Tag Archives: security awareness

Does “Research” Terminology Reduce Adoption Rates?

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What is your reaction to this tweet?

In the drive to “do something,” many applaud this as a reasonable step. I think it actually might harm our efforts and slow our progress.

Words matter.

Does the use of the term “research” reduce adoption rates vs. if we used the term QA or QC?

What is wrong with the term security research? Why might QA or QC be a better selling point?

Consider how businesses handle “research” versus quality assurance/control. In most cases, businesses have budget for quality work. They recognize the importance of producing to the level of quality expected in the marketplace.

The role of QA/QC is one of trust. Partnering together to produce a better product. A way to protect the company while growing the bottom line.

Research is a confusing concept. It either harkens back to grade school papers, college projects, or huge corporate investments. And in the corporate world, research is tightly controlled and wrought with failure. The hope is a small amount of success to make up the difference.

Research is about the future. Quality is about the current state.

Confusing the opportunity: security research

Security research is not well understood. Not even within the “research” community – Bug Bounties refer to their testers as “researchers”, “bounty hunters”, etc.Combining two expensive, confusing terms together creates additional barriers and hurdles.

Where does it fall within the budget? Is it a security item, an application item?

Does this make security testing or research bad? No. It highlights the fact that when working with an organization, perception matters.

When you approach an organization regarding security testing and approval, are they more apt to go with something that sounds familiar, they understand the value, and fits their model, or go with an option that is often interchanged with “hacker”, and they really don’t understand the value? You hear all the time how different groups need to speak the language of their consumer. While I am not a fan of the idea of all these different languages, I do think that using terminology that is familiar to the consumer provides a better connection and opportunity.

In this case, you are selling testing services. These are QA/QC services to offset the internal testing they are doing, while adding a specific focus on a limited classification of bugs. Would changing our terminology change the adoption rate?

I would love to hear others opinions on how they think choice of terminology affects adoption rate.

Security Budget: How Much vs. How it is Used

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I recently saw an article on Forbes that identified some of the major banks and how much money they will be spending on cybersecurity. We are talking about companies like Wells Fargo, Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase. We are talking about budgets starting around $250 Million a year for cybersecurity. That is a big budget.

In information security it is common to hear questions about how much a company spends on security. There are random numbers thrown out that 10% of the IT budget, or 10% of the total budget should be reserved for security. We also see, with every breach that happens, people claiming that the company didn’t take security seriously. My initial question when I saw the article was “does this mean these banks take security seriously enough?”

The issue is that it is impossible to determine how that money is used. Great, you are spending $200 million a year, but what are you doing with that money? The number really doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t help other companies determine how to increase their security. Is the answer just spend more money? No. The answer is spend that money more efficiently.

What I want to see is a break down of how that money is allocated.

How much of it is going to employee resources, hardware, software, monitoring, etc.

How much of that is focused on Firewalls, IDS, IPS, Antivirus and other controls.

Is that money used for training, Static or Dynamic analysis tools, scanning tools, 3rd party engagements?

I want to know what they are doing and what appears to be most effective. This information can then be useful to other companies that are still struggling with increasing their security.

Throwing big numbers around gets the user to be interested, but it is that breakdown of information that is what will help others improve their security.

Don’t stop short and just look at overall budget, or get hung up on just those numbers. Dig deeper into how that money is used. You can get the latest and greatest do all flashy light device for a lot of money, or you can get a little less flashy devices that may actually do a better job and be more cost effective. Lets get more discussion around what is actually working vs. what is not working rather than focusing on the size of your budget.

Versioning the SDLC to Indicate Security Level

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I recently saw a tweet that mentioned how trending SecDevOps is becoming. For those that don’t know, that is the “secure” devops, or shall I say devops with security injected. It really got me thinking about not only devops, but also the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). We keep saying security can’t be bolted on and that it needs to be built in, yet we keep bolting it on.

For years, we have talked about how the SDLC doesn’t have security built in and how we can create a “secure” SDLC, or the Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL). My concern is that as long as we have an SDLC and a “Secure” SDLC, or a DevOps or “Secure” DevOps, we will always have the insecure implementation. In addition, we are lacking a way to determine what security enhancements are built into “your” SDLC.

