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Before yesterdaySecurity

Powershell Payload Stored in a PSCredential Object, (Mon, Apr 27th)

An interesting obfuscation technique to store a malicious payload in a PowerShell script: In a PSCredential object!
  • April 27th 2020 at 06:44
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Video: Malformed .docm File, (Sun, Apr 26th)

In diary entry "Obfuscated with a Simple 0x0A", Xavier discovers that a .docm file is a malformed ZIP file.
  • April 26th 2020 at 08:27
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MALWARE Bazaar, (Sat, Apr 25th)

When we publish diary entries covering malware, we almost always share the hash of the malware sample.
  • April 25th 2020 at 15:30
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Lube, Fire, & Hand Sanitizer - PSW #648

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Steven Bay, Director of Security Operations at Security On-Demand, to talk about Insider Threats! In our second segment, we welcome Patrick Laverty, Conference Organizer at Layer8 Conference, and Ori Zigindere, Co-Founder of WorkshopCon, to discuss all things Layer8 Conference and WorkshopCon! In the Security News, Zoom releases 5.0 update with security and privacy improvements, Zero-click, zero-day flaws in iOS Mail 'exploited to hijack' VIP smartphones, NSA shares list of vulnerabilities commonly exploited to plant web shells, Legions of cybersecurity volunteers rally to protect hospitals during COVID-19 crisis, & the Top 10 In-Demand Cybersecurity Jobs in the Age of Coronavirus!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/PSWEpisode648

To sign up for the Layer8 Conference, please visit: https://layer8conference.com/

To watch our interview with Steven Bay on Enterprise Security Weekly #170, visit: https://youtu.be/nbnSSiVUSSw

 

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes!

Visit https://securityweekly.com/acm to sign up for a demo or buy our AI Hunter!

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  • April 24th 2020 at 21:00
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Zoom Can't Win, 0 Day Extravaganza, & Starbleed - Wrap Up - SWN #28

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week on the Security Weekly News Wrap Up, Cyber Justice League volunteers working with healthcare in the COVID-19 plague, Android 8.0-9.0 Bluetooth zero click RCE - Bluefrag, IBM refuses to patch 4 zero days and so, they are released on github, Audits Don't solve security problems, and Hack a satellite with the US Air Force CTF!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode28

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 24th 2020 at 20:37
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Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H – Episode WHAT?

By Jason Dablow
cloud

Teaching you to be a Natural Born Pillar!

Last week, we took you through the “WHO” of securing a cloud migration here, detailing each of the roles involved with implementing a successful security practice during a cloud migration. Read: everyone. This week, I will be touching on the “WHAT” of security; the key principles required before your first workload moves.  The Well-Architected Framework Security Pillar will be the baseline for this article since it thoroughly explains security concepts in a best practice cloud design.

If you are not familiar with the AWS Well-Architected Framework, go google it right now. I can wait. I’m sure telling readers to leave the article they’re currently reading is a cardinal sin in marketing, but it really is important to understand just how powerful this framework is. Wait, this blog is html ready – here’s the link: https://wa.aws.amazon.com/index.en.html. It consists of five pillars that include best practice information written by architects with vast experience in each area.

Since the topic here is Security, I’ll start by giving a look into this pillar. However, I plan on writing about each and as I do, each one of the graphics above will become a link. Internet Magic!

There are seven principles as a part of the security framework, as follows:

  • Implement a strong identity foundation
  • Enable traceability
  • Apply security at all layers
  • Automate security best practices
  • Protect data in transit and at rest
  • Keep people away from data
  • Prepare for security events

Now, a lot of these principles can be solved by using native cloud services and usually these are the easiest to implement. One thing the framework does not give you is suggestions on how to set up or configure these services. While it might reference turning on multi-factor authentication as a necessary step for your identity and access management policy, it is not on by default. Same thing with file object encryption. It is there for you to use but not necessarily enabled on the ones you create.

Here is where I make a super cool (and free) recommendation on technology to accelerate your learning about these topics. We have a knowledge base with hundreds of cloud rules mapped to the Well-Architected Framework (and others!) to help accelerate your knowledge during and after your cloud migration. Let us take the use case above on multi-factor authentication. Our knowledge base article here details the four R’s: Risk, Reason, Rationale, and References on why MFA is a security best practice.

Starting with a Risk Level and detailing out why this is presents a threat to your configurations is a great way to begin prioritizing findings.  It also includes the different compliance mandates and Well-Architected pillar (obviously Security in this case) as well as descriptive links to the different frameworks to get even more details.

The reason this knowledge base rule is in place is also included. This gives you and your teams context to the rule and helps further drive your posture during your cloud migration. Sample reason is as follows for our MFA Use Case:

“As a security best practice, it is always recommended to supplement your IAM user names and passwords by requiring a one-time passcode during authentication. This method is known as AWS Multi-Factor Authentication and allows you to enable extra security for your privileged IAM users. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a simple and efficient method of verifying your IAM user identity by requiring an authentication code generated by a virtual or hardware device on top of your usual access credentials (i.e. user name and password). The MFA device signature adds an additional layer of protection on top of your existing user credentials making your AWS account virtually impossible to breach without the unique code generated by the device.”

If Reason is the “what” of the rule, Rationale is the “why” supplying you with the need for adoption.  Again, perfect for confirming your cloud migration path and strategy along the way.

“Monitoring IAM access in real-time for vulnerability assessment is essential for keeping your AWS account safe. When an IAM user has administrator-level permissions (i.e. can modify or remove any resource, access any data in your AWS environment and can use any service or component – except the Billing and Cost Management service), just as with the AWS root account user, it is mandatory to secure the IAM user login with Multi-Factor Authentication.

Implementing MFA-based authentication for your IAM users represents the best way to protect your AWS resources and services against unauthorized users or attackers, as MFA adds extra security to the authentication process by forcing IAM users to enter a unique code generated by an approved authentication device.”

Finally, all the references for each of the risk, reason, and rationale, are included at the bottom which helps provide additional clarity. You’ll also notice remediation steps, the 5th ‘R’ when applicable, which shows you how to actually the correct the problem.

All of this data is included to the community as Trend Micro continues to be a valued security research firm helping the world be safe for exchanging digital information. Explore all the rules we have available in our public knowledge base: https://www.cloudconformity.com/knowledge-base/.

This blog is part of a multi-part series dealing with the principles of a successful cloud migration.  For more information, start at the first post here: https://blog.trendmicro.com/principles-of-a-cloud-migration-from-step-one-to-done/

The post Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H – Episode WHAT? appeared first on .

This Week in Security News: Security Researcher Discloses Four IBM Zero-Days After Company Refused to Patch and Trend Micro Integrates with Amazon AppFlow

By Jon Clay (Global Threat Communications)

Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, read about a security researcher who has published details about four zero-day vulnerabilities impacting an IBM security product after the company refused to patch the bugs. Also, learn about Amazon’s new AppFlow and how Trend Micro Cloud One integrates with it.

Read on:

Trend Micro’s COVID-19 Resource Page

To help protect you during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trend Micro has put together a resource page to help address the new security challenges you may be facing. This page includes the latest news and information on COVID-19 scams, security tools and programs to help keep you informed and safe while you work remotely.

Security Researcher Discloses Four IBM Zero-Days After Company Refused to Patch

A security researcher has published details about four zero-day vulnerabilities impacting an IBM security product after the company refused to patch bugs following a private bug disclosure attempt. The bugs impact the IBM Data Risk Manager (IDRM), an enterprise security tool that aggregates feeds from vulnerability scanning tools and other risk management tools to let admins investigate security issues.

“We Need COBOL Programmers!” No, You Probably Don’t

New Jersey recently made the news following a plea for COBOL programmers to help modernize legacy systems running unemployment claims that had apparently failed following a recent spike in activity. In a recent blog from Bill Malik, VP of Infrastructure Strategies at Trend Micro, Bill explains why needing more COBOL programmers is likely not the answer.

 All the Things COVID-19 Will Change Forever, According to 30 Top Experts

We’re four weeks into the massive time-out forced on us by coronavirus and many of us have spent much of that time trying to get used to the radical lifestyle change the virus has brought. But we’re also beginning to think about the end of the crisis, and what the world will look like afterward. In this article, read Trend Micro CEO Eva Chen’s thoughts on how businesses will operate in the post-COVID world.

Gamaredon APT Group Use COVID-19 Lure in Campaigns

Gamaredon is an APT group that has been active since 2013 and is generally known for targeting Ukrainian government institutions. Trend Micro recently came across an email with a malware attachment that used the Gamaredon group’s tactics. Some of the emails used the coronavirus pandemic as a topic to lure victims into opening emails and attachments, and campaigns targeted victims in European countries, among others.

Grouping Linux IoT Malware Samples with Trend Micro ELF Hash

This year, 31 billion IoT devices are expected to be installed globally. Consequently, cybercriminals have been developing IoT malware, such as backdoors and botnets, for malicious purposes, including digital extortion. In response, Trend Micro created Trend Micro ELF Hash (telfhash), an open-source clustering algorithm that effectively clusters malware targeting IoT devices running on Linux, using Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) files.

SBA Reveals Potential Data Breach Impacting 8,000 Emergency Business Loan Applicants

The US Small Business Administration (SBA) has revealed a suspected data breach impacting the portal used by business owners to apply for emergency loans. On Tuesday, the US agency said the incident may affect close to 8,000 applicants to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program (EIDL), which offers up to $10,000 to small business owners currently struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Exposed Redis Instances Abused for Remote Code Execution, Cryptocurrency Mining

Recently, Trend Micro wrote an article about more than 8,000 unsecured Redis instances found in the cloud. In this blog, Trend Micro expands on how these instances can be abused to perform remote code execution (RCE), as demonstrated by malware samples captured in the wild. These malicious files have been found to turn Redis instances into cryptocurrency-mining bots and infect other vulnerable instances via their “wormlike” spreading capability.

Trend Micro Integrates with Amazon AppFlow

The acceleration of in-house development enabled by public cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform adoption in the last few years has given us new levels of visibility and access to data. Putting all the data together to generate insights and action, however, can present a challenge. Amazon is changing that with the release of AppFlow. Trend Micro Cloud One is a launch partner with this new service, enabling simple data retrieval from your Cloud One dashboard to be fed into AWS services as needed.

iOS Exploit Lets Attackers Access Default iPhone Mail App

This week it was reported that alleged Chinese state-sponsored hackers have been exploiting a critical vulnerability in iOS to spy to Uyghurs Muslim minority in China. In a new report published by security firm Zecops, it has been noted that a bug in iOS has been exploited by hackers since at least January 2018.

Nemty Ransomware Ceases Public Operations, Focuses on Private Schemes

Threat actors behind Nemty ransomware are to close their ransomware-as-a-service operation as they zero in on private schemes. This was confirmed in a Russian hacker forum post that security researcher Vitali Kremez shared with Bleeping Computer. In the post, “jsworm,” the ransomware’s operator, declared that “we leave in private” (translated from Russian) and that current victims only have one week to acquire decryptors for the last time.

