Answers to Questions from the nVisium SecCasts Panel

I was asked to be on on a panel for nVisium's SecCasts. Our episode should be out next week, so spoiler alert...my answers are below:

If readers/friends/community want additional details on something let me know.

Here are the answers to the questions I received ahead of time


- What security projects are you currently interested in?

* Still interested in metasploit.
* current things I'm working on is pentesting at scale and continuously.  Pentest tools aren't great for diffing results across scans with large numbers of hosts.  It can be a challenge identifying all of X in an environment then performing actions against it to test for vulnerabilities.
* osquery is pretty interesting


- What technologies are you currently looking into?

* Devops tools are really fun for me right now.  They are essentially botnet controllers...meaning they are designed to do a task against multiple machines quickly. Their security model leaves quite a bit to be desired. Their model is essentially, that if you can talk to the application you are trusted, which is horrible.

* AWS has tons of neat things that I want to start looking in to

* OSX exploitation


- What are some of the latest offensive security trends?

* Not sure this is necessarily a trend, but initial access vectors are always interesting to me. Especially as browser/memory corruption bugs are going away && they never ever work, pdfs/flash is better, default protections in office products, java has slowly been tightening the screws.  People will still open and run things but I wonder how that will look 5 years from now.

* The concepts in server side browsing talk by Nicolas Gregoire is also interesting to me
http://www.agarri.fr/docs/AppSecEU15-Server_side_browsing_considered_harmful.pdf


- How to use an internal RT in the best way
* continuous testing
* internal people have skin in the game
* understanding the environment a bit more in a mature or well monitored enviro
* breach assessments
* training for other teams
* not dropping problems on people and saying see ya
* work with SOC/NOC/incident responders/application owners


- What should defenders be concerned about or paying attention to?

* Establishing a baseline of what is normal network traffic wise, so you can alert on what is abnormal (not trivial)
* Effectively parsing tons of log data to create alerts on interesting events (not trivial)
* Creating a system that encourages users to report suspicious things and have a team that responds to those reports in a reasonable amount of time. If you don't respond (in a reasonable amount of time) this very much de-incentivizes users to report (easier to do--at least from a technical perspective)
* Know what you own and monitor it


- What areas should security folks be focused on in the next 3-4 years?

* How to make SSL/TLS, email encryption, 2fac more accessible to everyone
* Bridging the gap between recommendation to fix and execution of fixes (not trivial). we can do better with our recommendations. A lot of time we say stuff like, have better passwords or dont allow X but sometimes stopping X is really really hard, no one knows the best way to do it or its going to be a lot of work to do that. It can be overwhelming to fix. result...you see it next year on your pentest.
* Engineering better tools for everyone to use. I'm SUPER guilty of releasing works for me code, but we need to do better about engineering good tools for more people to use


- Having worked both sides (offense and defense), has this changed your perspective? If so, how?

* Fixing is way harder than breaking.
* Mature companies should be purple teaming, Where the offensive guys sit with the defenders to iteratively improve over time.  Removing the adversarial relationship is key for internal teams to work together in a better way.


- What are your thoughts on the so called "stunt hacking" as of late and all the crazy branding behind vulnerabilities like shellshock, heartbleed, etc.

* Behind most stunt hacking is a really bug/vuln/exploit.  I don't want those to go away. I also understand that people/businesses want to get paid and also that researchers have no control over the *PR releases* that marketing puts out though. At Lares we didn't win a RFP because someone had written a tool, the person selecting the company to do the work based the final decision on that. so I guess marketing is necessary evil.  However I'm a believer in putting the full issue out there. Checkpoint's dealing with the misfortune cookie issue is a good example of how NOT to do things in my opinion. they had enough time to come up with fancy marketing materials and clever name for the issue but never released exploit code.  Without code, no exploit, no exploit people don't give a crap. its sad but true. And the fortune cookie issue is a prime example. no exploit for it, no one cares, problem isn't getting fixed. Cool catchphrase and logo + exploit code == stuff gets exploited, fixed, and awareness generated...much better.


- What is the security community getting right?
* We are doing better with responsible disclosure despite some companies really really sucking at working with researchers
* Volume of information being put out there via conferences & blogs...arguably too much


- Where could the community improve?
* Consistency of testing and reporting. PTES was an attempt at this but lots of work still to be done.