So why not version these items? Rather than creating a “Secure” SDLC (or SDL) lets look to create SDLC 2.0. Now this wouldn’t be the end all for a secure SDLC, but it could be used to build a maturity model to help identify what controls are in place. Like BSIMM or OpenSAMM, it creates the opportunity for a maturity model to form. This maturity model not only provides goals for the organization to grow towards, it also makes auditing easier. Imagine going through a PCI audit and instead of answering a bunch of questions on your secure SDLC you can select what version you conform to. We seem to have too many different ways of doing things around application security which makes it more confusing. Development programs know SDLC, so versioning it vs. BSIMM or OpenSAMM may have some better traction. This is just a thought.

The same concepts go for versioning devops, or any other framework we are using. This is not something that could possibly happen overnight, but if properly implemented could be very beneficial. I would be curious if there are any thoughts on this, or if it has even been thought of previously. Is this possible? What would go in each version to help build up to a mature program?

Hacking Cars: Taken Seriously?

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Turn on an ad for new vehicles and you are bound to see how connected they are to our lives. Gone are the days when your vehicle is just a stand alone product. Now we are seeing cars that have internet connectivity. We are moving past the simple satellite radio or GPS systems and becoming connected to a lot of data. Security folks have been talking about vehicle security for a while now and a few researchers have been focusing on showing how serious the security of these vehicles is.

Today, a story was released on Wired “Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway – With Me In It” (http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/) describing how a Jeep was remotely controlled by a laptop 10 miles away. For the full details, check out the link I just provided. Once the story hit the airwaves, it received lots of attention, both good and bad.

Lets start with the positive side of things that were shown. It is possible to actually show the capability to breach a vehicles systems (remotely) and then control many of the functions. These functions include the radio, wipers, temperature controls, transmission and brakes to name a few. It is a concern that this can be done without authorization. I certainly do not want my vehicle to be taken over while I am driving it making it unsafe for myself or my family. The highlight: Security is important for vehicles with them being more reliant on software and internet connectivity.

Rumor is that there is a patch for the vehicle to fix this issue. The issue we now have to address is how do we efficiently and effectively get these patches to the vehicles. At this point, bringing the vehicle in to a dealership to have the software updated is the only real option.

The negative reception is where it gets interesting. They decided to do this experiment on a highway with other vehicles around traveling at the speed limit (70 MPH). At one point the driver is explaining how he can’t see because the windshield wipers are going with the fluid spraying. At another point, they cut out the transmission and the vehicle slows way down on the highway where there was no breakdown lane. That is a brief and probably insufficient summary, however the point is that a lot of people are upset.

This type of testing in a public place like this puts the other drivers on that highway at risk. This is not much different than the plane hacking bonanza that happened a few months ago (http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/us/fbi-hacker-flight-computer-systems/) causing a huge backlash. It is one thing to look for security issues that may help make things safer, but it is critical that the testing of these theories are done in a controlled environment, not putting people at risk. They don’t test vehicle crash ratings on the highway, they do it in a secluded area where safety is a priority.

If you are going to research security issues, no matter what they are, it is critical to think about this type of stuff before you just jump on in. While I understand that this type of stunt hacking is great for advertising an upcoming talk at your local hacker conference, it is not acceptable when directly putting other people at risk. You want to hack a plane? Get an airline to get you into a hangar in a controlled environment. The other option, by a plane to test out yourself. But don’t do it on a plane full of passengers at 30,000 feet. In this case, the researchers went out and acquired the vehicle and researched in their own facilities. The issue arose when they did their testing on a highway and not on a closed course. Security research is walking a fine line and it will require the best foot forward to push it in a positive direction. If all people see is the stunt hacking they will lose sight of the real issue at hand and just see these stunts as reckless. It will have the opposite effect of what the end goal is: to increase security awareness and security of the devices or products.

If you are in the market for a new vehicle, don’t be afraid to ask questions about the security of the vehicles communication systems. The more we dig as consumers the more aware the manufacturers will be. At some point, promoting security as a feature will be critical to beating out the competition ultimately forcing everyone to get on board. Be smart and stay safe.

Ashley Madison site breached

If you are keeping up with the news you have probably already heard about the breach of the adult site known as Ashley Madison.   Here is a link to one of the articles about it: http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/20/technology/ashley-madison-hack/index.html. Like the breach at Adult Friend Finder (http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/22/technology/adult-friendfinder-hacked/) a few months ago, this type of incident is a little different than the usual breach.   This breach is less about identity information (although at the root has a lot to do with it), financial information, or even health information.   The focus of this type of site/service is on secrecy and discreetness.   It is about sharing sensitive information about an individual’s private life.

