Defense
I wrote this over 5 years ago and wanted to see if it stood the test of time – I also see too often that organisations don’t have the right capabilitites to recover so I figured this is a good post on the subject.
Defense
Have you ever wondered what the absolute minimum you should do is to protect against cyber criminals? I’ll be honest I haven’t, that minimalistic approach to be seems kind of risky… BUT the world is not me and if you want to achive greatness you need a good foundation! So the essentials are good to know.
Read more “Endpoint Security – The Essentials”
Defense
Active directory permissions are a complex beast, at the core of Active Directory you have databases and partitions.
These have access controls lists, there are two types of these:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secauthz/access-control-lists
In active directory auditing these with out of the box tools can be a pain, especially when you are looking to enumerate effective permissions. Luckily a nice chap as made a great PowerShell app which can help you with your auditing activities! Read more “Active Directory Effective Permission Auditing”
Defense
https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/threat
According to those clever people at NIST it is:
“Any circumstance or event with the potential to adversely impact organizational operations (including mission, functions, image, or reputation), organizational assets, or individuals through an information system via unauthorized access, destruction, disclosure, modification of information, and/or denial of service. Also, the potential for a threat-source to successfully exploit a particular information system vulnerability.” Read more “Threat Modelling 101”
Defense
Everyone knows about cyber chef, right? Well, I can tell you now that my misses knows so if you don’t now’s a great time to get to know! Cyber Chef is a tool created by GCHQ distrubted via an apache license that’s hosted on GitHub or you can download and run locally. Read more “CyberChef Taster”
Guides
Back in 2019 I started to make some materials to help people with some basic offensive security techniques. I made three eppisodes of training materials. Well I’ve decided to re-release these, they haven’t really been changed but I’ve updated a few graphics on episode 3 and removed a link to Cain and Abel because it’s no longer maintained. I will probably go through these at some point and re-factor them.
I’ve got more documents on active directory security, I’ve actually written hundreds of pages on the subject but the challenge I’ve had is there is just so much to write, so I’ve decided I’m going to chunk it up into small blogs on a specific technique or area.
Read more “Hacking 101”
Defense
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world today. I believe it is about 35% of the market share globally. That is a lot of sites.
I have been using WordPress for years myself; some people give it some stick for being vulnerable but that is usually them referring to third party plugins. I like it because you can build a site easily, without having to spend ages and you can deploy it and migrate etc. without having a huge headache. Read more “WordPress Security Considerations”
Defense
I do not know Mr Martin, but I would assume that his role at NCSC and GCHQ would have given him a good insight into the realities of cybercrime, cyber terrorism, nation state affairs and how to effectively defend against cyber criminals (and other threat actors) so please read this blog as it is intended, it’s an analysis on the quoted statements and reporting style and general view of mine about current cyber war rhetoric, not an analysis of the person. Why am I writing this? Well, I am seeing an increased level of FUD, snake oil and cyber war rhetoric and I wanted to share some of my thoughts, opinions, and ideas in this space. For it is far too easy to call for war and in cyberspace do we even know what that means? Read more “Combating Cyber Crime: Should we really be charging to cyber war?”
Defense
For years you might have heard to have a complex password you change regularly (like every 30 days to keep you safe from the hax0rs) but well… let us not lie, it is bloody terrible advice.
Password cracking, brute force attacks, credential stuffing and well mad human things like writing passwords down on post it notes under keyboards are hugely prevalent still. The other day I managed to see a password used on a corporate system which was “Thursday49”. Yep, I know I know we all know that a weak easily guessable, easily crack able password is not a good idea yet honestly, humans like things that work and are simple vs remember their 6 favourite books in reverse order with a complex character and capital letter. Read more “Password Managers – The Good the Bad and the Ugly”
Defense
Firstly before we get into recovering passwords from the veeam servers we have to think why is this technique so important to know?
It’s not what you think, so if you are a red teamer/penetration tester then sure you are going to want to know this to support your goals. But the real value in knowing this is to drive home a specific message.
DO NOT (PRODUCTION) DOMAIN JOIN BACKUP SERVERS
Veeam expicitly suports not being on a domain for this very reason. Why Dan? Why is it so important to not (PRODUCTION) domain join them? Well my friends, if a threat actor gets into your network, gains high priviledge access to active directory and get’s onto you veeam server they will probably disrupt and destroy your backup just prior to ransoming everyhing they can. You do no want this!
Read more “Retrieving Passwords From Veeam Backup Servers”