Bill’s Security Blog

Howdy folks!

Episode 195 of PaulDotCom Security Weekly prompted me to revisit an old favorite, netcat (many netcat versions exist). On the episode, Ed Skoudis provided an excellent technical segment on using netcat and netcat-like relays.

The write-up at PDC is very well done, but I thought I’d work my way through the examples, and try to illustrate with more text and some graphics. If you are following the notes on PDC, be advised I am using the term pivot synonymously with relay…

The goal of this post is to reinforce my own understanding of netcat by providing an informative introduction, and help readers who may not have familiarity with netcat develop an understanding of the possibilities the tool introduces.

Background

The simple netcat session consists of two steps:

1. On one host, create a netcat listener on a specified port – sometimes referred to as the server
2. On another host, create a netcat connection to the listener created in Step 1, sometimes referred to as the client

Once established, a netcat session provides bi-directional communication. Data going in one end, comes out the other. The session does not discriminate between ‘client’ and ’server.’ The only differentiator is that the listener is created first.

A fairly contrived networking example is provided below to illustrate netcat in use.

The version of netcat used in these examples is provided with BackTrack 4, and is slightly different than the version provided with some flavors of *Nix. But the basics are the same.  If you are using Ubuntu - the -p when creating the listener is optional.  Other than that, these command should work as written.

Example 1: Simple Netcat Session

Image 1: Simple Netcat Session

In this example, Host A and Host B want to communicate. Following the process described above, Host B creates a listener in Step 1, and Host A connects to that listener in Step 2.

A slightly more complicate example is provided in Example 2.

Example 2: Partial Pivot

Image 2: Partial Pivot

In Example 2, Hosts A and B can communicate, and B and C can communicate, but A and C cannot, directly.

If A wants to send data to C, we must pivot through B.  We must use B as a relay between A and C.

This requires two netcat sessions. One between B and C, and another between A and B. Naturally, then, we need to set up two listeners (servers) and two talkers (clients).

The first session is established between B and C. This is done in Step 1 and the second part of Step 2.
Step 1) > nc -l -p 3333
Step 2.2) > nc 10.1.0.3 3333

The second session is created between A and B. This is done in the first part of Step 2 and in Step 3:
Step 2.1) > nc -l -p 2222
Step 3) > nc 10.1.0.2 2222

The key to making this pivot work, is that we must connect the output of the second session (between Host A and B) to the input of the first session (between Host B and C). This can be seen in the diagram’s Step 2. Host B issues the command to establish the listener for the communication with Host A using a pipe to send the output to the connection is it making to Host C.
> nc -l -p 2222 | nc 10.1.0.3 3333
This basically says, “listen for data coming in on 2222 and pipe it to port 3333 on host 10.1.0.3.

Perfect. Now all data sent to stdin on Host A will be sent through the pivot at Host B and to stdout on Host C.

The problem, however, is that Host A cannot see the results of whatever he sends through to C.

The challenge is that Host A’s output to B is being piped into a netcat session with C. Data coming back from C appears on the stdout of Host B! Host A never gets to see what is going on.

To remedy this, we must pipe the stdout coming from Host C to Host B to a place A can see it. If Host B has write access to a publicly accessible source (e.g., ftp server, wwwroot, etc) then problem solved. Or, we can create a third netcat session back from B to A!

Example 3: Two-way Pivot

Image 3: Two-way Pivot

This example extends the second example by simply providing one more netcat session back from stdin on B (coming from C) to Host A.

The stinky part is that Host A now has two terminal windows open:

1. A session for sending the data through the pivot at B to C, and
2. A session for receiving the results coming from C back through the pivot at B.

What we do gain, however, is that though Hosts A and C cannot talk directly, they can relay their communications through an intermediary set of hosts to accomplish the same task.

This method can be simplified.

As Ed pointed out in his Technical Segment, a shell redirect through a named pipe works quite well.

Example 4: Two-Way Pivot Using Named Pipe

Image 3: Two-Way Pivot Using Named Pipe

In Example 3, the relay, Host B, creates a named pipe, and then funnels the netcat input/output through the named pipe.

Host B issues the following two items on the command line:
> mknod bp p
> nc -l -p 2222 0<bp | nc 10.1.0.3 3333 1>bp

To analyze, let me label each part of this set of commands:
A) mknod bp p
B) nc -l -p 2222 0<bp
C) nc 10.1.0.3 3333 1>bp
D) B | C

A) mknod bp p
In step A, Host B creates a named pipe of type FIFO (p). A FIFO pipe works just like a FIFO queue – First In, First Out. This means that the first data arriving in the pipe will be the first data taken out of the pipe. This will allow us to create a writer and a reader attached to the queue. If you envision this as a line at a bank, the reader will be the bank teller, taking folks out of the queue, and the door to the bank acts as the writer, adding folks to the queue.