Maze Ransomware Attacks US IT Firm

According to a report from Bleeping Computer, IT managed services firm Cognizant suffered a ransomware attack purportedly conducted by threat actors behind Maze ransomware. The company has emailed their clients about the attack, including a preliminary list of indicators of compromise (IoC) identified through its investigation. The list of IoCs include IP addresses and file hashes, which have been linked to previous Maze attacks.

Containers Are Not VMs, and Other Misconceptions

The adoption rate of containers has been steadily growing as organizations begin to see the benefits container technology provides. This adoption represents a new computing paradigm for many of the engineers responsible for running the IT infrastructure of these organizations – but new concepts often come with misconceptions. In this article, Trend Micro’s Rob Maynard shares some of the biggest misconceptions about container technology.

Australian Health Insurance-Themed Spam Spreads Ursnif

Trend Micro researchers encountered a spam campaign referencing the Australian health insurance brand Medicare. The attachment, which Trend Micro detects as Trojan.X97M.URSNIF.THDAEBO, downloads the malicious file (detected as TrojanSpy.Win32.URSNIF.THDAEBO). The campaign aims to spread the spyware Ursnif, also known as Gozi.

Loki Delivered as CAB File Attachment

Trend Micro has found a spam sample that delivers the info stealer Loki through an attached Windows Cabinet (CAB) file in its honeypot. The email that bears the malicious file poses as a quotation request to trick the user into executing the binary file inside the CAB file.

Know the Symptoms: Protect Your Devices While Working from Home

Would you know if one of your devices was compromised? In this article, Trend Micro shares how cybercriminals are leveraging the COVID-19 pandemic to capitalize on vulnerable hardware and unsecured systems. Trend Micro also shares common symptoms of compromise across mobile devices, desktops, laptops and IoT devices.

What do you think will be the biggest change to business in the post-COVID world? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.

The post This Week in Security News: Security Researcher Discloses Four IBM Zero-Days After Company Refused to Patch and Trend Micro Integrates with Amazon AppFlow appeared first on .

Malicious Excel With a Strong Obfuscation and Sandbox Evasion, (Fri, Apr 24th)

For a few weeks, we see a bunch of Excel documents spread in the wild with Macro V4[1]. But VBA macros remain a classic way to drop the next stage of the attack on the victim’s computer. The attacker has many ways to fetch the next stage. He can download it from a compromised server or a public service like pastebin.com, dropbox.com, or any other service that allows sharing content. The problem is, in this case, that it generates more noise via new network flows and the attack depends on the reactivity of the other party to clean up the malicious content. If this happens, the macro won’t be able to fetch the data and the infection will fail. The other approach is to store the payload in the document metadata, the document itself or appended to it.
  • April 24th 2020 at 05:16
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Getting ATT&CKed By A Cozy Bear And Being Really Happy About It: What MITRE Evaluations Are, and How To Read Them

By Greg Young (Vice President for Cybersecurity)

Full disclosure: I am a security product testing nerd*.

 

I’ve been following the MITRE ATT&CK Framework for a while, and this week the results were released of the most recent evaluation using APT29 otherwise known as COZY BEAR.

First, here’s a snapshot of the Trend eval results as I understand them (rounded down):

91.79% on overall detection.  That’s in the top 2 of 21.

91.04% without config changes.  The test allows for config changes after the start – that wasn’t required to achieve the high overall results.

107 Telemetry.  That’s very high.  Capturing events is good.  Not capturing them is not-good.

28 Alerts.  That’s in the middle, where it should be.  Not too noisy, not too quiet.  Telemetry I feel is critical whereas alerting is configurable, but only on detections and telemetry.

 

So our Apex One product ran into a mean and ruthless bear and came away healthy.  But that summary is a simplification and doesn’t capture all the nuance to the testing.  Below are my takeaways for you of what the MITRE ATT&CK Framework is, and how to go about interpreting the results.

 

Takeaway #1 – ATT&CK is Scenario Based

The MITRE ATT&CK Framework is intriguing to me as it mixes real world attack methods by specific adversaries with a model for detection for use by SOCs and product makers.  The ATT&CK Framework Evaluations do this but in a lab environment to assess how security products would likely handle an attack by that adversary and their usual methods.  There had always been a clear divide between pen testing and lab testing and ATT&CK was kind of mixing both.  COZY BEAR is super interesting because those attacks were widely known for being quite sophisticated and being state-sponsored, and targeted the White House and US Democratic Party.  COZY BEAR and its family of derivatives use backdoors, droppers, obfuscation, and careful exfiltration.

 

Takeaway #2 – Look At All The Threat Group Evals For The Best Picture

I see the tradeoffs as ATT&CK evals are only looking at that one scenario, but that scenario is very reality based and with enough evals across enough scenarios a narrative is there to better understand a product.  Trend did great on the most recently released APT/29/COZY BEAR evaluation, but my point is that a product is only as good as all the evaluations. I always advised Magic Quadrant or NSS Value Map readers to look at older versions in order to paint a picture over time of what trajectory a product had.

 

Takeaway #3 – It’s Detection Focused (Only)

The APT29 test like most Att&ck evals is testing detection, not prevention nor other parts of products (e.g. support).  The downside is that a product’s ability to block the attacks isn’t evaluated, at least not yet.  In fact blocking functions have to be disabled for parts of the test to be done.  I get that – you can’t test the upstairs alarm with the attack dog roaming the downstairs.  Starting with poor detection never ends well, so the test methodology seems to be focused on ”if you can detect it you can block it”.  Some pen tests are criticized that a specific scenario isn’t realistic because A would stop it before B could ever occur.  IPS signature writers everywhere should nod in agreement on that one. I support MITRE on how they constructed the methodology because there has to be limitations and scope on every lab test, but readers too need to understand those limitations and scopes.  I believe that the next round of tests will include protection (blocking) as well, so that is cool.

 

Takeaway #4 – Choose Your Own Weather Forecast

Att&ck is no magazine style review.  There is no final grade or comparison of products.  To fully embrace Att&ck imagine being provided dozens of very sound yet complex meteorological measurements and being left to decide on what the weather will be. Or have vendors carpet bomb you with press releases of their interpretations.  I’ve been deep into the numbers of the latest eval scores and when looking at some of the blogs and press releases out there they almost had me convinced they did well even when I read the data at hand showing they didn’t.  I guess a less jaded view is that the results can be interpreted in many ways, some of them quite creative.  It brings to mind the great quote from the Lockpicking Lawyer review “the threat model does not include an attacker with a screwdriver”.

 

Josh Zelonis at Forrester provides a great example of the level of work required to parse the test outcomes, and he provides extended analysis on Github here that is easier on the eyes than the above.  Even that great work product requires the context of what the categories mean.  I understand that MITRE is taking the stance of “we do the tests, you interpret the data” in order to pick fewer fights and accommodate different use cases and SOC workflows, but that is a lot to put on buyers. I repeat: there’s a lot of nuance in the terms and test report categories.

 

If, in the absence of Josh’s work, if I have to pick one metric Detection Rate is likely the best one.  Note that Detection rate isn’t 100% for any product in the APT29 test, because of the meaning of that metric.  The best secondary metrics I like are Techniques and Telemetry.  Tactics sounds like a good thing, but in the framework it is lesser than Techniques, as Tactics are generalized bad things (“Something moving outside!”) and Techniques are more specific detections (“Healthy adult male Lion seen outside door”), so a higher score in Techniques combined with a low score in Tactics is a good thing.  Telemetry scoring is, to me, best right in the middle.  Not too many alerts (noisy/fatiguing) and not too few (“about that lion I saw 5 minutes ago”).

 

Here’s an example of the interpretations that are valuable to me.  Looking at the Trend Micro eval source page here I get info on detections in the steps, or how many of the 134 total steps in the test were detected.  I’ll start by excluding any human involvement and exclude the MSSP detections and look at unassisted only.  But the numbers are spread across all 20 test steps, so I’ll use Josh’s spreadsheet shows 115 of 134 steps visible, or 85.82%.  I do some averaging on the visibility scores across all the products evaluated and that is 66.63%, which is almost 30% less.  Besides the lesson that the data needs gathering and interpretation, it highlights that no product spotted 100% across all steps and the spread was wide. I’ll now look at the impact of human involvement add in the MSSP detections and the Trend number goes to 91%.  Much clinking of glasses heard from the endpoint dev team.  But if I’m not using an MSSP service that… you see my point about context/use-case/workflow.  There’s effectively some double counting (i.e. a penalty, so that when removing MSSP it inordinately drops the detection ) of the MSSP factor when removing it in the analyses, but I’ll leave that to a future post.  There’s no shortage of fodder for security testing nerds.

 

Takeaway #5 – Data Is Always Good

Security test nerdery aside, this eval is a great thing and the data from it is very valuable.  Having this kind of evaluation makes security products and the uses we put them to better.  So dig into ATT&CK and read it considering not just product evaluations but how your organization’s framework for detecting and processing attacks maps to the various threat campaigns. We’ll no doubt have more posts on APT29 and upcoming evals.

 

*I was a Common Criteria tester in a place that also ran a FIPS 140-2 lab.  Did you know that at Level 4 of FIPS a freezer is used as an exploit attempt? I even dipped my toe into the arcane area of Formal Methods using the GYPSY methodology and ran from it screaming “X just equals X!  We don’t need to prove that!”. The deepest testing rathole I can recall was doing a portability test of the Orange Book B1 rating for MVS RACF when using logical partitions. I’m never getting those months of my life back. I’ve been pretty active in interacting with most security testing labs like NSS and ICSA and their schemes (that’s not a pejorative, but testing nerds like to use British usages to sound more learned) for decades because I thought it was important to understand the scope and limits of testing before accepting it in any product buying decisions. If you want to make Common Criteria nerds laugh point out something bad that has happened and just say “that’s not bad, it was just mistakenly put in scope”, and that will then upset the FIPS testers because a crypto boundary is a very real thing and not something real testers joke about.  And yes, Common Criteria is the MySpace of tests.

The post Getting ATT&CKed By A Cozy Bear And Being Really Happy About It: What MITRE Evaluations Are, and How To Read Them appeared first on .

All Systems Go - ESW #180

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we talk Enterprise News, to discuss F-Secure launching protection and response service to protect remote workers, Sectigo and Infineon integrate to advance IoT security with automated certificate provisioning, Enhanced continuous threat detection and secure remote access with the Claroty Platform, and some acquisition and funding updates from SafeBreach, Swimlane, & Syncurity! In our second segment, we welcome Mark Orsi, President of the Global Resilience Federation, to talk about the Business Impacts and Security Risks with Working from Home! In our final segment, we welcome Peter Warmka, Founder of the Counterintelligence Institute, to discuss how The Threat of Social Engineering Goes Well Beyond Phishing!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ESWEpisode180

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 23rd 2020 at 09:00
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Trend Micro Integrates with Amazon AppFlow

By Trend Micro

The acceleration of in-house development enabled by public cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform adoption in the last few years has given us new levels of visibility and access to data. Putting all of that data together to generate insights and action, however, can substitute one challenge for another.

