Jun 01 2010

The Smart Grid needs to get smart about security

Category: Information Security,Information WarfareDISC @ 6:17 pm

A terminus of the Nelson River HVDC system, no...
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by Larry Karisny
While following the Connectivity Show in Santa Clara California, I thought I should follow-up on the at Greentech Media’s annual Smart Grid conference in Palm Springs last week. I wanted to focus this article on Smart Grid security so I thought I should find some clear explanation of where we are now and then add my thoughts on where we need to be in smart grid security. To get an indication of where we are I couldn’t pass up this simultaneously humorous and cautionary anecdote opening panel discussion from Smart Grid security guru, Massoud Amin of University of Minnesota, drawn from his most recent whitepaper:

Now with all due respect to the power companies, why should they even know how to spell IP? Their history in communications was to build stand alone power facilities and substations connected with point to point microwave communication links (many times upgraded to their own dark fiber point to points). With this kind of money and private network capabilities, why would you ever worry about security? You lived on your own island with your own power and communications grid and every thing was just fine. Then came the smart grid. By definition, the smart grid requires a two-way digital technology to control appliances at consumers’ homes to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability and transparency. A big change for power companies and admittedly a whole new learning curve with many power companies like PG&E setting up their own test labs begin learning this who knew an complex smart grid system (See: Inside PGE’s Smart Grid Lab Chris Knudsen, director of the technology innovation center at PG&E, shows us what they’re tinkering with).

It didn’t take long for problem to occur. Again, you need to understand that even smart meters were just dusted off 20 year old designs that were lying around waiting for someone to push the power companies into the 21 century. These designs were never meant to securely send a store data real time. It wasn’t long before serious security issues were found and were reported by respected security form like InGuardian and IOactive. And we are not talking about someone hacking you PC. When it comes to the power grid, the costs of remote hack attacks are potentially more dramatic. “The cost factor here is what’s turned on its head. We lose control of our grid, that’s far worse than a botnet taking over my home PC,” said Matthew Carpenter, senior security analyst of InGuardian, speaking at a panel at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco . So now with little knowledge of the Internet and security the power companies have billions of dollars of grant in hand with one big problem. The grants mandate an iron clad security platform.

To add to the smart grid security problems some people think the power grid is the main target in the new battle in cyber wars.

Richard Clarke, the former anti-terrorism czar, has now turned his attention to a new national security threat, putting an attack of the power grid on the front lines. In a recent NewsWeek article Clarke was quoted as saying, “I think the average American would understand it if they suddenly had no electricity.

The U.S. government, [National Security Administration], and military have tried to access the power grid’s control systems from the public Internet. They’ve been able to do it every time they have tried. They have even tried to issue commands to see if they could get generators to explode. That’s the famous Aurora experiment in Idaho. Well, it worked. And we know there are other real cases, like the power grid taken out in Brazil as part of a blackmail scheme. So the government knows it can be done, the government admits it can be done, the government intends to do it to other countries. Even the Chinese military has talked publicly about how they would attack the U.S. power grid in a war and cause cascading failures.”

So what can we do to secure the grid now while upgrading it to smart grid capabilities?

Ed Smith, CEO of WirelessWall has one word, “Attack.” Having a military background he understands that you begin an attack by crippling an enemy’s communication and critical infrastructure. His civilian background has a long history of Situational Crisis Management, using Rapid Response Teams to facilitate the successful conclusion to crisis situations. Armed with security that exceeds the DoD 8100.2 (DoD Directive on wireless security) and FIPS 140-2 End-to-End Security that was developed for the U.S. Navy to provide secure, mobile shipboard networks, Smith knows he has an immediately implementable data security solution that is simply not being recognized.

“People in the civilian sector are not upgrading their security for business reasons, basically to save money, not for security reasons. That can be tolerated if you are protecting data that involves a loss of money, but it is inexcusable when the lack of protection of data involves the loss of life. Let there be no doubt that an attack on critical infrastructure is an act of war and it is absolutely appropriate to use an available military solution to protect civilian lives.”

“We can’t afford not to put good enough security in our power grids. My company has offered our platform of higher security to VISA and others in the financial industry and made it clear that the retail industry POS terminals Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) has already been hacked, but nothing will be changed unless there are more attacks that cause greater losses. The PCI DSS standard will have to be raised, and ultimately will, but the Smart Power Grid protection has to be implemented now.”

