vulnerability is a wake-up call for corporations that continue to deploy business functionality at the edge without protecting their services and API with hardened devices that do not provide a shell-prompt for unfettered access to OS internals for anyone to exploit.”

Jody Brazil, CEO of FireMon:

“This is the kind of vulnerability that can be exploited by an external attacker with malicious intent. So, how do those from the Internet, partner networks or other outside connection gain access to this type of exposure?

An attack vector analysis that considers network access through firewalls and addresses translation can help identify which systems are truly exposed. Then, determine if it’s possible to mitigate the risk by blocking access, even temporarily. In those cases where this is not an option, prioritizing patching is essential. In other cases where, for example, where there is remote access to a vulnerable system that is not business-critical, access can be denied using existing firewalls.

This helps security organizations focus their immediate patching efforts and maximize staffing resources. It’s critical to identify the greatest risk and then prioritize remediation activities accordingly. Those are key best practices to address Bash or any vulnerability of this nature.”

Mark Stanislav, Security Researcher at Duo Security:

“While Heartbleed eventually became an easy vulnerability to exploit, it was ultimately time consuming, unreliable and rarely resulted in ‘useful’ data output. Shell Shock, however, effectively gives an attacker remote code execution on any impacted host with a much easier means to exploit than Heartbleed and greater potential results for criminals.

Once a web application or similarly afflicted application is found to be vulnerable, an attacker can do anything from download software, to read/write system files, to escalating privilege on the host or across internal networks. More damning, of course, is that the original patch to this issue seems to be flawed and now it’s a race to get a better patch released and deployed before attackers leverage this critical bug.”

Rob Sadowski, Director of Technology Solutions at RSA:

“This is a very challenging vulnerability to manage because the scope of potentially affected systems is very large, and can be exploited in a wide variety of forms across multiple attack surfaces. Further, there is no single obvious signature to help comprehensively detect attempts to exploit the vulnerability, as there are so many apps that access BASH in many different ways.

Because many organizations had to recently manage a vulnerability with similar broad scope in Heartbleed, they may have improved their processes to rapidly identify and remediate affected systems which they can leverage in their efforts here.” 

Joe Barrett, Senior Security Consultant, Foreground Security:

 “Right now, Shellshock is making people drop everything and scramble to fix patches. Security experts are still expanding the scope of vulnerability, finding more devices and more methods in which this vulnerability can be exploited. But no one has gotten hacked and been able to turn around and point and say ‘It was because of shellshock’ that I’ve seen.

 

If you have a Linux box, patch it. Now. Do you have a Windows box using Cygwin? Update Cygwin to patch it. And then start trying to categorize all of the ‘other’ devices on the network and determining if they might be vulnerable. Because chances are a lot of them are.

Unfortunately, vendors probably will never release patches to solve this for most appliances, because most [Internet-connected] appliances don’t even provide a way to apply such an update. But for the most part all you can do is try to identify affected boxes and move them behind firewalls and out of the way of anyone’s ability to reach them. Realistically, we’ll probably still be exploiting this bug in penetration tests in 8 years. Not to mention all of the actual bad guys who will be exploiting this.”

Until Next Friday…Have a Great Weekend!

Related Reading: What We Know About Shellshock So Far, and Why the Bash Bug Matters

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A group of security researchers called upon automobile manufacturers to build cyber-security safeguards inside the software systems powering various features in modern cars.

In an open letter to “Automotive CEOs” posted (PDF) on the I am the Cavalry website, a group of security researchers called on automobile industry executives to implement five security programs to improve car safety and safeguard them from cyberattacks. As car automation systems become more sophisticated, they need to be locked down to prevent tampering or unauthorized access. The Five Star Automotive Cyber Safety Program outlined in the letter asked industry executives for safety by design, third-party collaboration, evidence capture, security updates, and segmentation and isolation.

“The once distinct world of automobiles and cybersecurity have collided,” read the letter. “Now is the time for the automotive industry and the security community to connect and collaborate..”

