Last week it was reported in the media that two British tourists were detained at Los Angeles International Airport due to the threatening tone of messages on Twitter (“tweets”), as one of the two travelers had said that they were going to “destroy America” on their holiday. It turns out that either the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) noticed those tweets through their efforts to monitor social media, or, as has been suggested more recently, someone explicitly reported the tweets to DHS as a prank. The legal ramifications of this event are worthy of examination when we consider that this event contains elements of language (slang), location (whose laws apply based on where the alleged events took place), and intent — particularly if the prank allegation turns out to be true. Read More »
How many times have we encountered a situation where some part of the software industry starts small, in a closed environment, then grows and attracts a lot of attention before realising that things were not designed properly for this changed environment? On a large scale, I would say three times. It happened with the Internet, operating systems, and system and industrial control systems (also referred to as SCADA). This transition from a closed environment to an open environment inevitably exposes aspects that were overlooked during the development phase. The speed of this transition will only exacerbate the situation. Because SCADA systems are currently going through this transition I will call this a “SCADA Syndrome.”
The Cisco 4Q11 Global Threat Report has been released. The report covers the period from 1 October 2011 through 31 December 2011 and features data from across Cisco Security Intelligence Operations. This quarter’s contributors were Cisco Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), Cisco IronPort, Cisco Security Research and Operations (SR&O), and Cisco ScanSafe.
In this short article the reader will first learn what NetFlow is and how it works. Next the reader will understand how it can be as an important security tool. Finally, a technique for correlating NetFlow results with public sources of Internet reputation, along with the tool “Netoriety,” which implements the technique, will be introduced and explained. Read More »
The threat landscape is an ever evolving environment that must be addressed with constant iteration. Since the Cisco Intrusion Prevention System signature configuration has grown over the past few years, the Cisco Security Research and Operations IPS Signature Development Team performed an exhaustive review of the default IPS signature settings currently shipping. As a result of that analysis, the team will be releasing changes to the default signature set via signature updates in a two-phase process over the course of several months.
Up until recently I was an owner of a hybrid car from one of the leading car manufacturers. The mechanical side of the car was good but I always had some serious doubts about the car’s cockpit. In particular, the touch screen mounted squarely in the middle of the dashboard, presumably to be equally accessible to the driver and the front passenger.
It is certainly a new day and age for many aspects of today’s society. One prominent sector that continues to lead by example in this area is the Internet, more specifically the online shopping environment. Note that online shopping is not a simple matter of go to a website, click “buy,” and checkout. That would be too simple. Ironically the purchase aspect itself tends to be the simplest matter here. The crux of the experience begins with the search and research phase. What exactly does one need/want? Is there a particular brand in mind? Is there a popular alternative? The convenience of asking and gathering answers to these questions and many more begin the journey, and thanks to the power and slew of resources the Internet provides, shoppers are able to search common products, brands, uses, verify details such as durability, ease of use and more based on the numerous rating systems, applications, web 2.0 solutions, social networking, and the ongoing phenomena that continue to evolve. So what does this mean? What does this have to do with security? Quite simply, all of this equates to more TIME on the Internet. Furthermore, the continued rise in scam and theft activities during the holidays is an additional means for concern. As mentioned in a recent Cyber Risk Report Law enforcement and government agencies continue to search and seize counterfeit and fraudulent websites. This includes counterfeit merchandise in addition to fraudulent website domains. More time spent on the Internet means there is more potential for exposure to threats and vulnerabilities. Simple math right? That said, let’s look at some numbers to provide valued context…….
Organizations are faced with providing security for employees that are rapidly adopting new technology in their personal and professional lives and expect their work environments and employers to do the same. As the data from the new Cisco 2011 Annual Security Report and the Cisco Connected World Technology Report Chapter 3 show, organizations that do not or cannot provide that type of environment are at risk of losing the ability to compete for those employees and business opportunities. If employers attempt to block, deny, or forbid mobile devices, social networks, instant communications, and new technologies in the work place employees will likely ignore the policies or, even worse, find ways around them that open your environment to unrealized risks.
As a new father and a security professional, it terrifies me to think of my daughter roaming freely around the Internet. However, I feel like restricting her completely will cut off a valuable avenue for education.
Recently, it seems in the media there has been a push to move websites that contain adult content into the .xxx sponsored top level domain (sTLD) in order to easily classify them. While I understand the reasoning for this, there is definitely a large spectrum of additional content which, in my opinion, is unsuitable for children and disallowing access to this sTLD would not provide an adequately restricted environment.
It’s happening every day. People are inadvertently sharing one of the most personal and private pieces of information, the infamous social security number (SSN). For Jonathan Barnett, the unbelievable became a reality when he discovered that nearly 50 names were connected to his SSN. The irony is that his credit report and social security earnings records are clean. The nation’s creditors, employers, and many others depend on this identity system predicated on SSNs.
The Cyber Risk Report for November 7 through 13 covered the second consecutive Social Engineering Capture the Flag event that was organized by Defcon 19 (a prominent industry “underground” security conference). The event proposes a challenge to competitors with the focus of leveraging social engineering tactics to successfully obtain key company information from a list of prospective companies, with the ultimate goal (based on the past two years) of raising awareness of the threat impact social engineering has on organizations. Furthermore, the competition highlights the common tactics and aspects that social engineers employ. As this year’s competition drew to a close, the Social Engineering CTF Results Report (which provides a debrief of the event, outcomes, and lessons learned) puts an emphasis on the techniques utilized, and the reasons why the respective techniques ultimately succeeded or failed.
Black holes, from a network security perspective, are placed in the network where traffic is forwarded and dropped. When an attack has been detected, black-holing can be used to drop all attack traffic at the edge of an Internet service provider (ISP) network, based on either destination or source IP addresses. Remotely triggered black hole (RTBH) filtering is a technique that uses routing protocol updates to manipulate route tables at the network edge or anywhere else in the network to specifically drop undesirable traffic before it enters the service provider network.
One of the most enjoyable parts of my job as a product manager is launching a new product. Typically this is a shiny new widget or a great piece of software. But for a cloud-based service like Cisco’s ScanSafe Web Security solution, the infrastructure is a big part of the product.
For those not familiar with the product, ScanSafe offers web security solutions to organizations ranging from global enterprises to small businesses. The service provides multiple layers of malware protection and acceptable use controls to block users from specific websites and categories. It does this by redirecting end-user web traffic directly to the cloud where every web request is analyzed using artificial intelligence-based “scanlets” to determine the associated security risk. With such heavy processing and computation, the nature of the cloud is as important as the service in the cloud.
That is why today, I am pleased to welcome Canada to ScanSafe’s cloud with the addition of two datacenters—the first in Vancouver and the second in Toronto. Canada has been an early adopter of SaaS-based technologies, and our newest datacenters will help us serve our customers in the region. In addition, companies with branch offices in these locations will now benefit from a local internet breakout.
Either someone is doing some serious academic work in researching password strengths, or someone is building a really great hashed password dictionary. The Steam community forum compromise, in which attackers gained access to a database containing usernames, encrypted passwords, and e-mail addresses, is just the latest in a series of compromises targeting a subset of the online community: gamers.
It’s difficult to say whether these attacks are increasing in frequency or whether media reporting and voluntary disclosure has created the illusion of a growing trend. In either case, our activities are continually moving online, often protected only by a username and password, instead of staying safe and warm in hard disks on our home desktop computers. The attack surface is increasing as more web services require more usernames and passwords and the opportunity for password reuse increases. Read More »