As we become more content with the Internet and the freedoms it provides us, we often start to overlook the reality that it creates.  Some people think what they do on a computer isn’t real, rather, more of a game.   That the effects are not real.   We have this notion that everything we do is anonymous, leading us to take more risks than we might have otherwise.  Take a moment and think about some things you might have said or done online that you most likely wouldn’t have done in person.  Think about how quickly that can snowball out of control.  

The breach at Ashley Madison should serve as a reminder that what we do may not be as anonymous as we thought.   That the effects of our actions may turn out to have some real life consequences.   Is it possible someone was just curious and meant no harm signing up on the site?  Maybe they got in a fight with their spouse, had a bad day at work, were just bored.   Of course those may not be acceptable excuses for joining a site that promotes adultery, but it could be something that small that led to the initial curiosity.  There are also people just looking for another relationship.  Anyone who has their name released as being a member has the same potential consequences.  You may be publicly criticized, sorry.. that is what society does now.  Your job or career could be effected. Your relationship with your significant other and/or children can be effected.  The list goes on.

We are all still learning the effects our online actions have on us over time. Our parents didn’t have nearly as much technology so many of us are learning on our own. We need to understand that, just like business, we assume a level of risk when acting online.  There is no 100% secure systems.  It doesn’t matter if we are talking online banking, adult sites, social media, or password managers.  There is always some level of risk.  We must learn to calculate that risk and determine if it is worth it.  We are often quick to blindly accept the risk for the quick reward.  Share your contacts for some coins in a game.  Post atrocious comments for a chance to feel like you stood for something.  

Is there a risk to joining an adult site like this?  Of course there is.  For many, that risk is acceptable for their own personal reasons.  Some members may had not really considered the risks, while others may have given great thought to joining.  Either way, the risk is there.   The big question in this situation is regarding what that risk now means to the individuals involved.

The media hypes this up to be devastating.  However if we look back at Adult Friend Finder, after a few days, you stopped hearing much about it.  This doesn’t mean that there were no consequences suffered by users effected by that breach, but it did quiet down a lot.  Maybe it was because of the personal nature that people didn’t want to put it out for everyone to see.  That makes it difficult to judge the real effect that this breach will have.

It will be interesting to see what types of effects this has going forward.  In the meantime, we should ensure that we are thinking about the risks. Be safe everyone.

Hacking Airplanes…Lets Think About This

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Recent news of airplane security and the did or didn’t someone take control of an airplane during a flight is scattered across the web. There are lots of opinions on whether or not the inflight entertainment systems and the airplane control systems are connected or not. I haven’t tested an airline system, so I can’t say for sure, and it may be different depending on the type of plane. One glaring issue here is we don’t know and there are a lot of people that don’t know either, while acting as if they do know. Is airplane security a concern? Of course it is, what security isn’t a concern? What is the right approach to having it tested?

United Airlines recently announced a bug bounty program. For those that may not know, a bug bounty program is set up by companies to recognize or reward security testers for identifying security bugs in their applications. Some of the big names like Google, FaceBook and Twitter have been doing this for a while now. While not something everyone is prepared for, it can help identify some of the security bugs in your applications, although many of these flaws should be identified internally by developers and QA before release to production. Any average person can participate in most bug bounties, no skills required (we won’t dig into that for this piece).

What seems to be interesting with the United program, at least what we see on Twitter, is that there is some concern that the airplane and in-flight systems are out of scope. This means that while you can test United’s external applications, they are NOT giving permission for anyone to test the airline systems during a flight. Airline security has been propelled into the spotlight recently with stories like GAO: Newer aircraft vulnerable to hacking and Chris Roberts tweeting on a plane about it and then getting questioned by authorities for hours upon arrival.

Does United have it right, by banning hacking on the plane? But what about the children you say? First off, without permission, you shouldn’t be security testing something that isn’t yours. I know there are lots of debate around this topic, but lets just get the permission thing out of the way. I understand, if the systems are not safe, then the issue should be addressed. Many will tell you that the only way to know if it is safe is to have any Joe Blow out there firing away at it. If telling the airline about it doesn’t get them to fix it then doing something a bit more rash is needed “for your safety”. Be prepared, when it comes to public disclosure of flaws that contain working exploits that are not patched “YOU” are the collateral damage.

