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Posts Tagged ‘internet security’

How to Use E-mail PGP Encryption

Every day internet users send more than 200 billion emails and this statistics makes anonymous e-mail a number one feature to use in day-to-day communication.

Below here is a step by step guide to set up PGP encryption and communicate securely online. The tutorial is developed using Privatoria E-mail service, though one can use any e-mail client supporting this feature. The device used in this installation wizard is MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite. Pay attention that you can set up PGP on any device, regardless of OS.

Step 1

Please login to your Control Panel and go to Services /Anonymous E-Mail / Go to your inbox. You will be redirected to your mail inbox.

Step 2

Go to Settings section in the right top corner of your page. Click Open PGP – Enable OpenPGP – Save.

To start sending encrypted emails you need to first of all generate a KEY and send it to the recipient.

Click on Generate new key. It is recommended to set own password on this step and use it each and every time you want to send/receive encrypted emails. It provides additional security meaning that your PGP email can never be decrypted and/or your  signature is really yours! Please note that this password cannot be reset, but you can create a new one in case you forget it 🙂

Click Generate and wait for about half a minute until it is being generated. Once ready, you will see the following screen

To send an encrypted email you will need to use Public Key. Click View and then choose Send.

Step 3

You will be redirected to email interface ready to send your email. Send this email to the recipient first and wait until they send you their key. Once received click Import. Now, once the key is received you can proceed with sending the actual both-end encrypted email. Type in the recipient’s email, add subject  and body of your email.

To finalize the encryption click on PGP Sign/Encrypt and proceed further. You will receive a message “OpenPGP supports plain text only. Click OK to remove all the formatting and continue.” Click OK.

NB! Private key is your own key that encrypts the data and is being generated for you only.

Email recipient should use any email client supporting PGP encryption function.

 

Are We Creating An Insecure Internet of Things (IoT)? Security Challenges and Concerns

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been an industry buzzword for years, but sluggish development and limited commercialization have led some industry watchers to start calling it the “Internet of NoThings”.

Double puns aside, IoT development is in trouble. Aside from spawning geeky jokes unfit for most social occasions, the hype did not help; and, in fact, I believe it actually caused a lot more harm than good. There are a few problems with IoT, but all the positive coverage and baseless hype are one we could do without. The upside of generating more attention is clear: more investment, more VC funding, more consumer interest.

However, these come with an added level of scrutiny, which has made a number of shortcomings painfully obvious. After a couple of years of bullish forecasts and big promises, IoT security seems to be the biggest concern. The first few weeks of 2015 were not kind to this emerging industry, and most of the negative press revolved around security.

Was it justified? Was it just “fear, uncertainty and doubt” (FUD), brought about by years of hype? It was a bit of both; although some issues may have been overblown, the problems are very real, indeed.

From “Year Of IoT” To Annus Horribilis For IoT

Many commentators described 2015 as “the year of IoT,” but so far, it has been a year of bad press. Granted, there are still ten months to go, but negative reports keep piling on. Security firm Kaspersky recently ran a damning critique of IoT security challenges, with an unflattering headline, “Internet of Crappy Things”.

Kaspersky is no stranger to IoT criticism and controversy; the firm has been sounding alarm bells for a while, backing them up with examples of hacked smart homes, carwashes and even police surveillance systems. Whether a hacker wants to wash their ride free of charge, or stalk someone using their fitness tracker – IoT security flaws could make it possible.

Wind River published a white paper on IoT security in January 2015, and the report starts off with a sobering introduction. Titled Searching For The Silver Bullet, it summarizes the problem in just three paragraphs, which I will condense into a few points:

  • Security must be the foundational enabler for IoT.
  • There is currently no consensus on how to implement security in IoT on the device.
  • A prevalent, and unrealistic, expectation is that it is somehow possible to compress 25 years of security evolution into novel IoT devices.
  • There is no silver bullet that can effectively mitigate the threats.

However, there is some good news; the knowledge and experience are already here, but they have to be adapted to fit the unique constraints of IoT devices.

Unfortunately, this is where we as system security developers stumble upon another problem, a hardware problem.

U.S. Federal Trade Commission chairwoman, Edith Ramirez, addressed the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, warning that embedding sensors into everyday devices, and letting them record what we do, could pose a massive security risk.

Ramirez outlined three key challenges for the future of IoT:

  • Ubiquitous data collection.
  • Potential for unexpected uses of consumer data.
  • Heightened security risks.

She urged companies to enhance privacy and built secure IoT devices by adopting a security-focused approach, reducing the amount of data collected by IoT devices, and increasing transparency and providing consumers with a choice to opt-out of data collection.

Ramirez went on to say that developers of IoT devices have not spent time thinking about how to secure their devices and services from cyberattacks.

“The small size and limited processing power of many connected devices could inhibit encryption and other robust security measures,” said Ramirez. “Moreover, some connected devices are low-cost and essentially disposable. If a vulnerability is discovered on that type of device, it may be difficult to update the software or apply a patch – or even to get news of a fix to consumers.”

