Thoughts On Security

Security is in a constant evolving state and keeping up with the various changes can be heard. As my journey continues in the security industry, I will share thoughts and opinions based on personal experiences. Thoughts are mostly around website security, sprinkled with general security concepts as well, but all tailored to the everyday enduser.

Creating a Safe Online Experience At Home

Published in Security on October 13, 2018

As a parent, and a technologist, I struggle with creating a safe online experience at home. I’m constantly playing with different technologies – hardware and software – trying to find a healthy configuration that will give me a higher degree of confidence inside my trust zone.

I am specifically thoughtful about what my kids will see as they traverse the web. I want them to explore, but I’m also very concerned about what the web will throw at them. As a technologist that specializes in web security, I’m specifically concerned about the threats that web-based malware pose – specifically things like drive-by-downloads delivered via malvertising or malicious injections inside otherwise benign sites (i.e., hacked sites). There are a number of different tools I’ve played with over the past year and a half, things like OpenDNS, Disney’s Circle, CloudFlare’s 1.1.1.1., and CleanBrowsing.

Good Password Hygiene Requires Behavior Changes and Password Managers

Published in Security on October 6, 2018

For years I advocated the importance of good hygiene. The importance of using complex, long and unique passwords. But where this approach falls short is that it’s dependent on one very important element – you, the user.

Today, I draw all my energy trying to impress upon users like you the importance of a password manager. I personally use LastPass, but I don’t personally care which one you use.

Analyzing Sucuri’s 2017 Hacked Website Trend Report

Published in Security on April 6, 2018

The Sucuri team just released their first annual security report that looks at telemetry from hacked websites – Hacked Website Report 2017. It uses a representative sample of infected websites from the Sucuri customer base to better understand end-user behavior and bad-actor tactics.

It specifically focuses on 34,371 infected websites, aggregating data from two distinct groups – Remediation and Research Teams. These are the teams that work side-by-side with the owners of infected websites on a daily basis, and are also the same team members that generate a lot of the research shared on the Sucuri Blog.

In this post I will expand on the analysis shared, and add my own observations.

Diving Into the Dark Web and Understanding the Economy Powering Cyber Attacks

Published in Security on March 20, 2018

This morning, Armor, a cloud security provider, released a great report into the cyber crime black market. Armor was formerly known as as FireHost – they were one of the leading hosts boasting security first and have dramatically evolved over the years. This report was put together by the Armor Threat Resistance Unit (TRU), whom extrapolated data from a number of dark web sources; focusing specifically on the fourth Quarter of 2017 (2017/Q4).

The report strives to give us a view into an otherwise elusive world, specifically highlighting the economic foundation of cyber crime. Understanding the criminal economy is critical to understanding the ease of use, motivations and behaviors of bad actors.

Effective security takes more than technology; it requires realtime knowledge of the threat landscape and risks to your data. – The Black Market Report

Phishing and Ransomware Leads Security Concerns for Organizations

Published in Security on August 22, 2017

The SANS Institute recently released their 2017 Threat Landscape Survey: User on the Front Line in which they interviewed 263 IT and security professional on the things that keep them up at night. Survey was conducted in May / June of 2017, it’s no surprise Ransomware was top of mind (e.g., WanaCry and Petya dominated the media). I am constantly amazed at the continued impact of Phishing threats.

This survey helps provide a deeper appreciation for what the security domain is faced with, while also providing insights into what the SMB market should be aware of (but are often not). This specific audience is technically capable, with a vested in interest in security as it’s their job (i.e., security / IT professionals), and it stands in stark contrast to the SMB market.

Google Begins Campaign Warning Forms Not Using HTTPS Protocol

Published in Security on August 17, 2017

August 2014, Google released an article sharing their thoughts on how they planned to focus on their “HTTPS everywhere” campaign (originally initiated at their Google I/O event).

The premise of the idea was that every website, regardless of what it was doing, should be communicating securely between point A and point B. To help motivate users, it went right for the carotid artery by making it a ranking factor in search.

December 2015, Google adjusted their crawlers to start start prioritizing and indexing HTTPS pages by default. If you had HTTP / HTTPS, they would start giving more weight to your HTTPS pages.

Password Management

Published in Security on June 27, 2017

The year is 2017 and we continue to give advice on the process of creating passwords. This must stop. The phrase “These are the tips to creating a secure password” should be stricken from all presentations, articles, tips and side-bar conversations.