B) nc -l -p 2222 0<bp
In step B, the host creates a listener bound to port 2222, and uses input redirection to dump anything from the named pipe (bp) into the netcat session. When a client actually connects to this netcat session, the input will be written to stdout on Host B.

C) nc 10.1.0.3 3333 1>bp
In step C, the host creates a netcat session to host 10.1.0.3, where the output (stdout) arriving from the listener at the far end will be written into the named pipe (because of 1>bp).

What we can see now, is that the netcat listener in Step B is the reader from the FIFO queue, and the netcat session created in Step C is the writer to the queue. Perfect.

D) B | C
The final command D ties the two components together. Without using the pipe operator, the stdout arriving from Host A is still written to stdout on Host B. By using the pipe, we push stdout arriving from A into the netcat session created to Host C, just as we’ve done several times in these examples.

To illustrate the full data flow, then. Once both sets of netcat sessions are established as illustrated in Example 4, data flows through the system as follows. Data entered at Host A is sent over the netcat session to Host B where it is redirected through a pipe ( “|” ) into the netcat session Host B has created with Host C. As data comes back from Host C, it arrives at Host B, is written into the named pipe using output redirection (1>bp), where it is picked up by the netcat session Host B has with Host A because of input redirection (0<bp)

Conclusion

Skoudis goes into several deeper examples in the PDC Episode 195 show notes, and I encourage folks to read. It seems that your imagination, and the combination of your user access rights and a forgiving firewall rule-set are the only things limiting you!

The goals of this post are to:

• Strengthen my knowledge by educating;
• Assist those who may not have much exposure to netcat; and
• Help spark interest in the countless possibilities introduced!

I help you found it useful.

Bill

Good article on the security of SCADA and control networks.

Some good background and some insights into how people might go about hacking these networks.  Social engineering almost always seems to work…

I know a lot of IT Security people don’t know a ton about SCADA or control networks, but they sure have an easy time hacking them.  I see a growing convergence between Control System people and IT people - hopefully they’ll talk about security.

Cyber watch

This is common theme for me.

Perhaps I should state my feelings clearly: “If you depend on wireless in a control system environment, you are friggin’ crazy!”

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a SCADA tool from Conlab called U.C.ME.

This tool touts two-way SMS management of your infrastructure! Sweet, eh?

Now, I wrote Conlab but haven’t heard anything meaningful back. Err… Well, I did. I got a quippy email… “You said you emailed us, but you never did.”

Well, I have tried again, and to no avail.

Looking at the product’s material, they seem to be referencing a company ControlSee.  I’ll contact them.  Perhaps Conlab is just a reseller?  Who knows.

I wrote Conlab, who I thought was the product creator, to ask them what kind of authentication they are doing, and how they are preventing simple things like replay attacks.

Crickets.

Google alerts just tossed me this:
“Imagine you could speak to your SCADA system… Send a text message to your SCADA system.”

More talk of controlling your infrastructure through remote access.

Zero talk of configuration and control of access.

Conlab, ControlSee, whoever, for the love of god and all that is holy, if you have any information on this, please send it to me. This kind of stuff keeps me up at night.

Bill

The attack vectors and mitigation are not exhaustive, and are exemplary only.

A denial of service (DOS) attack is an attack against limited resources. A DOS attack is an attack against the “availability” function of the typical “CIA” security triad of “Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability”.

A DOS attack is perpetrated by applying enough pressure against a target that the target’s resource allocation is overwhelmed.

In the question you posed, a DOS attacks can be perpetrated against any resource that supports the Web infrastructure.

A successful DOS attack against a web site tends to exhaust resources in one or more of three primary categories:

1. Network resources (routing capacity, network bandwidth, etc)
2. Web server resources (processor power, memory power, host networking capacity)
3. Database server resources

Mitigating a DOS attack involves protections at all three levels of the infrastructure.

One popular DOS attack is the “Distributed Denial of Service” attack.

Mitigation for this type of attack include:

• Network layer traffic filtering to attempt to block sources of the network-based DOS traffic.
• Increased network bandwidth and capability – Can you out-power the attackers.
• Website mirroring and caching can be employed.
• Website collocating can also help. If your website is hosted on multiple physical networks, taking the site down involves attacking multiple network resources.