Proprietary protocols, inconsistent fields and formatting combined with interoperability and connectivity hurdles can turn the process of answering simple questions into a major undertaking. When this undertaking is a recurrent requirement then that effort can seem overwhelming.

Nowhere is this more evident than in security teams, where writing code to integrate technologies is rarely a core competency and almost never a core project, but when a compliance or security event requires explanation, finding and making sense of that data is necessary.

Amazon is changing that with the release of AppFlow. Trend Micro Cloud One is a launch partner with this new service, enabling simple data retrieval from your Cloud One dashboard to be fed into AWS services as needed.

Amazon AppFlow is an application integration service that enables you to securely transfer data between SaaS applications and AWS services in just a few clicks. With AppFlow, you can data flows between supported SaaS applications, including Trend Micro, and AWS services like Amazon S3 and Redshift, and run flows on a schedule, in response to a business event, or on demand. Data transformation capabilities, such as data masking, validation, and filtering, empower you to enrich your data as part of the flow itself without the need for post-transfer manipulation. AppFlow keeps data secure in transit and at rest with the flexibility to bring your own encryption keys.

Audit automation

Any regularly scheduled export or query of Cloud One requires data manipulation before an audit can be performed.

You may be responsible for weekly or monthly reports on the state of your security agents. To create this report today, you’ve written a script to automate the data analysis process. However, any change to the input or output requires new code to be written for your script, and you have to find somewhere to actually run the script for it to work.

As part of a compliance team, this isn’t something you really have time for and may not be your area of expertise, so it takes significant effort to create the required audit report.

Using Amazon AppFlow, you can create a private data flow between RedShift, for example, and your Cloud One environment to automatically and regularly retrieve data describing security policies into an easy to digest format that can be stored for future review. Data flows can also be scheduled so regular reports can be produced without recurring user input.

This process also improves integrity and reduces overall effort by having reports always available, rather than needing to develop them in response to a request.

This eliminates the need for custom code and the subsequent frustration from trying to automate this regularly occurring task.

Developer Enablement

Developers don’t typically have direct access to security management consoles or APIs for Cloud One or Deep Security as a Service. However, they may need to retrieve data from security agents or check the state of agents that need remediation. This requires someone from the security team to pull data for the developer each time this situation arises.

While we encourage and enable DevOps cultures working closely with security teams to automate and deploy securely, no one likes unnecessary steps in their workflow. And having to wait on the security team to export data is adding a roadblock to the development team.

Fortunately, Amazon AppFlow solves this issue as well. By setting up a flow between Deep Security as a Service and Amazon S3, the security team can enable developers to easily access the necessary information related to security agents on demand.

This provides direct access to the needed data without expanding access controls for critical security systems.

Security Remediation

Security teams focus on identifying and remediating security alerts across all their tools and multiple SaaS applications. This often leads to collaborating with other teams across the organization on application-specific issues that must be resolved. Each system and internal team has different requirements and they all take time and attention to ensure everything is running smoothly and securely.

At Trend Micro, we are security people too. We understand the need to quickly and reliably scale infrastructure without compromising its security integrity. We also know that this ideal state is often hindered by the disparate nature of the solutions on which we rely.

Integrating Amazon AppFlow with your Cloud One – Workload Security solution allows you to obtain the security status from each agent and deliver them to the relevant development or cloud team. Data from all machines and instances can be sent on demand to the Amazon S3 bucket you indicate. As an added bonus, Amazon S3 can trigger a Lambda to automate how the data is processed, so what is in the storage bucket can be immediately useful. And all of this data is secured in transit and at rest by default, so you don’t have to worry about an additional layer of security controls to maintain.

Easy and secure remediation that doesn’t slow anyone down is the goal we’re collectively working toward.

It is always our goal to help your business securely move to and operate in the cloud. Our solutions are designed to enable security teams to seamlessly integrate with a DevOps environment, removing the “roadblock” of security.

As always, we’re excited to be part of this new Amazon service, and we believe our customers can see immediate value by leveraging Amazon AppFlow with their existing Trend Micro cloud solutions.

The post Trend Micro Integrates with Amazon AppFlow appeared first on .

Brick & Mortar - SCW #25

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome our Founder and CTO of Security Weekly, Paul Asadoorian, to talk about his vision for Security Weekly Productions and how Security & Compliance Weekly fits into the mix! In the Security and Compliance News, Back to basics: The GDPR and PCI DSS, Why Compliance is for Guidance, Not a Security Strategy, Cognizant hit by 'Maze' ransomware attack, Audits Don't Solve Security Problems, Contact Tracing Apps Attempt to Balance Necessary Public Health Measures With User Privacy, and more!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SCWEpisode25

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/scw for all the latest episodes!

 

Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly

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  • April 22nd 2020 at 18:00
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“We Need COBOL Programmers!” No, You Probably Don’t

By William "Bill" Malik (CISA VP Infrastructure Strategies)

Editor’s note: While this topic isn’t entirely security-specific, Trend Micro leader William Malik, has career expertise on the trending topic and shared his perspective.

——

There was a provocative report recently that the Governor of New Jersey told reporters that the state of New Jersey needed COBOL programmers. The reason was that the number of unemployment claims had spiked, and the legacy system running unemployment claims had failed. That 40-year-old system was written in COBOL, so the conclusion was that the old language had finally given out. Hiring COBOL programmers would let the State update and modernize the application to handle the increase in load.

This might be the problem, but it probably is not. Here’s why.

  1. Software doesn’t wear out, and it doesn’t rust. Any code that’s been running for 40 years is probably rock solid.
  2. Computers have a fixed amount of specific resources: processing power, memory, network capacity, disk storage. If any of these is used up, the computer cannot do any more work.
  3. When a computer application gets more load than it can handle, things back up. Here’s a link to a process that works fine until excessive load leads to a system failure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkQ58I53mjk Trigger warning – this may be unsettling to people working on assembly lines, or on diets.
  4. Adding more resources must fit the machine architecture proportionately.
  5. Incidentally, throwing a bunch of people at an IT problem usually makes things worse.

From these points, we learn the following lessons.

Software Doesn’t Wear Out

Logic is indelible. A computer program is deterministic. It will do exactly what you tell it to do, even if what you tell it to do isn’t precisely what you meant it to do. Code never misbehaves – but your instructions may be incorrect. That’s why debugging is such a hard problem.

Incidentally, that’s also why good developers usually make lousy testers. The developer focuses her mind on one thing – getting a bunch of silicon to behave. The tester looks for faults, examines edge conditions, limit conditions, and odd configurations of inputs and infrastructure to see how things break. The two mindsets are antithetical.

Once a piece of software has been in production long enough, the mainline paths are usually defect free. In fact, the rest of the code may be a hot mess, but that stuff doesn’t get executed so those defects are latent and do not impact normal processing. Ed Adams published a report in 1984 titled “Optimizing Preventative Service for Software Products” (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5390362, originally published in the IBM Journal of Research and Development, v 28, n 1). He concluded that once a product has been in production for a sufficient time, it was safer to leave it alone. Installing preventative maintenance was likely to disrupt the system. Most IT organizations know this, having learned the hard way. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the mantra for this wisdom.

As a corollary, new software has a certain defect rate. Fixes to that software typically have a defect rate ten times greater. So if a typical fix is large enough, you put in a new bug for every bug you take out.

Computers Are Constrained

All computers have constraints. The relative amount of resources mean some computers are better for some workloads than others. For mainframes, the typical constraint is processing power. That’s why mainframes are tuned to run at 100% utilization, or higher. (How do you get past 100% utilization? Technically, of course, you can’t. But what the measurements are showing you is how much work is ready to run, waiting for available processing power. The scale actually can go to 127%, if there’s enough work ready.)

Different types of computers have different constraints. Mainframes run near 100% utilization – the CPU is the most expensive and constrained resource. PCs on the other hand never get busy. No human can type fast enough to drive utilization above a few percent. The constrained resource on PCs is typically disk storage. That’s why different types of computers do better at different types of work. PCs are great for user interface stuff. Mainframes are perfect for chewing through a million database records. By chance we developed mainframes first; that’s not an indictment of either type, Both are useful.

Computers Can Run Out of Resources

Any IT infrastructure has a design point for load. That is, when you put together a computer you structure it to meet the likely level of demand on the system. If you over-provision it, you waste resources that will never be used. If you under-provision it, you will not meet your service level agreements. So when you begin, you must know what the customers – your users – expect in terms of response time, number of concurrent transactions, database size, growth rates, network transaction load, transaction mix, computational complexity of transaction types, and so on. If you don’t specify what your targets are for these parameters, you probably won’t get the sizing right. You will likely buy too much of one resource or not enough of another.

Note that cloud computing can help – it allows you to dynamically add additional capacity to handle peak load. However, cloud isn’t a panacea. Some workloads don’t flex that much, so you spend extra money for flexibility for a capability that you can provide more economically and efficiently if it were in-house.

Add Capacity in Balance

When I was in high school our physics teacher explained that temperature wasn’t the same as heat. He said “Heat is the result of a physical or chemical reaction. Temperature is simply the change in heat over the mass involved.” One of the kids asked (snarkily) “Then why don’t drag racers have bicycle tires on the back?” The teacher was caught off guard. The answer is that the amount of heat put into the tire is the same regardless of its size, but the temperature was related to the size of the area where the tire touched the road. A bicycle tire has only about two square inches on the pavement, a fat drag tire has 100 square inches or more. So putting the same amount of horsepower spinning the tire will cause the bicycle tire’s temperature to rise about 50 times more than the gumball’s will.

When you add capacity to a computing system, you need to balance related capacity elements or you’ll be wasting money. Doubling the processor’s power (MHz or MIPS) without proportionately increasing the memory or network capacity simply moves the constraint from one place to another. What used to be a system with a flat-out busy CPU now becomes a system that’s waiting for work with a queue at the memory, the disk drive, or the network card.

Adding Staff Makes Things Worse

Increasing any resource creates potential problems of its own, especially of the system’s underlying architecture is ignored. Fore the software development process (regardless of form) one such resource is staff. The book “The Mythical Man-Month” by Fred Brooks (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mythical-man-month-frederick-p-brooks-jr/1126893908) discusses how things go wrong.

The core problem is adding more people require strong communications and clear goals. Too many IT projects lack both. I once was part of an organization that consulted on a complex application rewrite – forty consultants, hundreds of developers, and very little guidance. The situation degenerated rapidly when the interim project manager decided we shouldn’t waste time on documentation. A problem would surface, the PM would kick off as task force, hold a meeting, and send everybody on their way. After the meeting, people would ask what specific decisions had been reached, but since there were no minutes, nobody could be sure. That would cause the PM to schedule another meeting, and so on. Two lessons I learned concerns meetings:

  1. If you do not have agenda, you do not have a meeting.
  2. If you do not distribute minutes, you did not have a meeting.

