Tag: security

Cyber Attacks-Protecting your assets and people from cyber attacks

Cyber Attacks-Protecting your assets and people from cyber attacks

Everyday we hear of new cyber attacks on organizations and countries. The latest attacks were on IMF and 200,000 accounts of Citibank and now the website of the US Senate. If some of the most powerful and technologically advanced organizations could not survive targeted attacks, how effective is your organization in handling cyber security. Sony Playstation, Google Gmail, PBS website are other famous targets that have been victimized.

Before we play the blame game by pointing to China for sponsoring hacker attacks, or Russian spammers for creating Bot Nets or ex Silicon Valley /American technology experts rendered jobless by off-shoring, we need to both understand which companies are most vulnerable, which processes need to be fine tuned and what is the plan of action in case your cyber security is breached.

Which companies are most vulnerable?

If you have valuable data, confidential in nature , in electronic form AND connectivity to internet, you have an opening. Think of data as water, if you have a small leakage all the water can be leaked away. To add to complexity, the attackers are mostly unknown, and extremely difficult to catch, and can take a big chunk of your credibility and intellectual property in a very short time.

The best people in technology are not the ones attending meetings in nicely pressed suits– and your IT guy is rarely a match for the talent that is now available on freelance hire for cyber corporate espionage.

Any company or organization that has not undergone through one real time simulated cyber attack or IT audit that focuses on data security is very vulnerable.

Which organizational processes need to be fine tuned ?
Clearly employee access even at senior management needs to be ensured for both technological as well as social vulnerability. Does your reception take the name of senior management if cold called. Do your senior managers surf the internet and use a simple password on the same computer and laptop. Do you have disaster management and redundancy plans.
A wall is only as strong as its weakest brick and the same is true of organizational readiness for cyber attacks.

What is the plan of action in case your cyber security is breached?
Lean back, close your eyes and think your website has just been breached, someone has just stolen confidential emails from your corporate email server, and complete client as well as the most confidential data in your organization has been lost.

Do you have a plan for what to do next? Or are you waiting for an actual cyber event to occur to make that plan.

Top 25 Errors in Programming that lead to hacker attacks

I am elaborating an earlier article on https://decisionstats.com/top-25-most-dangerous-software-errors/ based on my continued research into cyber conflict and strategy. My inputs are in italics – the rest is a condensed article for further thought.

This is thus a very useful initiative for the world to follow and upgrade their cyber security.

It is in accordance with the US policy to secure its cyber infrastructure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-securing-our-nations-cyber-infrastructure)  and countries like India, and even Europe as well as other nations could do well to atleast benchmark their own security practices in software and digital infrastructure with it. There seems to much better technical coordination between rogue hackers than patriotic hackers imho 😉


The Department of Homeland Security of the United States of America has just launched a list of top 25 errors in programming or creating software that increase vulnerability to hacking attacks. The list which is available at http://cwe.mitre.org/top25/index.html lists down a methodology fo measuring vulnerability called Common Weakness Scoring System (CWSS) and uses that score to rank the various errors as well as suggestions to eliminate these weaknesses or errors.
Measuring Weaknesses

The importance of a weakness (that arises due to software bugs) may vary depending on business usage or project implementation, the technologies , operating systems and computing environments in use, and the risk or threat perception.The Common Weakness Scoring System (CWSS) provides a mechanism for scoring weaknesses. and provides a framework for prioritizing security errors (“weaknesses”) that are discovered in software applications.
Identifying Weaknesses
For example the number 1 weakness is shown with
1CWE-89: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’).
The rest of the weaknesses are

RANK SCORE ID NAME
[1] 93.8 CWE-89 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’)
[2] 83.3 CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command (‘OS Command Injection’)
[3] 79.0 CWE-120 Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (‘Classic Buffer Overflow’)
[4] 77.7 CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation (‘Cross-site Scripting’)
[5] 76.9 CWE-306 Missing Authentication for Critical Function
[6] 76.8 CWE-862 Missing Authorization
[7] 75.0 CWE-798 Use of Hard-coded Credentials
[8] 75.0 CWE-311 Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data
[9] 74.0 CWE-434 Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type
[10] 73.8 CWE-807 Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision
[11] 73.1 CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
[12] 70.1 CWE-352 Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
[13] 69.3 CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory (‘Path Traversal’)
[14] 68.5 CWE-494 Download of Code Without Integrity Check
[15] 67.8 CWE-863 Incorrect Authorization
[16] 66.0 CWE-829 Inclusion of Functionality from Untrusted Control Sphere
[17] 65.5 CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
[18] 64.6 CWE-676 Use of Potentially Dangerous Function
[19] 64.1 CWE-327 Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm
[20] 62.4 CWE-131 Incorrect Calculation of Buffer Size
[21] 61.5 CWE-307 Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts
[22] 61.1 CWE-601 URL Redirection to Untrusted Site (‘Open Redirect’)
[23] 61.0 CWE-134 Uncontrolled Format String
[24] 60.3 CWE-190 Integer Overflow or Wraparound
[25] 59.9 CWE-759 Use of a One-Way Hash without a Salt
Details of each weakness is given by http://cwe.mitre.org/top25/index.html#Details
It includes Summary , Weakness Prevalence, Consequences, Remediation Cost, Ease of Detection ,Attacker Awareness and Attack Frequency .In addition the following sections describe each software vulnerability in detail- Technical Details ,Code Examples ,Detection Methods ,References,Prevention and Mitigation, Related CWEs and Related Attack Patterns.
Other important software weaknesses are –

