We are delighted to have Gary Miliefsky on our second Hacker Hotshot of 2013! Gary is the Editor of Cyber Defense Magazine, which he recently founded after years of being a cover story author and regular contributor to Hakin9 Magazine. In partnership with UMASS, he started the Cyber Defense Test Labs to perform independent lab reviews of next generation information security products. Gary is also the founder of NetClarity, Inc., which is the world's first next generation agentless, non-inline network access control (NAC) and bring your own device (BYOD) management appliances vendor based on a patented technology which he invented.
This course focuses on SCADA/ ICS systems. The title of this course is: Advanced Threat Detection in ICS – SCADA Environments.
In this course we take a look at the effectiveness of honeypots within a SCADA/ ICS context. A honeypot typically consists of data, or a network site that appears to be part of the organization’s network, but is actually isolated and monitored, and which seems to contain information or a resource of value to attackers.
Research Article On Web Application SecuritySaadSaif6
This Is The Totally Hand Written Research Article On
Web Application Security
(Improving Critical Web-based Applications Quality Through In depth Security Analysis)
This Research Article Was Made By Me After The Hard Working Of One Month. Its Best And Suitable For Your Research Paper And Also Used In Class For Present It And For Submission.
"How To Defeat Advanced Malware: New Tools for Protection and Forensics" is a FREE continuing education class that has been designed specifically for CIO's, CTO's, CISO's and senior executives who work within the financial industry and are responsible for their company's endpoint protection.
A Probabilistic Approach Using Poisson Process for Detecting the Existence of...theijes
The International Journal of Engineering & Science is aimed at providing a platform for researchers, engineers, scientists, or educators to publish their original research results, to exchange new ideas, to disseminate information in innovative designs, engineering experiences and technological skills. It is also the Journal's objective to promote engineering and technology education. All papers submitted to the Journal will be blind peer-reviewed. Only original articles will be published.
How To Protect Your Website From Bot Attacks is a one-hour continuing education course. After successfully completing the course and final exam, you will be awarded a certificate of completion that you can use towards fulfilling your continuing education requirements.
This is an era of technology and Internet is one o f the them which has changed the world the most in last decades. It is open and so anyone can use it to get information about anything, people have been using it for educational, business, social connections and every day work purposes. But the matter of fact is door open in both directions, bad people with bad intensions stared using this technology for evil intensions. They are stealing personal data, financial information, government secrets and many others are target of those people. In this paper we will discuss about vulnerabilities present currently in the network, some case studies and later recommendations to avoid vulnerabilities and prevent them from exploitations are also discussed.
Open Source Insight: Artifex Ruling, NY Cybersecurity Regs, PATCH Act, & Wan...Black Duck by Synopsys
This week’s news is dominated by fall-out and reaction from last week’s WannaCrypt/WannaCry attacks, of course, but other open source and cybersecurity stories you won’t want to miss, including an important open source ruling that confirms the enforceability of dual licensing, what New York’s new cybersecurity regulations mean for Financial Services and
the PATCH Act and the creation of a vulnerabilities equities process
We are delighted to have Gary Miliefsky on our second Hacker Hotshot of 2013! Gary is the Editor of Cyber Defense Magazine, which he recently founded after years of being a cover story author and regular contributor to Hakin9 Magazine. In partnership with UMASS, he started the Cyber Defense Test Labs to perform independent lab reviews of next generation information security products. Gary is also the founder of NetClarity, Inc., which is the world's first next generation agentless, non-inline network access control (NAC) and bring your own device (BYOD) management appliances vendor based on a patented technology which he invented.
This course focuses on SCADA/ ICS systems. The title of this course is: Advanced Threat Detection in ICS – SCADA Environments.
In this course we take a look at the effectiveness of honeypots within a SCADA/ ICS context. A honeypot typically consists of data, or a network site that appears to be part of the organization’s network, but is actually isolated and monitored, and which seems to contain information or a resource of value to attackers.