When you add staff, you must account for the extra overhead managing the activities of each person, and establish processes to monitor changes that every participant must follow. Scrum is an excellent way of flattening potentially harmful changes. By talking face to face regularly, the team knows everything that’s going on. Omit those meetings or rely on second-hand reports and the project is already off the rails. All that remains is to see how far things go wrong before someone notices.

In Conclusion …

If you have a computer system that suddenly gets a huge spike in load, do these things first:

  1. Review the performance reports. Look at changes in average queue length, response time, transaction flight time, and any relevant service level agreements or objectives.
  2. Identify likely bottlenecks
  3. Model the impact of additional resources
  4. Apply additional resource proportionately
  5. Continue to monitor performance

If you are unable to resolve the capacity constraints with these steps, examine the programs for internal limitations:

  1. Review program documentation, specifications, service level objectives, workload models and predictions, data flow diagrams, and design documents to understand architectural and design limits
  2. Determine what resource consumption assumptions were built per transaction type, and expected transaction workload mix
  3. Verify current transaction workload mix and resource consumption per transaction type
  4. Design program extension alternatives to accommodate increased concurrent users, transactions, resource demands per transaction class
  5. Model alternative design choices, including complexity, size, and verification (QA cost)
  6. Initiate refactoring based on this analysis

Note that if you do not have (or cannot find) the relevant documentation, you will need to examine the source code. At this point, you may need to bring in a small set of experts in the programming language to recreate the relevant documentation. Handy hint: before you start working on the source code, regenerate the load modules and compare them with the production stuff to identify any patches or variance between what’s in the library and what’s actually in production.

Bringing in a bunch of people before going through this analysis will cause confusion and waste resources. While to an uninformed public it may appear that something is being done, the likelihood is that what is actually being done will have to be expensively undone before the actual core problem can be resolved. Tread lightly. Plan ahead. State your assumptions, then verify them. Have a good plan and you’ll work it out. Remember, it’s just ones and zeros.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below, or @WilliamMalikTM.

The post “We Need COBOL Programmers!” No, You Probably Don’t appeared first on .

The Warriors - BSW #170

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Summer Fowler, Co-Chair of the Leadership Board for InfoSec World Conference, to discuss how this is an excellent opportunity for Executive, Management, and Technical teams to attend a conference together to learn more about both the business of cyber security and the latest in technical capabilities! In the Leadership and Communications segment, Leaders, Do You Have a Clear Vision for the Post-Crisis Future?, 3 recession scenarios and their impact on tech spend, Supply chain transparency: Technology, partnership and progress, and more!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/BSWEpisode170

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  • April 21st 2020 at 21:00
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FPGA Chip Flaws, Hacking Dropbox, & Starbleed - SWN #27

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week on the Security Weekly News, COVID-19 affects web traffic and attack trends, Hackers continue to exploit patched Pulse Secure VPN Flaws, Starbleed: Flaw in FPGA chips exposes safety-critical devices to attacks, COVID-19's impact on Tor, and more! Jason Wood delivers the Expert Commentary on how Attackers Are Not Letting This Crisis Go To Waste!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode27

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  • April 21st 2020 at 20:20
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SpectX: Log Parser for DFIR, (Tue, Apr 21st)

I hope this finds you all safe, healthy, and sheltered to the best of your ability.
  • April 21st 2020 at 02:29
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Crabby Code - ASW #104

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Rebecca Black, Senior Staff Application Security Engineer at Avalara, to talk about Building an AppSec Ecosystem! This week in the Application Security News, JSON Web Token Validation Bypass in Auth0 Authentication API, Mining for malicious Ruby gems, A Brief History of a Rootable Docker Image, Privacy In The Time Of COVID, and Threat modeling explained: A process for anticipating cyber attacks!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ASWEpisode104

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  • April 20th 2020 at 22:30
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KPOT AutoIt Script: Analysis, (Mon, Apr 20th)

In diary entry "KPOT Deployed via AutoIt Script" I obtained 3 files:
  • April 20th 2020 at 06:56
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KPOT Analysis: Obtaining the Decrypted KPOT EXE, (Sun, Apr 19th)

In diary entry "KPOT Deployed via AutoIt Script" I obtained 3 files:
  • April 19th 2020 at 08:03
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Maldoc Falsely Represented as DOCX Invoice Redirecting to Fake Apple Store, (Sat, Apr 18th)

This is a phishing document received today pretending to be an invoice (Word Document) from Apple Support but initial analysis shows it is a PDF document.
  • April 18th 2020 at 18:38
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Secure Your Nipples - PSW #647

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Wade Woolwine, Principal Threat Intelligence Researcher at Rapid7 to talk about Threat Intel Program Strategies! In our second segment, we welcome Magno Gomes, Director of Sales Engineering at Core Security (a HelpSystems Company), to discuss Penetration Testing to Validate Vulnerability Scanners! In the Security News, How to teach your iPhone to recognize you while wearing a mask, Hackers Targeting Critical Healthcare Facilities With Ransomware During Coronavirus Pandemic, VMware plugs critical flaw in vCenter Server, Russian state hackers behind San Francisco airport hack, and Macs Are More Secure, and Other Jokes You Can Tell Yourself!

 

To learn more about Core Security, visit: https://securityweekly.com/coresecurity

To learn more about Rapid7 or to request a demo, visit: https://securityweekly.com/rapid7

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/PSWEpisode647

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  • April 17th 2020 at 21:00
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Hospital Hacks, Masking Face ID, & Attacking 5G - Wrap Up - SWN #26

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week in the Security Weekly News Wrap Up Show, Doug White covers the hot topics and and stories across all our shows on the Security Weekly Network! How to teach your iPhone to recognize FACE ID while wearing a mask, Energetic bear behind SFO Airport site hacks, Hackers are targeting critical healthcare facilities with ransomware during the pandemic, Cyber insurance providers using "act of war" exclusion in reference to "cyberwar" in notPetya Claims, and more!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode26

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  • April 17th 2020 at 16:39
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This Week in Security News: 5 Reasons to Move Your Endpoint Security to the Cloud Now and ICEBUCKET Group Mimics Smart TVs to Steal Ad Money

By Jon Clay (Global Threat Communications)

Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about 5 reasons your organization should consider moving to a cloud managed solution. Also, read about a massive online fraud operation that has been mimicking smart TVs to fool online advertisers and gain unearned profits from online ads.

 

Read on:

Letter from the CEO: A Time of Kindness and Compassion

As a global company with headquarters in Japan, Trend Micro has been exposed to COVID-19 from the very early days when it first erupted in Asia. During these difficult times, Trend Micro has also witnessed the amazing power of positivity and kindness around the world. In this blog, read more about the importance of compassion during these unprecedented times from Trend Micro’s CEO, Eva Chen.

What Do Serverless Compute Platforms Mean for Security?

Developers deploying containers to restricted platforms or “serverless” containers to the likes of AWS Fargate, for example, should think about security differently – by looking upward, looking left and also looking all-around your cloud domain for opportunities to properly security your cloud native applications. 

April Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Battles 4 Bugs Under Active Exploit

Microsoft released its April 2020 Patch Tuesday security updates, its first big patch update released since the work-from-home era began, with a whopping 113 vulnerabilities. Microsoft has seen a 44% increase in the number of CVEs patched between January to April 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019, according to Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative – a likely result of an increasing number of researchers looking for bugs and an expanding portfolio of supported products.

5 Reasons to Move Your Endpoint Security to the Cloud Now

As the world adopts work from home initiatives, we’ve seen many organizations accelerate their plans to move from on-premises endpoint security and detection and response (EDR/XDR) solutions to SaaS versions. In this blog, learn about 5 reasons you should consider moving to a cloud managed solution.

Why Running a Privileged Container is Not a Good Idea

Containers are not, by any means, new. They have been consistently and increasingly adopted in the past few years, with security being a popular related topic. It is well-established that giving administrative powers to server users is not a good security practice. In the world of containers, we have the same paradigm. In this article, Trend Micro’s Fernando Cardoso explains why running a privileged container is a bad idea.

Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere

Over the past three decades, Trend Micro has observed the industry trends that have the biggest impact on its customers. One of the big things we’ve noticed is that threats move largely in tandem with changes to IT infrastructure. As digital transformation continues to remain a priority, it also comes with an expanded corporate attack surface, driving security leaders to demand enhanced visibility, detection and response across the entire enterprise — not just the endpoint.

Shift Well-Architecture Left. By Extension, Security Will Follow

Using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the norm in the cloud. From CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform, Serverless Framework and ARM, the options are nearly endless. IaC allows architects and DevOps engineers to version the application infrastructure as much as the developers are already versioning the code. So, any bad change, no matter if on the application code or infrastructure, can be easily inspected or, even better, rolled back.

Work from Home Presents a Data Security Challenge for Banks

The mass relocation of financial services employees from the office to their couch, dining table or spare room to stop the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus is a significant data security concern, according to several industry experts. In this article, learn how managers can support security efforts from Trend Micro’s Bill Malik.

Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H

For as long as cloud providers have been in business, discussing the Shared Responsibility Model has been priority when it comes to customer operation teams. It defines the different aspects of control, and with that control, comes the need to secure, manage, and maintain. In this blog, Trend Micro highlights some of the requirements and discusses the organization’s layout for responsibility.

Coronavirus Update App Leads to Project Spy Android and iOS Spyware

Trend Micro discovered a potential cyberespionage campaign, dubbed Project Spy, that infects Android and iOS devices with spyware. Project Spy uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a lure, posing as an app called ‘Coronavirus Updates’. Trend Micro also found similarities in two older samples disguised as a Google service and, subsequently, as a music app. Trend Micro noted a small number of downloads of the app in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Romania, Grenada and Russia.

Exposing Modular Adware: How DealPly, IsErIk, and ManageX Persist in Systems

Trend Micro has observed suspicious activities caused by adware, with common behaviors that include access to random domains with alternating consonant and vowel names, scheduled tasks, and in-memory execution via WScript that has proven to be an effective method to hide its operations. In this blog, Trend Micro walks through its analysis of three adware events linked to and named as Dealply, IsErIk and ManageX. 

ICEBUCKET Group Mimicked Smart TVs to Steal Ad Money

Cybersecurity firm and bot detection platform White Ops has discovered a massive online fraud operation that for the past few months has been mimicking smart TVs to fool online advertisers and gain unearned profits from online ads. White Ops has named this operation ICEBUCKET and has described it as “the largest case of SSAI spoofing” known to date.

Fake Messaging App Installers Promoted on Fraudulent Download Sites, Target Russian Users

Fake installers of popular messaging apps are being propagated via fraudulent download sites, as disclosed in a series of tweets by a security researcher from CronUp. Trend Micro has also encountered samples of the files. The sites and the apps are in Russian and are aiming to bait Russian users.

