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Category Archives: Risk

Davos 2020 World Economic Forum 2020 Global Risk Report Cyber Cliffs Notes

Each year the World Economic Forum releases their Global Risk Report around the time of the annual Davos conference. This year’s report is out and below are notes on the “cyber” content to help others speed-read through those sections (in the event you don’t read the whole thing). Their expert panel is far from infallible, but IMO it’s worth taking the time to read through their summarized viewpoints. Some of your senior leadership are represented at Davos and either contributed to the report or will be briefed on the report, so it’s also a good idea just to keep an eye on what they’ll be told.

Direct link to report PDF: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risk_Report_2020.pdf.

“Cyber” Cliffs Notes

  • Cyberattacks moved out of the Top 5 Global Risks in terms of Likelihood (page 2)

  • Cyberattacks remain in the upper-right risk quadrant (page 3)

  • Cyberattacks likelihood estimation reduced slightly but impact moved up a full half point to ~4.0 (out of 5.0) (page 4)

  • Cyberattacks are placed as directly related to named risks of: (page 5)

    • information infrastructure breakdown, (76.2% of the 200+ member expert panel on short-term outlook)
    • data fraud/theft, (75.0% of the 200+ member expert panel on short-term outlook) and
    • adverse tech advances (<70% of the 200+ member expert panel on short-term outlook)

    All three of which have their own relationships (it’s worth tracing them out as an exercise in downstream impact potential if one hasn’t worked through a risk relationship exercise before)

  • Cyberattacks remain on the long-term outlook (next 10 years) for both likelihood and impact by all panel sectors

  • Pages 61-71 cover the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) and cyberattacks are mentioned on every page.

    • There are 2025 market projections that might be useful as deck fodder.
    • Interesting statistic that 50% of the world’s population is online and that one million additional people are joining the internet daily.
    • The notion of nation-state mandated “parallel cyberspaces” is posited (we’re seeing that develop in Russia and some other countries right now).
    • They also mention the proliferation of patents to create and enforce a first-mover advantage
    • Last few pages of the section have a wealth of external resources that are worth perusing
  • In the health section on page 78 they mention the susceptibility of health data to cyberattacks

  • They list out specific scenarios in the back; many have a cyber component

    • Page 92: “Geopolitical risk”: Interstate conflict with regional consequences — A bilateral or multilateral dispute between states that escalates into economic (e.g. trade/currency wars, resource nationalization), military, cyber, societal or other conflict.

    • Page 92: “Technological risk”: Breakdown of critical information infrastructure and networks — Cyber dependency that increases vulnerability to outage of critical information infrastructure (e.g. internet, satellites) and networks, causing widespread disruption.

    • Page 92: “Technological risk”: Large-scale cyberattacks — Large-scale cyberattacks or malware causing large economic damage, geopolitical tensions or widespread loss of trust in the internet.

    • Page 92: “Technological risk”: Massive incident of data fraud or theft — Wrongful exploitation of private or official data that takes place on an unprecedented scale.

FIN

Hopefully this saved folks some time, and I’m curious as to how others view the Ouija board scrawls of this expert panel when it comes to cybersecurity predictions, scenarios, and ratings.

Data Driven Security Roundup: betaPERT, Shiny, Honeypots, Passwords & Reproducible Research

Jay Jacobs (@jayjacobs)—my co-author of the soon-to-be-released book [Data-Driven Security](http://amzn.to/ddsec)—& I have been hard at work over at the book’s [sister-blog](http://dds.ec/blog) cranking out code to help security domain experts delve into the dark art of data science.

We’ve covered quite a bit of ground since January 1st, but I’m using this post to focus more on what we’ve produced using R, since that’s our go-to language.

Jay used the blog to do a [long-form answer](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/posts/2014/Jan/severski/) to a question asked by @dseverski on the [SIRA](http://societyinforisk.org) mailing list and I piled on by adding a [Shiny app](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/posts/2014/Jan/solvo-mediocris/) into the mix (both posts make for a pretty `#spiffy` introduction to expert-opinion risk analyses in R).

Jay continued by [releasing a new honeypot data set](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/data/2014/01/marx.gz) and corresponding two-part[[1](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/posts/2014/Jan/blander-part1/),[2](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/posts/2014/Jan/blander-part2/)] post series to jump start analyses on that data. (There’s a D3 geo-visualization stuck in-between those posts if you’re into that sort of thing).

