Threat Intelligence

BGP Security: A Gentle Reminder that Networking is Business

At NANOG on the Road (NotR) in September of 2018, I participated in a panel on BGP security -- specifically the deployment of Route Origin Authentication (ROA), with some hints and overtones of path validation by carrying signatures in BGP updates (BGPsec). This is an area I have been working in for... 20 years? ... at this point, so I have seen the argument develop across these years many times, and in many ways. more

The Root KSK Rollover? What Does It Mean for Me?

In a little over two weeks, precisely in 17 days (on 11 October 2018 at 16:00 UTC), ICANN will roll the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) root Key Signing Key (KSK). If you are a Domain Name System (DNS) and DNSSEC expert already engaged globally on the topic, you are certainly both well aware and ready for the rollover. This article is probably not for you! If however, you are out there focused on your day to day running or managing a DNS infrastructure... more

Lessons Learned from the Namejuice/DROA/DROC Outage

Last week an ICANN registrar, Namejuice, went off the air for the better part of the day -- disappearing off the internet at approximately 8:30 am, taking all domains delegated to its nameservers with it, and did not come back online until close to 11 pm ET. That was a full business day and more of complete outage for all businesses, domains, websites, and email who were using the Namejuice nameservers -- something many of them were doing. more

Continued Threats from Malware

As part of my job, I manage an incident response team that was engaged by a significant organization in Georgia whose network was infected by the QBOT (a.k.a. QAKBOT) malware. The customer had been infected for over a year, several teams before ours had failed to solve the problem, and they continued to get reinfected by the malware when they thought they had eradicated it. Over time it had spread to more than 1,000 computers in their ecosystem stealing user credentials along the way. more

A Look at the Current State of DNSSEC in the Wild

The DNS system is, unfortunately, rife with holes like Swiss Cheese; man-in-the-middle attacks can easily negate the operation of TLS and website security. To resolve these problems, the IETF and the DNS community standardized a set of cryptographic extensions to cryptographically sign all DNS records... Now that these standards are in place, how heavily is DNSSEC being used in the wild? How much safer are we from man-in-the-middle attacks against TLS and other transport encryption mechanisms? more

Taking a Multi-Stakeholder Look at Cyber Norms

Recently we've seen several examples of likely state sponsored security incidents of which the appropriateness was later strongly debated. Incidents such as states impacting commercial enterprises during cyber attacks; purported sabotage of critical infrastructure, and attacks on civilian activists have all, to a greater or lesser degree, led to concerns being raised by both civilian watchdog groups, academics, technologists and governments. more

Join the Quantum Internet Hackathon 2018

The eighth RIPE NCC hackathon takes on the Quantum Internet! The hackathon will be held during the weekend before RIPE 77 in Amsterdam, and is co-organised by QuTech and TU Delft, along with the RIPE NCC. We're bringing together network operators, quantum networking researchers, students, hackers, software developers and artists, to imagine and build the tools for the future Internet. more

DNSSEC and DNS over TLS

The APNIC Blog has recently published a very interesting article by Willem Toorop of NLnet Labs on the relationship between Security Extensions for the DNS (DNSSEC) and DNS over Transport Layer Security. Willem is probably being deliberately provocative in claiming that "DoT could realistically become a viable replacement for DNSSEC." If provoking a reaction was indeed Willem's intention, then he has succeeded for me, as it has prompted this reaction. more

Why Foldering Adds Very Little Security

I keep hearing stories of people using "foldering" for covert communications. Foldering is the process of composing a message for another party, but instead of sending it as an email, you leave it in the Drafts folder. The other party then logs in to the same email account and reads the message; they can then reply via the same technique. Foldering has been used for a long time, most famously by then-CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer/lover Paula Broadwell. Why is foldering used? more

The Economics of Hacking an Election

There have been many news stories of late about potential attacks on the American electoral system. Which attacks are actually serious? As always, the answer depends on economics. There are two assertions I'll make up front. First, the attacker -- any attacker -- is resource-limited. They may have vast resources, and in particular, they may have more resources than the defenders -- but they're still limited. Why? more