* Touched on it above. we give crap recommendations to clients.  We need to do better on our recommendations to fix problems. it sounds trivial but we bitch and moan about clients being too stupid to do what we tell them but we give them little to no resources to actually fix issues.  Free business idea is for PT companies to partner with companies that can/want to fix these issues like hardening routers or creating secure baselines or GPOs.  most pentest companies don't want to do this, another camp says its a conflict of interest. The fix is to at least have a few places companies can immediately turn to get some help if the pentesters company doesn't want to do it.


-Follow on by Rob: awareness trainings vs technical controls
* Mostly in agreement. Technical controls should be better to prevent more things that we say users should catch/report.  On the other hand, security awareness transcends work and moves into home computer usage, education of others, and ideally more awareness in the real world (think 419 scams, 3 card monty scams, people selling you stuff door to door, etc). Facebook's Hacktober carries value all year long http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/how-to-hacktober/439382  so the human element of social engineering can not be fully fixed by technology.


- Name the top 1-3 books you think every security person should read this year.

*The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim  to understand how devops can work in an enterprise but also so we don't become the security guy with the black binder in the book who is perceived as doing nothing but creating unnecessary work.
*Zero to One by Peter Thiel to understand what makes a good startup or idea (TLDR does the company solve a huge problem --aka go zero to one or does it just iterate on something somewhat solved). Its also a good way to see why companies in SV have some of the policies they have.
* No Place to Hide by Greenwald (and Snowden) -- why and how it all played out is interesting despite your feelings on the action itself.


- What are your favorite sites or resources for information, tools, etc.
* twitter
* blogs although it seems less and less people are blogging. Not sure where all that information is going
* NoVA Hackers


- What advice would you give a person entering the security field or who wants to get into it? 
* Don't
* Learn webapps
* Learn python/ruby/javascript
* Learn/have patience with clients. They aren't as smart as you (or as smart as you think you are) and have tons of other stuff to do besides fix the issues you found
* If solving puzzles doesn't interest you, pick something else.
* If you don't want to have to continually learn new things...FOR THE REST OF YOUR CAREER...pick something else.


- (Assuming not answered in the previous question) What value do you place on a college degree (in terms of entering the field)?
* Not required but there is something to be said for being a well rounded individual which the core/required classes they make you take in college attempt to make you learn.  From a life hacking perspective it has values as people automatically assume things based on having finished college or having a particular cert or having an MBA or whatever.  Not necessarily good or valid but it is what it is.


-What's your favorite US and non-US security conference and why?
* Troopers and BRUCON  but to be fair I haven't been to many EU cons and zero AP cons
* Derbycon for US con. I actually don't go to that many cons anymore. I'd rather be home with the wife and kids

-Are you currently working on any security projects?
* Not that I can currently share but maybe soon.


-What are you general thoughts on crowdsource programs such as Bugcrowd or HackerOne?
* Bugs getting fixed is always good. However, I think the payouts are too low for most bugs.


-What recent research from the security community has excited you the most in the past year or has had tremendous impact (aside from Heartbleed)? 
* BIOS rootkits, GPU rootkits, tools/techniques the NSA uses that were disclosed by Snowden.


-Does the public really care about cybersecurity?
* They care about their dickpics getting leaked or can be seen by the NSA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M) but otherwise no.  Plus check out the stock for TJ Maxx, Target, any of these healthcare companies. Its not affecting them long term.

Answers on how to get started in Security

I got hit up on twitter and email about how to get started in security by someone.  The question was pretty generic and since I didn't even receive a thanks back from the guy I'm sharing it with everyone else/archiving it in case I'm asked again in the future.

The question:

I want to become proficient at pentesting on computers and phones. I have a running version of Kali Linux on my computer and am using the "Kali Linux Cookbook" as a reference. What book or online tutorials would you recommend for me to use in order to get better? 

A few things I think you should do to get started.

1. Get rid of Kali. It is a shortcut to learning to have all these tools already there.  You'll learn way more by figuring out what tool you need for a job/task (feel free to use the index of tools in Kali which is readily available) and installing the tool yourself.  Ubuntu is the most supported hacker tool wise but there are other distros. Pick whatever suits you.  Use a VM so you can undo stuff if you break your distro but that's pretty rare these days. Most things apt-get install or  compile from source on ubuntu without issues.


