No one is responsible for your OWN Cyber Defences…

Introduction

I talk to hundreds or maybe even thousands of people online. I work in the Cyber security industry, I worked previously with central government, local authorities, finance, third sector, healthcare, defence and well most verticals of business. I often see people comment online about how “GCHQ has failed” or some other silly nonsense when it comes to an organisation (not GCHQ) being victim to a cyber incident.

I fear the world has watched a few too many Bond and Bourne films and let’s their imaginations run wild! The true reality of defending cyberspace is frankly vastly different to what I think people believe it is.

Education

Cyber Security for PC Gamers

Introduction

The other day there was a lot of focus on “ATLASOS” a rather oddly branded project, just to be clear:

ATLASOS is NOT AN Operating System (OS) (despite it’s name!)

ATLASOS (at the time of writing) disables basically the majority of Windows Security features including:

Defender
Smart Screen
Windows Update
Spectre/Meltdown Mitigations

Basically, if you can think of “nightmare” in the cyber world, ATLASOS’s security posture is basically that (in my opinion)! That said, it’s cool from a nerd Windows customization/build pov, however based on my initial investigations I would strong recommend NOT using it on a “PRODUCTION” system (or anything that’s connected to the internet!).

Fiction

The Hacker on a Train

It was a crowded train ride during rush hour, and everyone was packed in like sardines. The train was slowly making its way through the city, and people were trying to kill time with their phones or laptops.

At one end of the train, there was a young man, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, typing away furiously on his laptop. He had a serious look on his face, and his eyes were focused on the screen.

Education

Vulnerability Prioritisation

I’ve got 99 vulnerabilities but log4j ain’t one!

Most organisations have hundreds to thousands of vulnerabilities. They range across the spectrum from:

CRITICAL
HIGH
MEDIUM
LOW
INFORMATIONAL

The challenge comes in trying to determine how to prioritise. Which ways could we go?

Where do we start?

Defense

Broadband Routers

When it comes to digital technology, we have to consider many things.

Availability, Confidentiality, and Integrity are good building blocks for considerations. We can probably split this into two major views to start with:

What does a typical consumer care about?
What security and privacy considerations could be made?

A typical consumer may be about:

Availability
Cost
WIFI Coverage
Performance
Ease of Use
Ease of Support/Troubleshooting
Style/Looks
What happens if it breaks?
Can I stop my kids messing with it? (Probably not so why bother)

Guides

Enable Number Matching in Azure MFA

Introduction

MFA was the “silver bullet” but friction and security kind of go hand in hand, the idea of a push notification and simple “authorise” is great in theory, but in practise it is vulnerable to brute force and human error. In this post we are going to check out enabling number matching authentication in Azure.

This is just one configuration option, as you can see there are loads of options for methods and specific configurations. Bear in mind the pros and cons for each one, for example SMS based 2FA can be vulnerability to SIM swapping attacks. I’m going to focus on Number Matching in Authenticator for this post: Read more “Enable Number Matching in Azure MFA” →

Education

PWNDEFND: Known Exploitable Vulnerabilities (KEV) – AKA: Offensive KEV

There’s thousand of vulnerabilities, but do you ever struggle work out what ones might actually be useful to you if you are defending or attacking?

Well don’t worry I’ve started to document some things that might help you both attack and defend in CYBERSPACE!