Vehicles are “computers on wheels,” Josh Corman, CTO of Sonatype and a co-founder of I am the Cavalry, the group who penned the open letter. The group aims to bring security researchers together with representatives from non-security fields, such as home automation and consumer electronics, medical devices, transportation, and critical infrastructure, to improve security.

Computers manage engines, brakes, navigation, air-conditioning, windshield wipers, entertainment systems, and other critical and non-critical components in modern cars. Security experts have warned that unless the systems are built with better security features, cyberattacks against cars could result in a physical injury to the driver and possible passengers. The five star plan can conceivably be used by consumers, ala Consumer Reports style, to understand which automakers are thinking about security, Corman said.

The first “star,” safety by design, simply means automakers should design and build automation features with security in mind. Engineers should be stopping to think about how the systems could be tampered with and then build in blocks to prevent such an attack. Automakers should also implement a secure software development program within their companies to encourage better coding and design.

Third party collaboration asks automakers to establish a formal vulnerability disclosure program, to clearly state what its policies are and who to contact. This doesn’t mean bug bounties—where companies would pay for bugs—but rather designing a process that ensures bug reports and other information from third-party researchers reach the right engineers.

“Tesla already gets a star,” Corman said, noting the electronic car maker recently established such a policy.

Evidence capture is the first technical piece in the Five Star program, and asks for forensics capabilities such as events logging in car systems.

“We have black boxes in airplanes,” Corman said, noting it’s currently impossible to collect any information on why something failed in car systems. Security updates mean the issues found and reported which have been fixed actually get pushed out to individual cars in a timely and effective manner. And the final star—and the last technical piece—is segmentation and isolation, referring to keeping critical systems separate from the rest of the car’s network.

“With segmentation and isolation, we want to make sure you contain failures, so a hack to the entertainment system never disables the brakes,” said Corman.

Vehicles, transportation systems, industrial control systems, and medical devices represent some of the hottest areas of cyber research. At Black Hat this year, Charlie Miller, an engineer at Twitter, and Chris Valasek, director of vehicle security research at IOActive, demonstrated how they could remotely control vehicles by compromising non-critical systems. The panel built on last year’s research, which showed how they could take over the breaks and the car’s steering from the back seat of the car. There were sessions discussing medical device security, and a DEF CON presentation looked at how traffic control systems were not secure.

The security industry reaching out directly to the automobile industry was a good idea, said Andrew Ruffin, a former staffer for Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), a member of the Senate Commerce Committee. Ruffin attended the press conference at DEF CON 22 on Friday. “I’m encouraged by the letter and hope there’s a quick response,” said Ruffin. “I think this has some legs.”

Considering how technology has permeated practically all parts of modern life, the group wants manufacturers to think about security and start implementing security features in their designs and business processes. The goal is to start thinking about security and implementing safeguards before the major cyberattack happens, said Corman. To people who say these things take time and would require a lot of work, Corman had two words: “We know.” The time to start is now, so that in a few years, these efforts would actually show results, he said.

Along with releasing the open letter, the group participated in a closed-door session with automobile and medical device representatives in a private meeting in Las Vegas on Tuesday and plan to discuss automotive hacking at DEF CON on Sunday. There is also a change.org petition demanding automakers pay attention car safety and cybersecurity.

“When the technology we depend on affects public safety and human life, it commands our utmost attention and diligence. Our cars command this level of care. Each and every day, we entrust our lives and the lives of those we love to our automobiles,” the letter said.

Signatures and instructions for signing  the petition can be found online. 

Podcast: Car Hacking with Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek

Related: Car-hacking Researchers Hope to Wake up Auto Industry

Related: Forget Carjacking, What about Carhacking?

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The Oil and Natural Gas industry this week unveiled a new Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ONG-ISAC) to facilitate the exchange of information, help evaluate risks, and provide up-to-date security guidance to U.S. companies.

Designed to help protect infrastructure from cyber-attacks, the industry-owned and operated organization will be structured similar to other industry ISACs in order to:

• Allow participants to submit incidents either anonymously or with attribution via a secure web portal;

• Circulate information on threats and vulnerabilities among ONG-ISAC members, other ISACs, vendors, and the U.S. government;

• Provide industry participants with access to cyber security experts;

• Alert participants of cyber threats deemed ‘Urgent’ or ‘Elevated’ in near real-time; and,

• Coordinate industry-wide responses to computer-based attacks.