[26] CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
[27] CWE-129: Improper Validation of Array Index
[28] CWE-754: Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions
[29] CWE-805: Buffer Access with Incorrect Length Value
[30] CWE-838: Inappropriate Encoding for Output Context
[31] CWE-330: Use of Insufficiently Random Values
[32] CWE-822: Untrusted Pointer Dereference
[33] CWE-362: Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization (‘Race Condition’)
[34] CWE-212: Improper Cross-boundary Removal of Sensitive Data
[35] CWE-681: Incorrect Conversion between Numeric Types
[36] CWE-476: NULL Pointer Dereference
[37] CWE-841: Improper Enforcement of Behavioral Workflow
[38] CWE-772: Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime
[39] CWE-209: Information Exposure Through an Error Message
[40] CWE-825: Expired Pointer Dereference
[41] CWE-456: Missing Initialization
Mitigating Weaknesses
Here is an example of the new matrix for migrations that also list the top 25 errors . This thus shows a way to fix the weaknesses and relative impact on each weakness by the following mitigations.
http://cwe.mitre.org/top25/mitigations.html#MitigationMatrix

Effectiveness ratings include:

  • High: The mitigation has well-known, well-understood strengths and limitations; there is good coverage with respect to variations of the weakness.
  • Moderate: The mitigation will prevent the weakness in multiple forms, but it does not have complete coverage of the weakness.
  • Limited: The mitigation may be useful in limited circumstances, only be applicable to a subset of this weakness type, require extensive training/customization, or give limited visibility.
  • Defense in Depth (DiD): The mitigation may not necessarily prevent the weakness, but it may help to minimize the potential impact when an attacker exploits the weakness.

Within the matrix, the following mitigations are identified:

 

  • M1: Establish and maintain control over all of your inputs.
  • M2: Establish and maintain control over all of your outputs.
  • M3: Lock down your environment.
  • M4: Assume that external components can be subverted, and your code can be read by anyone.
  • M5: Use industry-accepted security features instead of inventing your own.

The following general practices are omitted from the matrix:

  • GP1: Use libraries and frameworks that make it easier to avoid introducing weaknesses.
  • GP2: Integrate security into the entire software development lifecycle.
  • GP3: Use a broad mix of methods to comprehensively find and prevent weaknesses.
  • GP4: Allow locked-down clients to interact with your software.

 

M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 CWE
High DiD Mod CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory (‘Path Traversal’)
Mod High DiD Ltd CWE-78: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command (‘OS Command Injection’)
Mod High Ltd CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation (‘Cross-site Scripting’)
Mod High DiD Ltd CWE-89: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’)
Mod DiD Ltd CWE-120: Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (‘Classic Buffer Overflow’)
Mod DiD Ltd CWE-131: Incorrect Calculation of Buffer Size
High DiD Mod CWE-134: Uncontrolled Format String
Mod DiD Ltd CWE-190: Integer Overflow or Wraparound
High CWE-250: Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
Mod Mod CWE-306: Missing Authentication for Critical Function
Mod CWE-307: Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts
DiD CWE-311: Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data
High CWE-327: Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm
Ltd CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Mod DiD Mod CWE-434: Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type
DiD CWE-494: Download of Code Without Integrity Check
Mod Mod Ltd CWE-601: URL Redirection to Untrusted Site (‘Open Redirect’)
Mod High DiD CWE-676: Use of Potentially Dangerous Function
Ltd DiD Mod CWE-732: Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
High CWE-759: Use of a One-Way Hash without a Salt
DiD High Mod CWE-798: Use of Hard-coded Credentials
Mod DiD Mod Mod CWE-807: Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision
High High High CWE-829: Inclusion of Functionality from Untrusted Control Sphere
DiD Mod Mod CWE-862: Missing Authorization
DiD Mod CWE-863: Incorrect Authorization

Contribution to #Rstats by Revolution

I have been watching for Revolution Analytics product almost since the inception of the company. It has managed to sail over storms, naysayers and critics with simple and effective strategy of launching good software, making good partnerships and keeping up media visibility with white papers, joint webinars, blogs, conferences and events.

