January's Security Streams

It's been quite a busy month, still I've managed to keep my blog up to date with over 30 posts during January, here they are with short summaries. Thanks for the comments folks!

I often get the question, how many people is my blog attracting, the answer is quantity doesn't matter, but the quality of the visits, still, for January there were 7,562 unique visits and over 13,000 pageloads. I'm already counting over 400 .mil sub domains, have the majority of security/AV vendors(hi!) reading it, and the best is how long they spend on average, and how often they come back. To sum up, 60% of all visits come from direct bookmark of my blog, 30% through referers, and 10% from search engines. It is also worth mentioning my last referring link, notice the domain and what they are interested in.

1. What's the potential of the IM security market? Symantec thinks big" gives a brief overview of the wise acquisition Symantec did and a little something the IM security market.

2. "Keep your friends close, your intelligence buddies closer!" mentioning the release of a book excerpt and provides further resources on various NSA and intelligence related topics

3. "Security quotes : a FSB (successor to the KGB) analyst on Google Earth" is Google Earth or satellite imagery a national security threat? At least the Russian FSB thinks so!

4. "How to secure the Internet" discusses the U.S National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace and some thoughts on the topic

5. "Malware - Future Trends" the original announcement for the release of my research

6. "Watch out your Wallets!" gives more info on ID theft and talks about a case that left a 22 years old student in debt of $412,000

7. "Would we ever witness the end of plain text communications?" a released report on the growth of VPNs prompted me to open up the topic, recently, Yahoo! communicate over SSL by default which is a great progress from my point of view

8. "Why we cannot measure the real cost of cybercrime?" an in-depth summary of my thoughts on why we cannot measure the real cost of cybercrime, and why I doubt the costs outpace those due to drug smuggling

9. "The never-ending "cookie debate" tries to emphasize on how the Cookie Monster should worry about cookies only, and what else to keep in mind concerning further techniques that somehow invade your privacy

10. "The hidden internet economy" here I argue on what would the total E-commerce revenues be given those afraid to purchase over the Internet actually start doing it.

11. "Security threats to consider when doing E-Banking" provides a link to practical research conducted by a dude I happen to know :)

12. "Insecure Irony" is indeed an ironical event, namely how a private enterprise, one used to gather intelligence actually lost sensitive info belonging to the Intelligence Community

13. "Future Trends of Malware" the post mentioning my Slashdotted research and the rest of the people and respected sites that recognized it

14. "To report, or not to report?" how can you measure costs when the majority of companies aren't even reporting the breaches, cannot define a breach, or think certain breaches don't require law enforcement intervention?

15. "Anonymity or Privacy on the Internet?" argues on what exactly different individuals are trying to achieve, is it Anonymity, is it Privacy and provides further resources on the topic

16. "What are botnet herds up to?" gives a brief overview of recent botnet herds' activities the ways used to increase the revenues through affiliate networks, or domaining. It also provides good resources on the topic of Bots and Botnets

17. "China - the biggest black spot on the Internet’s map" a very recent and resourceful overview of Internet Censorship in China, that also provides further resources on the topic

18. "FBI's 2005 Computer Crime Survey - what's to consider?" one day after the release of the FBI's survey I summarized the key points to keep in mind

19. "Why relying on virus signatures simply doesn't work anymore?" a very practical post that argues and tries to build more awareness on how the number of signatures detected by a vendor doesn't actually matter, still there are other solutions that will get more attention with the time. I received a lot of feedback on this, both vendors and from folks I met through my blog, thanks for the ideas!!