Lets get real here for just a moment. Lets take a moment to realize that things that happen on computers DO have real consequences. Messing around on a website that exposes sensitive information is bad enough, but to think that allowing anyone to attempt hacking a plane to look for security vulnerabilities at 30,000 feet is a good idea is just ludicrous. You are directly, and immediately putting the lives of everyone on that plane at risk. Maybe you should do a vote to see who is ok with you attempting this. After events such as 9/11, I don’t think you want to announce you are hacking the plane.. you may find yourself duct taped to a chair and bruised up a bit for the remainder of the diverted flight.

In the professional world of security, when we want to test the security of something like this, we seek out the vendor and get a contract that outlines what testing will be done. Obviously this requires the vendor to agree to a contract and the testing. In this scenario, the testing would most likely be done in an airplane in a hangar at the airport, not at 30,000 feet and with no other passengers on board. If you are unable to get the vendor to commit to a contract for testing, then hopefully making people aware of the potential issue and the risks they assume by using that vendor could be enough to force the vendor into it. In our market, people stop using a service, vendor starts listening to people.

In the case of United, and hopefully any other airline that decides to open a bug bounty, I think they are making a good decision in not opening up a bounty on the airline systems. Of course these systems are critical, especially since they keep the plane safe in the air, but we need to make intelligent decisions about how things get tested. This decision by United does not seem to be a method of trying to silence “researchers” about the potential security vulnerabilities in the airplane. This is a move to keep people safe during a flight. We have ways to test, as mentioned earlier with the contract in a controlled environment, we don’t have to do it in the air with other passengers. It is also a smart decision to not open a bug bounty on those systems because with critical systems like this you want to ensure that only trained experts are assessing the system. Someone that can understand the fragility of the environment, the way it works, the things that shouldn’t be done. You start letting John in 34C who just learned what Metasploit is start firing exploits at a system all ad hoc, you are asking for a world of hurt.

If you really want to test the security of an airplane and its flight controls, pony up and buy a plane to do the testing. We see this with the guys that are testing the security of cars. They get funded or pay out of their own pocket to get a vehicle that they can test out the security. Look at some of what they have done, it doesn’t always go as planned. They are not hopping on a city bus and hacking it. They are not hopping on a train and attempting to hack it. They are doing their best to create a controlled environment to test in a safe environment.

Everything has security issues. There will never be a time when we don’t have some security issue still around in a system. We should be glad that due to recent events the airlines have not banned electronic devices on airplanes.. Yet if we keep making decisions to put people at risk with this type of “research” we will probably really learn with “chilling security research” really means.

What Happens When All SSNs are Breached

Visit any news site or social media outlet and you are bound to see news of some new company getting breached. It is a lot of what we talk about these days. Whether it is passwords, credit card information, health information or social security numbers, if it is breached it is headline news. With the exception of those trying to scam the system and get a quick payday, it is getting to the point where most people outside of the information security industry just write it off and don’t give it much thought.

There is a difference between social security numbers or health information that distinguish them from passwords or credit card numbers. They are much harder to replace. Taking a quick look at passwords we can see that it is easy to change them. If my password gets breached, I create a new one. It is usually a simple process that takes very little time. This is especially true if using different passwords for different sites. Credit cards are also fairly simple to replace and come with zero liability. If my card gets breached and there are fraudulent charges I just report them and they are removed. The bank sends me a new credit card and if I am doing regular monitoring of my statements the biggest hassle is changing the credit card that is stored on the different sites.

With social security numbers it is much more difficult to replace them. While they were not meant to be used as identifiers in all of these systems, they unfortunately are. Countless numbers of sites store your social security number increasing the risk to it. Getting a new number can be very difficult, not just the process of getting the new number but also updating everyplace that has it.

What happens if all of the social security numbers get breached? With under 400 million people in the united states how long will it take with all of these breaches for all numbers to have been breached? I know, we could just create all of the numbers that fit the format of xxx-xx-xxxx, but I am talking number with other identifying information. If all of the numbers get breached, what do we do next? Is it still worth spending so much money trying to protect them in our systems? We can’t get people to encrypt them now, will they continue to do it when they are all in the public domain? Do we finally start moving to a new identifier, albeit probably too late? Maybe it is just a money ticket for identity monitoring and credit monitoring companies. Will the duty to protect this information be removed when it is public domain? As we have seen with other breaches, once something is in public domain, no matter how it got there, it is fair game. It raises an interesting situation when a finite set of data is at risk. Do you know what your company is doing to protect this type of information? Better yet, as a consumer, do you have any concern about your SSN being stolen? Chances are very good it is already out there somewhere.