“If you are a Smart Grid Integrator offering a solution, someone that has been breached, or better yet, don’t want to be breached, you have to be proactive. Where are the power companies? What are they waiting for? PG&E, Duke Power, Florida Power and Light, Progress Energy, Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), we are right here in Silicon Valley California, WirelessWall can even be installed remotely and proven in a matter of hours so there is really no excuse for not putting this in their labs and testing it. After about 10 years of real-life military testing and the only wireless protection allowed by the DoE to secure nuclear sensors for the last 6 years, there is not a lab test that can come close to disputing the protection capabilities of WirelessWall. It is a time and situation proven solution and our Rapid Response Team approach is designed to install protection immediately”.

Like the old David and Goliath story, the power companies need to start embracing smaller company expertise and leverage their learning curve. Like the security story of WirelessWall, the expertise of how to build these wireless network platforms resides in the companies that have had their products tested in real world municipal, public safety and military environments. Companies like Tropos Networks, Trillium (SkyPilot), Mesh Dynamics, Strix Systems and Proxim, just to name of few, they were the trail blazers that learned along the way and can now bringing tested wireless network expertise to the smart grid. With secure wireless solutions out there, power companies need to leverage the expertise of these wireless pioneers that have been there, done that and are ready to support a secure a wireless smart grid network with their tested solutions.

SP AusNet selects GE for world’s first 4G communications smart grid solution, delivering revolutionary security and reliability benefits.(CONTRACTS): An article from: Home Networks

Tags: Business, Electrical grid, Federal government of the United States, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, San Francisco, Security, Smart Grid, United States


Mar 16 2010

Microsoft Power Point 2010 Hacks and Tips

Category: App SecurityDISC @ 1:13 pm

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

San Francisco (GaeaTimes.com) – Microsoft Office 2010 is the latest version of Microsoft Office productivity suite. The new features of Office 2010 are its extended file compatibility and a refined user interface. Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most important parts of the Office suite and has many advanced features. But Microsoft Office software has been a potential attractor for many hackers and malware publishers. Some weak code or loophole in the programming is their target so that they can get their malicious code injected into the end user computers. It has been a favorite playground for the hackers since Microsoft’s Office’s birth. But the new Microsoft 2010 comes with three new security layers that are very efficient to get rid of hacks and malwares. The three new layers are named as Protected View Mode, Binary File Validation system and Enhanced file blocking system. But we have some hacks that work on this new version.

Opening Password Protected Files through Hacking

Microsoft Office has a feature to password protect the files. But the password protected files can be opened bypassing the password. All you need to have is some hacking. If you don’t know how to hack them, don’t panic. If you don’t know anything about hacking, you can still open the file. There are many softwares available for this purpose. Office Password Remover is a good example of that. Using this software you can hack password protected files and the software will return the files without the password. The software does not take too much time either. It can remove the password within minutes.

Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office hacks, Microsoft PowerPoint, Office 2010, office 2010 security, San Francisco


Mar 05 2010

RSA 2010 and Cybercrime Strategy

Category: Cybercrime,Information SecurityDISC @ 2:31 pm

Howard Schmidt
U.S. Cybersecurity Coordinator

In a keynote address at RSA, national cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt announced that the White House was releasing an unclassified version of its plan for securing government and private industry networks which is called Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, and now available for download from the White House Website (PDF).

Among Schmidt’s priorities are the “resilience” of federal government networks and ensuring those networks are properly secured, and ensuring that private-sector partners also have sufficiently secured systems and networks. “The government is not going to secure the private sector,” Schmidt said. “But we are making sure our private sector partners have more security as part of what we’re doing.”
View Video

Panel Discussion: Big Brother
Panel includes Richard Clark, Michael Chertoff and Marc Rotenberg

Panelists agreed that the U.S. faces rapidly escalating problems with cyber warfare and cyber espionage, data theft and malware attacks on corporations and federal infrastructure that will persist as long as glaring vulnerabilities in government networks remain.

Clarke said that U.S. networks are continually under attack, citing last year’s logic bomb hack on the U.S. electrical grid. Clarke said that the attack indicated the likelihood of future assaults on U.S. infrastructure. “That’s not cyber espionage, that’s preparation for warfare,” he said.

