Prologue

On April 10, 2013, a collective of politically motivated hacktivists announced a round of planned attacks called #OPUSA. These attacks, slated to begin May 7, 2013, are to be launched against U.S.-based targets. #OPUSA is a follow-up to #OPISRAEL, which were a series of attacks carried out on April 7 against Israeli-based targets. Our goal here is to summarize and inform readers of resources, recommendations, network mitigations, and best practices that are available to prevent, mitigate, respond to, or dilute the effectiveness of these attacks. This blog was a collaborative effort between myself, Kevin Timm, Joseph Karpenko, Panos Kampanakis, and the Cisco TRAC team.

Analysis

If the attackers follow the same patterns as previously witnessed during the #OPISRAEL attacks, then targets can expect a mixture of attacks. Major components of previous attacks consisted of denial of service attacks and web application exploits, ranging from advanced ad-hoc attempts to simple website defacements. In the past, attackers used such tools as LOIC, HOIC, and Slowloris.

Publicly announced attacks of this nature can have highly volatile credibility. In some cases, the announcements exist only for the purpose of gaining notoriety. In other cases, they are enhanced by increased publicity. Given the lack of specific details about participation or capabilities, the exact severity of the attack can’t be known until it (possibly) happens. Read More »

Tags: advisories, ASA, botnet, botnets, Cisco Security, Cloud Computing, cloud security, data center security, DDoS, exploits, firewall, incident response, IPS, IPS signatures, malware, mitigations, security, targeted attacks, TRAC, vulnerability

The Common Vulnerability Reporting Framework (CVRF) is a security automation standard intended to make your life easier by offering a common language to exchange traditional security and vulnerability bulletins, reports, and advisories. You can read more about it on the official ICASI CVRF 1.1 page, in my CVRF 1.1 Missing Manual blog series, or in the cvrfparse instructional blog. CVRF 1.1 has been available to the public for almost a year and we would like to know how its helped and how we can improve it. Please take a moment to take the poll and please feel free to share it with any interested parties. Comments are encouraged and welcomed. The more feedback we get, the more we can improve CVRF.

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Tags: advisories, Cisco Security, cvrf, cybersecurity, exploits, psirt, security, vulnerability

“A security advisory was just published! Should I hurry and upgrade all my Cisco devices now?”

This is a question that I am being asked by customers on a regular basis. In fact, I am also asked why there are so many security vulnerability advisories. To start with the second question: Cisco is committed to protecting customers by sharing critical security-related information in a very transparent way. Even if security vulnerabilities are found internally, the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) – which is my team – investigates, drives to resolution, and discloses such vulnerabilities. To quickly answer the first question, don’t panic, as you may not have to immediately upgrade your device. However, in this article I will discuss some of the guidelines and best practices for responding to Cisco security vulnerability reports.

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Tags: advisories, CVSS, cybersecurity, exploits, incident response, malware, psirt, security advisories, security advisory, security notice, security notices, security top of mind, vulnerability

Prologue

In this article, you will be provided a thorough treatise on an in-house developed tool for parsing and validating CVRF documents aptly named “cvrfparse”. The article is split into two parts. The first part, intended for CVRF document producers and consumers, is a hands-on manual detailing how to use cvrfparse. The second part, intended for burgeoning Python programmers, explores some of the inner workings of the tool.

Introduction

The CVRF parser or “cvrfparse” is a Python-based command line tool that offers simple parsing and validation of CVRF documents. Using it, you can quickly query a CVRF document for any of its contents. For example, let’s say one of your vendors releases a bundle of security advisories encoded in CVRF. There are a dozen individual CVRF documents each with multiple vulnerabilities across hundreds of products. Using cvrfparse, you can quickly ascertain which documents contain vulnerable products you might have installed in your infrastructure. We’ll see how, shortly.

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Tags: advisories, cvrf, security

Security events, such as vulnerabilities and threats, that are detected globally continue to grow and evolve in scale, impact, diversity, and complexity. Compounded with this is the other side of the coin, the unreported or undetected events waiting in the wings, hovering below the radar in a stealthy state. With all of the security technologies at our disposal, are they sufficient enough to provide effective protection? Well, it is certainly a good start when applied correctly. At a summary level, Cisco’s Security Intelligence Operations (SIO) approach to this challenge was covered in the Network World feature article, “Inside Cisco Security Intelligence Operations.” However, one of the core human elements, which I will introduce, that deserves closer attention is the role of security analyst. In addition, this article provides those of you with career interests some additional insight into working in the IT security field.

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Tags: advisories, Cisco, cyber security, cybersecurity, exploits, intellishield, secure software, security, security management, vulnerability