Managing passwords has never been more streamlined. Organizations have invested countless hours and resources into building solutions that seamlessly integrate into our habits, and every business owner, and individual, should invest energy into integrating password managers into their overarching security program. So ask yourself, why are you, or your organization, not employing the tools designed to help you from yourself?

A Website Security Framework Intro

Published in Security on May 1, 2017

A framework should provide the underlying structure we require to build on.

Consider a home. Regardless of the type of home, they all have a similar framework. The framework keeps the house together and defines the basic structure, it starts with the foundation on which the house will sit. From there, the developers and architects build and expand it into something that fits their specific requirements. Without a basic framework, the house will collapse.

The same is true for how we should manage the security of our websites. We believe the security problems we face today to be technological in nature. I disagree. We invest all our energy into the latest technologies, making hardening and configuration changes in the hopes that we are addressing the latest perceived media threat. This approach is flawed, it lacks the structure required to adequately account for the emerging threats.

Attackers are successful not because we’re technically incapable, but because we are behaviorally weak. – @perezbox

At Sucuri we were naive to believe early on that our product was for everyone, we’ve realized over time however that it is not. It’s not that the product isn’t effective, but that the businesses leveraging the products lack a basic understanding and appreciation for basic security principles. Tools are employed with no structure in place to define why they are being deployed.

We have to do a better job of bridging the divide between the knowledge that today’s webmasters have, and those that they require to effectively manage their websites security. Start by defining a basic Website Security Framework that any organization, regardless of size, can employ.

A Basic Website Security Framework

The basis of the proposed framework is not new. It’s borrowed from the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The idea is to educate users on a framework that already exists and can be easily leveraged for your organizations website security needs.

It is built on 5 core elements: Functions, Categories, Subcategories, and Informative References. Their relationship is as follows:

The functions are designed to organize the key security domains you should be considering. Keep the functions to these core five domains, do not over complicate.

As the illustration shows, the categories are subdivisions of the functions, and the subcategories subdivisions of categories. There is a one to many relationship between Functions and Categories, and Categories and Subcategories. The informative references have a one to one relationship with the subcategories, they are important to ensure that everyone is aligned with the exact steps being leveraged for each control and action.

Improving our Security Posture

The challenges we face today are as much human issues, as technological ones. Before looking to deploy security solutions into your stack ask yourself what your general disposition is towards security. The framework above is designed to help you in this process.

As you consider the framework, think of security as a continuous process. The threat landscape is constantly evolving, your security posture should also evolve. Revisit the process at some interval (e.g., weekly, monthly, quarterly). It’s not about the frequency as much as the simple act of actually revisiting the process.

In future posts I’ll dive into each function and category. For now, consider the questions you would ask yourself in each function, and how that will have a domino affect through the design, and eventually your deployment of security controls.

A simple thought exercise: Start with the Identification function.

When was the last time you created an inventory of a) the number of domains you manage? b) the various plugins, integrations, extensions, they leverage? or c) where they are hosted?

We do not get hacked because cyber criminals have an advantage over us, or because of the platforms we use. We get hacked because we are generally lazy. We fail to take the basic precautions required when introducing a new property to the greater internet ecosystem.

Note: Thanks AJ for your designs.

We Must Improve the HTTPS Message

Published in Security on December 4, 2016

HTTPS is as important today as it has ever been. If you are transferring sensitive data you should use HTTPS to encrypt data in transit, that is not up for debate. Understand though that it is but one piece of a larger security conversation, and that’s where the message falls flat on it’s face.

I shared my thoughts last year on how HTTPS does not secure websites, and in the time since the message has only grown as to be expected. You’ve seen exponential growth of the LetsEncrypt initiative which we fully support at Sucuri (making us one of the first cloud CDN / Firewall solutions to do so). Additionally, organizations of all sizes have been adamantly pushing the importance of SSL, including both hosting and service providers alike. The WordPress Foundation, the organization spearheading the growth of the WordPress platform (currently at 27% market share of all websites), also recently announced that it would only be promoting hosting companies that offer SSL by default:

Google Introduces new Repeat Offender Blacklist

Published in Security on November 9, 2016

On November 8th, 2016, Google introduced a new feature to Chrome that would blacklist repeat offenders.