While Ramirez is spot on in most respects, I should note that the Internet went through a similar phase two decades ago. There were a lot of security concerns, and the nineties saw the emergence of the internet-borne malware, DDoS attacks, sophisticated phishing and more. Even though Hollywood depicted a dystopian future in some films, we have ended up with kittens on social networks and a high-profile security breach here and there.

The Internet is still not secure, so we can’t expect IoT to be secure, either. However, security is constantly evolving to meet new challenges, we’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again, with IoT and subsequent connected technologies.

IoT Hardware Is And Will Remain A Problem

Some of you will be thinking that the hardware issues mentioned by the FTC boss will be addressed; yes, some of them probably will.

As the IoT market grows, we will see more investment, and as hardware matures, we will get improved security. Chipmakers like Intel and ARM will be keen to offer better security with each new generation, since security could be a market differentiator, allowing them to grab more design wins and gain a bigger share.

Technology always advances, so why not? New manufacturing processes generally result in faster and more efficient processors, and sooner or later, the gap will close, thus providing developers with enough processing power to implement better security features. However, I am not so sure this is a realistic scenario.

insecure iot

First of all IoT chips won’t be big money-makers since they are tiny and usually based on outdated architectures. For example, the first-generation Intel Edison platform is based on Quark processors, which essentially use the same CPU instruction set and much of the design of the ancient Pentium P54C. However, the next-generation Edison microcomputer is based on a much faster processor, based on Atom Silvermont cores, which is in many Windows and Android tablets, today. (Intel shipped ~46m Bay Trail SoCs in 2014.)

On the face of it, we could end up with relatively modern 64-bit x86 CPU cores in IoT devices, but they won’t come cheap, they will still be substantially more complex than the smallest ARM cores, and therefore will need more battery power.

Cheap and disposable wearables, which appear to be the FTC’s biggest concern, won’t be powered by such chips, at least, not anytime soon. Consumers may end up with more powerful processors, such as Intel Atoms or ARMv8 chips, in some smart products, like smart refrigerators or washing machines with touchscreens, but they are impractical for disposable devices with no displays and with limited battery capacity.

Selling complete platforms, or reference designs for various IoT devices, could help chipmakers generate more revenue, while at the same time introduce more standardisation and security. The last thing the industry needs is more unstandardized devices and more fragmentation. This may sound like a logical and sound approach, since developers would end up with fewer platforms and more resources would be allocated for security, however, security breaches would also affect a bigger number of devices.

Money Is Pouring In, Analysts Remain Bullish, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

One of the most common ways of tackling any problem in the tech industry is to simply throw money at it. So, let’s see where we stand right now in terms of funding rather than technology.

According to research firms IDC and Gartner, IoT will grow to such an extent that it will transform the data centre industry by the end of the decade. Gartner expects the IoT market will have 26 billion installed units by 2020, creating huge opportunities for all parties, from data centres and hardware makers, to developers and designers. IDC also expects the IoT industry to end up with “billions of devices and trillions of dollars” by the end of the decade.

Gartner’s latest comprehensive IoT forecast was published in May 2014 and it also includes a list of potential challenges, some of which I’ve already covered:

  • Security: Increased automation and digitization creates new security concerns.
  • Enterprise: Security issues could pose safety risks.
  • Consumer Privacy: Potential of privacy breaches.
  • Data: Lots of data will be generated, both for big data and personal data.
  • Storage Management: Industry needs to figure out what to do with the data in a cost-effective manner.
  • Server Technologies: More investment in servers will be necessary.
  • Data Centre Network: WAN links are optimised for human interface applications, IoT is expected to dramatically change patterns by transmitting data automatically.

All these points (and more) must be addressed sooner or later, often at a substantial cost. We are no longer talking about tiny IoT chips and cheap toys based on such chips, this is infrastructure. This is a lot of silicon in server CPUs, expensive DDR4 ECC RAM and even bigger SSDs, all housed in expensive servers, in even bigger data centres.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg; industry must tackle bandwidth concerns, data management and privacy policies, and security. So how much money does that leave for security, which is on top of Gartner’s list of IoT challenges?

A lot of money is already pouring into the industry, VCs are getting on board and the pace of investment appears to be picking up. There were also a number of acquisitions, often involving big players like Google, Qualcomm, Samsung, Gemalto, Intel and others. There is a list of IoT-related investments on Postscapes. The trouble with many of these investments, especially those coming from VCs, is that they tend to focus on “shiny” things, devices that can be marketed soon, with a potentially spectacular ROI. These investments don’t do much for security or infrastructure, which would basically have to trail IoT demand.

Big players will have to do the heavy lifting, not VC-backed startups and toymakers. Agile and innovative startups will certainly play a big role by boosting adoption and creating demand, but they can’t do everything.

