Oct 01 2009

Sophisticated phishing attack and countermeasures

Category: Cybercrime,Email Security,Identity Theft — DISC @ 12:36 am

phishing

Phishing and Countermeasures: Understanding the Increasing Problem of Electronic Identity Theft

Phishing is a practice of luring unsuspecting Internet users to a fake Web site by using authentic-looking email with the real organization’s logo, in an attempt to steal passwords, financial or personal information. In daily life people advise to retrace your steps when you lose something. The question is how you retrace your steps on cyberspace where some uber hackers know how to erase their footsteps to avoid detection. It is difficult to find phishers in cyberspace, and jurisdictional issues make it even harder to prosecute them. Then there is an issue of trust that phishers dupe people to believe that their web site is not fraudulent to collect personal/financial information.

Below is an example of sophisticated phishing attack
Link to phishing email

It looks very legit, with all the correct data, logos, graphics and signatures.

One giveaway: the TSA rule change has nothing to do with rental cars. It only affects your airline ticket vs your photo ID (drivers license, passport, whatever.)

To verify that this is bad stuff, right click on the links. You get “http://click.avis.com/r/GDYHH9/16HY8/6V5I29/M93XX4/YCCJP/A5/h”, which looks OK on first glance, since it says “avis.com”. But myAvis should not send me to “click.avis.com”. I also noticed that all the other links send you to the same location.

The clincher (here comes the geeky stuff:)

To open a terminal window, press the “Windows key” and the letter “R”.

You will see the “Run Dialog Box”. Type “cmd”, and press “OK

Open a terminal window and run nslookup:

C:\> nslookup
> www.avis.com <<< check IP address of the real AVIS web site Server: 4.2.2.3 Address: 4.2.2.3#53 Non-authoritative answer: www.avis.com canonical name = www.avis.com.edgekey.net. www.avis.com.edgekey.net canonical name = e2088.c.akamaiedge.net. Name: e2088.c.akamaiedge.net Address: 96.6.248.168 <<< get IP address of the real AVIS web site > click.avis.com <<< now check IP address of the bogus AVIS web site Server: 4.2.2.3 Address: 4.2.2.3#53 Non-authoritative answer: click.avis.com canonical name = avis.ed10.net. Name: avis.ed10.net <<< not the same domain as the real AVIS domain Address: 208.94.20.19 <<< note IP address is in a totally different sub net > 208.94.20.19 <<< now do a reverse lookup of the fake AVIS web site Server: 4.2.2.3 Address: 4.2.2.3#53 ** server can't find 19.20.94.208.in-addr.arpa.: NXDOMAIN <<< it should give you the web site name > avis.ed10.net <<< bogus AVIS web site name Server: 4.2.2.3 Address: 4.2.2.3#53 Non-authoritative answer: Name: avis.ed10.net Address: 208.94.20.19 > 208.94.20.19

Moral of the story: be very careful with links in emails and web pages. To check the authenticity of the link, right click on the link, copy that to a text file and take a good look.
Don’t click on the phisher’s email. Type URL into web browser yourself

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In the table below are the 12 threats to your online identity which can be manipulated in phishing scams, and possible countermeasures to protect your personal and financial information. Some threats are inadequate or no security controls in place. The last row of the table is a monitoring control to identify the warning signs of identity theft.
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[TABLE=7]



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Tags: email archiving, Email Security, Identity Theft, online backup, phishing, phishing countermeasures, phishing threats, web security

May 18 2009

Security breach and notification

Category: Security Breach — DISC @ 1:05 am

California Flag
Image by victoriabernal via Flickr

California was the first state in the nation to pass a data breach notification law in 2003, and it’s now planning to broaden the notification for companies doing business in the state. Notification will require specific information about the breach to the consumer and send notices to the state authorities at the same time.

The notices which consumers currently receive are basically too little too late, meaning they might say that your information may have been compromised and these notices may be released several months after the incident.

notice

California’s new legislation will force the organization to admit the extent of the compromise, so consumers can assess their own risks in a timely manner. Heartland, the credit card processor, has been sued by the banks to recover the breach notification cost. Should the credit card processing company which had a security breach be responsible for the cost of the notification?

Current notification does not inform you where and how your credit card information was compromised so that at least you can stop shopping from that merchant. When consumers ask specific questions regarding the breach to the credit card company customer service representative, they will deny any knowledge of the breach and will say something along the lines of, when all the legal information has been taken care the credit card company will send you a detailed letter about the breach.
Now in case of a processor security breach, the credit card company might issue notices to several hundred thousand people. Without specifics, that particular notice might have “crying wolf” effect and consumers might not take any action.

Last week a well publicized security breach at UC Berkeley exposed the records of 160,000 people. The hackers had access to the vulnerable system for more than six months before they were discovered, which clearly shows lack of monitoring control and due care.
When a young college student affected by the breach receives a “may have been breached” notice he or she immediately will worry about his/her credit and possibility of identity theft. Now the question is why a student has to bear the burden of the negligence by the merchant or campus and lack of reasonable security safeguards. After issuing such notice that the private information “may have been compromised,” the responsibility of keeping an eye on your credit is transferred to you. The problem is some fraudulent transactions might not be noticed for at least a year.



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Tags: Computer security, Credit card, due care, Identity Theft, Law, privacy, sb 1386, University of California Berkeley

Mar 04 2009

HIPAA accountability and security program

Category: hipaa,Security Risk Assessment — DISC @ 7:34 pm

Logo of the United States Department of Health...
Last year the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) started penalizing healthcare organizations for security breaches and lack of security program. Healthcare stimulus bill says that HHS will post a breach of healthcare organization on their website. In both cases the intent is clear that HHS want to hold healthcare organizations accountable for security lapses.

World Privacy Forum (WPF) states in recent report that medical identity theft is on the rise and it leaves false information in medical records that can torment victims’ medical lives for years. Medical identity theft mostly carried out by insiders with legitimate access to medical and insurance billing. Patient medical files, and addresses can be changed to reflect phony medical care, and insurance payments are forwarded to different address.

HHS has given ample warning and time to healthcare organization to get their house in order. Healthcare stimulus bill which require digitizing healthcare records will demand even more stringent security program from healthcare organizations. Time is of the essence for healthcare organizations to start their security strategy planing now to implement their security program before HHS come knocking at their door.

Risk Management Process:

Like other compliance initiatives, HIPAA also require organizations to build a security risk management program to manage their daily risks. The process of risk management consists of risk assessment (analyzing the risks), design/select control, implement control, test control, maintain/ monitor control. At high level, risk management is accomplished by balancing risk exposure against mitigation costs and implementing appropriate countermeasures and controls.

rm-process

Risk assessment states the security posture of an organization at a given point in time. Therefore organization should conduct risk assessment of their assets on a regular basis. Risk assessment looks at the impact and likelihood of threat/ vulnerability pair to assess the risk. What is the likelihood of a threat to exploit a given vulnerability and what will be the impact of the threat if the given vulnerability is exploited. If either likelihood/impact is low, the overall risk is low.

Performing vulnerability assessment of critical assets on monthly basis is highly recommend to find out new vulnerabilities and making sure the hardened systems configuration have not changed. Also any changes introduced to a system will require checking the necessary system configurations are intact.

A Five-step Roadmap to HIPAA Security Compliance

Related videos by youtube
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Srhrow67f8

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Tags: Health care, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Identity Theft, Risk management, Security, Security Risk Assessment, United States Department of Health and Human Services

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