Once Safe Browsing has designated a site as a Repeat Offender, the webmaster will be unable to request additional reviews via the Search Console. Repeat Offender status persists for 30 days, after which the webmaster will be able to request a review.

The feature was introduced to address an issue where they noticed a trend where websites would remove infections long enough to have warnings removed, only to return once removed. They go on to say that this won’t affect websites that have been hacked. In other words, it’s built to affect intentional misuse versus unintentional.

Please note that websites that are hacked will not be classified as Repeat Offenders; only sites that purposefully post harmful content will be subject to the policy.

I can’t help but ask myself – how are they going to differentiate between intentional and unintentional misuse?

Defense in Depth And Website Security

Published in Security on October 23, 2016

The concept of Defense in Depth is not new. It’s been leveraged in the InfoSec domain for a long time, and has it’s roots deeply embedded in military strategy and tactics. That however doesn’t mean that even those in the InfoSec domain explain or implement it correctly. To fully appreciate the idea of Defense in Depth you have to subscribe to a very simple idea:

There is no single solution capable of providing 100% protection against any environment.

I recently wrote an article on the Sucuri blog sharing some thoughts on how I feel we should think about the concept, and how we should go about deploying it within our technology stacks and organizations. I expanded my thoughts this past weekend at the BadCamp Hack The Planet summit in Berkeley where I shared some of the challenges we face in the website security domain pertaining to the subject.

The idea of Defense in Depth is simple: employ as many complementary defensive controls as makes sense for you and your organization. The optimal word being “complementary”. It’s based on the idea that every tool has a weakness, so find tools that help address them and that work in unison with one another. This does not mean you deploy every tool available, instead you must strategically map out the threats that you are most concerned with, that pose the biggest impact to your organization, and prioritize your defensive posture.

Today’s threats are evolving at a faster clip than any one solution or team can account for. It’s not a matter of finding the 100% solution, but about deploying the things we need to help reduce the growing risk. This has never been truer than in the website security domain. If employed correctly we should be better prepared to quickly identify issues, mitigate the threats and respond to incidents if so required. Attackers only need to win once. As defenders, we have to win every time.

Accounting for Website Security in Higher Education

Published in Security on October 18, 2016

This morning I had the privilege of speaking at the Higher Education Web Professionals Association (HighEdWeb) annual conference. I took the opportunity to share a number of points around the website security threats as they pertain to the education industry, our observations on the trends at Sucuri and more importantly our thoughts on how to think about website security.

I’ll be sharing some thoughts in the coming weeks specifically on the subject via the Sucuri Blog and updating this post as necessary as the recorded video and audio become available.

DrupalCon Europe 2016 – Building a Security Framework for Your Websites

Published in Security on October 4, 2016

Last week I spent a few days in beautiful Dublin, Ireland for DrupalCon Europe 2016. I had the opportunity to present a new presentation in which I try to introduce an approach to building a security framework that anyone can build and deploy.

We live in an age where the threats against our website are real, and their impacts have the potential to be devastating. As open-source CMS applications continue to become a staple in our infrastructure stack, organizations are faced with the challenges of accounting for this new attack vector. With limited resources and knowledge, organization need a streamlined approach to managing their websites. In the talk below I share some thoughts on how to think about security more holistically by thinking through an attackers TTPs and using that to help build a repeatable framework applicable to all website owners, regardless of organization size.

How To Protect Your Business Data

Published in Security on September 17, 2016

It’s impossible to go a week without seeing some reference to a data breach, whether it’s a write up on what happened years ago, or updates on breaches that are still happening. The two breaches I found most interesting where a treasure trove of business data (not credit card data) was exfiltrated, and subsequently released would have to be the 2014 Sony Hack and more recently the Panama Papers hack. With this in mind, there has never been a better time for more discussion around how we think about data protection in our businesses than now.

I am partial to these hacks because as a business owner, especially one in the website security industry, the threat of a compromise is very real. We work under the guise that someone is always watching and the fact that a compromise is inevitable. As such, a lot of what we do is about minimizing the exposure and impact when it happens. There are many ways to do this as well as many areas to focus on, but one particular domain for us is the protection of the data that keeps our company going.