So let’s think of it this way, even a small company can build a car, or tens of thousands of cars, but it can’t build highways, roads, petrol stations and refineries. That same small company can build a safe vehicle using off-the-shelf technology to meet basic road safety standards, but it couldn’t build a Segway-like vehicle that would meet the same safety standards, nor could anyone else. Automotive safety standards could never apply to such vechicles, we don’t see people commuting to work on Segways, so we cannot expect the traditional tech security standard to apply to underpowered IoT devices, either.

Having commuters checking their email or playing Candy Crush while riding their Segways through rush hour traffic does not sound very safe, does it? So why should we expect IoT devices to be as safe as other connected devices, with vastly more powerful hardware and mature operating systems? It may be a strange analogy, but the bottom line is that IoT devices cannot be expected to conform to the same security standards as fully fledged computers.

But Wait, There Weren’t That Many IoT Security Debacles…

True, we don’t see a lot of headlines about spectacular IoT security breaches, but let me put it this way: how many security related headlines did you see about Android Wear? One? Two? None? It is estimated there are fewer than a million Android Wear devices in the wild, so they’re simply not a prime target for hackers, or a subject for security researchers.

How many IoT devices do you own and use right now? How many does your business use? That’s where the “Internet of NoThings” joke comes from, most people don’t have any. The numbers keep going up, but the average consumer is not buying many, so where is that growth coming from? IoT devices are out there and the numbers are booming, driven by enterprise rather than the consumer market.

Verizon and ABI Research estimate that there were 1.2 billion different devices connected to the internet last year, but by 2020, they expect as many as 5.4 billion B2B IoT connections.

Smart wristbands, toasters and dog collars aren’t a huge concern from a security perspective, but Verizon’s latest IoT report focuses on something a bit more interesting: enterprise.

The number of Verizon’s machine-to-machine (M2M) connections in the manufacturing sector increased by 204 percent from 2013 to 2014, followed by finance and insurance, media and entertainment, healthcare, retail and transportation. The Verizon report includes a breakdown of IoT trends in various industries, so it offers insight into the business side of things.

The overall tone of the report is upbeat, but it also lists a number of security concerns. Verizon describes security breaches in the energy industry as “unthinkable,” describes IoT security as “paramount” in manufacturing, and let’s not even bring up potential risks in healthcare and transportation.

How And When Will We Get A Secure Internet of Things?

I will not try to offer a definitive answer on how IoT security challenges can be resolved, or when. The industry is still searching for answers and there is a long way to go. Recent studies indicate that the majority of currently available IoT devices have security vulnerabilities. HP found that as many 70 percent of IoT devices are vulnerable to attack.

While growth offers a lot of opportunities, IoT is still not mature, or secure. Adding millions of new devices, hardware endpoints, billions of lines of code, along with more infrastructure to cope with the load, creates a vast set of challenges, unmatched by anything we have experienced over the past two decades.

That is why I am not an optimist.

I don’t believe the industry can apply a lot of security lessons to IoT, at least not quickly enough, not over the next couple of years. In my mind, the Internet analogy is a fallacy, simply because the internet of the nineties did not have to deal with such vastly different types of hardware. Using encryption and wasting clock cycles on security is not a problem on big x86 CPUs or ARM SoCs, but it won’t work the same way with tiny IoT devices with a fraction of the processing power and a much different power consumption envelope.

More elaborate processors, with a biger die, need bigger packaging and have to dissipate more heat. They also need more power, which means bigger, heavier, more expensive batteries. To shave off weight and reduce bulk, manufacturers would have to resort to using exotic materials and production techniques. All of the above would entail more R&D spending, longer time-to-market and a bigger bill of materials. With substantially higher prices and a premium build, such devices could hardly be considered disposable.

the internet of things - iot

So what has to be done to make IoT secure? A lot. And everyone has a role to play, from tech giants to individual developers.

Let’s take a look at a few basic points, such as what can be done, and what is being done, to improve IoT security now:

  • Emphasise security from day one
  • Lifecycle, future-proofing, updates
  • Access control and device authentication
  • Know your enemy
  • Prepare for security breaches

A clear emphasis on security from day one is always a good thing, especially when dealing with immature technologies and underdeveloped markets. If you are planning to develop your own IoT infrastructure, or deploy an existing solution, do your research and stay as informed as possible. This may involve trade-offs, as you could be presented with a choice of boosting security at the cost of compromising the user experience, but it’s worth it as long as you strike the right balance. This cannot be done on the fly, you have to plan ahead, and plan well.

In the rush to bring new products and services to market, many companies are likely to overlook long-term support. It happens all the time, even in the big leagues, so we always end up with millions of unpatched and insecure computers and mobile devices. They are simply too old for most companies to bother with, and it is bound to be even worse with disposable IoT devices. Major phone vendors don’t update their software on 2-3 year old phones, so imagine what will happen with $20 IoT devices that might be on your network for years. Planned obsolescence may be a part of it, but the truth is that updating old devices does not make much financial sense for the manufacturer since they have better things to do with their resources. Secure IoT devices would either have to be secure by design and impervious from the start, or receive vital updates throughout their lifecycle, and I’m sure you will agree neither option sounds realistic, at least, not yet.