I got it into my head to start a project to build a [password dump analytics tool](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/posts/2014/Feb/ripal/) in R (with **much** more coming soon on that, including a full-on R package + Shiny app combo) and also continue the discussion we started in the book on the need for the infusion of reproducible research principles and practices in the information security domain by building off of @sucuri_security’s [Darkleech botnet](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/posts/2014/Feb/reproducible-research-sucuri-darkleech-data/) research.

You can follow along at home with the blog via it’s [RSS feed](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/feeds/all.atom.xml) or via the @ddsecblog Twitter account. You can also **play** along at home if you feel you have something to contribute. It’s as simple as a github pull request and some really straightforward markdown. Take a look the blog’s [github repo](https://github.com/ddsbook/blog) and hit me up (@hrbrmstr) for details if you’ve got something to share.

Bahrain eGov Conference “Risk Reality” Slides

For those finding this post from the Bahrain eGov conference, I’d like to re-extend a hearty “Thank you!” for being one of most engaging, interactive and intelligent audiences I’ve ever experienced. I truly enjoyed talking with all of you.

You can find the slides on my Dropbox [PDF] and please do not hesitate to bounce any questions here or on Twitter (@hrbrmstr).

New SecurID Soft Token Cloning Weakness : What’s The Risk?

I posted a link to Twitter earlier on a recent discovery of the ability to clone RSA SecurID soft tokens:

https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/204908233645764609

It (rightfully so) received some critical responses by @wh1t3rabbit & @wikidsystems since, apart from what the hypesters may say, this is a low-risk weakness.

Think about it. Just looking at the two most likely threat actors & actions: an insider trying to siphon off soft tokens and an external attacker using crafted malware to grab soft tokens. The former (most likely) knows your organization is using soft tokens (and probably has one herself). The latter is unlikely to just try to blanket siphon off soft tokens so they’ll have to do some research to target an organization (which costs time/money).

Once a victim (or set of victims) is identified, the cloning steps would have to be perfectly executed (and, I’m not convinced that’s a given). Let’s say that this is a given, though. Now both the insider and external agent have access to the bits to clone a token. It is easier for the insider to get that data, but the external attacker has to exfiltrate successfully it somehow (more complexity/time/cost).

To be useful, the attacker needs the user id, PIN and – in most implementations – a password. An insider would (most likely) know the user id (since she probably has one herself) but that data would require more time/effort/cost to the external attacker (think opportunistic keylogger/screenscraper with successful exfiltration). For both attackers, getting the password requires either social engineering or the use of a keylogger. Even then, there’s a time-limit of 90 days or less (since, if you’re using soft tokens, you probably have a 90 day password policy). That shrinks the amount of time the attack can be successful.

Now, both attackers need to know where this soft token can be used and have direct access to those systems. Again, probably easier for an insider and fairly costly for an external attacker.

Looking at this, there’s definitely a greater risk associated with an insider from this weakness than there is from an external party (as pointed out by the aforementioned twitter commentators). As @wikidsystems further pointed out, this also shows the inherent positives of multi-factor authentication :: you need far more component parts to execute a successful attack, making the whole thing very costly to obtain. Security economics FTW!

My comment has been that if using the TPM store for Windows-based SecurID soft token implementations negates this weakness, then why not do it? Does the added deployment & management complexity really cost that much?

In the end, I would categorize this weakness as a low risk to most organizations using soft tokens with a non-TPM storage configuration. Unless you know you’re a nation-state target (my opine for the origin of the attacker) – and, even then, you’re probably using hard tokens – far too many celestial bodies need to align for this weakness to be exploited successfully.

NOTE: This post was not meant to be a comprehensive risk assessment of the weakness and does not cover all attack scenarios. I left out many, including Windows desktop administrators and privileged script access. I was merely trying to do my part to counter whatever hype ensues from this weakness. Comments on those vectors or the analysis in general are most welcome.

Off By One : The Importance Of Fact Checking Breach Reports

I didn’t read through the Massachusetts 2011 Report on Data Breach Notifications [PDF] until recently, but once I went through the report my brain kept telling me “something is wrong”. Not something earth shattering, but more of a “something is off” signal. This happens more than I’d like as I tend to constantly background process what I intake visually.

As Twitter followers may lament, I have been known to transcribe useful tabular information from reports such as these, especially when I need to communicate them internally and I have done so with this report [gdocs] as well.

