Security November 2009 Archives

Making Sense of Complex Digital Evidence

We learned from this past week’s Cyber Risk Report that inane Facebook status updates may in fact have value after all. Rodney Bradford mildly teased his pregnant girlfriend in front of his friends on the social networking site: “On the phone with this fat chick… where my IHOP.” If there was any chance that his “fat chick” was going to be upset about being left out of Rodney’s trip to get some pancakes, or even for being called “fat chick”, I’m betting she’ll give him a pass on this one.

Using this Facebook posting to corroborate an alibi, Rodney’s attorneys were able to convince the district attorney’s office to dismiss an armed robbery case against Bradford. Based on timestamp evidence provided by Facebook, and further alibis provided by Bradford’s family, the DA’s office was certain that Rodney could not have gotten from Harlem to Brooklyn in time to commit the robbery that took place one minutes after he made his now-famous posting.

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Posted by Seth Hanford at 10:45AM PST

Do We Need a Global CERT?

The idea of a global CERT has been proposed multiple times in the course of several years.  And while it has not always been proposed in the same form, the concept is the same nonetheless. The idea is very simple—we need a global CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) to coordinate all other CERTs in the world.

Let us examine this idea through a dialog between two imaginary people, Mr. Pro and Mr. Con, who will debate some issues related to a global CERT, or G-CERT as we will call it for short. We will start the discussion by asking Mr. Pro to explain the benefit of a G-CERT.

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Posted by Damir Rajnovic at 09:21AM PST

Unintentional Insider Attacks

In this week’s Cyber Risk Report, we noted a recent article on CSO Online that mentions a rise in internal security incidents that are caused unintentionally or non-maliciously by employees. Employees, especially younger ones that have a lifelong connection to computers and the Internet, are becoming more involved with technologies and Internet resources in the workplace. As a result, companies are finding that their security policies, and in some cases their perimeters, are being breached by workers who are determined to access files, media, websites, or communities that are considered off-limits. Organizations and their security teams are challenged by the rise in disobedience and disdain for established policy. How can they be stopped?

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Posted by Seth Hanford at 09:42AM PST

Cyber Security, or What You Will

One of the recurring themes of 2009 for information security professionals has been the term “cyber”—whether used in the context of cyber security, cyberspace, cyber threats, cyber command, or even cyber war. Cyber traces its roots back to the Greek word kybernetes, meaning “governor,” and was picked up in 1948 by writer Norbert Wiener for his book on control sciences and electronic communications, and further extrapolated in 1984 by novelist William Gibson in his book Neuromancer.  The term causes no small amount of consternation among industry purists who find the word imprecise and vague.  Cyber security, after all, is little more than a shiny new name for what has long been known as information assurance, information security, or critical infrastructure assurance.  If there is a reason for the term sticking in the current vernacular, and for simultaneously driving people crazy, it may be attributable to its sci-fi derivation, which evokes nefarious government “Big Brother” images.

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Posted by Jean Gordon Kocienda at 07:10AM PST

The Impact of E-Surveillance on Information Security in India

The unabated proliferation of Information Technology has had significant impact on the manner in which organizations conduct their business, effectively rendering geographical boundaries redundant.  This impact has been particularly notable in developing countries such as India, which has witnessed a meteoric rise in the use of Information Technology and Information Technology services over the past few years.  While immensely contributing to the nation’s economy, this growth has unfortunately also served as an invaluable tool for terrorism and other anti-national activities.  Consequently, citing the best interests of the security and safety of its citizens, the government of India has amended its Information Technology Act (2000), which has recently passed into law.

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Posted by Prasanna Sambasivan at 03:18PM PST

Cisco SIO Delivering Training at Black Hat DC 2010 - Round 2

A few months back at Black Hat USA 2009 a few members of Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO) delivered our first, of what is expected to be many, training sessions to conference attendees.  Well, here we are three months later with Black Hat DC 2010 just around the corner and we (Cisco SIO) are back on the agenda again to deliver our hands-on Detecting & Mitigating Attacks Using Your Network Infrastructure training session. One small change for round 2 though, John Stuppi will be joining us as an instructor for our training session in Arlington, VA.  Welcome aboard John - oh if he only knew what he was getting himself into. ☺

As described in a previous blog post by one of my fellow instructors and esteemed Cisco Security blogger, Tim Sammut, we will be informing and teaching attendees about the built-in features, solutions, and capabilities that exist in devices within your network infrastructure and how to make practical and effective use of the devices to monitor, detect, prevent, and trigger responses to attacks and threats.

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Posted by Joseph Karpenko at 05:09AM PST