“We’re talking about the cloud as if it’s the most important issue,” Clark continued. “We are being attacked. We’re being attacked by the governments and criminal gangs from China and Russia.”

However, viewpoints diverged on how to address the problem. Rotenberg argued that while U.S. networks are plagued with security holes, imposing sweeping security restrictions, monitoring systems and security policies on users’ online behavior would inevitably create a myriad of privacy issues that could violate Constitutional law.

“Privacy is what ends up being collateral damage,” Rotenberg said. “Every one of those (security) scenarios becomes a justification for some kind of intrusion for the user that has done nothing wrong.”

Clarke suggested that the government have oversight on an outside agency or private organization that would conduct deep packet inspection on tier 1 ISP networks in search of malware.

Rotenberg warned that NSA deep packet inspection could give the agency carte blanche to search for other information and could potentially lead to unlawful surveillance.

“I think we have to be careful if we go down that road,” Rotenberg said. “The folks at NSA are not just interested in looking for malware.”
View Video

Janet Napolitano
U.S. DHS Secretary

US secretary of homeland security Janet Napolitano says a secure cyber environment is as much about people, culture and habit as it is about machines.

“Even the most elegant technological solution will ultimately fail unless it has the support of talented professionals and a public that understands how to stay safe online,” she told the RSA Conference 2010 in San Francisco.

“We need to have an ongoing multifaceted effort with the public at large,” she said, but added that government needs to be mindful of the fact that it is addressing a wide variety of audiences, from teenagers to grandparents.

On the technology side, IT security professionals have an important role to play, she said, in helping to ensure that the information systems are safe and secure by improving the level of performance of the supporting technologies”
View Video

Tags: howard schmidt, Janet Napolitano, Marc Rotenberg, Michael Chertoff, Richard Clark, RSA 2010, San Francisco


Feb 03 2010

UCSF laptop containing patient files stolen

Category: hipaa,Security BreachDISC @ 3:46 pm

UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program
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The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO—The medical records of more than 4,000 patients at the University of California, San Francisco may have been compromised after a laptop they were on was stolen.
Officials with the university said Wednesday the laptop was recovered earlier this month after it was taken from a medical school employee during a flight in November. It does not appear that anyone gained access to the computer or the confidential patient information, but officials say the records still could have been exposed.

The files contained patients’ names, medical record numbers, ages and clinical information, but no Social Security numbers or financial data.

School officials say they are notifying the 4,400 patients whose records were on the computer. They were all treated in 2008 and 2009.
———
Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle


Here we have another unnecessary major security breach in a large healthcare organization which resulted in a loss of patient data demonstrating poor baseline security. They clearly are not ready for the new HIPAA provision ARRA and HITECH. Evaluate your current business and system risks to make sure this does not happen to you.

Contact DISC for any question if you think, this may apply to you.

The Practical Guide to HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance




Tags: arra and hitech, confidential patient information, Data, hipaa, Medical record, medical records breach, Medicine, Patient files stolen, San Francisco, San Francisco Chronicle, UCSF, University of California San Francisco


Dec 14 2009

Viruses That Leave Victims Red in the Facebook

Category: MalwareDISC @ 3:21 pm

5 Ways to Cultivate an Active Social Network
Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr

By BRAD STONE – NYTimes.com

It used to be that computer viruses attacked only your hard drive. Now they attack your dignity.

Malicious programs are rampaging through Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, spreading themselves by taking over people’s accounts and sending out messages to all of their friends and followers. The result is that people are inadvertently telling their co-workers and loved ones how to raise their I.Q.’s or make money instantly, or urging them to watch an awesome new video in which they star.

“I wonder what people are thinking of me right now?” said Matt Marquess, an employee at a public relations firm in San Francisco whose Twitter account was recently hijacked, showering his followers with messages that appeared to offer a $500 gift card to Victoria’s Secret.

Mr. Marquess was clueless about the offers until a professional acquaintance asked him about them via e-mail. Confused, he logged in to his account and noticed he had been promoting lingerie for five days.

“No one had said anything to me,” he said. “I thought, how long have I been Twittering about underwear?”

The humiliation sown by these attacks is just collateral damage. In most cases, the perpetrators are hoping to profit from the referral fees they get for directing people to sketchy e-commerce sites.

