Information Security Philippines

presents

Malcode Analysis and Response: Proficiency vs. Complexity

by Matt Allen and Russ McRee

Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 1:00 PM EDT (1700 UTC/GMT)

The threat landscape changes constantly, driven in part by the “bot economy” and changing malcode techniques. In response, incident handler techniques must keep pace. This presentation will cover the use of RAPIER, a security tool built to facilitate first response procedures for incident handling. It is designed to acquire commonly requested information and samples during an information security event, incident, or investigation. RAPIER automates the entire process of data collection and delivers the results directly to the hands of a skilled security analyst. From detection and discovery, capture and containment, count on a useful discussion meant to further your incident response practices.

The second part of this webcast will discuss how malicious code authors are persistently introducing new hurdles to complicate reverse engineering. At Norman, we combine observations from our labs with feedback from SandBox customers to identify complexities responsible for wearing down efficient analysis of new threats. The impact of new SandBox capabilities for addressing these complexities will be introduced, followed by a short discussion of top priorities in the SandBox product roadmap.

Matt Allen: With backgrounds in computer and information sciences as well as business, Matt Allen has worked in a number of different roles at Norman over the past 5 years, varying from incident response to web and software development. Matt is currently working with the SandBox team on various projects ranging from development to marketing.

Russ McRee: Russ McRee, GCIH, GCFA, CISSP is a security analyst working in the Seattle area. He’s the author of ISSA Journal’s monthly column Toolsmith, and has written for Information Security, Linux Pro, SysAdmin and others, including an OWASP whitepaper. Prior speaking engagements include SecureWorld Expo, ISSA Northwest Regional, WSA SIG, RAID 2005, and Linuxfest Northwest. Russ has been a board member of ISSA Puget Sound, and is a member of PACCISO, InfraGard and CCSA. Russ maintains holisticinfosec.org.

Register for this free webseminar.

presents

Security Insights with Dr. Eric Cole

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 1:00 PM EDT (1700 UTC/GMT)

Most people think that encryption protects attackers from accessing sensitive information, but it is important to remember that encryption stops anyone from reading information. Therefore if it is not properly deployed, encryption can actually decrease security if it blinds critical security components from analyzing traffic. In addition, many companies are deploying full disk encryption but if it is not configured correctly, it might be providing a false sense of security.

Based on first-hand experience, this talk will look at areas where encryption should be used and how to avoid common mistakes. Dr. Cole will also identify areas where encryption should not be deployed. Overall, this talk will provide expert knowledge of the landscape of encryption, proper uses and common pitfalls.

Dr. Eric Cole is an industry recognized security expert, with over 15 year’s hands-on experience. Dr. Cole currently performs leading edge security consulting and works in research and development to advance the state of the art in information systems security. Dr. Cole has experience in information technology, with a focus on perimeter defense, secure network design, vulnerability discovery, penetration testing, and intrusion detection systems. Dr. Cole has a Masters in Computer Science from NYIT, and Ph.D. from Pace University with a concentration in Information Security. Dr. Cole is the author of several books to include Hackers Beware, Hiding in Plain Site, Network Security Bible and Insider Threat. He is also the inventor of over 20 patents and is a researcher, writer, and speaker. Eric is also a senior scientist with Lockheed Martin Information Technology (LMIT) and Lockheed Martin (LM) fellow. Dr. Cole is actively involved with The SANS Technology Institute (STI) and SANS actively working with students, teaching, maintaining and developing courseware.

Register now for this free webcast!

The threat vectors that target today’s software applications are constantly evolving. While commercial software security features are improving, vulnerabilities still exist.

Customized and proprietary software – those that power much of today’s business operations – are even more vulnerable, as hackers increasingly target applications that range from e-commerce platforms to legacy accounting systems.

As the number of companies deploying proprietary software on or near public networks continues to spike, concerns about application security are more acute than ever.

What steps can you take to protect your company?

An effective, proactive defense against today’s attacks and tomorrow’s threats requires the right combination of technology and expertise.

Making sure you have the right team in place, typically a blend of internal and external experts, is the first step. Methodically identifying and addressing your company’s vulnerabilities, and establishing a plan for ongoing defensive measures is the next.

This FREE whitepaper from Neophasis will help you better understand the threats your company is facing, and the immediate steps you can take to confidently secure your applications.

Download Neophasis’ Proactive Strategies for Securing Your Applications FREE Whitepaper

Anatomy of a Breach Webcast

June 13 , 2007- 12 p.m. EDT

You harbor vast amounts of confidential information ranging from credit cards to health information to corporate plans. That proprietary data is today’s “new money” and someone is willing to pay for it. Unfortunately, the miscreants who want it may know more about technology—and your IT environment—than your own staff. The stakes are enormous: for your customers, your company, and you.