Implementing secure access control and device authentication sounds like an obvious thing to bring up, but we are not dealing with your average connected device here. Creating access controls, and authentication methods, that can be implemented on cheap and compact IoT devices without compromising the user experience, or adding unnecessary hardware, is harder than it seems. As I mentioned earlier, lack of processing power is another problem, as most advanced encryption techniques simply wouldn’t work very well, if at all. In a previous post, I looked at one alternative, outsourcing encryption via the blockchain technology; I am not referring to the Bitcoin blockchain, but similar crypto technologies that are already being studied by several industry leaders.

Si vis pacem, para bellum – if you want peace, prepare for war. It is vital to study threats and potential attackers before tackling IoT security. The threat level is not the same for all devices and there are countless considerations to take into account; would someone rather hack your daughter’s teddy bear, or something a bit more serious? It’s necessary to reduce data risk, keep as much personal data as possible from IoT devices, properly secure necessary data transfers, and so on. However, to do all this, you first need to study the threat.

If all else fails, at least be prepared for potential security breaches. Sooner or later they will happen, to you or someone else (well, preferably a competitor). Always have an exit strategy, a way of securing as much data as possible and rendering compromised data useless without wrecking your IoT infrastructure. It is also necessary to educate customers, employees and everyone else involved in the process about the risks of such breaches. Instruct them in what to do in case of a breach, and what to do to avoid one.

Of course, a good disclaimer and TOS will also help if you end up dealing with the worst-case scenario.

The post originaly appeared on the: Toptal Engineering Blog

 

10 Most Common Web Security Vulnerabilities

For all too many companies, it’s not until after a breach has occurred that web security becomes a priority. During my years working as an IT Security professional, I have seen time and time again how obscure the world of IT Security is to so many of my fellow programmers.

An effective approach to IT security must, by definition, be proactive and defensive. Toward that end, this post is aimed at sparking a security mindset, hopefully injecting the reader with a healthy dose of paranoia.

In particular, this guide focuses on 10 common and significant web security pitfalls to be aware of, including recommendations on how they can be avoided. The focus is on the Top 10 Web Vulnerabilities identified by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), an international, non-profit organization whose goal is to improve software security across the globe.

A little web security primer before we start – authentication and authorization

When speaking with other programmers and IT professionals, I often encounter confusion regarding the distinction between authorization and authentication. And of course, the fact the abbreviation auth is often used for both helps aggravate this common confusion. This confusion is so common that maybe this issue should be included in this post as “Common Web Vulnerability Zero”.

So before we proceed, let’s clearly the distinction between these two terms:

  • Authentication: Verifying that a person is (or at least appears to be) a specific user, since he/she has correctly provided their security credentials (password, answers to security questions, fingerprint scan, etc.).
  • Authorization: Confirming that a particular user has access to a specific resource or is granted permission to perform a particular action.

Stated another way, authentication is knowing who an entity is, while authorization is knowing what a given entity can do.

Common Mistake #1: Injection flaws

Injection flaws result from a classic failure to filter untrusted input. It can happen when you pass unfiltered data to the SQL server (SQL injection), to the browser (XSS – we’ll talk about this later), to the LDAP server (LDAP injection), or anywhere else. The problem here is that the attacker can inject commands to these entities, resulting in loss of data and hijacking clients’ browsers.

Anything that your application receives from untrusted sources must be filtered, preferably according to a whitelist. You should almost never use a blacklist, as getting that right is very hard and usually easy to bypass. Antivirus software products typically provide stellar examples of failing blacklists. Pattern matching does not work.

Prevention: The good news is that protecting against injection is “simply” a matter of filtering your input properly and thinking about whether an input can be trusted. But the bad news is that all input needs to be properly filtered, unless it can unquestionably be trusted (but the saying “never say never” does come to mind here).

In a system with 1,000 inputs, for example, successfully filtering 999 of them is not sufficient, as this still leaves one field that can serve as the Achilles heal to bring down your system. And you might think that putting an SQL query result into another query is a good idea, as the database is trusted, but if the perimeter is not, the input comes indirectly from guys with malintent. This is called Second Order SQL Injection in case you’re interested.

Since filtering is pretty hard to do right (like crypto), what I usually advise is to rely on your framework’s filtering functions: they are proven to work and are thoroughly scrutinized. If you do not use frameworks, you really need to think hard about whether not using them really makes sense in your environment. 99% of the time it does not.

Common Mistake #2: Broken Authentication

This is a collection of multiple problems that might occur during broken authentication, but they don’t all stem from the same root cause.