“Twin Flower” Campaign Jacks Up Network Traffic, Downloads Files, Steals Data

A campaign dubbed “Twin Flower” has been detected by Jinshan security researchers in a report published in Chinese and analyzed by Trend Micro. The files are believed to be downloaded unknowingly when visiting malicious sites or dropped into the system by another malware. The potentially unwanted application (PUA) PUA.Win32.BoxMini.A files are either a component or the main executable itself of a music downloader that automatically downloads music files without user consent.

Undertaking Security Challenges in Hybrid Cloud Environments

Businesses are now turning to hybrid cloud environments to make the most of the cloud’s dependability and dynamicity. The hybrid cloud gives organizations the speed and scalability of the public cloud, as well as the control and reliability of the private cloud. A 2019 Nutanix survey shows that 85% of its respondents regard the hybrid cloud as the ideal IT operating model.

How to Secure Video Conferencing Apps

What do businesses have to be wary of when it comes to their video conferencing software? Vulnerabilities, for one. Threat actors are not shy about using everything they have in their toolbox and are always on the lookout for any flaw or vulnerability they can exploit to pull off malicious attacks. In this blog, learn about securing your video conferencing apps and best practices for strengthening the security of work-from-home setups.

Monitoring and Maintaining Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 4: Best Practices

In the last blog of this four-part series, Trend Micro delves deeper into regular monitoring and maintenance of home network security, to ensure you’re getting the best protection that Trend Micro Home Network Security can provide your connected home.

Surprised by the ICEBUCKET operation that has described as “the largest case of SSAI spoofing” known to date? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.

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Weaponized RTF Document Generator & Mailer in PowerShell, (Fri, Apr 17th)

Another piece of malicious PowerShell script that I found while hunting. Like many malicious activities that occur in those days, it is related to the COVID19 pandemic. Its purpose of simple: It checks if Outlook is used by the victim and, if it's the case, it generates a malicious RTF document that is spread to all contacts extracted from Outlook. Let's have a look at it. The script is available on VT (SHA256: 1f7f0d75fe5dace66ec9b5935d28ba02765527f09f58345c2e33e17ab4c91bd7) and has a low score of 8/60[1].
  • April 17th 2020 at 10:35
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Using AppLocker to Prevent Living off the Land Attacks, (Thu, Apr 16th)

STI student David Brown published an STI research paper in January with some interesting ideas to prevent living off the land attacks with AppLocker. Living off the land attacks use existing Windows binaries instead of downloading specific attack tools. This post-compromise technique is very difficult to block. AppLocker isn't really designed to block these attacks because AppLocker by default does allow standard Windows binaries to run.
  • April 16th 2020 at 21:31
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Irons in the Fire - ESW #179

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we talk Enterprise News, to discuss how NeuVector adds to container security platform and automates end-to-end vulnerability management, Sysdig Expands Unified Monitoring Across IBM Cloud Services Globally, Optiv Hires Deloitte Stalwart Kevin Lynch as Chief Executive Officer, Illusive Networks Integrates with Infoblox to Speed Deployment, and Microsoft's April 2020 Patch Tuesday arrives with fixes for 3 zero-day exploits and 15 critical flaws! In our second segment, we welcome Terry McCorkle, Founder and CEO of PhishCloud, to discuss Phishing's effect on the Corporate Culture! In our final segment, we welcome Tim Williams, Founder and CEO of Index Engines, to talk about how Testing is the Missing Link for Protecting Your Data Against a Ransomware Attack!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ESWEpisode179

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  • April 16th 2020 at 09:00
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The Red Lions - SCW #24

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Jeffrey Smith, Managing Partner at Cyber Risk Underwriters, to sell us Cyber Insurance, and how he wants to take on the skeptics (e.g. the SCW hosts) about the role that Cyber Insurance plays in security! Jeffrey stays on for the Security and Compliance News, to talk about how Cyber Insurance in playing out in the real world, or at least how it's showing up in the news!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SCWEpisode24

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  • April 15th 2020 at 21:00
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Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H

By Jason Dablow
cloud

Whosawhatsit?! –  WHO is responsible for this anyways?

For as long as cloud providers have been in business, we’ve been discussing the Shared Responsibility Model when it comes to customer operation teams. It defines the different aspects of control, and with that control, comes the need to secure, manage, and maintain.

While I often make an assumption that everyone is already familiar with this model, let’s highlight some of the requirements as well as go a bit deeper into your organization’s layout for responsibility.

During your cloud migration, you’ll no doubt come across a variety of cloud services that fits into each of these configurations. From running cloud instances (IaaS) to cloud storage (SaaS), there’s a need to apply operational oversight (including security) to each of these based on your level of control of the service.  For example, in a cloud instance, since you’re still responsible for the Operating System and Applications, you’ll still need a patch management process in place, whereas with file object storage in the cloud, only oversight of permissions and data management is required. I think Mark Nunnikhoven does a great job in going into greater detail of the model here: https://blog.trendmicro.com/the-shared-responsibility-model/.

shared responsibility model

I’d like to zero in on some of the other “WHO”s that should be involved in security of your cloud migration.

InfoSec – I think this is the obvious mention here. Responsible for all information security within an organization. Since your cloud migration is working with “information”, InfoSec needs to be involved with how they get access to monitoring the security and risk associated to an organization. 

Cloud Architect – Another no-brainer in my eyes but worth a mention; if you’re not building a secure framework with a look beyond a “lift-and-shift” initial migration, you’ll be doomed with archaic principles leftover from the old way of doing things. An agile platform built for automating every operation including security should be the focus to achieving success.

IT / Cloud Ops – This may be the same or different teams. As more and more resources move to the cloud, an IT team will have less responsibilities for the physical infrastructure since it’s now operated by a cloud provider. They will need to go through a “migration” themselves to learn new skills to operate and secure a hybrid environment. This adaptation of new skills needs to be lead by…

Leadership – Yes, leadership plays an important role in operations and security even if they aren’t part of the CIO / CISO / COO branch. While I’m going to cringe while I type it, business transformation is a necessary step as you move along your cloud migration journey. The acceleration that the cloud provides can not be stifled by legacy operation and security ideologies. Every piece of the business needs to be involved in accelerating the value you’re delivering your customer base by implementing the agile processes including automation into the operations and security of your cloud.

With all of your key players focused on a successful cloud migration, regardless of what stage you’re in, you’ll reach the ultimate stage: the reinvention of your business where operational and security automation drives the acceleration of value delivered to your customers.

This blog is part of a multi-part series dealing with the principles of a successful cloud migration.  For more information, start at the first post here: https://blog.trendmicro.com/principles-of-a-cloud-migration-from-step-one-to-done/

The post Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H appeared first on .

5 reasons to move your endpoint security to the cloud now

By Chris Taylor

As the world has adopts work from home initiatives, we’ve seen many organizations accelerate their plans to move from on-premises endpoint security and Detection and Response (EDR/XDR) solutions to Software as a Service versions. And several customers who switched to the SaaS version last year, recently wrote us to tell how glad to have done so as they transitioned to working remote. Here are 5 reasons to consider moving to a cloud managed solution:

 

  1. No internal infrastructure management = less risk

If you haven’t found the time to update your endpoint security software and are one or two versions behind, you are putting your organization at risk of attack. Older versions do not have the same level of protection against ransomware and file-less attacks. Just as the threats are always evolving, the same is true for the technology built to protect against them.

With Apex One as a Service, you always have the latest version. There are no software patches to apply or Apex One servers to manage – we take care of it for you. If you are working remote, this is one less task to worry about and less servers in your environment which might need your attention.

  1. High availability, reliability

With redundant processes and continuous service monitoring, Apex One as a Services delivers the uptime you need with 99.9% availability. The operations team also proactively monitors for potential issues on your endpoints and with your prior approval, can fix minor issues with an endpoint agent before they need your attention.

  1. Faster Detection and Response (EDR/XDR)

By transferring endpoint telemetry to a cloud data lake, detection and response activities like investigations and sweeping can be processed much faster. For example, creating a root cause analysis diagram in cloud takes a fraction of the time since the data is readily available and can be quickly processed with the compute power of the cloud.

  1. Increased MITRE mapping

The unmatched power of cloud computing also enables analytics across a high volume of events and telemetry to identify a suspicious series of activities. This allows for innovative detection methods but also additional mapping of techniques and tactics to the MITRE framework.  Building the equivalent compute power in an on- premises architecture would be cost prohibitive.

  1. XDR – Combined Endpoint + Email Detection and Response

According to Verizon, 94% of malware incidents start with email.  When an endpoint incident occurs, chances are it came from an email message and you want to know what other users have messages with the same email or email attachment in their inbox? You can ask your email admin to run these searches for you which takes time and coordination. As Forrester recognized in the recently published report: The Forrester Wave™ Enterprise Detection and Response, Q1 2020:

“Trend Micro delivers XDR functionality that can be impactful today. Phishing may be the single most effective way for an adversary to deliver targeted payloads deep into an infrastructure. Trend Micro recognized this and made its first entrance into XDR by integrating Microsoft office 365 and Google G suite management capabilities into its EDR workflows.”

This XDR capability is available today by combining alerts, logs and activity data of Apex One as a Service and Trend Micro Cloud App Security. Endpoint data is linked with Office 365 or G Suite email information from Cloud App Security to quickly assess the email impact without having to use another tool or coordinate with other groups.

Moving endpoint protection and detection and response to the cloud, has enormous savings in customer time while increasing their protection and capabilities. If you are licensed with our Smart Protection Suites, you already have access to Apex One as a Service and our support team is ready to help you with your migration. If you are an older suite, talk to your Trend Micro sales rep about moving to a license which includes SaaS.

 

The post 5 reasons to move your endpoint security to the cloud now appeared first on .

Monitoring and Maintaining Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 4: Best Practices

By Trend Micro

We continue our four-part series on protecting your home and family. See the links to the previous parts at the end of this blog.

We’re now done with familiarizing ourselves with the features of Trend Micro Home Network Security (HNS) It’s now time for you to get a bit more adept at regular monitoring and maintenance, to ensure you’re getting the best protection HNS can provide your connected home.

Keeping Tabs on Your Home Network

Once you’re tracking the various internet-capable devices in your home within HNS, as with any security-related device it’s essential to monitor the activities captured by it. In the same way that we need to periodically review the videos taken by our security cameras, to check for any unusual events in or around the home that need our attention; so too, do you need to keep abreast of the goings on in your home network, particularly those of an unusual or suspect nature, as revealed by HNS. This can easily be done in two ways: via Voice Control and Reports.