2. You are in luck these days as there are tons and tons of resources available to learn infosec.

-Books I'd start with ( buy or torrent depending on ability)

• The latest Hacking Exposed book. The methodology it teaches is still relevant today and its a 10,000 ft view of different hacking areas
• Pick a basics of pentesting book (or a few)  to start with I've stopped reading the basics books but any of them should wet your appetite.

Some examples (more netsec):

• Penetration Testing: A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking – by Georgia Weidman
• The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing, Second Edition: Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Made Easy –by Patrick Engebretson
• The Hacker Playbook - By Peter Kim (decent but more of an outline vs teaching)
• Metasploit: The Penetration Tester's Guide - by David Kennedy and Jim O'Gorman

Some examples (webappsec)

• Web Application Security, A Beginner's Guide - by Bryan Sullivan and Vincent Liu (read this, its decent)
• Hacking Exposed Web Applications (current version)
• Web Application Hackers Handbook (more advanced)

Some examples (social engineering)

• Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking
• Kevin Mitnicks books
• Social Engineering Penetration Testing: Executing Social Engineering Pen Tests, Assessments and Defense -by Gavin Watson and Andrew Mason

Some examples (Physsec/redteam)

• Unauthorised Access: Physical Penetration Testing For IT Security Teams - by Wil Allsopp and Kevin Mitnick
• Practical Lock Picking, Second Edition: A Physical Penetration Tester's Training Guide - by Deviant Ollam

Lots more here, the list is a bit dated i'll try to update it this week but it IS sorted by category
http://astore.amazon.com/carnal0wnage-20

Exploit dev

• Tons and tons of books/resources.  Unless you are really really interested in writing exploits I wouldn't start here. Understanding the above will give you more opportunities for jobs in the business, writing exploits and automating tasks will come naturally as you progress

3.  Pick a scripting language to work on

• python is probably most supported/popular
• ruby is what metasploit is written in, so there is value in learning that
• javascipt/node.js will be useful going forward as well

4. Online CTFs

• Pretty good list here: http://captf.com/practice-ctf/
• Vulnhub for downloadable images to try  https://www.vulnhub.com/
• Search for downloadable vulnerable images to hack against herot, metasploitable, owasp broken apps

5. Training
Lots out there, plenty is torrentable or pay for it if you feel like it/can (you should if you can afford it -- those people work hard on it).  With the amount of resources you should be able to learn the basics without paying a dime and seek out mentors or ask questions over email/twitter for topics you are stuck on.


Second Question:

Also, what steps did you initially take to become proficient at computer security?

-I was a computer science major in college so I came out knowing some of the basics. My job in the military was communications and I ended up doing a lot of layer 2/layer 3 stuff along with MCSE type tasks.  Its going to be important for you to learn, if you don't already know, A+ type material and Network+/basic CCNA type materials.  Hacking is all about exploiting the mistakes someone made setting things up, abusing protocols, but a lot of finding/identifying/exploiting misconfigurations. This is a lot easier if you understand how to do these basic configurations.

Aside from that, start practicing, reading blogs/twitter, watching talks that interest you. I'd start with a basic ones but also stuff advanced/over your head. Getting your mind blown occasionally helps let you know there really is no limit to the stuff you can do, what you can learn, etc.  http://www.securitytube.net/ has pretty much everything and more content than you will ever be able to consume plus lots of free courses.


That's what I have for starters as you asked a pretty generic question, so hope that helps

Chris

Lets Call Stunt Hacking What it is, Media Whoring.

Lets Call Stunt Hacking What it is, Media Whoring.

by Valsmith

I recently read this article: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/03/17/ground-control-analysts-warn-airplane-communications-systems-vulnerable-to/ and it brought to mind some thoughts that have been percolating for quite a while. Sometime last year I believe Dave Aitel coined the term Stunt Hacking, which I think is a pretty good way to describe it. We often see these media blitzes about someone hacking a car, or an airplane, or some other device. The public who has a limited understanding of the technology, and the media who has a worse understanding, get in a frenzy or outrage, the security company hopes this translates into sales leads, and the researcher hopes this translates into name recognition leading to jobs, raises, conference talks, etc.

A question that I think we should keep in mind is: Why would a company hire someone who just publicly displayed how little they understand about the technology and made their desired potential client look bad.

There are two problems with this: 1.) The research is often FUD or based on a very limited understanding of real world deployment or 2.) Any actually valuable technical research gets lost in the hype.