Assuming that anyone still wants to roll their own authentication code in 2014 (what are you thinking??), I advise against it. It is extremely hard to get right, and there are a myriad of possible pitfalls, just to mention a few:

  1. The URL might contain the session id and leak it in the referer header to someone else.
  2. The passwords might not be encrypted either in storage or transit.
  3. The session ids might be predictable, thus gaining access is trivial.
  4. Session fixation might be possible.
  5. Session hijacking might be possible, timeouts not implemented right or using HTTP (no SSL), etc…

Prevention: The most straightforward way to avoid this web security vulnerability is to use a framework. You might be able to implement this correctly, but the former is much easier. In case you do want to roll your own code, be extremely paranoid and educate yourself on what the pitfalls are. There are quite a few.

Common Mistake #3: Cross Site Scripting (XSS)

This is a fairly widespread input sanitization failure (essentially a special case of common mistake #1). An attacker gives your web application JavaScript tags on input. When this input is returned to the user unsanitized, the user’s browser will execute it. It can be as simple as crafting a link and persuading a user to click it, or it can be something much more sinister. On page load the script runs and, for example, can be used to post your cookies to the attacker.

Prevention: There’s a simple web security solution: don’t return HTML tags to the client. This has the added benefit of defending against HTML injection, a similar attack whereby the attacker injects plain HTML content (such as images or loud invisible flash players) – not high-impact but surely annoying (“please make it stop!”). Usually, the workaround is simply converting all HTML entities, so that <script> is returned as &lt;script&gt;. The other often employed method of sanitization is using regular expressions to strip away HTML tags using regular expressions on < and >, but this is dangerous as a lot of browsers will interpret severely broken HTML just fine. Better to convert all characters to their escaped counterparts.

Common Mistake #4: Insecure Direct Object References

This is a classic case of trusting user input and paying the price in a resulting security vulnerability. A direct object reference means that an internal object such as a file or database key is exposed to the user. The problem with this is that the attacker can provide this reference and, if authorization is either not enforced (or is broken), the attacker can access or do things that they should be precluded from.

For example, the code has a download.php module that reads and lets the user download files, using a CGI parameter to specify the file name (e.g., download.php?file=something.txt). Either by mistake or due to laziness, the developer omitted authorization from the code. The attacker can now use this to download any system files that the user running PHP has access to, like the application code itself or other data left lying around on the server, like backups. Uh-oh.

Another common vulnerability example is a password reset function that relies on user input to determine whose password we’re resetting. After clicking the valid URL, an attacker can just modify the username field in the URL to say something like “admin”.

Incidentally, both of these examples are things I myself have seen appearing often “in the wild”.

Prevention: Perform user authorization properly and consistently, and whitelist the choices. More often than not though, the whole problem can be avoided by storing data internally and not relying on it being passed from the client via CGI parameters. Session variables in most frameworks are well suited for this purpose.

Common Mistake #5: Security misconfiguration

In my experience, web servers and applications that have been misconfigured are way more common than those that have been configured properly. Perhaps this because there is no shortage of ways to screw up. Some examples:

  1. Running the application with debug enabled in production.
  2. Having directory listing enabled on the server, which leaks valuable information.
  3. Running outdated software (think WordPress plugins, old PhpMyAdmin).
  4. Having unnecessary services running on the machine.
  5. Not changing default keys and passwords. (Happens way more frequently than you’d believe!)
  6. Revealing error handling information to the attackers, such as stack traces.

Prevention: Have a good (preferably automated) “build and deploy” process, which can run tests on deploy. The poor man’s security misconfiguration solution is post-commit hooks, to prevent the code from going out with default passwords and/or development stuff built in.

Common Mistake #6: Sensitive data exposure

This web security vulnerability is about crypto and resource protection. Sensitive data should be encrypted at all times, including in transit and at rest. No exceptions. Credit card information and user passwords should never travel or be stored unencrypted, and passwords should always be hashed. Obviously the crypto/hashing algorithm must not be a weak one – when in doubt, use AES (256 bits and up) and RSA (2048 bits and up).

And while it goes without saying that session IDs and sensitive data should not be traveling in the URLs and sensitive cookies should have the secure flag on, this is very important and cannot be over-emphasized.

Prevention:

  • In transit: Use HTTPS with a proper certificate and PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy). Do not accept anything over non-HTTPS connections. Have the secure flag on cookies.
  • In storage: This is harder. First and foremost, you need to lower your exposure. If you don’t need sensitive data, shred it. Data you don’t have can’t be stolen. Do not store credit card information ever, as you probably don’t want to have to deal with being PCI compliant. Sign up with a payment processor such as Stripe or Braintree. Second, if you have sensitive data that you actually do need, store it encrypted and make sure all passwords are hashed. For hashing, use of bcrypt is recommended. If you don’t use bcrypt, educate yourself on salting and rainbow tables.

And at the risk of stating the obvious, do not store the encryption keys next to the protected data. That’s like storing your bike with a lock that has the key in it. Protect your backups with encryption and keep your keys very private. And of course, don’t lose the keys!