Voice Control. When you want just a quick overview of the status of your network, you can use HNS’s Voice Control. Voice Control is available as a skill for both Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

Once the skill has been enabled, you can ask Alexa or Google Assistant to control your Home Network Security (HNS) using the following voice commands:

  • Start a Check Devices Scan – To check your network and devices, say: “Alexa (or Ok, Google), tell Trend Micro to scan my network.”
  • Get Your Security Status – To get a network security status update, say: “Alexa (Ok, Google), ask Trend Micro if my network is ok.”
  • Get An Online Activity Summary – To get a summary of a profile’s online activity, say: “Alexa (Ok, Google), ask Trend Micro what Tom (or any member of your household) did today.”
  • Pause the Internet for a Profile – To disconnect the devices assigned to a profile from the internet, say: “Alexa (Ok, Google), ask Trend Micro to pause the Internet for Tom (or any member of your household).”
  • Pause YouTube for a Profile – To prevent the devices assigned to a profile from accessing YouTube, say: “Alexa (Ok, Google), ask Trend Micro to turn off YouTube for Tom (or any member of your household).”
  • Use the Dashboard – Lastly, though not a voice command, checking out the Dashboard of the HNS app will give you a brief summary of the state of security of your home network, and will let you know if anything triggered any Parental Control rules that you’ve set.

Reports. On the other hand, if you have more time to spare, you can peruse the Reports for your devices, user profiles, and network usage.

  • Devices. On your HNS app, Tap Menu > Devices and select a device. Then, tap Report and choose the report you want to view in order to see more details.
  • User Profiles. From your HNS app, Tap Menu > Family and select a user profile. Then, tap Report and choose an event card from the list to see more details.
  • Network Usage. Besides knowing the status of your devices and users, it’s also necessary to know your network usage, especially when your home network relies on a metered connection. Having an idea which devices are hogs on the network will allow you to make proper adjustments, either to rules you implement for your youngsters and other members of your household; or to let you know that maybe you need to upgrade your internet plan to address the more intensive internet needs of your family. Network usage can be viewed by scrolling down to the bottom of the Dashboard and tapping the Network Usage graph; or you can just simply tap Menu > Network. Both will display more detailed network usage information.

Responding to Network Events

Now that you’re more acquainted with your home network through HNS, it’s vital that you know what to do when, for instance, you received a Smart Alert notification indicating an unusually high network activity detected on one of your connected devices.

A Range of Network Events. In brief, you’ll need to review the recent activities and perform the required actions to eliminate risks such as the following:

  • Check if there are any important security-related issues you need to resolve by checking if the ball at the top of the Dashboard says “Action Required”. Tap the ball to find out what you need to do to make sure your network and device security are optimal.
  • Check detected network activities.
  • Check if the device where the unusually high network activity was detected.
  • Select the device where the unusual activity was detected to view the Summary Report for the past 7 days.
  • You will see the unusual network traffic details, including the time range of the traffic and the amount of data used.
  • Check if the top 3 activity destinations were done by you or your family member.
  • If you are aware of the activities and not concerned about these events, tap Report > Not Unusual.
  • If these unusually high traffic activities were not caused by you or your family member, you need to double-check that the Network and Security settings are still enabled, to keep your connected devices protected. Moreover, you should fix any vulnerabilities on your devices, usually resolved by a software or firmware update.

For more specific information regarding these types of incidents, you may refer to this Technical Support article.

Monitoring the Health of Your Home Network Security Station

The Home Network Security Station takes care of your home and your family’s security and safety. In return, you should know how to check if it’s in good working condition.

Physical Status. Check whether the physical components (LED, Reset button, Power, and Ethernet ports) of your Station are intact.

Power. Ensure that the Station is powered on. To check if the Station has power supply, just follow these simple steps:

  • Connect the adapter to the outlet and the Station.
  • Make sure power on the outlet is turned on.
  • Change outlets to ensure power is on.

Offline Notifications. When the HNS Station is offline the user will receive a notification about it. In addition, the HNS app will indicate the Station is offline. This situation can be attributed to loss of either the internet or LAN connections.

Internet Connection. Make sure you have stable internet connection. Checking your internet connection is easy:

  • Disconnect your Home Network Security Station from the router.
  • Check if internet line is connected to the router’s WAN port.
  • If there is no internet connection, do the following:
  • Reboot your router
  • Check the network status from your Internet Service Provider
  • Check your router settings

If you are able to connect to the internet, just reconnect your Home Network Security Station to the router.

LAN Connection. Check the connection between the router and the HNS Station.

  • Ensure that the Ethernet cable provided is used to connect the HNS Station to any available LAN port of your router.
  • Check if the two LED lights of the LAN port are turned on.
  • The port on the right should be blinking green, while the other port should be a steady green or yellow.
  • If the LED lights don’t light up as mentioned, move the Ethernet cable to another router LAN port. Once the LED lights become normal, your HNS Station should be connected to the network.

Updates. Make sure that you update the HNS App if you receive a notification that indicates, “Update Needed. Please click the button below to get the latest version.” This will guarantee that your HNS is up-to-date with app improvements.

Getting Help. Always remember, if you encounter any questions, issues or concerns that you’re unable to resolve, Help is just a click away.

Final Thoughts

Home networks are everywhere these days. However, the user knowledge required to secure and maintain our home networks spans from tech newbies to gurus and often seems to be a rather complicated or even confusing task.

To help you maintain and monitor your home network, Trend Micro offers a simple plug-and-protect home network device to protect your smart home and connected devices from being hacked, while keeping the internet safe for your kids on any device. But plug-and-protect doesn’t mean plug-and-forget. As with any security device, ongoing monitoring and maintenance is needed to provide the best protection your home network and family members need and deserve.

For more information, go to Trend Micro Home Network Security.

To read the rest of our series on HNS, go to

You’re in Safe Hands with Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 1: Setup and Configuration

Trend Micro Home Network Security Has Got You Covered – Part 2: Parental Controls

In Safe Hands with Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 3: Testing Its Functions

The post Monitoring and Maintaining Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 4: Best Practices appeared first on .

No IOCs? No Problem! Getting a Start Hunting for Malicious Office Files, (Wed, Apr 15th)

Most of us know that macros in Office documents are one of the most common ways to get malware into an organization.  Unfortunately, all to many organizations depend on their AV products to detect these macros and the associated malware.  It's sad fact that macro's are easy to write, and it's not too tough to evade AV by being smart about how you write a malicious macro.
  • April 15th 2020 at 12:53
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Higher Priority - BSW #169

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, it's our Security Money show, where we'll review the Security Weekly 25 Index and all the financial updates for both the public and private security markets! In the Leadership and Communications segment, the 3 stages of adapting to a crisis, build a culture that aligns to people's values, stop, start, defer: how companies are navigating technology spend in a crisis, and more!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/BSWEpisode169

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 15th 2020 at 09:00
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Some Good Meatiness - ASW #103

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Brad Geesaman, Co-Founder of Darkbit, to talk about Making Kubernetes a Hostile Place for Attackers! In the Application Security News, Zoom Taps Ex-Facebook CISO Amid Security Snafus, Lawsuit, How we abused Slack's TURN servers to gain access to internal services, Moving from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha, Automate Security Testing with ZAP and GitHub Actions, Shift-Right Testing: The Emergence of TestOps, and Building Secure and Reliable Systems!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ASWEpisode103

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  • April 14th 2020 at 21:00
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5G Conspiracies, Zombieware, & C-Suite Targets - SWN #25

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week on the Security Weekly News, Checkpoint Global Threat Index moved Dridex to third place, Dutch Telco towers damaged by 5G protestors, CyberCube reports indicate Increased targeting of C-Suite employees, Cybercrime may be the world's third-largest economy by 2021, and Jason Wood joins for the Expert Commentary on how WooCommerce Falls to Fresh Card-Skimmer Malware!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode25

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  • April 14th 2020 at 19:57
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Microsoft April 2020 Patch Tuesday, (Tue, Apr 14th)

This month we got patches for 113 vulnerabilities total. According to Microsoft, three of them are being exploited (CVE-2020-1020, CVE-2020-0938 and CVE-2020-0968)  and two were previously disclosed (CVE-2020-1020 and CVE-2020-0935).
  • April 14th 2020 at 18:22
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Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere

By Leah MacMillan

Over the past three decades, we’ve had time at Trend Micro to observe the industry trends that have the biggest impact on our customers. And one of the big things we’ve seen is that threats move largely in tandem with changes to IT infrastructure. This matters today because most organizations are transforming the way they run and manage their infrastructure—a daunting task on its own.

But with digital transformation also comes an expanded corporate attack surface, driving security leaders to demand enhanced visibility, detection & response across the entire enterprise — this is not just about the endpoint.

Transforming business

Over the past five years, there has been a major shift in the way IT infrastructure is delivered, and with that shift, increasing complexity. A big part of this change has been the use of the cloud, reflected in Gartner’s prediction that the market will grow to over $266 billion in 2020. Organizations everywhere are leveraging the cloud and DevOps to rapidly deliver new and differentiated applications and services for their customers, partners and employees. And the use of containers and microservices across a multi-cloud and hybrid environment is increasingly common.

In addition to leveraging public cloud services like IaaS, organizations are also rapidly adopting SaaS applications like Office 365, and expanding their use of mobile and collaborative applications to support remote working. Some are even arguing that working patterns may never be the same again, following the changes forced on many employers by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Combine these changes with networks that continue to extend to include branch offices and add new areas to protect like operational technology including industrial systems, and we can certainly see that the challenges facing the modern enterprise look nothing like they did a few years ago.

Under fire, under pressure

All of these infrastructure changes make for a broader attack surface that the bad guys can take advantage of, and they’re doing so with an increasingly wide range of tools and techniques. In the cloud there is a new class of vulnerabilities introduced through a greater use of open source, containers, orchestration platforms, supply chain applications and more. For all organizations, the majority of threats still prey upon the user, arriving via email (over 90% of the 52.3 billion we blocked in 2019), and they’re no longer just basic phishing attempts. There’s been an uptick in fileless events designed to bypass traditional security filters (we blocked 1.4 million last year). And Business Email Compromise (BEC) and ransomware continue to evolve, the latter causing major outages across local government, healthcare and other vulnerable sectors.

Organizations are often left flat-footed because they don’t have the in-house skills to secure a rapidly evolving IT environment. Mistakes get made, and configuration errors can allow the hackers to sneak in.

Against this backdrop, CISOs need visibility, detection and response capabilities across the extended enterprise. But in too many cases, teams are struggling because they have:

  • Too many security tools, in silos. Security leaders want to consolidate the 10, 20 or even 50+ security technologies currently in use across their organizations. And ideally, they need capabilities that work seamlessly together, sharing threat intelligence across security layers, and delivering a fully connected threat defense.
  • Too few people. Global cybersecurity skills shortages have now exceeded four million, with existing teams often overwhelmed by alerts, allowing serious threats to fly under the radar
  • Increased compliance pressures. CISOs are under pressure to comply with a number of regulations, and the impacts of non-compliance are increasingly strict. While newer, more demanding compliance requirements like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act aim to protect data, they also present operational challenges for cloud teams with complex, manual and time consuming audits. Not to mention new regulations have teeth, with fines that can have a serious impact on the bottom line.  For example, as of March 2020, 227 GDPR fines had been levied, totalling over 466 million euros.

