Skip to main content

InfoSecurity Europe 2009

Well, a couple of weeks ago I went to InfoSecurity Europe 2009 at Earl's Court, as I do every year. If you've never been, but are at all interested in network and information security or are looking for vendors, then I highly recommend visiting. To my surprise, and for the first time I can remember, Microsoft wasn't there. Apart from that, however, all the usual players were there and, to be honest, it was all much the same as before. There was no new emerging technology or hot topic, just new developments of old technologies. A couple of years ago we had the hot topic of 'social engineering' and 'securing the user'; ok, we all knew that the users were our weak link and phrases like "we spend all our time securing the first 2000 miles and forget about the last 2 feet", and "our network would be totally secure, reliable and fully functional if we didn't let users login", have always been commonplace, but there were new mass threats, new education programmes and new tools at the disposal of net admins to deal with them.

However, this year was different; nothing really sprang out. OK, cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has expanded and matured, but other than that we see the same products and services as before. What amazes me is how some vendors and speakers can get it so wrong and don't appear to understand the actual level of security offered or operating environment in which their products will be used. I'm not going to list actual vendors here, but how can an encryption solution for mobile users that doesn't encrypt the data at rest be viable? Encrypting network traffic is commendable, but not the only safeguard required. What if they now lose their laptop, mobile or pen drive? A secure USB pen drive vendor admitted, when questioned, that files were decrypted into the C:\Temp folder while in use, then deleted after encrypting for storage on the drive again. They couldn't tell me if this was a secure delete or a simple removal of the pointer in the file allocation table as normal. Regardless of the deletion process, however, how many applications can read and write to that folder? What's to stop me from writing a very small bit of code to monitor that folder every few seconds and take copies? This might be secure enough if it is on a corporate machine, but why not just store the file on it then and not bother with the drive?

Similarly, email security is always a problematic area, with almost no solution fitting the technology properly. The big advantage of email, and the reason we all use it, is that it is independent of firmware - i.e. it doesn't matter what hardware, OS or email app we use, it still works. Unfortunately, security was never built in to email, so every email is like sending an electronic postcard. However, I would argue that a solution that only allows you to send encrypted email within your organisation is of limited value. What about all your customers and partners? There are also still solutions that store your files on their servers and send a link to the recipient. Why trust your files to them? I asked several vendors how they deal with password transfer, only to be told that they don't. "It's up to the user how they tell the recipient what the password is," was a common reply. We know users are unreliable, why leave it to them? I had to transfer some confidential files to someone via email recently (the only transport method they would accept), only to be told that they didn't want the hassle of decrypting it, so could I send them in plaintext. Having got over that hurdle, they wouldn't give me a mobile phone number so that I could transfer the passphrase via a call or SMS (as people seem to need them written down), asking me to email it to them. I know there are technologies out there to solve these problems, but they aren't without any problems.

This is turning into a bit of a rant and I'm getting off topic, so back to InfoSec. I was pleased to see that there were some voices of caution out there about the wholesale adoption of virtualisation without considering the security implications. One that springs to mind is Steve Moyle who has produced 10 points to consider implementing on his blog here. Virtualisation is a good technology for a number of reasons, but it does bring in new security threats and it must be implemented with these in mind and secured accordingly. I do also think that cloud computing and SaaS could be very important to SMEs (Small to Medium-sized Enterprises) who don't have the in-house expertise or large budget. They can still have large enterprise-level configurability and security, without the overheads. Finally, people seem to be taking information governance and user education seriously rather than just paying lip-service to them. In all, the show was encouraging, but many vendors are not quite there yet, which only goes to highlight that the majority of organisations are not taking the new threat-landscape seriously enough and countermeasures must be lacking.

Comments

Popular Posts

Coventry Building Society Grid Card

Coventry Building Society have recently introduced the Grid Card as a simple form of 2-factor authentication. It replaces memorable words in the login process. Now the idea is that you require something you know (i.e. your password) and something you have (i.e. the Grid Card) to log in - 2 things = 2 factors. For more about authentication see this post . How does it work? Very simply is the answer. During the log in process, you will be asked to enter the digits at 3 co-ordinates. For example: c3, d2 and j5 would mean that you enter 5, 6 and 3 (this is the example Coventry give). Is this better than a secret word? Yes, is the short answer. How many people will choose a memorable word that someone close to them could guess? Remember, that this isn't a password as such, it is expected to be a word and a word that means something to the user. The problem is that users cannot remember lots of passwords, so remembering two would be difficult. Also, having two passwords isn't real

Trusteer or no trust 'ere...

...that is the question. Well, I've had more of a look into Trusteer's Rapport, and it seems that my fears were justified. There are many security professionals out there who are claiming that this is 'snake oil' - marketing hype for something that isn't possible. Trusteer's Rapport gives security 'guaranteed' even if your machine is infected with malware according to their marketing department. Now any security professional worth his salt will tell you that this is rubbish and you should run a mile from claims like this. Anyway, I will try to address a few questions I raised in my last post about this. Firstly, I was correct in my assumption that Rapport requires a list of the servers that you wish to communicate with; it contacts a secure DNS server, which has a list already in it. This is how it switches from a phishing site to the legitimate site silently in the background. I have yet to fully investigate the security of this DNS, however, as most

Web Hosting Security Policy & Guidelines

I have seen so many websites hosted and developed insecurely that I have often thought I should write a guide of sorts for those wanting to commission a new website. Now I have have actually been asked to develop a web hosting security policy and a set of guidelines to give to project managers for dissemination to developers and hosting providers. So, I thought I would share some of my advice here. Before I do, though, I have to answer why we need this policy in the first place? There are many types of attack on websites, but these can be broadly categorised as follows: Denial of Service (DoS), Defacement and Data Breaches/Information Stealing. Data breaches and defacements hurt businesses' reputations and customer confidence as well as having direct financial impacts. But surely any hosting provider or solution developer will have these standards in place, yes? Well, in my experience the answer is no. It is true that they are mostly common sense and most providers will conform