20. "2006 = 1984?" gives more details on private sector companies innovating in the wrong field, and further resources on censorship and surveillance practices

21. "Cyberterrorism - recent developments" an extended overview of Cyberterrorism, and a lot of facts worth mentioning obtained through a recently released report on the topic

22. "Still worry about your search history and BigBrother?" Some humor, be it even a black one is always useful

23. "Homebrew Hacking, bring your Nintendo DS!" Homebrew hacking is slowly emerging and I see a lot of potential in the "do it yourself culture"

24. "Visualization, Intelligence and the Starlight project" a post worth checkin' out, it provides an overview of various visualization technologies and talks about the Starlight project

25. "The Feds, Google, MSN's reaction, and how you got "bigbrothered"?" I'm not coining new terms here, "bigbrothered" is slowly starting to be used be pretty much everyone, yet I try to give practical tips on why the whole idea was wrong from the very beginning, and how other distribution vectors should also be considered

26. "Personal Data Security Breaches - 2000/2005" I came across a great report summarizing the issue, and tried to highlight the cases worth mentioning, some are funny, others are unacceptable

27. "Skype to control botnets?!" good someone is brainstoring, but that's rather unpractical compared to common sense approaches botnet herders currently use

28. "Security Interviews 2004/2005 - Part 1" Grab a beer and start going through this great contribution, soon to appear at Astalavista itself!

29. "Security Interviews 2004/2005 - Part 2" Part 2

30. "Security Interviews 2004/2005 - Part 3" and Part 3

31. "Twisted Reality" Everything is not always as it seems, and it's Google I have in mind :(

32. "How we all get 0wn3d by Nature at the bottom line?" :)

33. "Was the WMF vulnerability purchased/sold for $4000?!" among the few vendors I actually trust released a nice summary no one seems to be taking into consideration, still I find it truly realistic given the potential of the 0day market for software vulnerabilities

Till next month, and thanks to all readers for taking their time to go through my research and contributions!

Technorati tags :
security, information security

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Was the WMF vulnerability purchased for $4000?!

Going through Kaspersky's latest summary of Malware - Evolution, October - December 2005, I came across a research finding that would definitely go under the news radar, as always, and while The Hackers seem to be more elite than the folks that actually found the vulnerability I think the issue itself deserves more attention related to the future development of a market for 0day vulnerabilities.

Concerning the WMF vulnerability, it states :

"It seems most likely that the vulnerability was detected by an unnamed person around 1st December 2005, give or take a few days. It took a few days for the exploit enabling random code to be executed on the victim machine to be developed. Around the middle of December, this exploit could be bought from a number of specialized sites. It seems that two or three competing hacker groups from Russian were selling this exploit for $4,000. Interestingly, the groups don't seem to have understood the exact nature of the vulnerability. One of the purchasers of the exploit is involved in the criminal adware/ spyware business, and it seems likely that this was how the exploit became public."

Two months ago, I had a chat with David Endler, director of Security Research at TippingPoint, and their ZeroDayInitiative, that is an alternative to iDefense's efforts to provide money as a incentive for quality vulnerabilities submissions. The fact that a week or so later, the first vulnerability appeared on Ebay felt "good" mainly because what I was long envisioning actually happened - motivated by the already offered financial rewards, a researcher decided to get higher publicity, thus better bids. I never stopped thinking on who gains, or who should actually gain, the vendor, the end user, the Internet as a whole, or I'm just being a moralist in here as always?

This very whole concept seemed flawed from the very beginning to me, and while you wish you could permanently employ every great researcher you ever came across to, on demand HR and where necessary seems to work just fine. But starting with money as an incentive is a moral game where "better propositions" under different situations could also be taken into consideration. Researchers will always have what to report, and once ego, reputation and publicity are by default, it comes to the bottom line - the hard cash, not "who'll pay more for my research?", but "who values my research most of everyone else?". And when it comes to money, I feel it's quite common sense to conclude that the underground, have plenty of it. I am not saying that a respected researcher will sell his/her research to a illegal party, but the a company's most serious competitors are not its current, but the emerging ones, I feel quite a lot of not so publicly known folks have a lot to contribute..

Possible scenarios on future vulnerability purchasing trends might be :

- what if vendors start offering rewards ($ at the bottom line) for responsibly reported vulnerabilities to eliminate the need of intermediaries at all, and are the current intermediaries doing an important role of centralizing such purchases? I think the Full Disclosure movement, both conscious or subconscious :) is rather active, and would continue to be. Now, what if Microsoft breaks the rules and opens up its deep pocketed coat?