After working through the whole document, the last page of data is where I found the “off by one” error (see figure below). Someone performed “head math” vs copying & formatting from a spreadsheet. Never a good idea if you aren’t going to double-check the report thoroughly.

 

Off By One

My transcription (“Lost Stolen Misplaced” tab in the aforelinked workbook) assumes the “5” and “48” are correct and has the correct total (“53”). One of the problems when an error like this crops up is that you do not know where the error occurred, but since the sums of “12” and “277” are both correct in the spreadsheet and in the report, I think I’ve found the culprit. Unfortunately, a computational error such as this does foster suspicion on the accuracy of the rest of the report data.

It’s a lesson report writers should heed well: compute twice, publish once. Errant data can cut as deeply as a saw blade.

While I Have Your Attention

Since there aren’t many visualizations in  Massachusetts 2011 Report on Data Breach Notifications (3D numbers do not count), here are a few I made that I found helpful during my interpretation (2011 data unless otherwise specified):

# Residents Impacted By Breah Org

Number Of Breached By Org

Number of Breaches by Type 2008-2011

Residents Impacted By Breach Type

Lost/Stolen/Misplaced

Malicious/Non-Malicious

 

 

Is Your Organization Ready For a Risk Management Program?

While the slides will be officially available from SIRA web site in the not-too-distant future—complete with video (for all the talks)—I figured it wouldn’t hurt to put them up here as well.

My sincere thanks, again, to @jayjacobs and the SIRA board for allowing me to have the privilege of being the first speaker at the first ever SIRA conference. If you didn’t go, you really missed some of the best thinking and content I’ve heard in this space. Every talk had useful, takeaways and the in-talk and hallway-exchanges were nothing short of amazing.

Mark your calendars for next year!

Three Resolutions For Web Developers

I’m on a “three things” motif for 2012, as it’s really difficult for most folks to focus on more than three core elements well. This is especially true for web developers as they have so much to contend with on a daily basis, whether it be new features, bug reports, user help requests or just ensuring proper caffeine levels are maintained.

In 2011, web sites took more hits then they ever have and—sadly—most attacks could have been prevented. I fear that the pastings will continue in 2012, but there are some steps you can take to help make your site less of a target.

Bookmark & Use OWASP’s Web Site Regularly

I’d feel a little sorry for hacked web sites if it weren’t for resources like OWASP, tools like IronBee and principles like Rugged being in abundance, with many smart folks associated with them being more than willing to offer counsel and advice.

If you run a web site or develop web applications and have not inhaled all the information OWASP has to provide, then you are engaging in the Internet equivalent of driving a Ford Pinto (the exploding kind) without seat belts, airbags, doors and a working dashboard console. There is so much good information and advice out there with solid examples that prove some truly effective security measures can really be implemented in a single line of code.

Make it a point to read, re-read and keep-up-to-date on new articles and resources that OWASP provides. I know you also need to beat the competition to new features and crank out “x” lines of code per day, but you also need to do what it takes to avoid joining the ranks of those in DataLossDB.

Patch & Properly Configure Your Bootstrap Components

Your web app uses frameworks, runs in some type of web container and sits on top of an operating system. Unfortunately, vulnerabilities pop up in each of those components from time to time and you need to keep on top of those and determine which ones you will patch and when. Sites like Secunia and US-CERT aggregate patch information pretty well for operating systems and popular server software components, but it’s best to also subscribe to release and security mailing lists for your frameworks and other bootstrap components.

Configuring your bootstrap environment securely is also important and you can use handy guides over at the Center for Internet Security and the National Vulnerability Database (which is also good for vulnerability reports). The good news is that you probably only need to double-check this a couple times a year and can also integreate secure configuration baselines into tools like Chef & Puppet.

Secure Data Appropriately

I won’t belabor this point (especially if you promise to read the OWASP guidance on this thoroughly) but you need to look at the data being stored and how it is accessed and determine the most appropriate way to secure it. Don’t store more than you absolutely need to. Encrypt password fields (and other sensitive data) with more than a plain MD5 hash. Don’t store any credit card numbers (really, just don’t) or tokenize them if you do (but you really don’t). Keep data off the front-end environment and watch the database and application logs with a service like Loggly (to see if there’s anything fishy going on).

I’m going to cheat and close with a fourth resolution for you: Create (and test) a data breach response plan. If any security professional is being honest, it’s virtually impossible to prevent a breach if a hacker is determined enough and the best thing you can do for your user base is to respond well when it happens. The only way to do that is have a plan and to test it (so you know what you are doing when the breach occurs). And, you should run your communications plan by other folks to make sure it’s adequate (ping @securitytwits for suggestions for good resources).