A second attack vector is against the web server’s physical resources.

Perhaps you can get enough traffic through the network filters to overwhelm the web server’s processing capabilities.

Mitigation for this type of attack include:

• Throttling network filtering to ensure that the web server(s) do not get more traffic than they can handle.
• Website mirroring helps by adding additional capacity.
• Caching can also help by reducing the amount of processing necessary to serve the site.

Another type of DOS attack is a targeted attack against the applications running on the website.

If the website uses a database back-end, it is possible to execute a DOS attack by using SQL Injections that destroy database integrity, or prevent database access.

Mitigation for this type of attack include:

• Proper coding practices in the web applications that prevent SQL Injection attacks.
• Proper database account security that prevents unauthorized destruction of data.
• Database redundancy that attempts to keep the data available even if one or more data source is unavailable.

A snapshot of topics of personal interest that have been talked about in the IT Security realm over the past week.

NOTE: I have changed the name of this weekly post from “this week in infosec” to “last week in infosec” to capture the obscenely obvious.

NOTE 2: Last two weeks have been crushingly busy. Will try to catch up this coming week, but have doubts about my capability :)

Threats/Countermeasures

New core networking vulnerability in TCP on the horizon

Thought things were over when Kaminsky’s bug got fixed? Guess again.

From Rich Mogul’s Securosis blog: Massive TCP Flaw Looming (selected quotes)

Basically, it’s a massive unpatched denial of service attack that can take down nearly anything that uses TCP, in some cases forcing remote systems to reboot or potentially causing local damage. Codified in a tool called “Sockstress”, Robert E. Lee and Jack C. Louis seem to be having trouble getting the infrastructure vendors to pay attention.

From what Robert told me, supported by the articles, this tool allows an attacker to basically take down anything they want from nearly anywhere (like a home connection).

Rich points to other material:
Dark Reading Room: New DOS Attack Is a Killer
SearchSecurity: New attacks reveal fundamental problems with TCP

Rich followed up with a post on October 3: Why The TCP Attack Is Likely Bad, But Not That Bad - again, quoting selectively:

Here’s what I think you need to know:

1. It is almost certainly real.
2. Using this technique, an attacker with very few resources can lock up the TCP stack of the target system, potentially draining other resources, and maybe even forcing a reboot (Could this trash a host OS? We don’t know yet.).
3. Anything that accepts TCP connections is vulnerable. I believe that means passive sniffing/routing is safe.
4. The attack is obvious and traceable. Since we are using TCP and creating open connections (not UDP) it means spoofing/anonymous attacks don’t seem possible.
5. Thus, I’d be more worried about a botnet that floods your upstream provider than this targeted attack.
6. This is the kind of thing we should be able to filter, once our defenses are updated.

Countermeasures -
None at the moment - prayer might be a good start. From the SearchSecurity article:

“The best advice I have right now is don’t allow anonymous connections. Make whitelist so only certain IP addresses can come in,” Lee said, acknowledging the impracticality of that for a Web server or mail server or virtually any other TCP-enabled device. “There’s no real workaround right now.”

Verizon - Security FAIL
From BugTraq:
Verizon FIOS (and DSL?) wireless access point insecure default WEP key

By default, the 40-bit WEP key for the wireless router provided by
Verizon to FiOS (fiber optic) and possibly DSL customers is set to the
last 40 bits of the router’s 48-bit MAC address. This is significant
because the router’s MAC address (the MAC address of it’s WAN-side
ethernet port) is easily discoverable using kismet without even
needing to know the WEP key.

When I got my FIOS, I was excited to see that they at least had WEB enabled by default.

Because I don’t trust any wireless connection, I didn’t even bother looking too closely at the default WEP key. The built-in firewall is enabled, and it seemed much better of a default configuration than I expected.

But using the MAC as the WEP key… Uh… FAIL

Countermeasure - Change your WEP key. Do it… 5 minutes…

Yes, you can crack WEP easily, but why make it obscenely obvious. Changing the default at least makes the attacker have to work more than 30 seconds.

Attack Vectors/Trends

Exploiting web trends to serve malware
From ZDNet’s ZeroDay blog post: Cybercriminals syndicating Google Trends keywords to serve malware

In an underground ecosystem that is anything but old fashioned when it comes to abusing legitimate web services, cybecriminals have started exploiting the traffic momentum, and by monitoring the peak traffic for popular search queries using Google’s Trends, are syndicating the keywords in order to acquire the traffic and direct it to malware serving blogs primarily hosted at Windows Live’s Spaces.

