Guides

Cyber Security Design Review

Purpose

To conduct a solution review we need to consider multiple perspectives. Cyber security can be described as (from the NCSC):

“Cyber security’s core function is to protect the devices we all use (smartphones, laptops, tablets and computers), and the services we access – both online and at work – from theft or damage. It’s also about preventing unauthorised access to the vast amounts of personal information we store on these devices, and online.”

Cyber Security is concerned with risks, threats, vulnerabilities, and controls. This really means the breadth and depth of cyber security is vastly wide and terribly deep. Read more “Cyber Security Design Review” →

Defense

Risk management is easy! Isn’t it?

Information security theory and practises use a commonly understood and simple range of tools, methods, and practises to help organisations understand their risk portfolio and to enable them to make both strategic and tactical investment decisions….

Ok someone pinch me. this simply isn’t the reality I see on the ground. The theory is vast, complex and there are a multitude of good/best/insert phrase frameworks and tools that you can leverage to map, model, and communicate risks, vulnerabilities, controls, threats etc.

I’m not going to do a detailed analysis and comparison of different models here, but I am going to at least give people a view of some of the tools and frameworks that you can and may likely experience in the cyber security world. Read more “Risk management is easy! Isn’t it?” →

Leadership

Cyber Security Architecture

I remember (now it was a long time ago) when I worked in a support role and my dream job was being a technical architect, back in the warm and fuzzy days of no host-based firewalls, IPsec being something only MCPs knew about other than the networking team and when cybercrime was a shadow of how it is today.

It wasn’t until I had a few more notches under my belt when I realised that architecture in technology has different viewpoints, not only that but even the industry can’t agree on what things are or are not. That aside the reality is, is that architecture has different domains, specialisms, views, and viewpoints. I often find myself working across a whole range of areas, that is driven largely by specific customer requirements and scenarios (this is why I have a cool lab and lots of kit!)

When we consider a business technology system it has risk and by nature cyber security in that view. To think of this not being the case would be odd because ultimately “business” is the highest abstraction, and let’s think about what makes up a business: Read more “Cyber Security Architecture” →

Defense

Exposed VMWARE vCenter Servers around the world (CVE-2021-22005)

There’s a new CVE in town but don’t think it’s the only problem you get when you expose administrative interfaces to the wild west of the internet (yeeha or something). Let’s go on a quick exploration of what the world looks like with the help of our friends at Shodan and then let’s see the ramblings of Dan when looking at how benign enumeration and exploration of services can work. Let’s get started looking at the world, a quick face analysis on Shodan with vmware as a product shows a hit or two, what we are going to focus on is vCenter but you know.. you might want to review your attack surfaces so any exposed services (damn people expose some risky stuff!) Read more “Exposed VMWARE vCenter Servers around the world (CVE-2021-22005)” →

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated with medium confidence Threat Intel

CVE-2021-38647 – Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) RCE – Linux…

Situation

Ok so the situation is as per usual a bit fluid, when this first dropped I was looking at this with a “azure” lense, however as time goes on it appears this likely also covers any Linux distro with the Azure/SCOM/OMS agents installed. This may change the profile of risk considerable, not only from a public facing attack surafce but highly likely from a lateral movement persspective. I’m going to keep updating this as more intel comes in. (sorry I’d be clearer if I had a clearer picture myself)

This week 4 vulnerabilities were disclosed which affect Azure virtual machines running the Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) agent (think PowerShell remoting). As above the scope seems to be slightly wider with regard to SCOM/AZURE and OMS/Sentinel etc. agents for Linux (I want to confirm all of this but for now it seems this is the position)

Essentially these vulnerabilities allow for both network-based remove code execution (RCE) and local privilege escalation (LPE).

  • There is evidence of exploitation in honeypots.
  • There is a public proof of concept available for the RCE.
  • The internet facing attack surface from a global perspective seems low based on the data in Shodan and Censys however I’m not convinced this is currently giving a clear picture.
    • So, check your azure networks, Vms and firewalls would be a sensible idea

Read more “CVE-2021-38647 – Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) RCE – Linux hosts” →

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated with medium confidence CTF

Installing Kali 2021.3

Hax fun with the Dragon distro

Ok today we are going to look at deploying Kali 2013.3. The install process for this is fairly standard and familiar from previous version but for those new to this world, it seems like a good place to start.

Install Procedure (Virtual Machine)

Boot from the ISO

Graphical user interface, application Description automatically generated Read more “Installing Kali 2021.3” →

Guides

What if not everyone is a cyber expert?

Developing a Cyber Roadmap

Ok so this topic comes up a fair bit, but organisations and their management are often looking to ensure they are doing the right thing (no really this is a common phrase I hear with organisations) with regard to cyber security. THe challenge I think quite a few people have is even understanding what that even means. Sure you have a firewall, and antivirus and you had a yearly peneration test of a site that isn’t even touching your corproate network. You thought you were fine, but you keep seeing organisations get ransomared in the news and the board keep asking “are we ok?” so this then leads to a common position of maybe buying more widgets or thinking, well we haven’t been “hacked” so we must be doing ok.

Read more “What if not everyone is a cyber expert?” →
Defense

Vulnerability Management – Actually doing it!

Vulnerability Management, Assessments and Vulnerability scanning is sometimes treated a with distain in the Offensive security community, I personally don’t understand that. Vulnerability management is key to inputting into security strategy, architecture, and operations. It’s coupled heavily to many other processes such as:

  • Asset Management
  • Risk Management
  • Patch Management
  • Change & Release Management
  • Security Testing
  • Security Monitoring

Before we start deploying let’s think about some areas for consideration when performing vulnerability scans:

  • Scope
    • Asset/Hosts
      • IP Ranges
      • Hostnames
    • Connectivity
      • VPNs
      • LAN/WAN
    • Device Types and Configuration
      • Domain
      • Workgroup
      • Appliance
      • ICS
      • Printers
      • Network Equipment
    • Unauthenticated View
    • Authenticated View
      • Auth Types
      • Protocols
    • Scheduling
    • Authority to execute
  • Impact
    • Performance
    • Availability
    • Confidentiality
  • Objectives and Outcomes
  • Reporting
    • Information Flow
    • Report Storage and Confidentiality

Read more “Vulnerability Management – Actually doing it!” →

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