Research Article On Web Application SecuritySaadSaif6
This Is The Totally Hand Written Research Article On
Web Application Security
(Improving Critical Web-based Applications Quality Through In depth Security Analysis)
This Research Article Was Made By Me After The Hard Working Of One Month. Its Best And Suitable For Your Research Paper And Also Used In Class For Present It And For Submission.
"How To Defeat Advanced Malware: New Tools for Protection and Forensics" is a FREE continuing education class that has been designed specifically for CIO's, CTO's, CISO's and senior executives who work within the financial industry and are responsible for their company's endpoint protection.
A Probabilistic Approach Using Poisson Process for Detecting the Existence of...theijes
The International Journal of Engineering & Science is aimed at providing a platform for researchers, engineers, scientists, or educators to publish their original research results, to exchange new ideas, to disseminate information in innovative designs, engineering experiences and technological skills. It is also the Journal's objective to promote engineering and technology education. All papers submitted to the Journal will be blind peer-reviewed. Only original articles will be published.
How To Protect Your Website From Bot Attacks is a one-hour continuing education course. After successfully completing the course and final exam, you will be awarded a certificate of completion that you can use towards fulfilling your continuing education requirements.
This is an era of technology and Internet is one o f the them which has changed the world the most in last decades. It is open and so anyone can use it to get information about anything, people have been using it for educational, business, social connections and every day work purposes. But the matter of fact is door open in both directions, bad people with bad intensions stared using this technology for evil intensions. They are stealing personal data, financial information, government secrets and many others are target of those people. In this paper we will discuss about vulnerabilities present currently in the network, some case studies and later recommendations to avoid vulnerabilities and prevent them from exploitations are also discussed.
Open Source Insight: Artifex Ruling, NY Cybersecurity Regs, PATCH Act, & Wan...Black Duck by Synopsys
This week’s news is dominated by fall-out and reaction from last week’s WannaCrypt/WannaCry attacks, of course, but other open source and cybersecurity stories you won’t want to miss, including an important open source ruling that confirms the enforceability of dual licensing, what New York’s new cybersecurity regulations mean for Financial Services and
the PATCH Act and the creation of a vulnerabilities equities process
The state of being protected against the unauthorized use of information, especially electronic data, or the measures are taken to achieve this.
"the growing use of mobile applications is posing a risk to information security"
56 \\ JULY 2017 \\ WWW.COMPLIANCEWEEK.COM
The crisis of the moment in cyber-space is WannaCry, a nasty piece of ransomware attacking organizations around the globe. Those unfortunate enough to be in-
held hostage, only to be returned and unlocked once a speci-
The spotlight on this cyber-threat du jour has sparked
management and the need to break down corporate silos.
Ransomware, an increasing problem for anyone with
-
tacks include e-mails that look legitimate and seem to be
from a known sender, but are engineered to trick the recip-
ient into opening a malignant bit of code. Once loose, it cre-
ates an illicit data pipeline. Malware can also be embedded
onto Websites, waiting for an unsuspecting right click to
open the door.
WannaCry ransomware (also known as WCry and Wan-
na Decryptor) used e-mail to exploit unpatched hazards in
outdated, unpatched Microsoft Windows operating systems,
-
rosoft (which released a patch for the exploit, for newer op-
erating systems, in March) is blaming the National Security
A global hack attack that held organizations’ data hostage for Bitcoin ransoms
raises serious regulatory issues, disclosure debates, and risk management
concerns. Joe Mont has more on the worldwide cyber-security event.
{CYBER-SECURITY}
Risk management lessons of
the WannaCry ransomware
WWW.COMPLIANCEWEEK.COM // JULY 2017 // 57
Agency for letting one of its experiments in software subter-
fuge into the wild.
The regulatory perspective
On May 17, amid ongoing waves of the cyber-attacks, the Se-
-
spections and Examinations issued a ransomware alert.
-
amined 75 SEC registered broker-dealers, investment advis-
ers, and investment companies to assess practices associated
» Five percent of broker-dealers and 26 percent of advisers
and funds examined did not conduct periodic risk assess-
ments of critical systems to identify cyber-security threats,
vulnerabilities, and the potential business consequences.