According to the ONG-ISAC website, the organization will employ the Traffic Light Protocol for information sharing, with members having the option of submitting information either anonymously or with attribution. Only ONG-ISAC members will receive information that is classified as Red or Amber; non-members will only receive information that is classified as White, the organization explained.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the ONG-ISAC will offer member benefits including:

• Guided, anonymous information sharing via a secure web portal

• Automated sharing of machine-readable threat indicators

• Real-time notifications for near real-time analyses

• Open access to community leaders and security analyst experts

• Discover threats and vulnerabilities from ONG-ISAC members, other ISACs, vendors, and the U.S. Government, all in one place

• Coordinated response between members during industry incidents

The American Petroleum Institute (API), a national trade association representing the oil and natural gas industry with more than 600 members, expressed its support for the newly formed ISAC.

“Computer-based attacks are one of the fastest-growing threats to American businesses and infrastructure,” said API Vice President Kyle Isakower. “The center builds on existing programs to help companies quickly identify and respond to threats against energy production and distribution systems such as refineries and pipelines and stay connected with law enforcement agencies.”

Membership rates vary from $ 2,000 per year for organization with revenue of less than $ 250 million, to $ 50,000 per year for organizations with annual revenues over $ 10 billion.

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Security experts and eBay have confirmed that a recent user database being advertised on Pastebin was not obtained as a result of the data breach suffered by the online marketplace earlier this year.

On May 21, eBay admitted that its corporate network had been breached sometime between late February and early March 2014. The attackers compromised the login credentials of a small number of employees and used the data to gain access to the details of eBay’s 145 million customers. The breach was discovered only in early May.

While there’s no evidence that financial information has been compromised, or that PayPal customers are impacted, the cybercriminals have managed to gain access to names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords.

It’s uncertain who is behind the attack, but other cybercriminals and scammers are already trying to profit from the incident. Experts have reported seeing a higher number of PayPal and eBay phishing attacks, and, a post on Pastebin was found offering to sell 145,312,663 eBay customer records for 1.453 Bitcoin (around $ 750).

The seller has published a sample of 12,663 names, password hashes, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth allegedly belonging to eBay customers in the Asia-Pacific region.

Both security experts and eBay have analyzed the sample and determined that the data is fake. eBay representatives say none of the credentials appear to belong to customers.

Security expert Kenn White has also analyzed the data and found that it appears to originate from older leaks.

Security blogger Brian Krebs also believes that the data is fake. Allison Nixon, a threat researcher with Deloitte & Touche LLP, has told Krebs that the scammers are most likely hoping that security companies will purchase the data for research purposes.

In its official data breach announcement, eBay failed to disclose how it encrypts customer passwords, but  company representatives have told Reuters that a “sophisticated, proprietary hashing and salting technology” is used to protect them. On Twitter, eBay noted that passwords are hashed and salted, and there is no evidence that the encryption has been broken.

However, users are advised to change their passwords as a precaution. While some have criticized the company for not forcing password resets, as Australian security expert Troy Hunt highlights, that might not be such a good idea.

First of all, if the passwords are stored cryptographically and the company is confident that the information can’t be cracked easily, forcing a reset may be “overkill.” Furthermore, as Hunt explains, resetting the passwords of 145 million people at the same time and asking them to visit the site to set new ones might be too much for eBay’s servers, and it could be like launching a DDOS attack against themselves.

Another important aspect emphasized by Hunt and other security experts is the fact that it took eBay such a long time to detect the breach.

“What I find very distressful is the fact that the breach occurred 2 months ago and they found out just two weeks ago,” IT security expert Sorin Mustaca told SecurityWeek.

As far as disclosing information about the incident, Mustaca noted, “eBay is very careful in what they disclose because they are afraid of being sued. And indeed, I’ve seen in the media that there are already some attempts to sue them over their practices in what the security of the network is concerned.”

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