Beyond the endpoint

While endpoint detection and response (EDR) has become a popular response to some of these problems over recent years, the reality is that cyber-attacks are rarely straightforward and limited to the endpoint (as noted in the email statistic above). Security teams actually need visibility, detection, and response across the entire IT environment, so they can better contextualize and deal with threats.

This is what Trend Micro XDR offers. It provides visibility across not just endpoints but also email, servers, cloud workloads and networks, applying AI and expert security analytics to correlate and identify potential threats. The result is fewer, higher fidelity alerts for stretched IT security teams to deal with. Recognizing the skills shortage reality, we also offer a managed XDR service that augments in-house SOC activities with the power of Trend Micro security experts.

Detection and response is too important to be limited to the endpoint. Today’s CISOs need visibility, detection, and response everywhere.

The post Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere appeared first on .

Letter from the CEO: A time of kindness and compassion

By Trend Micro

Dear Customers,

Together, we are facing a truly unprecedented situation and we have all had to adapt to the new reality. The global coronavirus pandemic is affecting our families, our communities, our organizations – indeed, it affects our perspective and way of life. As you certainly have too, at Trend Micro we have been busy over the past few weeks ensuring our employees are safe while also delivering uninterrupted service and protection for our customers. We have made it a priority to help organizations around the globe strengthen their security and ensure business continuity while so many of their employees work remotely.

As a global company with headquarters in Japan, we have been exposed to COVID-19 from the very early days when it first erupted in Asia. We have seen the massive impact this novel coronavirus has had on all of us: from social distancing, to families being separated, illness and even death. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who has been impacted by the virus, directly or indirectly.

The safety of our employees is our first priority and for the last few weeks the vast majority of our employees are all working from home – all 7,000 across 60 countries. It is heartwarming to see the different activities teams have launched to stay connected while being apart: virtual happy hours or morning coffee meetings, online sports classes to stay fit together, movie watching nights and even remote karaoke. I sometimes feel that we are more connected now than ever before.

In the midst of these difficult times, we have also seen the amazing power of positivity and kindness around the world. I am very touched and proud of how our employees, our Trenders, are stepping up even more than usual to engage in acts of generosity and community support. A few examples include:

  • Employee-initiated neighborhood help services such as shopping for the elderly
  • Tools developed to help our medical heroes, for example a 3D printed clip that allows medical staff to wear face masks more comfortably
  • New content for students and parents who are now working from home, developed by our Internet Safety for Kids & Families team
  • Over 60,000 masks donated to our communities
  • Give & Match activities supporting underserved neighborhoods in India and the Philippines, with the company matching each employee donation.

We have also seen Trenders donating some of their accrued paid vacation days to colleagues who might need additional time off to take care of family. There have been thousands of such acts of kindness – likely many more that I’m not even aware of. Knowing the passion of our employees, I know that there are new activities being organized and happening at this exact moment.

In this same spirit, it is very important to me – as well as the entire executive team – that we do the right thing for our employees and our customers during these difficult times, rather than focusing solely on what’s best for our bottom line. We intend to retain all of our employees, and are working to ensure that our teams that work on commission will continue to have a steady income, no matter how business goes. We know that not every company is as fortunate as we are, and many family members of our employees are out of jobs, so our executives have also committed to reducing their salaries if necessary, to ensure that every employee will receive company bonuses for the first half of 2020. If we protect our Trend Micro family, our Trend Micro family can protect and care for their communities.

I understand these times are difficult and while we are celebrating acts of kindness and positivity, many of our friends and families are struggling with health issues and other concerns. Our hearts go out to all those who are affected, to our healthcare workers and all essential employees who help keep our lives going. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Please stay safe – and stay at home!

Kind regards,

Eva Chen

 

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Shift Well-Architecture Left. By Extension, Security Will Follow

By Raphael Bottino, Solutions Architect

A story on how Infrastructure as Code can be your ally on Well-Architecting and securing your Cloud environment

By Raphael Bottino, Solutions Architect — first posted as a medium article
Using Infrastructure as Code(IaC for short) is the norm in the Cloud. CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform, Serverless Framework, ARM… the options are endless! And they are so many just because IaC makes total sense! It allows Architects and DevOps engineers to version the application infrastructure as much as the developers are already versioning the code. So any bad change, no matter if on the application code or infrastructure, can be easily inspected or, even better, rolled back.

For the rest of this article, let’s use CloudFormation as reference. And, if you are new to IaC, check how to create a new S3 bucket on AWS as code:

Pretty simple, right? And you can easily create as many buckets as you need using the above template (if you plan to do so, remove the BucketName line, since names are globally unique on S3!). For sure, way simpler and less prone to human error than clicking a bunch of buttons on AWS console or running commands on CLI.

Pretty simple, right? And you can easily create as many buckets as you need using the above template (if you plan to do so, remove the BucketName line, since names are globally unique on S3!). For sure, way simpler and less prone to human error than clicking a bunch of buttons on AWS console or running commands on CLI.

Well, it’s not that simple…

Although this is a functional and useful CloudFormation template, following correctly all its rules, it doesn’t follow the rules of something bigger and more important: The AWS Well-Architected Framework. This amazing tool is a set of whitepapers describing how to architect on top of AWS, from 5 different views, called Pillars: Security, Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, Reliability and Performance Efficiency. As you can see from the pillar names, an architecture that follows it will be more secure, cheaper, easier to operate, more reliable and with better performance.

Among others, this template will generate a S3 bucket that doesn’t have encryption enabled, doesn’t enforce said encryption and doesn’t log any kind of access to it–all recommended by the Well-Architected Framework. Even worse, these misconfigurations are really hard to catch in production and not visibly alerted by AWS. Even the great security tools provided by them such as Trusted Advisor or Security Hub won’t give an easy-to-spot list of buckets with those misconfigurations. Not for nothing Gartner states that 95% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault¹.

The DevOps movement brought to the masses a methodology of failing fast, which is not exactly compatible with the above scenario where a failure many times is just found out whenever unencrypted data is leaked or the access log is required. The question is, then, how to improve it? Spoiler alert: the answer lies on the IaC itself 🙂

Shifting Left

Even before making sure a CloudFormation template is following AWS’ own best practices, the first obvious requirement is to make sure that the template is valid. A fantastic open-source tool called cfn-lint is made available by AWS on GitHub² and can be easily adopted on any CI/CD pipeline, failing the build if the template is not valid, saving precious time. To shorten the feedback loop even further and fail even faster, the same tool can be adopted on the developer IDE³ as an extension so the template can be validated as it is coded. Pretty cool, right? But it still doesn’t help us with the misconfiguration problem that we created with that really simple template in the beginning of this post.

Conformity⁴ provides, among other capabilities, an API endpoint to scan CloudFormation templates against the Well-Architected Framework, and that’s exactly how I know that template is not adhering to its best practices. This API can be implemented on your pipeline, just like the cfn-lint. However, I wanted to move this check further left, just like the cfn-lint extension I mentioned before.

The Cloud Conformity Template Scanner Extension

With that challenge in mind, but also with the need for scanning my templates for misconfigurations fast myself, I came up with a Visual Studio Code extension that, leveraging Conformity’s API, allows the developer to scan the template as it is coded. The Extension can be found here⁵ or searching for “Conformity” on your IDE.

After installing it, scanning a template is as easy as running a command on VS Code. Below it is running for our template example:

This tool allows anyone to shift misconfiguration and compliance checking as left as possible, right on developers’ hands. To use the extension, you’ll need a Conformity API key. If you don’t have one and want to try it out, Conformity provides a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. If you like it but feels that this time period is not enough for you, let me know and I’ll try to make it available to you.

But… What about my bucket template?

Oh, by the way, if you are wondering how a S3 bucket CloudFormation template looks like when following the best practices, take a look:

   
A Well-Architected bucket template

Not as simple, right? That’s exactly why this kind of tool is really powerful, allowing developers to learn as they code and organizations to fail the deployment of any resource that goes against the AWS recommendations.

References

[1] https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/why-cloud-security-is-everyones-business

[2] https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cfn-python-lint

[3] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kddejong.vscode-cfn-lint

[4] https://www.cloudconformity.com/

[5] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=raphaelbottino.cc-template-scanner

The post Shift Well-Architecture Left. By Extension, Security Will Follow appeared first on .

Look at the same phishing campaign 3 months apart, (Mon, Apr 13th)

While going through a batch of malicious e-mails, which were caught by my mail filters in March, I noticed a simple phishing e-mail, which carried an entire credential-stealing page in its attachment. This, although interesting in its own way, would not be that unusual[1,2]. While I was analyzing it, however, I found that a nearly identical e-mail message, which was obviously part of the same campaign, was uploaded to Any.Run[3] back in January. Since I had two samples from nearly 3 months apart, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at how much has changed in this phishing campaign over that time.
  • April 13th 2020 at 13:54
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Critical Vuln in vCenter vmdir (CVE-2020-3952), (Fri, Apr 10th)

On April 9, VMware published VMSA-2020-0006, a security advisory for a critical vulnerability in vCenter Server that received the maximum CVSSv3 score of 10.0.  The vulnerablity, %%cve:2020-3952%% , involves a sensitive information disclosure flaw in the VMware Directory Service (vmdir) which is included with VMware vCenter. Per the advisory, vmdir does not implement proper access controls, which could allow a malicious attacker with network access to obtain sensitive information.  This likely can allow the attacker to compromise other services which rely on vmdir for authentication.
  • April 10th 2020 at 22:30
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PowerShell Sample Extracting Payload From SSL, (Fri, Apr 10th)

Another diary, another technique to fetch a malicious payload and execute it on the victim host. I spotted this piece of Powershell code this morning while reviewing my hunting results. It implements a very interesting technique. As usual, all the code snippets below have been beautified.
  • April 10th 2020 at 09:32
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Performing deception to OS Fingerprint (Part 1: nmap), (Sat, Mar 28th)

How can you know which operating system is running on a specific remote host? The technique to answer this question corresponds to the fingerprinting of the operating system and is executed by sending a specific set of packages to the remote host and see how it behaves. Each operating system responds differently, which allows it to be identified. 
  • April 9th 2020 at 21:58
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What do serverless compute platforms mean for security?

By Trend Micro

By Kyle Klassen Product Manager – Cloud Native Application Security at Trend Micro

Containers provide many great benefits to organizations – they’re lightweight, flexible, add consistency across different environments and scale easily.

One of the characteristics of containers is that they run in dedicated namespaces with isolated resource requirements. General purpose OS’s deployed to run containers might be viewed as overkill since many of their features and interfaces aren’t needed.

A key tenant in the cybersecurity doctrine is to harden platforms by exposing only the fewest number of interfaces and applying the tightest configurations required to run only the required operations.