- how is the 0day status of a purchased vulnerability measured today? My point is, what if the WMF vulnerability was used to "nail down" targeted corporate customers, or even the British government as it actually happened , and this went totally unnoticed due to the lack of mass outbreaks, but the author sort of cashed twice, by selling the though to be 0day to iDefense, or ZeroDay's Initiative? What if?

- requested vulnerabilities are the worst case scenario I could think of at the moment. Why bother and always get excited about an IE vulnerability, when you know person/company X are running Y AV scanner, use X1 browser as a security through obscurity measure. That's sort of reverse model compared to current one where researchers "push" their findings, what if it turns into a "pull" approach, "I am interested in purchasing vulnerabilities affecting that version of that software", would this become common, and how realistic is it at the bottom line?

Some buddies often ask me, why do I always brainstorm on the worst case scenario? I don't actually, but try to brainstorm on the key factors and how the current situation would inevitably influence the future. And while I'm not Forrester Research, I don't charge hefty sums for 10 pages report on the threats posed by two-factor authentication or e-banking, do I? Still, I'm right on quite some occasions..

At the bottom line, ensure $ isn't the only incentive a researcher is getting, and don't treat them like they are all the same, because they aren't, instead sense what matters mostly to the individual and go beyond the financial incentive, or you'll lose in the long term.

What are you thoughts on purchasing vulnerabilities as far as the long term is concerned? What is the most effective compared to the current approaches way of dealing with 0day vulnerabilities? Might a researcher sell his findings to the underground given he knows where to do it? What do you think?

UPDATE : "Where's my 0day, please?"

Technorati tags :
security, information security, vulnerabilities, underground, 0day vulnerability market, WMF, Kaspersky, malware

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How we all get 0wn3d by Nature at the bottom line?

I just came across a clip courtesy of NASA that can be described as a beautiful devastation, still it reminds me of how insecure we are at the bottom line. And no, I don't see how you will distribute a signature for this, or can you? :)

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katrina, security

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Twisted Reality

I looked up the definition of Evil today, and I found it, I tried to play a Google War and came across 256 million occurrences of it, still there's a hope for all of us I guess. On the 17th of January I blogged on how China turned into the biggest black spot on the Internet's map, to find out that I even have activists commenting in my blog :)

Google has agreed to "remove certain sensitive information from our search results" you all know it by now, what you perhaps don't know is how what used to be the old Google still has its marks on the web. Google's Information for Webmasters still states that :

"Google views the comprehensiveness of our search results as an extremely important priority. We're committed to providing thorough and unbiased search results for our users."

I guess Chinese users should print this and stick it on their walls to remind them of the past as it says exactly the same. They have also removed their "censored notice" from "older removals", how come, and for what reason? Lack of accountability for when "local laws, regulations, or policies" were removing "sensitive information" before the date?! Google is my benchmark for disruption, but I guess its actions and "do no evil" motto were simply too pure for the business world, which on the majority of occasions is capable of destroying morale, even individuals..

Welcome in a "Twisted Reality" where one event looks like an entirely different one - on request, and the list is getting bigger!

But what is actually filtered in china these days, what are the topics of interest? Four years ago, a great initiative brough more insights into what's deemed "sensitive information", and while of course the list is changed on-the-fly, it is important to know how it blocks the top results, as this is where all the traffic goes.

Recently, CNET did a nice research on which sites are blocked by which search engine, I ever saw Neworder in there :)

The best thing about China's backbone is how centralized it really is and the way researchers are finding common censorship patters that could prove useful for future research. Is TOR with its potential applicable in China, and would initiatives such as the the Anonymous OS, or even TorPark, an USB extension of the idea, the future?

Meanwhile, in case they are interested parties reading this post, consider taking a look at the "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" courtesy of Reporters Without Borders.

Technorati tags :
privacy, censorship, search engine, google, china, TOR, Anonymity

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