Monday 24 December 2012

BREAKING NEWS - Really? - PCI Compliance is Mandatory

If you're thinking "That's hardly breaking news?" I would tend to agree. However, it is still providing plenty of copy even though the PCI DSS was introduced seven long years ago. At the time it was 'mandatory' and 'urgent' but the problem now is that, so many firms have avoided or delayed measures that overcoming the apathy often associated with PCI compliance is getting more difficult.

I read this last week on Bankinfosecurity.com

PCI SSC: Firms Must Perform Rigorous Risk Assessments

I couldn't agree more with one of the points made by Bob Russo, General Manager of the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). Mr. Russo is quoted as saying "The standard requires an annual risk assessment, because the DSS (data security standard) validation is only a snapshot of your compliance at a particular point in time. Therefore, it is possible that changes that have been made to a system since the previous evaluation could have undermined security protections or opened up new vulnerabilities"

In other words, real time file integrity monitoring coupled with  continuous server hardening checks is essential for PCI compliance - read more about both areas here.

And then two days later, I was sent a link to this article

Even the tiniest firms face fines for failing to protect credit card details

This is more interesting because the Daily Mail is about as mainstream as you can get in the UK - whatever you think about the newspaper's editorial leanings, this was published as contemporary, newsworthy copy for it's readers. The angle is about small firms needing to adhere to the PCI DSS requirements - again, not really news, as right from day one, anyone handling cardholder data has been burdened with a duty of care over it. Most small firms either run transactions directly to their bank or via an on-line service like Worldpay, so their main concerns for PCI compliance is to be aware of the risks and take care of the basics, such as

1. Don't write down, or store in any other form, cardholder details. If you need to regularly re-use a customers card details, you'll either need to ask for them again each time, or use your banks 'vault' facilities (based on tokenized card data)

2. Check you Pin Entry Device regularly and don't let anyone tamper with it. Card skimming is still one of the biggest card theft opportunities - see this video for the basics. In the UK, Chip and PIN has significantly reduced the risk but in the US and other parts of the world where card handling checks are limited to a superficial signature (that is rarely even checked against the card), card skimming still pays dividends. Of course, just because Track 1 data from a card is stolen in the UK, the card can still be cloned and used anywhere in the world where Chip and PIN is not enforced.

3. Make sure you are learning from the PCI DSS - work to use as many of the measures as you can. Even if you are using an online service to process a card payment transaction, the PC used to enter the details could be compromised by a key logger or other malware designed to steal data. Hardening your systems in line with Best Practice checklist guidance, Firewalling, Anti Virus, File Integrity Monitoring and Logging will all ensure your systems are secure and that you have the visibility of potential security threats before they can be used to steal card data.

If you can follow some of these basic steps then you'll be able to ensure that your company doesn't end up as headline news for the next card data theft story.



Friday 21 December 2012

So did the OSSEC File Integrity Monitor detect the Java Remote Exploit? For this and much more...Security BSides Delaware


I am sure many that read this blog like to attend security conferences. I am sure you are familiar with Black Hat, Defcon, and H.O.P.E. These are great conferences with a lot of high quality content, they are also expensive and very crowded. Last month I had the opportunity to attend Security BSides in Delaware. It was my first BSides and will not be my last. It was held at Wilmington University on November 9th and 10th. The conference was a smaller one but in my opinion that made it great. The best part the entire conference was free. Free attendance, parking, breakfast, and lunch. The content was high quality and attracted a number of well-known speakers.

I was only able to attend on Saturday. My first talk of the day was “Social Engineering Basics and Beyond” given by Valerie Thomas @hacktress09. Valerie is a penetration tester. She audits company’s security policies and is paid to hack them. The focus of the talk was on what could be the weakest link in your organization, people. You can have the best firewalls, anti-virus, and advanced persistent threat detection but all of that could be overcome by an unaware staff member or inattentive help desk team member. Since everyone transmits their entire lives and routines on Twitter, Facebook, and 4Square, it is not hard to figure out who works for a company and their co-workers. Once you have that information it is a quick hop to Google to figure out the organization email format, username format and other key information. The information in hand the hacker makes a carefully crafted call to the helpdesk and requests a password reset or gathers the other information they need to launch their attack. The bottom line is train your people, make sure they verify security information and know who you are on the phone with.  The person on the other end of the phone may be trying to steal your information.