Thinking Through The Password Expiration Discussion

Published in Security on August 8, 2016

The most intriguing debate to come out of last weeks security conferences in Vegas stems from a presentation by FTC Chief Technologist Lorrie Cranor at PasswordsCon 2016, part of the BSides security conference in Las Vegas. Dan Gooding, with ARS Technica, summarized the discussion well; the gist of the presentation seems to question why we should change passwords at some frequency, or aims to challenge the old model of forcing password expirations in systems. We’ve had others in the community like Bruce Schneier agree and Troy Hunt implies agreement in his tweet. In my mind though, I struggle with the idea that it’s in some way bad or ill-advised and that it’s time to do away with it.

Open-Source CMS Security In The Enterprise

Published in Security on April 20, 2016

Regardless of the size of your organization, the security challenges with open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) security are the same. In the enterprise the issue stems not from the technology or existing processes, but the fact that security is slipping through our fingers. We’ve made it too difficult for our counter parts in marketing and sales, and where there is a problem new solutions step in to solve them. We see this being enabled by the explosion of cloud platforms like Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and technologies that easily work in those environments like open-source CMS applications.

As a community we have to do something about this. These activities stem from the perception that IT / Security is always going to say “no” or “make my life too hard” and I can’t help but think there is a better way to handle this. To do this, we have to be prepared to embrace technologies like open-source CMS application and be willing to silence our personal biases towards them (i.e., WordPress is insecure, which is grossly untrue). A good first steps is better understanding how these technologies might fit into existing governance and their associated security policies and tools.

Accounting for Website Security in The Enterprise

Open-source CMS web applications are no different than any other applications enterprise security teams are responsible for. The principles like Defense in Depth still apply, and integrating things like Prevention, Detection and Response solutions are just as critical. The difference being that in the enterprise, these aren’t new concepts, yet when it comes to open-source CMS applications they’re dismissed.

Compromises within the open-source CMS domain are achieved through two key areas: access control and exploitation of software vulnerabilities. Here are a few tips to help enterprises think through the security challenges they face:

Impacts of a Website Compromise

Published in Security on April 15, 2016

The threats of a compromise are real, and are not specific to operating an online store. Attackers find value in a number of things, some of which include your audience and resources. In this webinar I spend some time exploring a number of the impacts we should all be aware of as website owners.

I recently gave a webinar at Sucuri in which I discuss the impacts hacks have on you as website owners. In this session I dive into three core areas:

Psychology of the Attackers.
Things they can do if successful.
Impacts to you as a website owner.

If you are currently infected, or know of someone that is, I encourage you to learn more about Sucuri and how they can help!

WordCamp US 2015: Navigating Today’s Website Threats!!

Published in Security on February 17, 2016

Recently I spoke at WordCamp US 2015 on the topic WordPress Security — Navigating Today’s Website Threats!!

WordPress is one of the most recognized website CMS platform available in the market. Dominating over 25% of the websites on the web, and over 50% of the CMS-based websites, it’s no surprise that it’s the preferred technology by marketers, sales professionals, small and large business alike, and those intent on nefarious actions.

Security In Open-Source CMS Applications

Published in Security on February 12, 2016

Open-source CMS applications are no stranger to the battle they face with security. The size of the organizations adopting the platform also has little to do with it – from bloggers to mom and pop shops to Fortune 500 companies; the concern is the same. Can open-source CMS applications be deployed securely within their respective stacks?

There are those that look at open-source and have a general distrust for it. The idea that people can see the code and submit patches makes them uneasy. There are also those who can’t get their head around the general ambiguity of open-source, in which the code belongs to no-one and everyone. What they don’t realize is that most open-source projects have a stringent commit process.

The security perception is still a very real problem for the open-source CMS industry, and many feel it’s unattainble.

How To Encrypt Gmail Emails Using Mailvelope

Published in Security on January 2, 2016

Over the past couple of years we’ve been reminded time and time again of how susceptible our communication mediums are to prying eyes. Classic examples of its susceptibility can be seen in the very public disclosure of General Petraeus affair in 2012, the release of over 170,000 emails after the Sony compromise in 2014, to the recent Ashley Madison compromise in which the CEO’s emails were shared publicly in 2015.

In either case, the information gleaned from these emails were damaging at best, and destructive at worst. In either case, what we should take away from it is that how and what we say, even if in what we perceive to be secure, is not necessarily the case.

Emails are a treasure trove of information, and as such we should all be spending a bit more time thinking of not only what we say, but how we keep what we say safe from prying eyes.