One method for distributing malware is getting people to visit your malicious website and then using browser hacks or other tactics to get the user to download and install your app.

This technique takes advantage of popular search terms to seed their malware pages, increasing their relevancy in searches.

Cute.

A snapshot of topics of personal interest that have been talked about in the IT Security realm over the past week.

Threats/Countermeasures

Browser Security
While reading about the new attack vector called Clickjacking, I came across a useful article by US-Cert titled Securing Your Web Browser.

The guide covers specifics for both IE and Firefox, and is a must read.

Social Engineering
Get your passwords here, less than $10 USD
Brits Give Up Passwords For a £5 Gift Voucher

Attack Vectors/Trends

Clickjacking
Discovered by Robert Hansen and Jeremiah Grossman.  From: Clickjacking: Researchers raise alert for scary new cross-browser exploit

With this exploit, once you’re on the malicious web page, the bad guy can make you click on any link, any button, or anything on the page without you even seeing it happening.

Seems to rely on DHTML which cannot be disabled in browsers easily.

Work around - for the trusting types: don’t visit un-trusted sites and fill out any forms - be safe and wait for vendor patches.

Work around - for the paranoid: use Lynx or Links.

More info from US-Cert: Multiple Web Browsers Affected by Clickjacking

US-CERT is aware of public reports of a new cross-browser exploit technique called “Clickjacking.” According to one of the reports, Clickjacking gives an attacker the ability to trick a user into clicking on something only barely or momentarily noticeable. Therefore, if a user clicks on a web page, they may actually be clicking on content from another page. A separate report indicates that this flaw affects most web browsers and that no fix is available, but that disabling browser scripting and plug-ins may help mitigate some of the risks.

An additional report suggests that Firefox users consider using the NoScript plug-in as an added preventative measure. Disabling IFRAMEs by default, as outlined in the Securing Your Web Browser document, is reported to protect against the vulnerability.

News and Analysis

Blackberry
India’s government: At last, we’ve cracked Blackberry’s encryption

If this is true, why are we trusting Blackberry devices in the enterprise?

Good: We know they’ve cracked it.
Bad: Brings home the point that government knows everything about us.

Oh, I guess this is good:

“… still unable to crack BlackBerry Enterprise Service’s end-to-end AES or Triple DES, doesn’t really count as cracking Blackberry’s encryption.”

Google Chrome
Still more vulnerabilities coming out about this beta product.

Makes me think bout something - one positive about “old” code is that it’s been fully tested - most of the low-hanging-fruit should be worked out.

Much of Chrome is established code - but it looks like in the parts Google had to write - lots of issues.

Apple + Security == NULL
Java on Apple Mac OS X 10.5.4 and 10.5.5 does not prevent applets from accessing file:// URLs, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary programs.

National Cyber Security
Estonia posts their national Cyber Security Strategy

I’ll be reading it this week.

I think it’s pretty compelling to have a national strategy guide. I wonder how long the US document would be. I think it would take more than a decade to write, given the myriad of federal agencies that would need to be involved.

Bureaucracy = security fail.

It’s been a busy last week, and this week looks no less busy. I’ve missed out on some of my favorite blogs this past week, but will hopefully catch up if I can!

See you next week

I have been spending some time lately researching the growing trend of using wireless and other remote connectivity services in SCADA networks and other control system applications.

Being an Infosec guy, this is hugely concerning.

Subversion of wireless and other remote technologies is very easy relative to a wired network at a facility.

SImple examples of the types of issues we can expect:

• Replay attacks
• DOS attacks
• Unauthorized disclosure
• Additional attack vectors

Some control systems (running a candy making facility, for example) - may not associate very high risk values to these vectors.

But what if you are a water plant, sewage treatment facility, auto manufacturer.

What kind of damage can be done if:

• An attacker can sent arbitrary alarm messages
• An attacker can send arbitrary alarm reset messages
• An attacker can flood the wireless device - preventing alarms from sounding

You get the idea.

On PACE, I just read a post: New software for wireless automation control, regarding Conlab’s U.C.ME product:

U.C.ME-OPC interfaces with any SCADA/HMI, OPC or DDE server to provide efficient, rapid and secure two-way communication with SCADA platforms, remote devices and users, via text messaging (SMS) or telephony, says the company.