Common Mistake #7: Missing function level access control

This is simply an authorization failure. It means that when a function is called on the server, proper authorization was not performed. A lot of times, developers rely on the fact that the server side generated the UI and they think that the functionality that is not supplied by the server cannot be accessed by the client. It is not as simple as that, as an attacker can always forge requests to the “hidden” functionality and will not be deterred by the fact that the UI doesn’t make this functionality easily accessible. Imagine there’s an /adminpanel, and the button is only present in the UI if the user is actually an admin. Nothing keeps an attacker from discovering this functionality and misusing it if authorization is missing.

Prevention: On the server side, authorization must always be done. Yes, always. No exceptions or vulnerabilities will result in serious problems.

Common Mistake #8: Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

This is a nice example of a confused deputy attack whereby the browser is fooled by some other party into misusing its authority. A 3rd party site, for example, can make the user’s browser misuse it’s authority to do something for the attacker.

In the case of CSRF, a 3rd party site issues requests to the target site (e.g., your bank) using your browser with your cookies / session. If you are logged in on one tab on your bank’s homepage, for example, and they are vulnerable to this attack, another tab can make your browser misuse its credentials on the attacker’s behalf, resulting in the confused deputy problem. The deputy is the browser that misuses its authority (session cookies) to do something the attacker instructs it to do.

Consider this example:

Attacker Alice wants to lighten target Todd’s wallet by transfering some of his money to her. Todd’s bank is vulnerable to CSRF. To send money, Todd has to access the following URL:

http://example.com/app/transferFunds?amount=1500&destinationAccount=4673243243

After this URL is opened, a success page is presented to Todd, and the transfer is done. Alice also knows, that Todd frequently visits a site under her control at blog.aliceisawesome.com, where she places the following snippet:

<img src="https://example.com/app/transferFunds?amount=1500&destinationAccount=4673243243" width="0" height="0" />

Upon visiting Alice’s website, Todd’s browser thinks that Alice links to an image, and automatically issues an HTTP GET request to fetch the “picture”, but this actually instructs Todd’s bank to transfer $1500 to Alice.

Incidentally, in addition to demonstrating the CSRF vulnerability, this example also demonstrates altering the server state with an idempotent HTTP GET request which is itself a serious vulnerability. HTTP GET requests must be idempotent (safe), meaning that they cannot alter the resource which is accessed. Never, ever, ever use idempotent methods to change the server state.

Fun fact: CSRF is also the method people used for cookie-stuffing in the past until affiliates got wiser.

Prevention: Store a secret token in a hidden form field which is inaccessible from the 3rd party site. You of course always have to verify this hidden field. Some sites ask for your password as well when modifying sensitive settings (like your password reminder email, for example), although I’d suspect this is there to prevent the misuse of your abandoned sessions (in an internet cafe for example).

Common Mistake #9: Using components with known vulnerabilities

The title says it all. I’d again classify this as more of a maintenance/deployment issue. Before incorporating new code, do some research, possibly some auditing. Using code that you got from a random person on GitHub or some forum might be very convenient, but is not without risk of serious web security vulnerability.

I have seen many instances, for example, where sites got owned (i.e., where an outsider gains administrative access to a system), not because the programmers were stupid, but because a 3rd party software remained unpatched for years in production. This is happening all the time with WordPress plugins for example. If you think they will not find your hidden phpmyadmin installation, let me introduce you to dirbuster.

The lesson here is that software development does not end when the application is deployed. There has to be documentation, tests, and plans on how to maintain and keep it updated, especially if it contains 3rd party or open source components.

Prevention:

  • Exercise caution. Beyond obviously using caution when using such components, do not be a copy-paste coder. Carefully inspect the piece of code you are about to put into your software, as it might be broken beyond repair (or in some cases, intentionally malicious).
  • Stay up-to-date. Make sure you are using the latest versions of everything that you trust, and have a plan to update them regularly. At least subscribe to a newsletter of new security vulnerabilities regarding the product.

Common Mistake #10: Unvalidated redirects and forwards

This is once again an input filtering issue. Suppose that the target site has a redirect.php module that takes a URL as a GET parameter. Manipulating the parameter can create a URL on targetsite.com that redirects the browser to malwareinstall.com. When the user sees the link, they will see targetsite.com/blahblahblahwhich the user thinks is trusted and is safe to click. Little do they know that this will actually transfer them onto a malware drop (or any other malicious) page. Alternatively, the attacker might redirect the browser to targetsite.com/deleteprofile?confirm=1.

It is worth mentioning, that stuffing unsanitized user-defined input into an HTTP header might lead to header injection which is pretty bad.

Prevention: Options include:

  • Don’t do redirects at all (they are seldom necessary).
  • Have a static list of valid locations to redirect to.
  • Whitelist the user-defined parameter, but this can be tricky.

Epilogue

I hope that I have managed to tickle your brain a little bit with this post and to introduce a healthy dose of paranoia and web security vulnerability awareness.

The core takeaway here is that age-old software practices exist for a reason and what applied back in the day for buffer overflows, still apply for pickled strings in Python today. Security helps you write correct(er) programs, which all programmers should aspire to.

Please use this knowledge responsibly, and don’t test pages without permission!

