Threat Intelligence

Web Encryption - It’s Not Just for E-Commerce, Anymore

Last week, I re-tweeted Cloudflare's announcement that they are providing universal SSL for their customers. I believe the announcement is a valuable one for the state of the open Internet for a couple of reasons: First, there is the obvious -- they are doubling the number of websites on the Internet that support encrypted connections. And, hopefully, that will prompt even more sites/hosting providers/CDNs to get serious about supporting encryption, too. Web encryption -- it's not just for e-commerce, anymore. more

A Look at the Security Collapse in the HTTPS Market

While in recent years, HTTPS has become integral part of protecting social, political, and economic activities online, widely reported security incidents -- such as DigiNotar's breach, Apple's #gotofail, and OpenSSL's Heartbleed -- have exposed systemic security vulnerabilities of HTTPS to a global audience. more

Credit Card Breaches a Salutary Lesson for DNSSEC Adoption

Maintaining an 150 year old house requires two things, a lot of time and a lot of trips to the hardware store. Since the closest hardware store to my house is Home Depot, it is rare that a weekend passes without at least one trip to Home Depot. So now in the wake of the Home Depot data breach I am through no fault of my own in a situation where any or all of the bank cards I use regularly could be cancelled if the issuer decides they might be compromised. And this is not the first time this has happened to me this year. more

Fear of Disaster: 5 Tips to Help Enterprises Cope

IT disasters can strike anywhere, anytime. In 1983, a faulty Soviet warning system nearly precipitated World War III -- the system claimed five missiles were en route from the U.S. Only quick thinking by Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov saved the day when he realized the United States would never launch so few warheads. And in 2004, a private contractor working with the British Child Support Agency (CSA) suffered a glitch that overpaid 1.9 million people and underpaid 700,000. more

Six Approaches to Creating an Enterprise Cyber Intelligence Program

As few as seven years ago, cyber-threat intelligence was the purview of a small handful of practitioners, limited mostly to only the best-resourced organizations - primarily financial institutions that faced large financial losses due to cyber crime - and defense and intelligence agencies involved in computer network operations. Fast forward to today, and just about every business, large and small, is dependent on the Internet in some way for day-to-day operations, making cyber intelligence a critical component of a successful business plan. more

What Should PGP Look Like?

Those who care about security and usability - that is, those who care about security in the real world - have long known that PGP isn't usable by most people. It's not just a lack of user-friendliness, it's downright user hostile. Nor is modern professional crypto any better. What should be done? How should crypto in general, and PGP in particular, appear to the user? I don't claim to know, but let me pose a few questions. more

Google Announces Project Zero to Secure the Internet

Google today revealed a new initiative, named Project Zero, with the objective to "significantly reduce the number of people harmed by targeted attacks." To carry out the project, Google is recruiting a team of experienced hackers - "practically-minded security researchers" - to contribute 100% of their time toward improving security across the Internet. more

It’s Time to Talk Solutions on Mass Surveillance

The public discussion of surveillance one year on from the Snowden revelations remains a search for the biggest sinner. New stories 'outing' countries and companies are great transparency and essential for healthy societies but they have a side effect that isn't so benign: they create an evergreen source of new justifications for security services to demand more money for a surveillance and counter-surveillance arms race. more

Painting Ourselves Into a Corner with Path MTU Discovery

In Tony Li's article on path MTU discovery we see this text: "The next attempt to solve the MTU problem has been Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery (PLPMTUD). Rather than depending on ICMP messaging, in this approach, the transport layer depends on packet loss to determine that the packet was too big for the network. Heuristics are used to differentiate between MTU problems and congestion. Obviously, this technique is only practical for protocols where the source can determine that there has been packet loss. Unidirectional, unacknowledged transfers, typically using UDP, would not be able to use this mechanism. To date, PLPMTUD hasn't demonstrated a significant improvement in the situation." Tony's article is (as usual) quite readable and useful, but my specific concern here is DNS... more

Do I need DDoS protection? A Realistic Look at the Decision Process

There has been a recent spate of well publicised Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that bring websites down and render them useless, including Evernote and most recently Feedly. In light of this, here are some comments and tips to help companies evaluate and prepare not to be held for ransom or suffer lost reputation and sales as a result. more

Popular RSS Reader Feedly Suffers Back to Back DDoS Attacks, Held for Ransom

Popular RSS reader Feedly has been hit by major distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks beginning 2:04am PST on Wednesday causing the service to be completely down for several hours two days in a row. (Second attack still undergoing as of the time of this post.) more

Why Do We Accept $10 Security on $1,000,000 Data?

Last week we heard of yet another egregious security breach at an online provider, as crooks made off with the names, address, and birth dates of eBay users, along with encrypted passwords. They suggest you change your password, which is likely a good idea, and you better also change every other place you used the same password. But that's not much help since you can't change your name, address, and birth date, which are ever so handy for phishing and identity theft. more

Recommendations for Adding Cybersecurity Intelligence to the Smart Grid

Over the last few years, there has been an increased effort to modernize the U.S. electric grid. Building a "Smart Grid" has been central in the effort to help utilities better manage their resources, minimize power outages and reduce energy consumption. However, adding more electronic devices and sensors to the grid's network has made it a prime target of cyberattacks, like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which if successful, could cause wide-spread disruption of services affecting many other sectors. more

The Real Uneven Playing Field of Name Collisions

Recent comments on the name collisions issue in the new gTLD program raise a question about the differences between established and new gTLDs with respect to name collisions, and whether they're on an even playing field with one another. Verisign's latest public comments on ICANN's "Mitigating the Risk of DNS Namespace Collisions" Phase One Report, in answering the question, suggest that the playing field the industry should be concerned about is actually in a different place. The following points are excerpted from the comments submitted April 21. more

Overcoming Cloud Storage Security Concerns: 7 Key Steps

According to a 2013 TwinStrata survey, 46 percent of organizations use cloud storage services and 38 percent plan to adopt this technology in the near future. Cloud storage capacity demands are increasing 40 to 60 percent year-over-year, while storage density lags behind at 20 percent. The result? More data, growing demands for space and increasing security concerns. How do enterprises overcome cloud storage security challenges? more