In the 'it was bound to happen" category, a trojan that can intercept Skype calls has been developed and released by its creator. What's interesting is that the trojan was developed by the Swiss government.
Should it be surprising that wiretapping Skype conversations is possible? As Symantec points out, it's not a flaw in Skype itself. At the point that the outgoing part of a conversation is recorded, it must be in memory in "clear text" prior to encryption. If you can capture the bits before encryption you are in business. By the same token, received bit streams must be decrypted so you can hear it. This is the same issue music encryption faces.
Does anyone believe that Switzerland is the only government to develop Skype wiretapping software?
Finally, from a business risk perspective – Do you know who is using Skype in your organization?
TrendMicro's security research team announced a
white paper detailing their investigation of an Estonian Internet
company that was actually a front for a cybercrime network. This white
paper is important because it shows just how organized cyber criminals
have become. I have pointed this out in an earlier post here.
Organizations in the U.S. and Western Europe may wonder how this is relevant to them:
"From its office in Tartu [Estonia], employees administer sites that host codec
Trojans and command and control (C&C) servers that steer armies of
infected computers. The criminal outfit uses a lot of daughter
companies that operate in Europe and in the United States. These
daughter companies’ names quickly get the heat when they become
involved in Internet abuse and other cybercrimes. They disappear after
getting bad publicity or when upstream providers terminate their
contracts."
The Washington Post reported yesterday that there is an increase in "funds transfer fraud" being perpetrated by organized crime groups from Eastern Europe against small and medium U.S. businesses.
It's hard to know the extent of this type of crime because there is no breach notification requirement since no customer information is disclosed. However, many companies are reporting these crimes to the FBI and of course to their banks.
The risk of funds transfer fraud to businesses is much higher than to consumers for the following reasons:
Dollar amounts are higher.
Under the Uniform Commercial Code, businesses only have two days to dispute charges they feel are unauthorized. Consumers have 60 days from the time they receive their statements.
Because banks are liable for the consumer losses and less so for the business losses, they invest more resources in protecting consumers.
The complete article in the Washington Post is well worth reading.
In a previous post, I highlighted one of the techniques used by cyber criminals where they surreptitiously install the Clampi trojan on a PC in order to get the login credentials needed for online banking.
Recommended actions:
Install anti-virus/anti-malware agents on all workstations and keep them up-to-date
Use an end-point configuration management system to discover all workstations, to assure the above mentioned agents are installed and up-to-date, and to assure that unauthorized software is not installed
Implement firewall policies to (1) assure that only authorized people (i.e. people in authorized roles) using only authorized workstations can connect to financial institutions to perform funds transfer transactions, (2) assure that people not authorized cannot connect to financial institutions, (3) generate alerts when there are attempts to violate these policies
Implement a process where funds transfer transactions are reviewed on a daily basis by someone other than the person or people who perform the transactions
The Department of Health and Human Services this week published the regulations for the "breach notification" provision of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). In effect, this is an extension of HIPAA and further strengthens HIPAA's Privacy Rule and Security Rule.
The new breach notification regulations are in a 121 page document. HHS also issued a press release that summarizes the new regulations.
This type of breach notification regulation started in California with SB 1386 which went into effect on July 1, 2003. Since then about 40 other states passed a similar law.
In 2008, California went on to pass a specific health care information protection law, SB 541, which requires notification of breaches and financial penalties up to $250,000 per incident. Here is a Los Angeles law firm's presentation on it. Since SB 541 went into effect on January 1, 2009, there have been over 800 incidents reported.
CSO Online Magazine has an article about IBM ISS Security Strategist Joshua Corman's concerns with the security industry. While I agree with much of what he says, I disagree with his core premise, expressed in Dirty Secret 1. Here are my comments on each of Josh's eight dirty secrets.
"Dirty Secret 1: Vendors don't need to be ahead of the threat, just the buyer – This is the problem that leads to the seven "dirty secrets" that
follow. In essence, Corman said, the goal of the security market is to
make money, not to ensure the customer's security."