However this is a listing of all technical contributions made by Revolution Analytics products to the #rstats project.

1) Useful Packages mostly in parallel processing or more efficient computing like

 

2) RevoScaler package to beat R’s memory problem (this is probably the best in my opinion as it is yet to be replicated by the open source version and is a clear cut reason for going in for the paid version)

http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/products/enterprise-big-data.php

  • Efficient XDF File Format designed to efficiently handle huge data sets.
  • Data Step Functionality to quickly clean, transform, explore, and visualize huge data sets.
  • Data selection functionality to store huge data sets out of memory, and select subsets of rows and columns for in-memory operation with all R functions.
  • Visualize Large Data sets with line plots and histograms.
  • Built-in Statistical Algorithms for direct analysis of huge data sets:
    • Summary Statistics
    • Linear Regression
    • Logistic Regression
    • Crosstabulation
  • On-the-fly data transformations to include derived variables in models without writing new data files.
  • Extend Existing Analyses by writing user- defined R functions to “chunk” through huge data sets.
  • Direct import of fixed-format text data files and SAS data sets into .xdf format

 

3) RevoDeploy R for  API based R solution – I somehow think this feature will get more important as time goes on but it seems a lower visibility offering right now.

http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/products/enterprise-deployment.php

  • Collection of Web services implemented as a RESTful API.
  • JavaScript and Java client libraries, allowing users to easily build custom Web applications on top of R.
  • .NET Client library — includes a COM interoperability to call R from VBA
  • Management Console for securely administrating servers, scripts and users through HTTP and HTTPS.
  • XML and JSON format for data exchange.
  • Built-in security model for authenticated or anonymous invocation of R Scripts.
  • Repository for storing R objects and R Script execution artifacts.

 

4) Revolutions IDE (or Productivity Environment) for a faster coding environment than command line. The GUI by Revolution Analytics is in the works. – Having used this- only the Code Snippets function is a clear differentiator from newer IDE and GUI. The code snippets is awesome though and even someone who doesnt know much R can get analysis set up quite fast and accurately.

http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/products/enterprise-productivity.php

  • Full-featured Visual Debugger for debugging R scripts, with call stack window and step-in, step-over, and step-out capability.
  • Enhanced Script Editor with hover-over help, word completion, find-across-files capability, automatic syntax checking, bookmarks, and navigation buttons.
  • Run Selection, Run to Line and Run to Cursor evaluation
  • R Code Snippets to automatically generate fill-in-the-blank sections of R code with tooltip help.
  • Object Browser showing available data and function objects (including those in packages), with context menus for plotting and editing data.
  • Solution Explorer for organizing, viewing, adding, removing, rearranging, and sourcing R scripts.
  • Customizable Workspace with dockable, floating, and tabbed tool windows.
  • Version Control Plug-in available for the open source Subversion version control software.

 

Marketing contributions from Revolution Analytics-

1) Sponsoring R sessions and user meets

2) Evangelizing R at conferences  and partnering with corporate partners including JasperSoft, Microsoft , IBM and others at http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/partners/

3) Helping with online initiatives like http://www.inside-r.org/ (which is curiously dormant and now largely superseded by R-Bloggers.com) and the syntax highlighting tool at http://www.inside-r.org/pretty-r. In addition Revolution has been proactive in reaching out to the community

4) Helping pioneer blogging about R and Twitter Hash tag discussions , and contributing to Stack Overflow discussions. Within a short while, #rstats online community has overtaken a lot more established names- partly due to decentralized nature of its working.

 

Did I miss something out? yes , they share their code by GPL.

 

Let me know by feedback

Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors

If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it- Peter Drucker

Here is a RSS feed/website  for all security incidents

http://www.us-cert.gov/current/ and http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/

You can also see http://www.onguardonline.gov/tools/overview.aspx for tools to be secure online.

But the new measuring system is http://cwe.mitre.org/cwss/ to help being secure. It basically creates a score or an anlytical approach for measuring vulnerabilities.

Common Weakness Scoring System (CWSS)

The Common Weakness Scoring System (CWSS) provides a mechanism for scoring weaknesses in a consistent, flexible, open manner while accommodating context for the various business domains. It is a collaborative, community-based effort that is addressing the needs of itsstakeholders across government, academia, and industry. CWSS is a part of the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) project, co-sponsored by the Software Assurance program in the National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

CWSS:

  • provides a common framework for prioritizing security errors (“weaknesses”) that are discovered in software applications
  • provides a quantitative measurement of the unfixed weaknesses that are present within a software application
  • can be used by developers to prioritize unfixed weaknesses within their own software
  • in conjunction with the Common Weakness Risk Analysis Framework (CWRAF), can be used by consumers to identify the most important weaknesses for their business domains, in order to inform their acquisition and protection activities as one part of the larger process of achieving software assurance.