Now, from what it looks like, the U.C.ME system does not alter settings on any devices - it’s simply a monitoring tool, but what if your command and control decisions are based on the information coming out of U.C.ME?

I have contacted Conlab for more information and will report back.

For now, it’s best to take some precautions:

1. Know that every message sent by your systems over a wireless network will be read by an adversary.
2. Assume that all data received from this system, or by this system may be forged.
3. Know that not hearing from the system doesn’t mean anything is going wrong, or that hearing from the system means there is a problem.

Essentially: If you use wireless technologies of any tye in the control system space, don’t trust the data at all… Not one bit.

Bill

A snapshot of what’s been talked about in the IT Security realm over the past week.

Attack Vectors/Trends

This weekend I was listening to an episode of hmm… I think it was SecuraBit.

In any event, they spent some time talking about something I have posted about before: GIFAR.

GIFAR is combining Java JAR applets inside a GIF image.

When I first heard of it, I thought it was a neat vector, but didn’t fully consider the threat until I was listening to the podcast.

How many sites let users upload a profile image? Or how many social networking sites allow people to upload images and make galleries?

So, this bug is back on the radar.

News and Analysis

Microsoft, Apple, and age old bugs

This week @RISK listed a series of Microsoft image processing buffer overflows.

Buffer overflows. Yep, you heard it right.

Microsoft still doesn’t get it. Boundary checking is to a software developer what firewalls are to a network admin.

Shame on you, Microsoft.

The part that really gets my goat on this is that these are being discovered by researchers. Not by Microsoft. You can run automatic code checkers that will tell you that you have assignments with improper bounds checking.

This means that not only have Microsoft’s developers not gotten the clue, but also that Microsoft isn’t even doing the due diligence to do automated validation.

Fail.

Now, to be fair, there are several similar bugs this week in Apple products, including both host OS and iPhone.

But Apple is not enterprise ready, and it should not be used in the enterprise, and if it is, you get what you get.

Microsoft, on the other hand, explicitly bills themselves as the enterprise product. I expect more.

Google Chrome

I wrote a little about Chrome in last week’s This Week in Infosec.

Many more bugs have been discovered.

This is odd coming from Google that traditionally has pretty tight code.

Either they were rushing to market, or hoping that the community would debug for them.

Either way, they lost credibility with me. Yes, it’s still beta software, but some of these bugs are pretty basic stuff, like buffer overflows, which are insanely easy to find in the code.

A weekly snapshot of what’s been talked about in the IT Security realm over the past week.

Attacks

Adobe Flash ads launching clipboard hijack attack - From the ZDNet Zero Day blog:

Malicious hackers are using booby-trapped Flash banner ads to hijack clipboards for use in rogue security software attacks.

In the Web attacks, which target Mac, Windows and Linux users running Firefox, IE and Safari, hackers are seizing control of the machine’s clipboard and using a hard-to-delete URL that points to a fake anti-virus program.

According to victims on several Web forums, the attack is coming from Adobe Flash-based advertising on legitimate sites — including Newsweek, Digg and MSNBC.com.

We’ve all got Flash.  Keep it patched, though I haven’ t yet heard if there is a patch available for this attack vector.

Bypassing .NET’s ValidateRequest security feature

The Microsoft .NET framework comes with a request validation feature, configurable by the ValidateRequest setting. ValidateRequest has been a feature of ASP.NET since version 1.1. This feature consists of a series of filters, designed to prevent classic web input validation attacks such as HTML injection and XSS (Cross-site Scripting).

This paper introduces script injection payloads that bypass ASP .NET web validation filters and also details the trial-and-error procedure that was followed to reverse-engineer such filters by analyzing .NET debug errors.

We have a lot of .NET here, and my team is studying this paper.

Breaking News
From the Scottish Sunday Herald, “Revealed: 8 million victims in the world’s biggest cyber heist”

EXCLUSIVE: Sunday Herald uncovers theft of data from every guest in 1300 Best Western Hotels in past 12 months
By Iain S Bruce

AN INTERNATIONAL criminal gang has pulled off one of the most audacious cyber-crimes ever and stolen the identities of an estimated eight million people in a hacking raid that could ultimately net more than £2.8billion in illegal funds.

A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that late on Thursday night, a previously unknown Indian hacker successfully breached the IT defences of the Best Western Hotel group’s online booking system and sold details of how to access it through an underground network operated by the Russian mafia.

It is a move that has been dubbed the greatest cyber-heist in world history. The attack scooped up the personal details of every single customer that has booked into one of Best Western’s 1312 continental hotels since 2007.