When Breaches Get Personal

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Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably heard about the breach of privacy against some celebrities who had some indecent images stolen. It is easy to get caught up in the hoopla that surrounds this latest intrusion due to the racy images that were stolen, but there is a bigger question around all of this. Lets pull away those top layers and see what the deal is.

The story goes that images were taken with mobile devices, and that device then synced the data to some form of cloud storage. You have seen cloud storage before right? DropBox, Sync, Box, ICloud, etc. There are a lot of services that allow storing your data into “The Cloud”. Some of this is just for backup purposes, others help sync data across multiple devices.

Lets start by talking about this mysterious cloud. If you saw the recent movie “Sex Tape” you may have heard it mentioned. You might be shocked that the only thing about the cloud that actually resembles a cloud is its representative image on a network diagram. There are lots of definitions and everyone will tell you something different when describing the cloud. The key point is that these services have servers running in multiple data centers and when you send your data to them it gets stored on those servers. You don’t know where the data actually is, and in most cases it doesn’t matter. It is, in this scenario, an offsite storage mechanism.

Many of these services make it easy to sync files between devices. Wait, you really don’t have more than one device? It is becoming much more common for people to have a phone, tablet, computer, etc. Wouldn’t it be great if when you created a file (photo, document, etc) that it was available on all your devices? The cloud services help with that. Some programs, like the IOS photos feature will automatically sync your pictures to all your devices.

Whether people are aware of how this works, or the implications is hard to really determine. I think most people really don’t think about the mechanism by which the photo made it from their phone to their tablet. They just care that it got there, not thinking about a copy being stored somewhere else. Just like in law, ignorance is no excuse for not knowing what is going on with your devices and services.

As we have seen in the past few years, breaches are an every day occurrence. Usually we see them at big businesses or retailers. These cloud services are also targets due to the types of data they store. Sure, in the most recent case it was nude photos, but think of some of the other stuff that you store from your device. There is a lot of potential for sensitive information being stored.

Do you stop using cloud services because of an incident? Personally, I keep on trucking as usual. I use ICloud, DropBox, and other cloud services all the time. Understand, there is a risk to using any of these services, although I wonder if that risk of the service getting compromised is less than or greater than your own personal device getting compromised. Like everything we do dealing with life, you have to be aware and take responsibility for what you do. Hey, if you want to take nude photos, that is your business. If those images get compromised, and if on an electronic device there is a chance of that, then you determine how to handle the situation. This goes for any data you store, not just photos.

There is so much finger pointing and blame game going around the internet about the recent nude photo breaches. It is the celebrities fault, it is the hackers fault, it is the cloud service provider’s fault. I don’t see how any blame is put on people that take pictures and use a service. We were all given a choice and that doesn’t give anyone else the right to exploit it. Depending on how the accounts were compromised, maybe user, maybe provider. If the provider did something completely negligent, then I can see some problem there. But lets not let any of that detract from the true malicious user here; the attacker that broke in and stole the information. There are going to be people that do this all the time and we are seeing more of it everyday. Lets be clear, there is no way to remove the blame from the attacker in any of these scenarios.

As users, we need to stay focused on doing the right security practices. Strong pass phrases, less password reuse across sites, don’t click stuff you shouldn’t, stay away from shady sites, and think about what you are doing. Don’t get caught up in the hype of news headlines, but rather take in the details and determine what the real issue is. All of the talk about nude photos is not the issue. Data stolen by an attacker is the issue. Be safe and enjoy the internet.

1.2 Billion Passwords… Password Best Practices Again

There is a lot of talk about the recent discovery of what appears to be about 1.2 billion username and passwords stolen. I haven’t seen the list, so I can’t confirm that, but let’s assume it is accurate. Is this something we should be panicking about?

The first question is how many unique people does this actually effect? The chances that it effects 1.2 billion people seems pretty. I haven’t seen any statistics generated but we have to assume that those people that are connected to the internet have more than one user account. The breach says the credentials were pilfered from more than 450,000 sites. Of course that information is not being released, and we don’t need it to protect ourselves.

Practice Good Password Practices

With all the recent breach coverage we can’t help but to continue preaching good password practices. You may ask if it really matters with all the breaches that occur, or what control you really have. It is not like these passwords are stolen from you, the application that stores them is usually the culprit.

As those that create and rely on passwords, we do want to help take care of them as best we can. I can’t control what the developer is doing to protect the password on their end, so I have to assume the worst and do the best I can on my end. At some point, I think we will start to see people actually stop using applications that are not proactively protecting our data, but to do that we need applications that are transparent and show us they are doing things right to gain our business.