Let me be clear, I am not saying that researchers like Charlie Miller or Barnaby Jack haven't contributed meaningful or ground breaking research to the community, (they have), but many ride a hype wave that is often unwarranted. Unscrupulous infosec companies take advantage of such researchers work to drive sales of mediocre consulting services as well.

The practice of companies pushing their best researchers to drop and overhype controversial or gimmicky bugs makes no sense from a business perspective either from the security vendor or the services purchaser point of view. Who wins in the long run? The vendor loses credibility and the purchaser suffers in the PR space.

Stunt hacking often works something like this:

1.) Purchase from Ebay or otherwise some component of a system widely in use that doesn't look like a computer but uses underlying computeresque technology.

2.) Since physical access to the device is ensured (unlike in the real world), spend a period of time analyzing and understanding the device.

3.) Develop or acquire some tool set to interact with the device.

4.) Make the device do something that the public perceives is out of the ordinary or unusual.

5.) Issue a number of hyping press releases. (The media has a vested interest in producing spectacular stories)

6.) Jump on the security conference talk circuit and present the research as many times as possible.

There are several issues with this and I can use some real world examples to explain them. When you state that you can hack an airplane based on something you saw (or worse did) on a flight, and that a particular vendor is or is not security responsible, you are missing a number of things:

• FAA Involvement - There are processes for approval, auditing, development and release cycles that pass through FAA policies. This affects time frames for patches to be pushed, what kinds of software can be installed, and how things are updated and inter-connected.
• Airline Involvement - What a particular vendor develops is often heavily modified or integrated into an airline's customized product suite. This means that company A could develop a piece of hardware or software for airplanes, the airline buys it, then the airline drastically changes it. It may not be immediately obvious where the responsibility for a security issue lies.
• Aircraft Manufacturer Involvement - Essentially the same as the previous point.
• Air crews - Maintenance and flight crews have the ability to modify some settings and make changes to the system.
• Product Vendor - The originator of a particular product. If they want to push a change, such as a security fix, all the above stakeholders and more have to be involved in that process. That means that an issue can be known, a fix developed and released, and it can take months or even years while it transitions all the stakeholders and each makes a business decision about applicability and severity before it reaches a particular airplane.
• Safety Concerns - Any technology that goes on to an aircraft is rigorously analyzed and tested for any potential impact to flight safety. Even if this technology doesn't touch the flight systems, its presence on the plane requires that it be checked. This leads to a slow down in the deployment of both new technologies, as well as fixes.
• End of Life Cycles - An airline can purchase a particular system, but that doesn't mean that they will purchase a new system or upgrade the old one. Serious fixes will likely be implemented, but as technology changes, older systems may fall by the wayside in security maintenance. It is a valid business decision for an airline or other org. to look at the cost of general technology upgrades across a fleet.

 Just because a company doesn’t want to hire YOU in particular, or tell you about what they are doing security wise, doesn’t mean that they don’t care about security! Or that they are doing nothing! For all you know they have a team of well credentialed people working on it and external factors make the release of fixes slower than you would personally prefer. Such hubris in this industry.

Do you want electronics and backpacks with gear in them banned on airplanes? Because that is how you get there. Do you want the adversarial, but slowly healing, relationship between hackers and business to become openly hostile and driving research totally underground? That's how you get there.

Have some professionalism! Try to work with the vendor so that you get a fuller picture and can provide more value to the world. If they don't want to work with you, understand there may be many factors at play that you are unaware of, and rely on the fact that you are creative and move on to a new technology.

The 1990's and early 2000's were a valuable time where groups such as the l0pht pushed companies to develop security programs and fix bugs. They succeeded for the most part. We now live in a world with bug bounties, security budgets, and companies that actually care about their security. Its time to evolve our tactics on the researcher side to match the evolution business has made. Unless you are an underground hacker / blackhat. In that case, don't promote yourself as a professional researcher and try to get contracts! Do your thing but own it, don't pretend to be something you're not.

Let’s take another example; ATMs. When you buy a used ATM off of Ebay or something similar and develop an attack for it, there are assumptions that are made and important things left out of the equation.

• What is the physical protection regime and tamper evident posture for a particular location, bank, or deploying maintenance company?
• What vendor modules are enabled or disabled via licensing on the individual ATM?
• What is the middleware in use and how is it configured to protect or configure a particular ATM?
• What are the interconnects to the bank and what transports are used? Cell, modem, Ethernet, etc.
• What card tracks are in use?
• Is it a modified XP, OS2warp, or other OS?
• How and where does an HSM come in to play?