» Five percent of broker-dealers and 57 percent of the invest-
-
etration tests and vulnerability scans on systems that the
» While all broker-dealers and 96 percent of investment
regular system maintenance, including the installation of
software patches to address security vulnerabilities, some
that were missing important updates.
Although not related to the latest ransomware attack, the
-
Smith Barney agreed to pay a $1 million penalty to settle
charges related to its failures to protect customer informa-
requires registered broker-dealers, investment companies, and
investment advisers to “adopt written policies and procedures
that address administrative, technical, and physical safeguards
for the protection of customer records and information.”
Is it a breach?
must a ransomware attack be disclosed in accordance with
For healthcare organizations and their business associ-
-
ity Act’s privacy rule there may no.
Running head UNPATCHED CLIENT SOFTWAREUNPATCHED CLIENT SOFTWARE.docxtodd521
Running head: UNPATCHED CLIENT SOFTWARE
UNPATCHED CLIENT SOFTWARE
Unpatched Client Software
Abstract
The best laid plans never make it through actual contact with the enemy; the same goes for defending networks. This paper examines how unpatched client software can significantly affect organizations. How many times have people ignored the update notification on their systems? How would an everyday user know that the update they are ignoring is critical to the security of their system? There are factors that come with patching a system that for some reason organizations are not understanding. As a result, their systems are being exploited by out of date exploits that should not be an issue. In addition, the paper also offers solutions to reduce vulnerabilities. The intent is to reduce attack vectors for adversaries and to deter them by making entering the network so agonizing that they decide to find a new target.
Information Technology (IT) managers are faced with an ever changing battleground; a battleground that is both logical and physical. This field is inundated by threats and vulnerabilities that must be mitigated or prevented by IT managers; there is also a fundamental difference between threats and vulnerabilities, which will be discussed later. Though several threats and vulnerabilities will be discussed, the single most important cybersecurity vulnerability facing IT managers today is unpatched client software. Methods for prevention of exploitation of vulnerabilities, and potential financial losses will be examined as well.
First, defining a threat: threats to systems involve deliberate malicious intent, sabotage, or human error (Vacca, 2013, p.380). In other words, a threat is an outside source propagating itself to vulnerable systems. Threats give rise to security risks by exploiting weaknesses. For example, a famous cyber attack conducted by Russia on Georgia in 2008. Russian zombie computers conducted distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) on Georgia’s servers (Dinicu, 2014, p.111). The threat in this case is Russia having deliberate malicious intent to degrade or deny Georgia’s networks. In addition, the DDOS attack exploited the vulnerable server’s in Georgia that could not mitigate the unprecedented amount of fake requests being sent.
Another instance of a well-known cyber threat is Stuxnet, which was a worm that was used in 2010. This malware was believed to be backed by a nation state because of its sophistication. The worm targeted Iran’s industrial facilities that were connected to its nuclear program (Fildes, 2015). The worm targeted the specific programmable logic control software that controlled uranium enrichment centrifuges.
The image above explains how Stuxnet operates (Kushner, 2013).
Stuxnet was one of the largest threats to systems, and there are still variants of it out on the internet. The takeaway here is that Stuxnet was a threat because of it’s deliberate .
Most users do not see front-line activity and 'normal business usage' to be a contributing factor to network security; but it's not all about the back-end. Business behavior is a direct impact to business information system risks.
Protecting Enterprise - An examination of bugs, major vulnerabilities and exp...ESET Middle East
This white paper focuses on the dramatic growth in the number and severity of software vulnerabilities, and discusses how multilayered endpoint security is needed to mitigate the threats they pose.