I find it surprising that a representative of one the largest and most profitable enterprises in the world attacks other vendors for wanting to make money, as if making money is bad. Is he serious about attacking capitalism? Is security some special market where profits are bad? From my perspective, making money is the result of solving client problems and helping them meet their objectives.
"Dirty Secret 2: AV certification omissions – While AV tools detect replicating malware like worms, they fail to identify such as [sic] non-replicating malware as Trojans."
Aside from the grammar issue, I agree that some vendors are having difficulty keeping up with the constantly evolving threat landscape. However, this creates opportunities for new vendors. Joseph Schumpeter called this "creative destruction."
"Dirty Secret 3: There is no perimeter – Corman said those who truly believe there's still a network "Perimeter" may as well believe in Santa Claus."
There has never been a perimeter in the sense that if you just protect the edge of your network, you are safe. I do agree that it can be difficult to know where that edge is. However, there is still an important role to be played by a perimeter firewall that understands applications, users, and content. Beyond that, good security has always been about "defense-in-depth."
"Dirty Secret 4: Risk management threatens vendors – Risk
management really helps an organization understand its business and its
highest level of risk, Corman said. But a company's priorities don't
always map to what the vendors are selling."
Again, this allusion to disreputable vendors. At any point in time, there surely are disreputable vendors. But they don't last long. Of course any IT Security control being deployed should be in the context of how risk is being reduced.
"Dirty Secret 5: There is more to risk than weak software – Corman
said the lion's share of the security market is focused on software
vulnerabilities. But software represents only one of the three ways to
be compromised, the other two being weak configurations and people."
No argument here, but not really new. The issues around security awareness training, for example, are much deeper than lack of money being spent on it. Regarding configuration management, has the issue been lack of attention or lack of good products to deal with the issues? It's a hard problem.
"Dirty Secret 6: Compliance threatens security – Compliance with such laws and industry standards as Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI DSS
drives companies to spend far more on security than they might
otherwise. Security vendors have obviously seized upon this fact,
offering products that do everything from offer PCI compliance out of
the box to ultimate cure-alls for healthcare entities coping with the
demands of HIPAA. Of course, this too leads to companies buying security tools that fail to properly address the particular risks they face."
I surely agree that compliance threatens security and there surely are cases where vendors have been successful by focusing on compliance rather than on reducing risk. When an organization "only" focuses on compliance requirements it falls short of what it can and should be doing to protect its assets. In fact, compliance represents a floor or bare minimum level of security.
Put another way, if you only focus on compliance, you will surely not be maximizing the value of your security investment. At the very least, there is no way that regulatory bureaucracies can keep up with the changing threat landscape.
"Dirty Secret 7: Vendor blind spots allowed for Storm – The Storm botnet, as an archetype, is being copied and improved. The Storm era of botnets is alive and well, nearly two years from when it first appeared, Corman said."
As I said in my comment on Dirty Secret 2, some vendors may not be responding to the changing threat landscape, but there are others who are. If you feel your vendors are not responding, look for new ones. There is a lot of innovation in the IT Security industry.
"Dirty Secret 8: Security has grown well past "do it yourself" – Technology
without strategy is chaos, Corman said. The sheer volume of security
products and the rate of change has super-saturated most organizations
and exceeded their ability to keep up."
Any actions or tactics that are not part of a strategy is obviously chaos. First Corman says that vendors are not keeping up and now he is saying that enterprises cannot keep up (without his help). With all due respect, let's remember that Corman is part of IBM's consulting organization. On the other hand, there is no harm in repeating that technology by itself is not the answer. It's people, process, and technology, as it has always been.
Weak passwords and other password issues continue to be the bane of every security manager's existence. Becky Waring from Windows Secrets reports on a Gmail vulnerability where an attacker can repeatedly guess your password using Gmail's, "Check for mail using POP3"
capability. This is a service Gmail provides that enables you to use an email client rather than the Gmail browser interface. You can read the details of the vulnerability at Full Disclosure.