In this webcast, we examine the fundamental shift of IT risk to the insider threat and the inability of legacy protection mechanisms to stop it. We itemize and quantify the impact from containment to notification. Most importantly, we discuss eradication of the breach risk. New, targeted, caustic threats require new responses that strictly secure your critical information assets, while proving it with 100 percent surety.

Who Should Watch:
Executives responsible for audits, compliance and mitigating data breach risks and security professionals responsible for protecting critical assets on their networks
About the speakers:
William Malik
Consultant, Identity and Information Security
Malik Consulting

Bill Malik has been well-known in information security since the early 1990s when he was a founding member of Gartner’s Information Security Strategies service. He began his IT career in Boston as an applications programmer with the John Hancock Insurance Company following undergraduate work at MIT. He joined IBM’s MVS team and worked in development, testing, business planning, and strategic planning for a dozen years. He moved to Gartner in 1990 and held a series of roles as an analyst and manager through 2002. As CTO of Waveset, a start-up in identity management, he helped the firm grow through its acquisition by Sun, where Bill became Director of Marketing for Security. In 2004 Bill established his independent consulting firm, where he helps clients develop their identity management and information security programs.

Robert Ciampa
Vice President, Marketing and Business Strategy
Trusted Network Technologies

Rob Ciampa has more than 20 years of experience in IT risk management, networking and security. Rob has worked with companies around the world designing and implementing secure infrastructures. An early OS engineer for HP and a former switch and router designer for 3Com, he co-founded one of world’s largest network and security integration firms. Rob then went on to Access360, where he was instrumental in its acquisition by IBM, where he subsequently ran IBM’s worldwide channel for security and identity management. In additional to television commentary on IT and computer security issues, Rob is frequently a featured speaker at major IT venues and events internationally. He has a B.S. in computer science and an M.S. in computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts, as well as an M.B.A. from Boston University. He holds two patents in information technology management. His blog is www.knowidentity.com.

Join the Anatomy of a Breach Webcast

Two zero-day exploits for remote code execution flaws in Yahoo! Messenger’s Webcam application have been released.

One of the flaws is a boundary error in the Yahoo! Webcam Upload ActiveX control; the other is in the Yahoo! Webcam Viewer ActiveX control.

Yahoo! expects to have a fix for the flaws available soon.  The flaws have been confirmed in Yahoo! Messenger version 8.1.0.249 and may exist in other versions as well.

{Update: As of Friday, June 8, 2007, Yahoo! has already prompted yahoo messenger users to download and install a security upgrade to patch the security issue}

More info here on the Yahoo! ActiveX Flaw.

Attackers broke into the computer systems of web host company DreamHost and installed malware on hundreds of websites, including the official site of the Mercury music awards.

DreamHost said the intruder or intruders exploited a flaw in its web control panel software.

DreamHost has notified affected customers of the breach via email.

The attackers attempted to access the company’s central database and billing data, but no billing or credit card data were compromised in the intrusion.

DreamHost is responsible for more than 500,000 domains.  The intrusion affected approximately 3,500 FTP accounts; users were urged to change their FTP account passwords as soon as possible.

Read Dreamhost’s official statement on the breach

It’s been estimated that three-fourths of today’s successful system hacks are perpetrated not via network security flaws, but by entering directly through the “front door” - exploiting vulnerabilities in customer facing web applications.

Grab a copy of SPI Dyanmic’s FREE SQL Injection white paper “SQL Injection: Are Your Web Applications Vulnerable?” Understand and prevent SQL Injection attacks today!

This version includes a number of new features, most notably Widgets integration, and over two hundred bug fixes. It’s named in honor of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz.

Goodies:

• WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes.
• Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface.
• A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.
• Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)
• We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.
• Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.
• We’ve added a hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari.

In addition there were also dozens of UI and accessibility improvements, ranging from more concise wording around options and links to things like a view and preview link above the content box when you’re editing a post or page, as well as several important security fixes. 

Wordpress will no longer continue to support the 2.1 branch, so this is a required upgrade.

Download Wordpress v2.2 Codename Getz.

This just in from Wordpress awhile ago…

We have a security update release now available for both the 2.1 and 2.0 branches of WordPress now available for immediate download. This update is highly recommend for all users of both branches.

These releases include fixes for several publicly known minor XSS issues, one major XML-RPC issue, and a proactive full sweep of the WordPress codebase to protect against future problems.

It isn’t April 1 anymore so this probably is the real thing. Make sure you guys update to this new version since it provides some important security fixes which if left unpatched will surely be easy to exploit.

Don’t forget to backup and test your backups first Good luck!