The Security Challenges of 2021

The gaps between strategic security improvement and keeping the wolves out, today!

The Cyber Realities in 2021

Most organisations today honestly don’t have great cyber security postures. Cyber security has improved since the 80’s and 90s’s but still common gaps can be found in the same old areas.

So, whilst security possibilities and technical capabilities for defence have greatly improved, this hasn’t really translated into the level of change we would like to see on the ground inside organisations.

I’m writing this post after giving a talk today about the challenges I see in cyber security across different organisations but also after watching a talk by Dave Kennedy which from my perspective emulates my experiences and largely my views. Read more “The Security Challenges of 2021” →

Defense

Phishing your own people – path to eroding trust…

Introduction

“Security education and awareness darling, it’s all the rage! It’s simply to hot right now.” Ok stop, let’s take a minute to get some context. It’s the year 2021, organisations are taking a battering round the globe from cyber criminals who are deploying ransomware, extortion, and fraud via a range of methods but one you can’t not have heard of is phishing.

In this post today, I’m going to look at realities of initial access, phishing and some questions I think people should be asking themselves about the idea of phishing their own userbase. I try and look at this from multiple perspectives because I think it’s a complex subject. Let’s start with initial access methods!

Common Patterns of Access

If we look at the world of technology and cyber security, you will see logs of references to frameworks and language that is enough to send even the committed to sleep! However, let’s abstract from our TTPs, our MITRE ATT&CK frameworks and our “threat actors” and let’s talk in normal English. Read more “Phishing your own people – path to eroding trust or a useful tool?” →

Defense

Apache Access Logs Rotation

By default, at least on Ubuntu apache2 is set to rotate logs every 14 days.

It will rotate logs held here: /var/log/apache2/*.log

Using the rotate configuration, you can specify a value: Read more “Apache Access Logs Rotation” →

Defense

HID Attacks using OMG Cables

Human Interface Devices is the science way of saying (in this case) keyboard! Now that doesn’t sound amazing but then we look at the details. What we are talking about here is a wireless remote controlled programable keyboard emulator disguised as a USB cable or a cable between a real USB keyboard (must be detachable). This provides attack opportunities to both key log and hijack inputs to PC devices covertly and remotely (within WIFI range). Just imagine what you could do with one of these.

Defense

Password Auditing with L0phtcrack 7 – A quick intro

If you know me that one of the first things, I recommend organisations do is conduct password audits against active directory on a regular basis. There are a ton of ways to do this and depending upon size of directory and budget you will likely want to do this with more than a CPU however the process remains the same. So, with the news that a new release of L0phtcrack (open source) is online let’s take a look at how we can deploy and start cracking those hashes! This isn’t an end to end guide to cracking with l0phtcrack – but it does show the install process and provide considerations for your cracking adventures. Remember, only do this where you have authorisation. Read more “Password Auditing with L0phtcrack 7 – A quick intro” →

Guides

Linux 101 for Windows People

Introduction

I come from a heavy Windows background, in fact I started my computer experience on an Amstrad however not long after I was using DOS and then Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. So, I’m a heavy Windows head, I’ve deployed all kinds of services and applications within business environments using common technologies such as:

CISCO/DELL/HP Networking switches and routers
ISA/TMG/UAG/Checkpoint firewalls
Palo Alto Firewalls
Microsoft Windows Client (Windows 3.11-Windows 11)
Microsoft Windows Server (NT4 – Windows Server 2022)
Vmware vSphere/ESXi
Random Linux Security appliances and VPN devices

One thing that I’ve noticed in my travels so far is that Linux deployments in enterprise environments in the back office/corp nets are often appliance based or “black boxes”. This creates a bit of a fun scenario whereby some system administrators and operations teams aren’t particularly comfortable with using UNIX/Linus systems. So, I thought I’d try and write some content to show how to do common tasks using the command line interface (CLI). This isn’t designed as an indepth guide, this is really just to try and give people a view of some of the things that you will need to be aware of. This isn’t mean’t to be “academic” or replace manuals and technical docs so it’s brief and to the point (as far as that is possible). Read more “Linux 101 for Windows People” →

Defense

Creating a honeypot for CVE-2021-41773 (Path Traversal and RCE)

A path traversal vulnerability and exploit just dropped in the wild for a specific version of Apache (Apache/2.4.49). This vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute a path traversal attack (and now shown RCE if MOD_CGI is enabled) to read files outside of the virtual directory path bounds. This only affects a single version of Apache, there’s a fair few of these online, however it’s very unlikely all are vulnerable. The vulnerability requires specific permissions to be configured.

Guides

Reporting an email as phishing in Office 365 with…

Did you ever just ignore or delete a phishing email? I mean that’s great in one sense that you won’t have any negative impact. But if the email did get past the mail security filters, you can report it using the “Mark as phishing” option.

What if as well you wanted to not only enable users to report but also pass the intelligence onto the NCSC Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS)? How cool would that be! Well, have no fear people, we are going to show you how easy this stuff is to deploy and configure. Read more “Reporting an email as phishing in Office 365 with NCSC SERS” →

Guides

mRr3b00ts Pentest Plus Study Notebook

I created a PDF notebook a while ago when I decided on a whim to to the Pentest+. I have quite a few people ask me about getting into cyber security and well, you know when I was younger this stuff was just called IT mainly (IT + Infosec) so I thought let’s go test out the Pentest+. I did the course and exam in a week (whilst writing the notebook) (don’t think that’s a good idea but my objectives were more to make sure if I think it’s any good or not). Pleased to say I thought the course was good (I used pluralsight at 1.x speed) and the exam was fun (for an exam).

Hopefully this helps people explore the some of the world of offensive security and appsec. Read more “mRr3b00ts Pentest Plus Study Notebook” →

Defense

Defending against authentication attacks

Ok so my most popular blog on pwndefend is about using Hydra… so I guess that’s all the goodies using it for good things, right? Probably not but it does help people understand the weaknesses of single factor authentication systems without supplementary controls.

So, let’s look at authentication defences, but let’s do this from an attacker perspective! (The opposite of what helps an attacker usually helps defend). Crazy madness right, let’s get to it!

Foundations of Sand

Ok so authentication is a key security control in computer systems. To understand the challenge around authentication and think it’s all a technical problem is to error.

See most modern computer systems require at least two things to authenticate:

A Username
A Password