After a quick lunch I decided to visit the lock pick village. The challenges were to pick some simple locks as well as learning how to impression a lock and cut a key. I have previous experience with lock picking so picking was easy. As a side note, the Kwikset lock on your front door can be picked by an experienced picker in less than 2 minutes. The process to impression a key however is very difficult. After about 20 minutes I was able to impression and open a one pin lock. Most locks have 5 pins so you can see why it is so hard. The good part is that a lock impression can be done in stages, so if you have to abort your attempt you can always come back and finish later. Also, once you have the key you always have it and can get in and out quickly.

The afternoon was punctuated by shorter talks. I attended three others. The first was a talk given by a group of students regarding the CVE 2012-4681 Java Remote Exploit. The presentation was interesting in the fact that the standard security that most people would have on their machines was easily bypassed. The various freeware programs such as OSSEC also did not detect the exploit. It looks like the file integrity monitoring or FIM portion of OSSEC wasn’t used but in this case would have picked  up the changes. They also caught a special privileges escalation to a user account in the system logs which a properly configured log management tool would have alerted to the problem and warranted further investigation.  The write up is available here: https://cyberoperations.wordpress.com/student-research/cve-2012-4681-by-o-oigiagbe-r-patterson/.

The second talk I attended was on exploiting android operating systems. In this case the attack victim would be on a “rooted” android phone in which ADB was left on (the default). In this case the attacker could attach his phone or Nexus 7 table to a device and within a few minutes steal critical data from the victim phone or table. Included in this critical data was the Google Authentication token. The token, which can be pasted directly into a web browser allows access the victims entire user account bypassing any Google supplied security enhancements including two factor. The speaker even gave everyone in the class a cable to perform the attack with. Bottom line, if you root your phone, turn ADB off!

The last talk I attended I was on Pentoo http://www.pentoo.ch/ the Gentoo based penetration testing live cd. It is an alternative to BackTrack. The developer of the tool was very passionate about it  and presented several advantages. The first being an hardened kernel, pointing out how laughably easy it is to hack BackTrack when its running, a real problem at cons like Defcon. He also pointed out the advantage of having a good stable of WIFI drivers as well as built in update system and the ability to save changes to a USB stick. I have not had an opportunity to test Pentoo myself but I hope to over the holiday break and I will report back in another blog post.

Finally after a long day at the con I stopped off at Capriotti’s and picked up a Bobbie. Those from Delaware will know what I am talking about, for the rest of the world, think Thanksgiving on a sub roll.

Bart Lewis, NNT

Tuesday 11 December 2012

Server Hardening Policy - Examples and Tips

Server Hardening PolicyIntroduction
Data Protection and Information Security best practice guidelines always place server hardening at the top of the list of measures that should be taken.
Every organization should have a hardened Windows build standard, a hardened Linux build standard, a hardened firewall standard etc. However, determining what is an appropriate server hardening policy for your environment will require detailed research of hardening checklists and then an understanding of how this should be applied to your operating systems and applications.

Server Hardening Policy background
Any server deployed in its default state will naturally be lacking in even basic security defenses. This leaves it vulnerable to compromise.
A standard framework for your server security policy should include
  • Access Security (physical and logical)
  • Operating System Configuration
  • User Accounts and Passwords
  • Filesystem Permissions
  • Software and Applications image
  • Patching and Updates
  • Auditing and Change Control
The server hardening policy should be documented and reviewed regularly.