For more information and more specific attacks, have a look at: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:Attack.

Feedback on this post is welcome and appreciated. Future related posts are planned, particularly on the issue of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and old-school (not web) IT security vulnerabilities. If you have a specific request on what to write about, please feel free to contact me directly at [email protected].

Cheers.

This post originally appeared on the Toptal Engineering Blog

Cloud Security: Is it Safe Enough for You?

Cloud computing is a service that is increasing rapidly in popularity, and companies are expanding to match that demand. Forbes reports that 42 percent of major IT decision makers are planning to increase spending on cloud computing. That spending is expected to reach $32 billion for the year 2015.

Yet while the services are popular, there have been some major breaches in the last few years. While some of them haven’t directly affected you and others only really affected celebrities, it makes one asks questions. Are cloud services really safe? Are they something you can trust your most sensitive data with?

“Cloud computing” by Dynamicwork under CC BY-SA 3.0

This is a basic graphic of what cloud computer is all about, but as you can see there are quite a few thinks that go in and out of the cloud. Do you want your data to be included?

 

Pros and Cons of the Situation Today

The first realization you have to make is that your data is going to be out of your control in a fundamental way. You can make sure there isn’t a leak on your end, but if someone hacks the servers, it is out of your hands. It also isn’t encouraging that cloud service providers have profit in mind as their top priority. This means that they might trim the budget or try to cut corners when it comes to security. They often look to prepare for the next threat, not three threats ahead, as they should.

Back to a simple question: can you trust them? Take a look at the following pros and cons and decide whether it is right for you.

Pros

  • Most hackers attacking cloud systems are only interested in going after major industries and data centers with valuable information. They are unlikely to want your individual information or want to comb through all of your documents to find it.
    • While it is easier to attack an endpoint, such as a user, the price an average hacker could get for your information is simply not worth the time expenditure that the hacker would put in.
  • While governments certainly have not stopped their surveillance in the past year or two, the recent disclosure of the extensive surveillance programs, such as PRISM, conducted by certain countries have forced them to taper off their ambitions. This means that you are less likely to be spied upon during your use of cloud services.
  • Even if it just to maintain a good reputation, all of the major players in cloud computing and storage will agree that security is an important issue. This means that they will be competing with each other for the title of “most secure.”

Cons

  • In 2014, Dropbox changed its terms of use to stop class action lawsuits, and then gave everyone 30 days to opt out of arbitration.
  • Note that this Dropbox document is currently (as of August 2015) about 2,000 words, but still very few people read it.
  • Nearly every major service has had one problem or another during its lifetime.
    • This is only counting the ones we know about.

How to Make Your Decision

Now knowing all that you do, take the following steps to determine whether you should use cloud services or an alternative option.

  • Determine your needs. Do you have a lot of items or documents to store, or are you working from home and have vital business interests to protect? If you have some sensitive data, it might be best stored on a flash drive where it is under your control.
  • Determine the service you might use. Try to research more about that company. Read any agreements beforehand and then sleep on it for a day or two. Compare services in terms of both security record and storage space.
  • Consider the costs. If you want to store a great deal of data that you don’t plan on using too often, then you might be better off getting a form of physical storage instead of paying for a cloud service.
  • Are you going to be sharing files or data with people? If so, then cloud solutions are probably best for you. Some services such as Dropbox are optimized for sharing, but you do need to be careful about who you share your folders with. Experts across the board say that human error is the number one cause of data leaks.

Additional Considerations

In addition to the above factors and tips for deciding whether the security measures put in place by cloud services are enough, there are few other things that you should know about as well.

  • Cloud security on your end is highly dependent on the general security of your online accounts and your computer. If you have a quality password, such as “Tr!yzxp176,” and have an up to date computer with the best anti-malware you can get, then you will have a significantly lower chance of experiencing a breach. Take this into your account when making your decision (or follow these tips anyway, as they are universally helpful).
  • If you are going to be using cloud services, then you should acquire the services of a Virtual Private Network for your computer. This service will connect your computer to an offsite secure server using an encrypted connection. This will protect you from surveillance and data interception on unprotected public networks.As an example of how this works, imagine that you are using cloud services in a café. Normally a hacker could open their laptop a half a dozen tables away, start up a small device, and intercept either the files being transferred or the username and password data for the account you are using. With a VPN your data will safely travel through and encrypted “tunnel” that is created around your connection, allowing no one access over the network.

Cloud computing is said to be secure, but remember that there is always a way to break in, even if it hasn’t been invented yet.

 

Conclusion

Have you come to a decision yet? I hope that you have, and while these tips can help you and give you all the facts that you need to make a decision, only you can make the final call about whether to use cloud services or not. Thank you for reading, and regardless of your decision may you never have to deal with a leak of your personal information.

 

About the Author: Cassie Phillips is an internet security specialist who likes to take a particular focus on the individual and how internet security can affect their day to day life. She loves to blog and is glad that she can share this important information about cloud computing with you.