“Ransomware” is in the top of all news that affecting the economy of the world like witches’ curse. This curse has been spreaded by Friday, 12 May 2017 infecting more than 230,000 computers by targeting the “Microsoft Windows Operating System” including 150 countries and this attack has been elaborated by Europol as bizarre in a scale. Well this is the basic information all over the world but what affection it has disseminated over businesses and entrepreneurs? If you want to know what businesses & entrepreneurs imperative to know about Ransomware, then this article is the perfect choice for you. Let’s have look on important points regarding this:
1. 16 n W
T
hough more than 600 million
people worldwide use the
Internet, it takes only one virus
writer to make just about all of
us miserable. Like a single
stray neutron in a critical mass
of plutonium, a lone virus can
trigger a chain reaction that spews thousands of
copies from desktop to desktop. Last summer’s aptly
named SoBig virus was an all-too-real example of this
danger. “At [SoBig.F’s] peak, one out of 17 e-mails
that we were processing was a copy of the…virus,”
says Josh White of U.S.-based e-mail security group
MessageLabs. “Certainly we haven't seen numbers
I l l u s t ra t i o n b y D y n a m i c D u o S t u d i o . c o m
Attack of the KILLER
VIRUS!
[ B Y D E N N I S F O W L E R ]
2.
3. updates, pop-ups, opt-outs, and buckets of
questionable information, plus the message
that anytime an alligator bites them in the
butt, it's because they are ‘careless.’”
“Users open PIF attachments because
they're attached—why would they know
enough about computers to know which
files to open and which not to open?” asks
Michael “Mac” McCarthy, VP Editorial
and Portals, DevX Division/Jupiter Media
Inc. “A technology this widely used can't
reasonably expect that level of expertise
from its users; it's simply impractical.”
Besides, with multi-vector viruses like
Blaster, which spread both via e-mail and
through an unguarded port 135, the aver-
age home user can be infected even if no e-
mail is received, no attachment is activated.
In any case, the average user is unlikely to
take the pro-active step of keeping the sys-
tem patched, anti-virus software up-to-
date. Most don’t know what a firewall is,
let alone how to implement it.
Pros to the Rescue?
Even if we could depend on the average
user, a heavy burden rests on IT depart-
ments and ISPs to make sure their patches
are up to date, their filters enabled. That is
easier said than done.
“[Administrators] don't apply patches
regularly,” McCarthy points out, “because
the patches themselves are buggy and crip-
pling just often enough for it to be the con-
ventional wisdom…to let patches cool off
for a few months before applying them.
Now [administrators are] happy to discov-
er they're screwed no matter what they
do—install all patches right away and risk
screwing up the system…or wait and only
install patches that have proven themselves.
And when hackers jump in…you get abuse
from your users—and the press.”
Mandatory patches have been emerging
from Microsoft at an average of more than
once a week. Clearly we can’t depend on
ATTACK OF THE KILLER VIRUS! DECEMBER 2003
n W18
like this before.” At that time AOL scanned
40.5 million e-mails and found SoBig.F in
half of them. In fact, SoBig accounted for
98 percent of all viruses then circulating—
all this from a single virus-writing miscre-
ant. How can we possibly hope to stop the
inevitable legions of similarly determined
troublemakers? Better get used to it: There
are no easy solutions to the virus problem.
Blaming the Victim
What, do you suppose, is the percentage of
users who will open and run an e-mail
attachment from a total stranger? Five per-
cent? Ten percent? Maybe more: In an arti-
cle in the September 12, 2003 issue of The
New York Times, a study is cited where a
test virus was e-mailed anonymously to 13
members of a bank’s computer security
team. “Five members of the I.T.-security-
savvy team in the financial sector executed
an in-your-face [virus],” reported Roelof
Temmingh, technical director at South
Africa-based SensePost Information
Security, at a July security conference in Las
Vegas. That’s over 38 percent. One can
only imagine the percentage of less-sophisti-
cated users who would have acted exactly
the same way.
The temptation is to blame careless users
for unthinkingly launching these infections,
blame them for not keeping their systems
patched, protected with anti-virus software,
for not implementing firewalls. “In all fair-
ness, users aren't so much ‘careless’ as over-
whelmed by a world not their making,”
says Karen G. Schneider, director of the
Web portal, Librarians' Index to the
Internet (http://lii.org/). “The sales pitch has
been ‘technology will change your life.’ The
part we all left out is ‘yes, but not necessar-
ily for the better.’ So they go online to send
e-mail to their kids, buy dresses from Sears,
and otherwise participate in our ‘paperless
society’…and the next thing they know,
they're grappling with spam, viruses,
4. users or administrators. Who’s left?