Access Security
  • Is the server held under lock and key? Is there a log of all access to the server (visitor book, card swipe/entry code records, and video surveillance) for any access to the server?
  • Is server access governed by firewall appliances and/or software?
  • Is network access disabled, or if required, restricted using device/address based access control lists? For example, are the hosts.allow and hosts.deny files configured in line with best practice guidelines? Are accounts provided on a strict ‘must have access’ basis? Are there logs kept of all access and all account privilege assignment?
Operating System Configuration
  • Is the OS service packed/patched to latest levels and is this reviewed at least once a month?
  • Are all services/daemons removed or disabled where not required? For example, obvious candidates like web, ftp and telnet services should be removed and SSH used instead of Telnet. Similarly, remote desktop access should be removed if business operations will not be overly compromised. The best tip is to remove everything you know is not required e.g. Themes service, and then carefully experiment one at a time with other services you feel are unnecessary but may not be sure, however, don’t feel obliged to take this process too far – if you find that disabling a service compromises server operation too much for you, then don’t feel you need to do so.
  • For Windows Servers, is the Security and Audit Policy configured in line with best practice guidelines?
  • Is there a documented Secure Server Build Standard?
Filesystem Permissions
  • For example, for Unix and Linux Servers, are permissions on key security files such as /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow set in accordance with best practice checklist recommendations?
  • Is sudo being used, and are only root wheel members are allowed to use it?
  • For Windows servers, are the key executables, DLLs and drivers protected in the System32 and SysWOW64 folder?
User Accounts and Passwords
  • Are default user accounts, such as the local Administrator account and a local Guest account, renamed and in the case of the Guest Account, disabled? Whilst these accounts will be protected via a password, a number of simple steps can be taken to multiply up the security defenses in this area, simply by disabling the Guest account, and then renaming both the Guest and Administrator accounts.
  • Is there a password policy set with ageing, complexity, length, retry, lockout and reuse settings in line with best practice guidelines?
  • Is there a regular review process for removing redundant or leavers’ accounts?
  • Is there an audit trail of all account creation, privilege or rights assignments and a process for approval?
Software and Applications image/ Patching and Updates
  • Which packages and applications are defined within the Secure Build Standard? For example, anti-virus, data leakage protection, firewalling and file integrity monitoring?
  • Is there a process to check latest versions and patches have been tested and applied
  • Are automated updates to packages disabled in favor of scheduled, planned updates deployed in conjunction with a Change Management process?
Auditing and Change Control
  • Are audit trails enabled for all access, use of privilege, configuration changes and object access, creation and deletion? Are audit trails securely backed up and retained for at least 12 months?
  • Is file integrity monitoring used to verify the secure build standard/hardened server policy?
  • Is there a Change Management process, including a change proposal (covering impact analysis and rollback provisions), change approval, QA Testing and Post Implementation Review?
Best Practice Checklist for Server Hardening Policy
In the previous section there were a number of references to hardening the server ‘in line with best practice checklists’, and there are a number of sources for this information. In fact you may be reading articles like this in search of a straight answer to ‘How do I harden my Windows of Linux Server?’ It isn’t quite as simple as that unfortunately, but it also doesn’t have to be over complicated either.
Getting access to a hardening checklist or server hardening policy is easy enough. For example, the Center for Internet Security provide the CIS hardening checklists, Microsoft and Cisco produce their own checklists for Windows and Cisco ASA and Cisco routers, and the National Vulnerability Database hosted by NIST provides checklists for a wide range of Linux, Unix, Windows and firewall devices. NIST also provide the National Checklist Program Repository, based around the SCAP and OVAL standards.
SCAP is an ambitious project designed as a means of not only delivering standardized hardenings checklists, but automating the testing and reporting for devices. As such it is still being developed and refined, but in the meantime, commercial systems like Tripwire Enterprise and NNT Change Tracker provide automated means of auditing server hardening policy. The hardened server policy checklists can cover host operating systems such as CentOS, RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu, Solaris, AIX and of course Server 2003, Server 2008 and Windows 7/Windows 8.
However, any default checklist must be applied within the context of your server’s operation – what is its role? For example, if it is internet-facing then it will need to be substantially more hardened with respect to access control than if it is an internal database server behind a perimeter and internal firewall.

Server Hardening and File Integrity Monitoring
Once you have established your hardened server policy and have applied the various security best practice checklists to your hardened server build, you will now need to audit all servers and devices within your estate for compliance with the build standard. This can be very time-consuming but in order to automate the audit of a server for compliance with the security policy it is necessary to use a FIM or file integrity monitoring tool like Change Tracker Enterprise or Tripwire Enterprise. These tools can automatically audit even wide scale server estates within a few minutes, providing a full report of both passes and failures for the policy. Tips for mitigation of vulnerabilities will also be provided so the task can be greatly simplified and de-skilled.
Best of all, the hardened build standard for your server hardening policy can be monitored continuously. Any drift in configuration settings will be reported, enabling the system administrator to quickly mitigate the vulnerability again.

Summary
Prevention of security breaches is the best approach to data security. By locking out configuration vulnerabilities through hardening measures, servers can be rendered secure and attack-proof.
Using file integrity monitoring not only provides an initial audit and compliance score for all servers against standardized hardening checklists, but ensures the Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, Solaris and CentOS servers all remain securely configured at all times.