In other words, even the crooks are on social networks now — because millions of tightly connected potential victims are just waiting for them there.

Often the victims lose control of their accounts after clicking on a link “sent” by a friend. In other cases, the bad guys apparently scan for accounts with easily guessable passwords. (Mr. Marquess gamely concedes that his password at the time was “abc123.”)

After discovering their accounts have been seized, victims typically renounce the unauthorized messages publicly, apologizing for inadvertently bombarding their friends. These messages — one might call them Tweets of shame — convey a distinct mix of guilt, regret and embarrassment.

“I have been hacked; taking evasive maneuvers. Much apology, my friends,” wrote Rocky Barbanica, a producer for Rackspace Hosting, an Internet storage firm, in one such note.

Mr. Barbanica sent that out last month after realizing he had sent messages to 250 Twitter followers with a link and the sentence, “Are you in this picture?” If they clicked, their Twitter accounts were similarly commandeered.

“I took it personally, which I shouldn’t have, but that’s the natural feeling. It’s insulting,” he said.

Earlier malicious programs could also cause a similar measure of embarrassment if they spread themselves through a person’s e-mail address book.

But those messages, traveling from computer to computer, were more likely to be stopped by antivirus or firewall software. On the Web, such measures offer little protection. (Although they are popularly referred to as viruses or worms, the new forms of Web-based malicious programs do not technically fall into those categories, as they are not self-contained programs.)

Getting tangled up in a virus on a social network is also more painfully, and instantaneously, public. “Once it’s delivered to everyone in three seconds, the cat is out of the bag,” said Chet Wisniewski of Sophos, a Web security firm. “When people got viruses on their computers, or fell for scams at home, they were generally the only ones that knew about it and they cleaned it up themselves. It wasn’t broadcast to the whole world.”

Social networks have become prime targets of such programs’ creators for good reason, security experts say. People implicitly trust the messages they receive from friends, and are inclined to overlook the fact that, say, their cousin from Ohio is extremely unlikely to have caught them on a hidden webcam.

Sophos says that 21 percent of Web users report that they have been a target of malicious programs on social networks. Kaspersky Labs, a Russian security firm, says that on some days, one in 500 links on Twitter point to bad sites that can infect an inadequately protected computer with typical viruses that jam hard drives. Kaspersky says many more links are purely spam, frequently leading to dating sites that pay referral fees for traffic.

A worm that spread around Facebook recently featured a photo of a sparsely dressed woman and offered a link to “see more.” Adi Av, a computer developer in Ashkelon, Israel, encountered the image on the Facebook page of a friend he considered to be a reliable source of amusing Internet content.

A couple of clicks later, the image was posted on Mr. Av’s Facebook profile and sent to the “news feed” of his 350 friends.

“It’s an honest mistake,” he said. “The main embarrassment was from the possibility of other people getting into the same trouble from my profile page.”

Others confess to experiencing a more serious discomfiture.

“You feel like a total idiot,” said Jodi Chapman, who last month unwisely clicked on a Twitter message from a fellow vegan, suggesting that she take an online intelligence test.

Ms. Chapman, who sells environmentally friendly gifts with her husband, uses her Twitter account to communicate with thousands of her company’s customers. The hijacking “filled me with a sense of panic,” she said. “I was so worried that I had somehow tainted our company name by asking people to check their I.Q. scores.”

Social networking attacks do not spare the experts. Two weeks ago, Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit research group, accidentally sent messages to dozens of his Twitter followers with a link and the line, “Hi, is this you? LOL.” He said a few people actually clicked.

“I’m worried that people will think I communicate this way,” Mr. Rainie said. “ ‘LOL,’ as my children would tell you, is not the style that I want to engage the world with.”

Tags: Antivirus software, Computer virus, facebook, Google, Kaspersky Lab, Malware, malware 2.0, Online Communities, San Francisco, Security, Social network, Social network service, Spyware, Twitter


Apr 22 2009

RSA and cybersecurity

Category: Information SecurityDISC @ 6:52 pm

SAN FRANCISCO - FEBRUARY 6:  Art Coviello, Exe...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
This week I was in attendance with thousands of people from all over the globe at RSA conference in Moscone Center San Francisco. The conference offers variety of training tracks and this year included two new tracks physical security & governance and risk & compliance. Since Novell CNE was one of my first professional certification, I was glad to see Novell making some headway’s in information security arena, especially Deloitte was promoting Novell identity management solution in the conference.