The unfortunate reality is that we have reached a point in the evolution of technology that if an attacker is in a position to implement an unimpeded repetitive "guessing" attack on your password, like this Gmail vulnerability, there is no password you can remember that can survive the attack. In other words, if you can remember the password, it's too weak, and it will be cracked.
NIST Special Publication 800-63 rev1 "Electronic Authentication Guideline" Appendix A (Page 86) discusses the concepts of password strength (entropy) in detail.
The only way you can really protect yourself is by using an automated password manager. LifeHacker has a very good review of the top choices available.One of the side benefits of these products, is that you should not have to physically type your passwords, thus reducing the risk associated with keyloggers, which I discussed in previous posts here and here.
Steve Gibson has a site called Perfect Passwords that automatically generates high entropy passwords.
At the very least, follow the advice in Becky Waring's column.
The recent Goldman Sachs breach of proprietary trading software highlights the risk of insider fraud and abuse. RGE, Nouriel Roubini's website, has the best analysis I've read on the implications of such an incident.
Here is the money quote, "What is troubling about the Goldman leak is how unprepared our infrastructure is against active measures. We already have good security practices, defamation laws and laws against market manipulation. What we don't have is a mechanism for dealing with threats that appear to be minor, but where the resulting disinformation is catastrophic."
I cannot imagine any better proof of the need for better user, application, content, and transaction monitoring and control tools.
Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco, researchers for penetration testing software company Core Security Technologies, demonstrated at Black Hat how Absolute Software's Computrace LoJack For Laptops contains a BIOS rootkit-like vulnerability.The reason this is significant is that about 60% of laptops ship with this installed including those from Dell, HP, Toshiba, and Lenovo. These companies are listed as OEM partners on Absolute's web site.
Here is a good article which describes how LoJack for Laptops works and the vulnerability. Lest you think this is only a Windows issue, the software is also used on Macs, although Apple is not listed as an OEM partner.
In order for this vulnerability to be exploited the bad guy would need physical access to your laptop or remote access with Admin/root privileges. If you are running in User-mode, which should be an enforced policy, the risk drops significantly. The high risk exploits are:
A keylogger is installed and used to capture your passwords which, for example, you use to access your bank accounts
An agent is installed that enables the bad guy to retrieve whatever data is stored on the system, such as intellectual property, financial records, etc.
There are always trade-offs in technology. By definition, adding features increases the attack surface. The good news is that LoJack for Laptops reduces the risk of disclosing information on lost or stolen laptops. The bad news is that by using it, you are increasing the risk of a rootkit-like attack on the laptop.
Richard Bejtlich reports on a story that appeared in the Washington Times last week, "Apptis Inc., a military information technology provider, repaid
$1.3 million of a $5.4 million Pentagon contract after investigators
said the company provided inadequate computer security and a
subcontractors system was hacked from an Internet address in China…"
As Richard said, this may be a first. When is this going to happen in the commercial market?
Last week at Black Hat, Peter Kleissner, a young software developer from Vienna,
Austria, showed an interesting variation on a rootkit he
calls Stoned which he said can bypass disk encryption. However, I don’t think any disk encryption product, by itself, claims that it cannot be
bypassed by a keylogger.
Here is the scenario: If you lose your PC and the disk
is encrypted with a quality disk encryption product, you can have a high degree
of confidence that no encrypted information will be disclosed.
However, if the
PC is returned to you, you cannot be sure that a root kit and a keylogger have
not been installed on the machine. The risk of disclosing information occurs
when you boot up the machine and authenticate. At that point the keylogger can
capture your credentials and eventually access all the data on the disk (as you
would).
Also, the risk of your PC being “rootkitted” (if there is such a word) while browsing increases if you are working on your PC as an Administrator. Clearly
organizations have policies against this and are able to enforce it.