All of these things apply or have corollaries in the automotive, satellite, medical, SCADA, and other industries. In the end, they are just computers of one sort or another.

 Next we need to discuss what our industry is really doing with all of this. I've seen many researchers feign outrage that something is "so insecure" and wanting to "protect users". After sitting through 10 years of conference private parties, I have serious doubts that this is always the case. I think fame, media attention, hacker cred, etc. are more frequently the drivers than some sort of user centric altruism. Not always, but often.

This is exacerbated by the fact that it is a common tactic for security companies to hire one or two "rock star" researchers, have them pull off a bit of stunt hacking, often of dubious impact, and then push the FUD as hard as possible across whatever conferences will take them and whatever news shows will interview them.

I feel I can speak about this because I spent a lot of time speaking at conferences (at one point I think I held the record for the most talks in one week, 7.) and I was interviewed by media here and there. This personal experience is how I learned it is a bunch of BS. The media, for the most part, doesn't care or understand what you are talking about, really. They care about viewers for a short news cycle and FUD is sensational and achieves this goal. As far as the conference circuit, well that's full of BS as well. I remember attending a highly technical talk on rootkits by Joanna Rutkowska, a brilliant researcher in her own right, so please don't mistake this for me bagging on her, I'm not. The material in the talk was compelling and she broke new ground. However eavesdropping on other audience members, few knew what she was talking about. Multiple times I heard "I have no idea what she is talking about, but she's really smart". They paid thousands of dollars for that privilege. And rootkits have little impact on day to day security for most businesses. The value of highly technical security conferences is rather low, except to the researchers themselves, and pushing the field forward. But it is a money maker. I think it is rather telling that you don't see many talks from her anymore, perhaps she figured out the same issues I am talking about, I don't know. She does however continue to conduct highly technical, academically and business valuable work, quietly, without unnecessary hype.

I gave both technical talks as well as conceptual ones full of pictures. Other researchers somewhat respected the former while general audiences got little out of it. Audiences enjoyed and found the latter valuable, while researchers couldn't take me seriously. I tested this over 10 years and my conclusion is that for me, conferences have little value. But stunt hacking plays deeply into this dysfunction. It generates press for the conference and the researcher, dazzles and outrages attendees, and generates money and fun for many. But is it really helping anything?

If a "researcher" spends all their time on the conference circuit and talking on cable news shows, how much of a researcher are they really versus a marketing professional? A wise man once told me; "Let your work speak for itself."

And now we can proceed into the darker side of all this. High pressure sales in infosec. Most of my clients are former clients of big name, well known security companies. After a period of trust building they often show me the reports, deliverables, and emails from previous infosec "professionals" that they have engaged before me. THIS is where the real outrage and disappointment comes into play. Extremely poor deliverables for big bucks, arrogant "recommendations" (more like demands) with little business value, and a focus on upselling versus doing a good job on the current project is the norm. Several times I have seen the following:

Infosec company / individual: "Hire me/us to be your security researcher". Often this is after an initial first gig that didn't work out well.

Potential Client: "No thanks, we already have someone and we don't like the way you do business". Doing business often refers to everything but the technical work. For example communications, documentation, status reports, pricing, honoring NDA's, etc.

Infosec company / individual: "You better hire us or we will tell everyone how insecure and irresponsible you are!". Telling everyone involves conferences and media.

Potential Client: "That seems like a bad idea, especially since we have someone good working on it and you have an NDA with us, which you would be violating."

Infosec company / researcher: "We don't care, hire us or else!"

I may have oversimplified the exchange slightly in the interest of brevity, but this borderlines on extortion and is unacceptable. This kind of short sighted behavior is dragging our industry down and hurting the credibility of everyone, especially since it is so common. The focus on short term, scan and bang profits versus long term relationship building and iterative, incremental, business benefiting improvement is damaging the ability of legitimate researchers and companies to engender real change. Organizations are becoming disillusioned with engaging in real infosec, even as it becomes a hot industry.

This must stop. Stunt hacking must die. Researchers must learn to look beyond a overhyped-bug-snapshot in time and LEARN the industries and technologies they research. In the old days hackers knew more about a technology than the people building and maintaining it, not just how to break something and move on to the next trademarked bug. Let’s get back there before we lose all credibility.

V.