The cloud computing is the buzz word for this year conference. As far as virtual environment boundaries are concerned , it’s hard to say where it start and where it ends which complicate the matters and complexity of the cloud will introduce new threats and risks. With that in mind cyber security appears to be worse than last year. Attendance might be bit low this year due to budget cut but the conference floor was packed with vendors and enthusiastic audiences.

Most of the security expert understand that companies are cutting budgets and might be decreasing their investment in security. Having a proactive security strategy and spending the security dollars wisely is the key to success of a business in this downturn economy. One thing to understand about information security, there is no ROI (return on investment) in security. ROI is a total cost of ownership.

Another concern in the conference is that the threats and fraud goes up during downturn economy. Companies should have comprehensive policies to tackle insider threats regarding disgruntled employees who might be at verge of getting laid off to prevent them from stealing intellectual property.

There is an outstanding line of keynote speakers like Melissa Hathaway, federal acting senior director of cyberspace. She advised the current (Obama) administration. She will be discussing issues like how much federal government should be involved in protecting critical assets like power grids. The conference like RSA helps security professionals to sharpen their skills and work in collaborative manners to successfully defend their organizations from attackers.

RSA Conference 2009 Highlights
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAxAagvmu6w

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Tags: Cloud computing, Consultants, Information Security, Melissa Hathaway, Moscone Center, Obama, RSA Conference, San Francisco, Security


Dec 16 2008

Unstable economy and insider threats

Category: Information Security,Insider ThreatDISC @ 2:42 am

State of affairs
Image by Pulpolux !!! via Flickr
During the current unstable economy, organizations face increased threats from insiders during tough economic years ahead. During hard time organizations not only have to worry about outsider threats but will be facing an increased threat from disgruntled employees who might see no future with the organization during unstable economy. During these circumstances, when new jobs are hard to come by, revenge or financial need might play a motivating factor for a disgruntled employee.

In July 2008, San Francisco city network administrator (Terry Childs who hijacked the city network) was arrested and charged with locking his own bosses and colleagues out of city network. Basically his bosses got caught sleeping on their jobs because they were not monitoring this guy who happens to have the key to their kingdom. San Francisco city network controls data for its police, courts, jails, payroll, and health services. After 8 days in jail cell Terry Childs finally relinquished the password to Mayor Gavin Newsom in his jail cell. Why San Francisco’s network admin went rogue

Here are some considerations to tackle insider threats

Manage and monitor access
Manage your users through single sign on source like Windows active directory or Sun single sign on directory, which not only enable control access to sensitive data but also let you disable access to all resources when employee leave the company from a single location. Single sign on solution also provide comprehensive audit trail which can provide forensic evidence during incident handling.

Limit data leakage
Intellectual property (design, pattern, formula) should be guarded with utmost vigilant. Access to IP should be limited to few authorized users and controls should be in place to limit the data leakage outside the organization. Protect your online assets, and disable removable media to prevent classified data being copied into USB drives, CDs, and mobile phones.

Principle of least privilege
Which requires that user must be able to access to classified information only when user has legitimate business need and management permission. Sensitive data should be distributed on need to know basis and must have system logs and auditing turned on, so you can review the access is limited to those who are authorized. Proactively review the logs for any suspicious activity. In case suspicious activity is detected, increase audit and monitoring frequency of the target to detect their day to day activity. Limit access to critical resources through remote access.

Conduct background check
Conduct background check on all new and suspicious employees. All employees who handle sensitive data must go through background check. HR should conduct background verification, reference check and criminal history for at least 5 years. What type of checks will be conducting on an individual will depend upon their access to classified information.

Risk assessment
Conduct a risk analysis of your data on regular basis to determine what data you have, its sensitivity and where it resides and who is the business owner. Risk analysis should determine appropriate data classification based on sensitivity and risks to data. Regular risk assessment might be necessary, due to passage of time data classification might change based on new threats and sensitivity of the data.

Digital Armageddon – The Insider Threat
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ4bvCPwFMY

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Tags: Background Check, Detect activity, Gavin Newsom, Intellectual Property, Manage access, Monitor access, Online assets, risk analysis, San Francisco, Security, Tough Economy