and the top 25 errors in software are

http://cwe.mitre.org/top25/index.html

 

Rank Score ID Name
[1] 93.8 CWE-89 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’)
[2] 83.3 CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command (‘OS Command Injection’)
[3] 79.0 CWE-120 Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (‘Classic Buffer Overflow’)
[4] 77.7 CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation (‘Cross-site Scripting’)
[5] 76.9 CWE-306 Missing Authentication for Critical Function
[6] 76.8 CWE-862 Missing Authorization
[7] 75.0 CWE-798 Use of Hard-coded Credentials
[8] 75.0 CWE-311 Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data
[9] 74.0 CWE-434 Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type
[10] 73.8 CWE-807 Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision
[11] 73.1 CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
[12] 70.1 CWE-352 Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
[13] 69.3 CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory (‘Path Traversal’)
[14] 68.5 CWE-494 Download of Code Without Integrity Check
[15] 67.8 CWE-863 Incorrect Authorization
[16] 66.0 CWE-829 Inclusion of Functionality from Untrusted Control Sphere
[17] 65.5 CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
[18] 64.6 CWE-676 Use of Potentially Dangerous Function
[19] 64.1 CWE-327 Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm
[20] 62.4 CWE-131 Incorrect Calculation of Buffer Size
[21] 61.5 CWE-307 Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts
[22] 61.1 CWE-601 URL Redirection to Untrusted Site (‘Open Redirect’)
[23] 61.0 CWE-134 Uncontrolled Format String
[24] 60.3 CWE-190 Integer Overflow or Wraparound
[25] 59.9 CWE-759 Use of a One-Way Hash without a Salt

 

You can use the list at http://cwe.mitre.org/top25/index.html and check your own corporate vulnerabilities. It is better to sweat in cyber peace than bleed in cyber war, huh.

 

 

 

 

Chrome

If you are new to using Chrome, there are many delightful features just beneath the surface.

If you are an Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari or Arora or Opera or Sea Monkey browser user- this is one more reason to test, just test Chrome.

Ok so who Made chrome- (note the link i.e about:credits is what you type in chrome to see features)

about:credits

Credits

David M. Gay’s floating point routines
dynamic annotations
Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR)
Network Security Services (NSS)
purify headers
google-glog’s symbolization library
valgrind
xdg-mime
xdg-user-dirs
google-jstemplateshow licensehomepage
Launchpad Translationsshow licensehomepage
Mozilla Personal Security Managershow licensehomepage
Google Toolbox for Macshow licensehomepage
ActiveX Scripting SDKshow licensehomepage
Almost Native Graphics Layer Engineshow licensehomepage
Apple sample codeshow licensehomepage
Google Cache Invalidation APIshow licensehomepage
Compact Language Detectionshow licensehomepage
OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guideshow licensehomepage
OpenGL ES 2.0 Conformance Testsshow licensehomepage
hunspell dictionariesshow licensehomepage
IAccessible2 COM interfaces for accessibilityshow licensehomepage
Chinese and Japanese Word Listshow licensehomepage
ISimpleDOM COM interfaces for accessibilityshow licensehomepage
modp base64 decodershow licensehomepage
NSBezierPath additions from Sean Patrick O’Brienshow licensehomepage
Cocoa extension code from Caminoshow licensehomepage
OTS (OpenType Sanitizer)show licensehomepage
Google Safe Browsingshow licensehomepage
XUL Runner SDKshow licensehomepage
and of course
so thats who made chrome.
  • Will Google be able to monetize Chrome the way it has monetized Android (Atleast by locking in both search,computing and browsing platforms)? I like the Adblock extension- and I would be happy to see more paid extensions. or even two versions one free and other freer (in choice) browsers for ads /security etc. maybe even a premium paid browser which has tor embedded in it , adblock enabled in it, and encrypted chat (like Waste Again) as an extension…. Hmm Hmm Hmm There is a SOCIAL version of Chromium called Rockmelt used ironically by Google Social Nemesis -Facebook (see http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2011/06/facebook-partners-with-rockmelt-on-building-a-social-web-browser/)
  • Will Google share more revenue with open source contributors and thus create a new path in open source revenue generation just like it did with online advertising as an industry? Hmm Hmm Hmm. or Will Facebook continue to lead the way with extensions and applications (which did predate the mobile app place- so thats one innovation u gotta give to Zuk’s boys 😉
Back to Chrome-
To change settings- chrome://settings/browser
but to check what Autofill Data is stored within chrome (thats your credit card and your web form information)
chrome://settings/autofill and chrome://settings/content has all your content settings
Well Chrome is very very secure, or as secure as a browser can be in 2011.
You can set up Google Sync to keep all your data in the cloud, and it has an application specific password as well.
So hopefully you will have much more fun enjoying hacking Chromium 😉
See these