Can Programmers Be Held Liable for
Software Breaches?
The end-user license we agree to when we
open a software package almost always
says that there is “NO LIABILITY FOR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES,” or
words to that effect. As the flaws and holes
in Windows mount, so does a cry to hold
Microsoft accountable. That clause now
faces a legal challenge, thanks to a suit
filed in October in Los Angeles Superior
Court. Claiming Microsoft's “eclipsing
dominance in desktop software has created
a global security risk,” a suit was filed on
behalf of a mother of two from Los
Angeles whose identity was stolen thanks
to a hacker invading her system.
“We represent an individual plaintiff
who is also seeking to be a class represen-
tative on behalf of all U.S. purchasers of
Microsoft operating system software,” said
attorney Dana Taschner, the Newport
Beach, California, who filed the suit.
At the time of this writing Microsoft is
studying the action. They hope to quash
the class action certification, which would
effectively neutralize the suit. The company
blames the problems on the hackers who
write the worms and hack the systems, not
on their own failings.
If a locksmith knowingly sells flawed
locks, can he be held liable for the burglar-
ies that result?
If the class action request is accepted,
Microsoft may find itself facing monumen-
tal liability claims. Bruce Schneier, CTO of
Counterpane Security and a noted comput-
er security expert, hopes they do. “Maybe
then Microsoft will finally get the message
and secure their software,” he says. But
can they?
In Fairness to Microsoft
Totally securing an operating system any
operating system—but particularly Microsoft
Windows—is incredibly challenging.
In “CyberInsecurity: The Cost of
Monopoly,” a report written by a half
dozen independent security experts (Bruce
Schneier included) and published by the
Computer & Communications Industry
Association (CCIA, www.ccianet.org/
index.php3), the authors note that com-
plexity drives the creation of security flaws
and that “experts often describe software
complexity as proportional to the square of
code volume.”
The report says Windows NT code vol-
ume increased 35 percent per year, that
complexity increased 80 percent per year.
Internet Explorer code volume increased
220 percent per year, increasing complexity
380 percent per year.
Another source of Windows’ vulnerabil-
ATTACK OF THE KILLER VIRUS! DECEMBER 2003
n W 19
TOTALLY securing an operating system—
any operating system, but particularly
Microsoft Windows—is incredibly challenging.
5. ity has been Microsoft’s focus on ease of
use. There’s always a tradeoff here: As any-
one who has taken a flight on a commer-
cial airline in the last two years can attest,
the greater the security, the greater the
inconvenience to the traveler. And inconve-
nience is not exactly what the public seeks
in an operating system.
Also, as Microsoft integrated their com-
ponents more tightly with each other and
with the basic operating system, in an
effort—so they said—to enhance compati-
bility (and, again, make the product easier
to use), vulnerabilities multiplied further.
An opportunisitic worm entering the sys-
tem via Instant Messenger, for example,
might access Outlook for addresses to
which it can mail itself, or it might raid
databases containing credit card informa-
tion and transmit that data back to an
identity thief.
Now virtually any effort to close vulnera-
bilities may make things worse, and will
unavoidably make the system more challeng-
ing to use, alienating customers. Already, if a
user implements the strictest security in
Internet Explorer, he or she will be so pum-
meled by warnings as to make surfing the
Web unbearable. Blocking pop-up windows,
Java script or Active X controls makes some
Web sites virtually inaccessible.
In short, no matter what they say,
Microsoft is in an untenable position. The
company’s operating system is so complex,
that the odds of fixing every potential vul-
nerability are extremely low. Chances are
good that the patches will either break
something or introduce an unexpected vul-
nerability, and ease of use is bound to suf-
fer. Simply adding a default firewall
presents the average user with yet another
component to configure, or, more likely,
disable, because they don’t understand
what it is or how to use it.