The Role of WebRTC Technology In Online Security

WebRTC technology is rather new (spearheaded by Google in 2012 through the World Wide Web Consortium). It is a free project that provides browsers with Real-Time Communications. The technology is now widely used in live help customer support solutions, webinar platforms, chat rooms for dating, etc. But there are too little solutions for enhanced safety. It’s weird. Since this technology offers great opportunities in this field.

WebRTC opens great opportunities in secure communications online

In the case of WebRTC technology to create a communication channel between subscribers is used Peer to Peer method. At the same time, there is no data transfer to any server. It is a great advantage. This ensures the confidentiality of transmitted information.

The majority of modern communication services works through central server. It means that all history is stored on the server and third parties can get access to them.

Using WebRTC technology security provider Privatoria.net developed a solution for confidential communication online in 2013. The main difference is the absence of data transfer to the server. Only the subscribers’ web browsers are used.

 

Chat service provides users with an opportunity to exchange messages by establishing a direct connection between their browsers and uses Peer to Peer method to communicate online.

To create a communication channel between subscribers it is enough to get a one-time key, and pass it to the called subscriber by any means of communication available. When the communication session is over, the history is deleted and the browser is closed, all correspondence between the subscribers disappears from the system.

In such case, no one can gain access to the content of communications.

A user will benefit from:

  • Secure text messaging
  • Secure Voice Call
  • Secure Video Call
  • Secure Data Transfer

As WebRTC supports not all browsers, Secure Chat solution works only in Google Chrome, Opera and Mozilla. At now developers are working on beta application for Android which will be available in Google Play Market in the nearest month.

Therefore, it is good chance for all us today to communicate securely online.

Data and Web Security in Business

Not all businesses are aware of just how much of their data is potentially at risk within their own systems and even their website; there simply isn’t the education in place to identify the flaws in one’s system before it’s too late in most cases, which results in compromised data, stolen data, loss of trust from customers and potentially a loss of funds or profits for the business in question; usually because of issues that could have easily been avoided.

First of all you need to secure the internal workings of your business; which means users and data storage. One of the biggest threats to your computer and data security systems is actually the people that you give access to those systems; the human element is less predictable so be sure to take the necessary precautions that will prevent or limit damages should an employee choose to act maliciously. Start by ensuring logins are required and are unique to each user, this allows you to control exactly what each person has access to, and means that it is easier to trace who is responsible if damage is caused. You should also be very careful about providing permissions to these users; consider what they absolutely must have access to, and why, and consider whether or not they really need access to everything they can access. Limitations are the first step towards protection.

Once you have this much protected you can start to think about how to avoid unauthorised access; password protecting everything is a good start, and encrypting sensitive information can be a fantastic way to avoid giving away data that is particularly valuable to your company. These are generally very easy systems to implement, and most security organisations you may choose to work with will help you to set up systems for encryption, data recovery, remote destruction (allowing you to delete data on a stolen device), as well as other aspects of data protections that can be very important to your business. These are important if your business handles a great deal of sensitive information, and of course if that is the case and security is of particularly importance you will want to get a security firm to help you protect it, however in a lot of cases your own IT department can set up the encryption, passwords, firewalls and defences needed to protect basic levels of data against reasonably tough attacks.

Of course your online systems can require something a little different in order to keep them safe, and this is true of your website as well as any online content management, project management or other systems you might be using in the day to day running of your business. Again it is important that everything is password protected to keep things safe and secure as far as your users and their access levels are concerned, but you should also ensure that the development of the websites and tools are done with a certain level of security in mind. There are some rules to this, but in general it isn’t too difficult if you can already develop a website.

No WordPress. If you want a secure website to handle lots of valuable data then WordPress isn’t for you, no matter how easy you think it makes your life. The problem with WordPress is that literally anyone can get it, and they all get the same version. Within a short time the vulnerabilities of that version will have been discovered and likely shared among hackers and other such people, meaning that you can either update or remain vulnerable – your only hope is that WordPress and you update often enough to stay one step ahead of the hackers. This is an issue that exists with a variety of similar platforms and would be difficult to keep yourself secure using these platforms – the best option is to use a secure platform and your own web development team or company.

The variations in the programming that come from using your own team help to create diversity online, which means that it is much harder for hackers and malicious users to find the ways into your system; thus keeping you protected for longer. Of course even with your own website you are likely to be working with systems like Magento for database integration and content management, which will need to be updated every so often but are considerably more secure than systems like WordPress, and you will have to keep certificates up to date, particularly your SSL certificates.

 

Kate Critchlow is a freelance writer with a passionate interest for technology covering everything from web development to IT security services.

Protect Yourself Before Being A Identity Theft Victim

With the technological advancement, new security threats are emerging that could be more devastating than any physical weapons. Identity theft is one of those security threats that should be treated as early as possible.  The creative folks at Ecogreen IT have created an infographic that depicts the shocking facts of identity theft and some preventive measures from being the victim of same.

 

 

Source: Ecogreen IT Recycling