Skip navigation

Tag Archives: Sony

You’re The Mayor of FUDville!

Rik Ferguson, Director Security Research at Trend Micro, had a great tweet early last Tueday morning calling out potential FUD in an article over at The Metro:

Given the plethora of FUD-dropping in the article, I could only think of one way to do it justice, and that was a paragraph-by-paragraph check-in via:


Every FUD-check counts!

(it may help to have the article open in another window)

OK! we’ve got you at The Metro. You’ve been here 1 time.
  • +1 for heartstring tug (“Children”)
  • +1 for immediate FUD in headline
  • +1 for Facebook reference in headline
Nice check-in! You earned +3 points!
  • +1 for mention of Pentagon in sub-head
  • +3 for context switch from personal to national scariness
  • +1 for Facebook reference in sub-head
  • +1 for first use of “cyber”

Great mixing of FUD domains!
  • +3 for context switch to “child pornography” in main article picture caption
  • +1 for Facebook reference in caption

You’ve been to Facebook FUD 3 times! You’re the Mayor!
  • +3 for context switch back to national scariness
  • +1 for use of “cyber”
Every cyber-FUD check-in counts!
  • +2 for global scariness
  • +1 for social-media scariness
  • +3 for Facebook (you’re the Mayor!)
  • +1 for mentioning Sony attack
  • +1 for national scariness
  • +1 for mentioning Lockheed attack
  • +1 for mobile scariness
  • +1 for use of ‘bot’
Whoa! +10 points! Awesome check-in!
  • +3 for context switch back to personal scariness
  • +1 for re-mention of child pornography
  • +2 for added scariness of kidnappers

You know “they” know where they live and aren’t afraid to spread the FUD!
  • +1 for geolocation scariness

Headed in the right direction with this check in!
  • +1 for more geolocation scariness
  • +3 for Facebook (you’re the Mayor!)
  • +2 for “bedroom”

With that last check-in, you’re well on your way to becoming the Mayor of FUDville!
  • +1 for social-media scariness

Social-FUD FTW
  • +3 for Facebook (You’re the Mayor!)
  • +3 for coining ‘lifejacking’
  • +1 for mobile scariness

The Mayor is in the house!
  • +2 for Android scariness
  • +1 for “Wild West”

Artifical life-form FUD meets historic gunslinger FUD!
  • +1 for mobile/acrobatics tie-in
You’re a FUD gymnast!
  • +1 for SMS scariness
Every check-in counts!
  • +3 for Anonymous reference
  • +3 for LulzSec reference
  • +3 for context switch back to national scariness
Good use of “cyber-vigilante” FUD!
  • +1 for Lockheed reference

Defense FUD FTW!
  • +1 for “cyber”
  • +1 for “cyber”
  • +1 for “cyber” (You’re the Mayor!)
  • +3 for “cyber”

You’ve earned the Cyber-FUD Badge!
  • +3 for “cyber” (You’re the Mayor!)
  • +10 for nuclear scariness
  • +10 for “scary”
FUD is scary
  • +10 for context switch to global “Olympic” scariness

Congratulations! You scored over 100 points! You’re the mayor of FUD-ville!
(Done with homage to @shpantzer‘s SCSOVLF.)

Why Didn’t They Just…?

A while back I was engaged in a conversation on Twitter with @diami03 & @chriseng regarding (what I felt was) the need for someone to provide the perspective from within a medium-to-large enterprise, especially when there are so many folks in infosec who are fond of saying “why didn’t they just…?” in response to events like the Sony attack or the compromise of the senate.gov web servers.

Between consulting and full-time employment I’ve been in over 20 enterprises ranging from manufacturing to health care to global finance. Some of these shops built their own software, others used/customized COTS. Some have outsourced (to various degrees) IT operations and others were determined to keep all activity in-house. Each of them has had challenges in what many would say should be “easy” activities, such as patching, vulnerability management or ensuring teams were using good coding practices.

It’s pretty easy for a solitary penetration tester or industry pundit to lay down some snark and mock large companies for how they manage their environments. It’s quite another experience to try to manage risk across tens (or hundreds) of thousands of employees/contractors and an equal (or larger) number of workstations, combined with thousands of servers and applications plus hundreds (or thousands) of suppliers/partners.

While I would not attempt to defend all enterprise inadequacies, I will cherry-pick some of the top snarks & off-hand statements for this series and try to explain the difficulties an enterprise might have along with some suggestions on how to overcome them.

If you have a “why didn’t they just…?” you’d like answered drop me a note on Twitter or in the comments.

Your New Mega Security Program

Everyone who can read this blog should remember the Deepwater Horizon spill that occurred in the Spring of 2010; huge loss of life (any loss is huge from my persective) and still unknown impact to the environment. This event was a wake-up call to BP execs and other companies in that industry sector.

You should all also remember the “Sonage” of this Spring where Sony lost millions of records across 12+ web site breaches and should have been a wake-up call to almost every sector.

BP committed to developing and implmenting a new Safety & Operational Risk (S&OR) program (which is now active). Sony is planning on hiring a CISO and has started hiring security folk, but they really need to develop a comprehensive Security & Operational Information Risk Program (and I suspect your org does as well).

What can we in the info risk world glean (steal) from BP’s plan and new S&OR Organization? Well, to adapt their charter, a new S&OIR program charter might be:

<ul><li>Strengthen & clarify requirements for secure, compliant and reliable computing & networking operations</li>
  • Have an appropriately staffed department of specialists that are integrated with the business
  • Provide deep technical expertise to the company’s operating business
  • Intervenes where needed to stop operations and bring about corrective actions
  • Provides checks & balances independent of business & IT
  • Strengthens mandatory security & compliance standards & processes (including operational risk management)
  • Provide an independent view of operational risk
  • Assess and enhance the competency of its workforce in matters related to information security

    • BP claims success form their current program (the link above has examples), and imagine – just imagine – if you your org required – yes, required – that new systems & applications conform to core, reasonable standards.

    In their annual report, BP fully acknowledged that risks inherent in its operations include a number of hazards that, “although many may have a low probability of occurrence, they can have extremely serious consequences if they do occur, such as the Gulf of Mexico incident.”. Imagine – just imagine – if you could get your org to think the same way about information risk (you have plenty of examples to work from).

    BP did not remove responsibility for managing operational risk and operational delivery from the business lines, but they integrated risk analysts into those teams and gave them the authority to intervene when necessary. It took a disaster to forge this new plan. You don’t need to wait for a disaster in your org to begin socializing this type of change.

    Imagine…just, imagine…