Choosing Strong Passwords
We should start off by choosing strong passwords. Unfortunately, a lot of critical applications still don’t support strong enough passwords, but if you can, try to have at least 15 characters in the password. When it comes to password strength it is the length that has the greatest effect. Remember, it is rare that someone is trying to guess Your password, rather they are running software tools to crack large swaths of passwords. I prefer to use pass phrases or sentences to create my password. This makes it easier to remember and more difficult to crack.

Changing Passwords Regularly
Changing your password to critical systems regularly can help avoid your password from being stolen by malicious users. Many corporate systems require password changes every 45-90 days for end users. You should follow that guideline too for personal applications, especially the ones that focus on financial artifacts (such as your bank accounts). Lets hope that a company that has been breached and lost passwords isn’t losing them day after day. We hope it was a one or two time thing. By changing our passwords regularly it increases the chance that the breached data is no longer valid by the time it gets used.

Don’t Reuse Passwords
It is recommended to not use the same password on multiple sites. I understand that this is a pain point because it is difficult to remember that many passwords. Try a password manager, a piece of software to store all your passwords securely, to help solve that problem. The issue with re-using passwords is that many sites allow you to use the same username, or just your email address as the user name. Once your data has been stolen from one application, an attacker may try that password on another site where you use those same credentials. This also includes not using similar passwords. Using passwords like Summer2014 and Fall2014 are not a good idea because if these are identified, it is simple to figure out the pattern and guess the next password in line. This is critical if you do change your password regularly, and an older password got breached.

2 Factor Authentication
If a site offers 2-factor authentication, enable it. Two factor authentication means that the site will prompt you for your username and password and then a secondary piece of information. For example, my bank will send me a token via email that I have to enter. This token is different every time I log in. Many sites are starting to support tools like Google Authenticator, which is an app that runs on your mobile device and provides that 2nd piece of authentication. If you are using sites that do not support 2 factor authentication, write to them and request it. Remember, they are storing your data, you want it protected.

Validate the Hype

When news like this breaks, we often have a tendency to really overreact thinking that it is the end of the world. Credentials got stolen, we are not disputing that, but lets step back and think about what that means. Keep in mind that in this announcement, applications or companies were not named. At this point, it is possible the credentials are for meaningless sites that are not that big of a deal. Due to the nature of the accounts being used to send spam I am guessing many are probably email accounts, but that is just a guess. What has happened in the past can’t really be changed. We change our passwords, we monitor our accounts (like we should be anyway) and we continue reaping the benefits that these applications provide us.

Stay safe, and keep your eyes open.

Danger of USB Devices

There has been lots of news recently regarding a flaw in USB devices that could lead to an unwanted attack. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and is often associated with thumb drives used to store data. There are many other uses for USB devices, such as your mouse and keyboard. There are even monitors that connect via USB.

Each USB device has a microchip that contains instructions on how it will work. In addition, USB devices are separated into different classes; for example Human Input Devices (HID) for keyboards and mass storage devices like thumb drives. The computer looks at this classification to determine how to handle the device.

From a visual perspective, it is not possible to determine how a USB device will be treated because it is the firmware on the device that contains this information. A good example we have used for years is the teensy device, or rubber ducky. This device looks like a regular thumb drive, but when plugged in, acts like a HID (keyboard).

The concern here is that in an enterprise, there are often controls that block mass storage devices to load onto the end user computers. There are multiple reasons to block these devices. First, the company is trying to stop a malicious user from stealing a bunch of data using a tiny thumb drive. Remember the movie “The Recruit” where they stole info using a thumb drive? Another reason these devices are blocked is that they could contain malicious software ( malware). Block the device, block the malware.

The concern we often see with these controls is that it is difficult to block the human input device because we need a keyboard and a mouse. The idea of the rubber duck is that you, the attacker, can program a sequence of keystrokes onto the device and when it is plugged in it will execute the keystrokes. This technique allows attackers to bypass many controls and possibly gain unauthorized access to the system.

One can disassemble a rubber duck and see the sd card to see it is not a real thumb drive. The issue with this recent news is that regular thumb drives could be recoded to work as a HID without your knowledge. We haven’t seen many details of how to pull this off remotely, however we should be cautious anytime we plug a device into our system.

I will not stop using USB devices anytime soon. Diligence and user awareness are important here.