You want to be able to walk away from a breach with your reputation as intact as possible (so you’ll have to keep the other three resolutions anyway) with your users feeling fully informed and assured that you did everything you could to prevent it.

What other security-related resolutions are you making this year as a web developer or web site owner and what other tools/services are you using to secure your sites?

Predictions? Humbug! Resolve Is Where It’s At

This is the time of year when pundits and armchair/amateur analysts make predictions for the coming year. Given that only a tiny fraction of them predicted the Sonage of 2011 (not Sony specifically or the level of pwnage) or the RSA/Lockeed [↑, ↑, ↓, ↓, ←, →, ←, →, B, A] multi-faceted “supply chain” attack (most just predicting increased “nation state” hacks) or the decimation of trust in certificate authorities (not that we really trusted them before), it is hardly worth the time reading or seriously considering any post presuming to posit what will occur in 2012 (wait…I can’t resist…and it even fits in 140: “2012 Infosec Prediction: There will be more attacks just like the one this year if not worse in scale and/or magnitude #protip“).

Instead, why not get some resolve and take charge of what will happen in the coming year? “Resolution” & “resolve” have their roots in the Latin “resolvere“, which has a host of contextual meanings. One highly appropriate one is “to find the answer or solution to“. So, rather than pontificate, here are some “resolves” for you for 2012:

  • Resolve to not buy any more products and to make serious use (beyond the typical 5% you are) of the ones you have. That may require ensuring your staff has appropriate training to automate where applicable and tweak appropriately where possible. It may also require a good amount of thinking. In most shops, the last thing needed is more tools. Figure out the best way to use the tools you have. Not only will it improve the efficacy of current investments, it will free up more capital for your business units to invest & grow.
  • Resolve to actually have meaningful dialoge with your Internal Audit department. I’ve rarely come across an auditor who is truly evil (they do exist, tho). Most want to Do The Right Thing™, but many lack the technical skillset to turn that desire into a reality. You should make it a goal in 2012 to have you and your Internal Audit department toe-tapping from the same risk dance card.
  • Resolve to join at least one cross-industry information sharing group. Even if it’s just kvetching at a local ISSA meeting, you should not underestimate the cathartic benefit of knowing you’re not alone. Joining or help to build a full-on entity like the ACSC, however, will even reap even larger dividends.
  • Resolve to understand the business model of each of your business units (if you have more than one) and find a way to get a handle on their pain points (the ones you or your IT department are causing). Go out on sales calls; shadow call centers; watch highly experienced and effective folks as they get their jobs done by working around IT & security barriers you’ve helped put in place. You’ll come back with business justifications for all sorts of things (like adaptive authentication or revamping your outdated identity & access management model)
  • Speaking of sitting… Resolve to spend three or more total business days at your IT Help Desk (great advice for non-security IT folk, too). You will first-hand observe the gaps in many of your processes (which you should then fix) and will also be able to put real faces & names to the pile of call statistics you ignore every month. I can also guarantee that you will then be spending a great deal of time revamping your incident response plan/procedures (you will see things you really won’t believe).
  • Speaking of statistics… Resolve to pick three meaningful things to start measuring and find a way to collect the data, get access to the data and publish the data (including sharing it to Internal Audit and getting it in front of senior management). A great place to start is the CIS Consensus Information Security Metrics. Your goal is to have at least one action item per month from this exercise (or pick different things to measure).
  • Resolve to kick the effectiveness of your security awareness program up a few notches. Create an internal “YouTube” service that shows real attacks from end-to-end. Make your messages personal by tying in social media awareness, safe browsing practices and patch management with messages of how to help folks keep their kids safe online or themselves safe as they do online banking. Make the learning experience engaging (just like you demand of your kids’ teachers).
  • Resolve to be the first organization of 2012 that has a sane password policy. (This one won’t be easy)
  • Resolve to expand beyond the mystical forumlae for CVSS & CWSS and create the foundation for a true risk-centric security program. If you are looking for help/guidance, this rogues’ gallery is a good place to start. WARNING: you will actually have to talk to business/finance people. (*shudder*)
  • Resolve to partner with just one development team and one Ops team and help get them rugged and visible.

Finally, resolve to do just one of the items on that list and you’ll be doing more good in 2012 than all of the prognosticators combined.