Amounting to a complete identity-theft kit, the stolen data includes a range of private information including home addresses, telephone numbers, credit card details and place of employment.

This raises (again) some important issues for the IT and corporate space.  How much data should you keep about your clients, and for how long?

Now matter how good your defense-in-depth, someone will get through.  What will you allow them to find?

I’ll blog more on this later.

Older News
Students from MIT that were going to do a talk at DefCon were stopped by a court order.

Their research showed how to subvert the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority payment card system.

As a part of court filings, their full research was included.  Court documents are public domain, so, MBTA essentially released what they were trying to hide.

On the 19th, a judge lifted the restraining order, so the students are free to talk.

Will be interesting to see what happens.

I think this is the second time in the past few months where ‘private’ information was included in court filings and hence into the public domain.

Tools

Grendel-Scan - released at DefCon, this is a sophisticated, automated, Open Source web application penetration testing tool.

It appears to rival commercial tools.

I’ll be playing with this soon, I hope.

Countermeasures

Reduce attack surface!
Why allow access to anything by anyone who doesn’t absolutely need it.

Cyber Warfare
Some discussions resulting from the attacks of Georgian IT infrastructure by Russian hackers during the past few weeks.

Conclusion seems to be: we don’t have a real definition of what cyber war is, so it isn’t really warfare.

In my mind, true cyber warfare is using attacks against IT infrastructure as a force multiplier, or as a means of applying coercive pressure to an enemy of the state.

I do not think that the attackers have to be state sponsored.

Some would debate whether or not a DDOS is an act of warfare.  I say it is if it is intended to achieve: apply a coercive pressure to an enemy of the state.

A DDOS against a critical communications network, or safety critical control system would certainly qualify.  A DDOS against a n00b’s website, perhaps not.

On the Horizon

With elections right around the corner, I’m sure we will see the debate over electronic voting heat up.

Bill

Black Hat/Defcon Coverage

Lots of analysis of the Black Hat presentation by Mark Dowd of IBM’s ISS and Alexander Sotirov of VMWare about circumventing Vista security.

Essentially, they discovered a way to completely subvert most of Vista’s built in low-level security systems.

Let’s hope Microsoft gets it right in their next OS…

Note, there’s some people saying it isn’t a big deal.  Time will tell.

Here’s the summary from speaker’s list of Black Hat USA 2008:

Over the past several years, Microsoft has implemented a number of memory protection mechanisms with the goal of preventing the reliable exploitation of common software vulnerabilities on the Windows platform. Protection mechanisms such as GS, SafeSEH, DEP and ASLR complicate the exploitation of many memory corruption vulnerabilities and at first sight present an insurmountable obstacle for exploit developers.

This talk aims to present exploitation methodologies against this increasingly complex target. We will demonstrate how the inherent design limitations of the protection mechanisms in Windows Vista make them ineffective for preventing the exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities in browsers and other client applications.

More coverage:

• Bruce Schneier - Bypassing Microsoft Vista’s Memory Protection
• Search Security - Researchers use browser to elude Vista memory protections

Attack Trends

I keep up to date on the NIST’s National Vulnerability Database, updates to the milw0rm exploit database, and many others.

Though I don’t read all the alerts in detail (there are usually about 40 per day), I do try to scan enough to get an idea of what’s being disclosed.

The bulk seem to be SQL Injection Vulnerabilities or Cross Site Scripting (XSS).

These attacks can be very potent.

SQL injection can lead to information disclosure, unauthorized data modification, and data loss.

SQL injection attacks run through the browser and web server directly to the database.

XSS involves, generally, inserting script into URL’s or user input form fields that, when viewed by others, causes the script to run.  The scripts can run in the context of the user’s browser security zone, and has access to all cookies and whatnot.

Both types of attacks are difficult to deal with using “security tools.”  Most host-based intrusion detection systems (antivirus, anti-spiware, etc) are useless.

In both cases, application modifications need to be made.  Additionally, layer 7 firewalls can be employed to try to prevent these types of attacks.

From a defense-in-depth perspective, both approaches should be employed.

On another front, attacks against social networking sites continue.

As more and more private data gets into these online resources, they become a more attractive target for attackers.

New Attack Vectors

Kris Kaspersky of Kaspersky labs has uncovered flaws in Intel processors that allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on any computer that uses the flawed processor.

Man, that’s crazy stuff…

I wrote a blog post about it, “Why agro the OS when you can pwn the hardware?”

Bill