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This post was co-authored by Sarah McKune, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab. Public attention to the secretive world of cyber espionage has risen to a new level in the wake of the APT1: Exposing One of China's Cyber Espionage Units report by security company Mandiant. By specifically naming China as the culprit and linking cyber espionage efforts to the People's Liberation Army, Mandiant has taken steps that few policymakers have been willing to take publicly, given the significant diplomatic implications. more
As noted in the first part of this series, Security and Reliability encompasses holistic network assessments, vulnerability assessments, and penetration testing. In this post I'd like to go deeper into network assessments. I stated last time that the phrase "network assessment" is broad. more
I co-authored a book in 2005, titled "Extreme Exploits: Advanced Defenses Against Hardcore Hacks." My chapters focused on securing routing protocols such as BGP, and securing systems related to DMZs, firewalls, and network connectivity. As I look back over those chapters, I realize that the basic fundamentals of network security really haven't changed much even though technology has advanced at an incredible pace. "Defense in depth" was a hot catch phrase seven years ago, and it still applies today. more
In the first part of this trilogy, I discussed the importance of automatically provisioned second generation DNS in connection with Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC). In the second post, I talked about IP addressing, private enterprise networks, and how DHCP does not meet the requirements of multitenant Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud environments. I will now wrap up this trilogy by putting these two thesis into real-life context. more
In part 1, I talked about some of the risks associated with BYOD. But there are actions you can take to greatly reduce this risk. One effective method for limiting the risk of BYOD is to employ DNS-based security intelligence techniques. DNS-based security intelligence makes use of an enterprise's caching DNS server to monitor and block DNS queries to known botnet command and control (C&C) domains. more
In general, a network firewall is just a traffic filter... Filtering rules can be anything from "allow my web server to hear and answer web requests but not other kinds of requests" to "let my users Ping the outside world but do not let outsiders Ping anything on my network." The Internet industry has used firewalls since the mid-1980's and there are now many kinds, from packet layer firewalls to web firewalls to e-mail firewalls. Recently the DNS industry has explored the firewall idea and the results have been quite compelling. In this article I'm going to demonstrate a DNS firewall built using RPZ (Response Policy Zones) and show its potential impact on e-mail "spam". more
Throughout the second half of 2012 many security folks have been asking "how much is a zero-day vulnerability worth?" and it's often been hard to believe the numbers that have been (and continue to be) thrown around. For the sake of clarity though, I do believe that it's the wrong question... the correct question should be "how much do people pay for working exploits against zero-day vulnerabilities?" more
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that targeted U.S. financial institutions this week have reached 60 Gbps, according to researchers from DDoS mitigation provider Arbor Networks. more
SANS has announced NetWars CyberCity, a small-scale city located close by the New Jersey Turnpike complete with a bank, hospital, water tower, train system, electric power grid, and a coffee shop. NetWars CyberCity was developed to teach cyber warriors from the U.S. Military how online actions can have kinetic effects. more
Security researchers have found a new variant of the Macadocs malware to be using Google docs as a proxy server and not connecting to a command and control server directly. In a blog post on Friday, Symantec researcher Takashi Katsuki, wrote... more
In February 2012, Neustar surveyed IT professionals across North America to better understand their DDoS experiences. Most were network services managers, senior systems engineers, systems administrators and directors of IT operations. In all, 1,000 people from 26 different industries shared responses about attacks, defenses, ongoing concerns, risks and financial losses. more
Starting in mid-September, one of the largest and most sophisticated DDoS attacks ever targeted the titans of American banking. Initially, victims included Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC Bank, and U.S. Bancorp. In the weeks to come, others would also feel the pain. Websites crashed, customers were unable to make transactions and IT professionals and PR gurus went into panic mode. Leon Panetta, U.S. Secretary of Defense, said the attacks foreshadowed a "Cyber Pearl Harbor." more
If there's one simple - high impact - thing you could do to quickly check whether your network has been taken over by a criminal entity, or uncover whether some nefarious character is rummaging through your organizations most sensitive intellectual property out of business hours, what would it be? In a nutshell, I'd look to my DNS logs. It's staggering to me how few security teams have gotten wise to regularly interrogating the logs from their recursive DNS servers. more
A cooperative international report was released last week outlining Internet and mobile best practices aimed at curtailing malware, phishing, spyware, bots and other Internet threats. It also provides extensive review of current and emerging threats. "Best Practices to Address Online and Mobile Threats" is a comprehensive assessment of Internet security as it stands today... more
Convincing competitors, disparate business entities and researchers to collaborate - many donating their services and resources - to protect millions of end-users worldwide is no small feat. Yet FBI Supervisory Special Agent Thomas X. Grasso did just that by quietly working behind the scenes to create the DNS Changer Working Group that saved an inestimable number of end-users from losing access to the Web over the last two years. more
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