Developers deploying containers to restricted platforms or “serverless” containers to the likes of AWS Fargate for example, should think about security differently – by looking upward, looking left and also looking all-around your cloud domain for opportunities to properly security your cloud native applications. Oh, and don’t forget to look outside. Let me explain…

Looking Upward

As infrastructure, OS, container orchestration and runtimes become the domain of the cloud provider, the user’s primary responsibility becomes securing the containers and applications themselves. This is where Trend Micro Cloud One™, a security services platform for cloud builders, can help Dev and Ops teams better implement build pipeline and runtime security requirements.  Cloud One – Application Security embeds a security library within the application itself to provide defense against web application attacks and to detect malicious activity.

One of the greatest benefits of this technology is that once an application is secured in this manner, it can be deployed anywhere and the protection comes along for the ride. Users can be confident their applications are secure whether deployed in a container on traditional hosts, into EKS on AWS Bottlerocket, serverless on AWS Fargate, or even as an AWS Lambda function!

Looking Left

It’s great that cloud providers are taking security seriously and providing increasingly secure environments within which to deploy your containers. But you need to make sure your containers themselves are not introducing security risks. This can be accomplished with container image scanning to identify security issues before these images ever make it to the production environment.

Enter Deep Security Smart Check – Container Image Scanning part of the Cloud One offering. Scans must be able to detect more than just vulnerabilities. Developer reliance on code re-use, public images, and 3rd party contributions mean that malware injection into private images is a real concern. Sensitive objects like secrets, keys and certificates must be found and removed and assurance against regulatory requirements like PCI, HIPAA or NIST should be a requirement before a container image is allowed to run.

Looking All-Around

Imagine taking the effort to ensure your applications, containers and functions are built securely, comply with strict security regulations and are deployed into container optimized cloud environments only to find out that you’ve still become a victim of an attack! How could this be? Well, one common oversight is recognizing the importance of disciplined configuration and management of the cloud resources themselves – you can’t assume they’re secure just because they’re working.

But, making sure your cloud services are secure can be a daunting task – likely comprised of dozens of cloud services, each with as many configuration options – these environments are complex. Cloud One – Conformity is your cloud security companion and gives you assurance that any hidden security issues with your cloud configurations are detected and prioritized. Disabled security options, weak keys, open permissions, encryption options, high-risk exposures and many, many more best practice security rules make it easy to conform to security best practices and get the most from your cloud provider services.

Look Outside

All done? Not quite. You also need to think about how the business workflows of your cloud applications ingest files (or malware?).  Cloud storage like S3 Buckets are often used to accept files from external customers and partners.  Blindly accepting uploads and pulling them into your workflows is an open door for attack.

Cloud One – File Storage Security incorporates Trend Micro’s best-in-class malware detection technology to identify and remove files infected with malware. As a cloud native application itself, the service deploys easily with deployment templates and runs as a ‘set and forget’ service – automatically scanning new files of any type, any size and automatically removing malware so you can be confident that all of your downstream workflows are protected.

It’s still about Shared Responsibility

Cloud providers will continue to offer security features for deploying cloud native applications – and you should embrace all of this capability.  However, you can’t assume your cloud environment is optimally secure without validating your configurations. And once you have a secure environment, you need to secure all of the components within your control – your functions, applications, containers and workflows. With this practical approach, Trend Micro Cloud One™ perfectly complements your cloud services with Network Security, Workload Security, Application Security, Container Security, File Storage Security and Conformity for cloud posture management, so you can be confident that you’ve got security covered no matter which way you look.

To learn more visit Trendmicro.com/CloudOne and join our webinar on cloud native application threats https://resources.trendmicro.com/Cloud-One-Webinar-Series-Cloud-Native-Application-Threats.html

 

 

 

 

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Exploitable By Design - PSW #646

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we bring you one of Security Weekly's very own, Tyler Robinson, Managing Director of Network Operations at Nisos, for a Technical Segment titled: To Hunt or Not To Hunt: Using offensive tooling to obtain OSINT and Real-Time Intelligence on a subject of interest for hunting or targeting! In our second segment, we talk Security News, to discuss Vulnerabilities in B&R Automation Software Facilitate Attacks on ICS Networks, Using AWS to secure your web applications, Serious Vulnerabilities Patched in Chrome & Firefox, Email Provider that got Hacked & Data of 600,000 Users is Now being Sold on the Dark Web, and As if the world couldn't get any weirder, this AI toilet scans your anus to identify you! In our final segment, we air a pre recorded interview with Jeff Man, entitled "Tales from the Crypt...Analysts pt.2", discussing many myths, legends and fables in hacker history!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/PSWEpisode646

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes!

To view ngrok, visit: https://www.ngrok.com/

To check out the Trape tool, visit: https://github.com/jofpin/trape

 

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  • April 10th 2020 at 21:00
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COBOL, Grace Hopper, & AI Toilets - Wrap Up - SWN #24

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, Doug White brings you the latest on the Security Weekly Network in the Weekly Wrap Up, discussing Soaring phone calls, analprints, yes, I said that correctly, snake oil, Grace Hopper's ghost, and COBOL. No one has ever said all those things in a single sentence in the history of the world. All this and more on the Security Weekly News Wrapup.

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode24

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

 

Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly

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  • April 10th 2020 at 19:37
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This Week in Security News: Exploring Common Threats to Cloud Security and Zoom Removes Meeting IDs from App Title Bar to Improve Privacy

By Jon Clay (Global Threat Communications)
week in security

Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about why Zoom has released an update for its Linux, Mac, and Windows apps that removes the meeting ID from the app’s title bar. Also, read about Trend Micro’s latest research on cloud-specific security, with examples of threats and risks that organizations could face when migrating to the cloud or using cloud services.

Read on:

Trend Micro Study Shows Cloud Misconfiguration as Major Threat

This week, Trend Micro released new research findings concerning cloud security, a major area of concern for enterprises of all sizes. The research confirms the role of both human errors and complex deployments in creating cloud-based cyber threats; above all, Trend Micro notes the dangers of cloud misconfiguration to cloud environments.  

NCSA Small Business Webinar Series

The National Cyber Security Alliance is hosting a series of webinars for small business owners, and Trend Micro is proud to support this effort with guest speakers sharing threat intelligence and security expertise. The topics will help small companies deal with the challenges of COVID-19, including sessions on telework, digital spring cleaning, e-commerce security, how to avoid COVID-19 scams and more.

Cisco ‘Critical Update’ Phishing Attack Steals Webex Credentials

An ongoing phishing campaign is reeling in victims with a recycled Cisco security advisory that warns of a critical vulnerability. The campaign urges victims to “update,” only to steal their credentials for Cisco’s Webex web conferencing platform instead. The campaign is looking to leverage the wave of remote workers who have come to rely on online conferencing tools like Webex and other platforms.

Principles of a Cloud Migration – From Step One to Done

Cloud migrations are happening every day and analysts predict over 75% of mid-size to large enterprises will migrate a workload to the cloud by 2021 – but how can you make sure your workload is successful? In this multi-part blog series, Trend Micro explores best practices, forward thinking, and use cases around creating a successful cloud migration from multiple perspectives.  

Zoomed In: A Look into a Coinminer Bundled with Zoom Installer

Trend Micro recently found a Coinminer bundled with the legitimate installer of video conferencing app Zoom, luring users who want to install the software but end up downloading a malicious file. The compromised files are assumed to come from fraudulent websites. Trend Micro has been working with Zoom to ensure that they are able to communicate this to their users appropriately.

Investigation into a Nefilim Attack Shows Signs of Lateral Movement, Possible Data Exfiltration

Trend Micro’s Managed XDR (MxDR) and Incident Response (IR) teams recently investigated an incident involving a company that was hit by the Nefilim ransomware, which was initially discovered in March 2020. What makes Nefilim especially devious is that the threat actors behind the attack threaten to release the victim’s stolen data on an online leak site.

Zoom Removes Meeting IDs from App Title Bar to Improve Privacy

Video conferencing service Zoom has released an update for its Linux, Mac, and Windows apps that removes the meeting ID from the app’s title bar. The update comes after the company’s users have often leaked their meeting IDs, and even meeting passwords, when sharing screenshots of their meetings on social media.

Analysis: Suspicious “Very Hidden” Formula on Excel 4.0 Macro Sheet

A malicious Microsoft Excel 4.0 Macro sheet with a suspicious formula that is set as “Very Hidden” was submitted by a customer and further analyzed by Trend Micro researchers. The sheet is not readily accessible via the Microsoft Excel User Interface (UI) due to a feature documented in the Microsoft website that allows users to hide sheets. The compromised files were commonly used as an attachment in spam.

Actively Exploited MS Exchange Flaw Present on 80% of Exposed Servers

Attackers looking to exploit CVE-2020-0688, a critical Microsoft Exchange flaw patched by Microsoft in February 2020, don’t have to look hard to find a server they can attack: according to an internet-wide scan performed by Rapid7 researchers, there are at least 315,000 and possibly as many as 350,000 vulnerable on-premise Exchange servers (out of 433,464 total) out there.

Misconfigured Docker Daemon API Ports Attacked for Kinsing Malware Campaign

A campaign that targets misconfigured Docker Daemon API ports through Kinsing malware was reported by security researchers from Aqua Security. The campaign exploited the ports to run an Ubuntu container. According to the researchers, Kinsing malware’s strings revealed that it is a Golang-based Linux agent.

Threat Actors Deliver Courier-Themed Spam Campaign with Attached ACE Files

Trend Micro researchers detected a new courier service-themed malicious spam campaign that uses ACE files as attachments. The samples were gathered from Trend Micro’s honeypot. The email poses as a shipment arrival notification with a fake receipt attached. It then convinces receivers to download the attachment by asking them to check if the address on the receipt is correct.blo

Exploring Common Threats to Cloud Security

Trend Micro’s recent cloud research provides examples of threats and risks organizations could face when migrating to the cloud or using cloud services. No matter the cloud service or platform, the common theme is that misconfiguration continues to be one of the major pitfalls of cloud security, affecting both companies who subscribe to cloud services and users of software that are hosted on the cloud.

PowerPoint ‘Weakness’ Opens Door to Malicious Mouse-Over Attack

A researcher is sounding the alarm over what he believes could be a novel attack vector which allows a hacker to manipulate a PowerPoint file to download and begin the installation of malware, simply by hovering over a hypertext link. The technique does require a victim to accept one pop-up dialogue box to run or install a program. For those reasons, Microsoft does not consider this a vulnerability.

Cloud Transformation Is the Biggest Opportunity to Fix Security

Lower costs, improved efficiencies and faster time to market are some of the primary benefits of transitioning to the cloud. However, it’s not done overnight. It can take years to move complete data centers and operational applications to the cloud and the benefits won’t be fully realized until most functional data have been transitioned.

Who is World Wired Labs and Why Are They Selling an Android Trojan?

A company advertising a remote access tool frequently used by criminals and nation-state hackers may be serving as a front for a Chinese hacking group, according to research published by BlackBerry Cylance. In a report on remote access trojans (RAT), researchers detail an Android malware variant, which they call PWNDROID4, that can be used to monitor targets’ phone calls, record audio, send and receive text messages, and track victims’ GPS location.

Is your organization looking to migrate to the cloud? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.

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