Even getting users to implement patches
is a challenge. Automatically upgrading a
user’s system via download seems a better
idea, though AutoUpdate (which made its
debut in Windows ME in 1999) is hardly
something new. But what if the “fix” is
itself flawed, damaging the user’s system,
which already happens with conventionally
distributed patches?
In addition, the sheer volume of the
accumulated patches for Windows XP
makes downloading them impractical for
those limited to dial-up speeds. The
Japanese division of Microsoft is handing
out free CDs with vital patches, but there’s
no sign that U.S. users are going to receive
the same courtesy. Even if they do, how
many users are going to avail themselves of
the offer?
The Antivirus Arms Race
Antivirus vendors are continually playing
ATTACK OF THE KILLER VIRUS! DECEMBER 2003
n W20
THERE is security, of a sort, in a
diversified computing environment. With fewer targets
single-platform viruses find it harder to spread.
6. catch-up. Not unlike a biological immune
system battling microbes, the infection
comes first, then the antibodies.
Unfortunately, the antivirus forces are
always going to be one step behind. They
can’t start churning out the cure before the
infection is detected. The speed demon-
strated by nasties like SoBig and Slammer,
which infected virtually every vulnerable
machine on the Internet within 10 minutes
of its appearance, means that the infection
can get a monstrous head start before
countermeasures can be implemented.
We are running out of options. But
what’s left?
Is There Security in Diversity?
There are those who say that only
Windows is vulnerable to viruses and only
Windows viruses are written.
They’re wrong. No operating system is
invulnerable to viruses. Back in the days
before Windows there were DOS viruses.
Early Macintosh viruses were actually
more contagious than DOS viruses because
they were buried in the Macintosh file sys-
tem’s resource fork, making them easily
transmissible by download.
Some loyalists claim Linux is virus
proof. Windows loyalists counter with “No
one bothers to write viruses for Linux
because it has such a small market share.”
They’re both wrong. There are Linux
viruses, but so far they have been relatively
harmless. There is Linux antivirus soft-
ware, in itself an admission that Linux
viruses are for real.
It is true that the vast majority of virus-
es are written for Windows. Dr. Nic Peeling
and Dr. Julian Satchell, in their report
“Analysis of the Impact of Open Source
Software” (www.govtalk.gov.uk/docu-
ments/QinetiQ_OSS_rep.pdf) note that
“There are about 60,000 viruses known for
Windows, 40 or so for the Macintosh,
about five for commercial Unix versions
and perhaps 40 for Linux.”
The report gives two reasons for
Windows’ greater attraction for virus writ-
ers compared to Linux. The first is its pop-
ularity. Not only does that make it a more
tempting target, but “For a virus to spread,
it has to transmit itself to other susceptible
computers; on average, each infection has
to cause at least one more. The ubiquity of
Windows machines makes it easier for this
threshold to be reached.”
Secondly, they go on, “Windows has
had a number of design choices over the
years that have allowed the execution of
untrusted code, and this has made it a very
easy target.”
Linux, on the other hand, isn’t such a
push-over. In an article posted last June in
The Register, SecurityFocus’s Scott
Granneman notes that “a Linux user
would have to read the email, save the
attachment, give the attachment executable
permissions [which requires ‘root’ privi-
leges], and then run the executable.”
Of course, this very complexity is one of
the reasons Linux has been slow to gain
market share.
Now, just to give us more to worry
about, a new complex cross-platform
Windows/Linux virus has appeared. Not
the first, but the most challenging of the
breed so far. Simile/Etap was discovered
late last May and is described as a “very
complex virus that uses entry-point obscur-
ing, metamorphism, and polymorphic
decryption,” making it very hard to detect.
Simile/Etap infects Portable Executable
and 32-bit Executable and Linking Format
files on both Linux and Windows systems.
It contains no destructive payload, but dis-
plays messages on September 17th and
March 17th. The infection threat in the
wild is said to be low. For a Linux user to
be victimized he’d have to be logged in as
root and run suspicious e-mail attachments.
However, Marius van Oers, an analyst
ATTACK OF THE KILLER VIRUS! DECEMBER 2003
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