Site Review – Twitter

I think that everyone knows about Twitter by now. At first blush, one wouldn’t think that you could cram much information into just 140 characters… and one would probably be right. The signal to noise ratio on Twitter is exceptionally low.

However, despite it’s obvious flaws, people persist in using the site. Some use it keep in contact with friends. Some use it to communicate with business associates. Others just tie third-party systems into twitter and use it as a variant of an RSS feed.

However you use it, though, you should be aware of the security ramifications of the system. At it’s core, Twitter has two modes of operation. Everything you post is either fully public or protected (sorta private). So, the first question you have to ask yourself is whether you trust Twitter’s protection mechanism to keep your private data private. If you do, and you intend to broadcast private information, go ahead and use the protected mode. If, however, you wish to use the system for business, keeping it set to public makes the most sense. After all, you can’t promote a brand if you can’t be seen.

So, assuming that you are using Twitter publicly, you have to assume that anyone and everyone will be able to see your tweets. Thus, you should be careful with what you post. Keep in mind that, as with everything you put on the Internet, it will be there forever. Since you will change (like, both as a person and with regards to your company and career affiliation), your best bet is to just stay honest and polite. It’s pretty much inevitable that you will wind up looking stupid at some point, but you should probably be careful not to say anything that could come back to directly harm you.

So, the basic rules are the same as with most Internet sites.

  • Be aware that everything you do is public.
  • Try not to anything too unredemingly stupid.

Then you’re just left with the challenge of saying something useful in just 140 characters.

Small Business Defense – Network Exploration

Really, once they’re in, there is little you can do. If the attacker gets in too far, you’ll never know where the attacks are originating so unless you’re willing to build a completely new network with all new systems and applications, they’re there to stay.

One thing you can do is to segment your network ruthlessly.  If sensitive traffic doesn’t traverse the weaker zones, an attacker will have a much harder time getting to the parts that matter. Another is to eliminate all the systems you can.  A simpler network is easier to both maintain and to defend.  If you know each and every system on the network and what it should be doing, it is easier to identify when odd things occur.  You should also encrypt everything you can.  Now, this isn’t a perfect solution, as in order to be useful the traffic has to be decryptable, but it does limit the number of targets that the attacker can find useful.

Lastly, you should familiarize yourself with the tools mentioned yesterday: Ettercap, DSniff and p0f.  While it’s not about the tools, it is useful to understand what attackers can do.  All three are available on the Backtrack LiveCD so you don’t even have to worry about installing them yourself (which can be tricky, depending on your OS).

Small Business Attack – Initial Exploitation

Thus far, I’ve talked about ways that attackers get in to your computers or network.  I’ve not talked much about what they do once they’re there.  Though there are a great many things that can happen once they get in, one of the first things done is to make sure that they can stay in.  They may put backdoors into systems, set up secondary VPNs or modems or they may even sneak other systems onto your network.

Given that many networks aren’t fully mapped or even have tightly controlled access, there are many places on a network that a system can hide.  One common trick is to walk into a business with a pre-programmed netbook or wall wart. This machine can then conduct passive network scanning and man in the middle attacks.

With tools like Ettercap, DSniff, p0f, an attacker can alter network traffic in transit while convincing both sides that things are fine. They can identify systems on the network while evading detection and check for important data crossing the network.

Yes, given time (a decreasing amount, sadly), they can do almost anything, but to start, they’ll explore the network and try to identify targets for future exploitation. The question is, what can you do about it?

Security Lessons from Nature – Elephants

As I write this, I am sitting in my living room watching Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.  Which, when you think about it tells you several things.  First of all, modern technology is pretty neat.  Second, if you believe the movie, the technology of the ancient Romans was even cooler.  Third, my taste in movies could stand some improvement.  However, one thing is certain… the movie has elephants in it, even if only by reference. Since elephants are profoundly more interesting than firing guns and shattering glass, I think I’ll talk about them instead.

Elephants are big. Really big. They’ve also been around for a long long time. (Despite the fact that the Wikipedia entry on their evolution is the most pathetic I’ve ever seen.) They’ve lived this long by staking their survival on their size and the fact that they’re big enough and strong enough to handle anything that comes their way. This strategy, of course, has it’s own costs.

  • They have to eat hundreds of pounds of food each day.
  • It takes them almost two years to gestate their young, and even then, it’s only one at a time.
  • Babies require a significant amount of care, monopolizing the attention of several adults.
  • It takes a lot of time to move… or to stop.

In exchange for all of this, they get to be the biggest, baddest, floppy earsyest animal on the savanna.  They get to rip up trees with their noses… which is useful when they need to smack lions around.  And on top of all of this, they have two spears sticking out of their faces for when they are in a stabby mood (and those pesky lions just won’t take a hint).

And there in lies the problem.  The ivory in the tusks and the fact that they make “good” trophies caused a hunting spree that dropped their population to 1,300,000  by 1981 and to around 50,000 today. Though they were well adapted for life before humans invented guns, they’re not faring so well now (along with many others, actually).

The business lesson here is, I suppose, to not take anything for granted. A business model could work perfectly well for years and then one small change can come along and reduce your profit to 1/26th of what it once was. It’s happened before.

Just as, over time, elephants can develop new strategies, so can we.  If something isn’t working, or a strength becomes a weakness, it can be changed.  Who knows, if they survive, maybe elephants will eventually evolve shootable tusks or bulletproof skin.  Maybe I will learn that sequels to action movies are never good.  Perhaps your business can change and adapt to new conditions.

The good news is that you’re not an elephant, and businesses can adapt faster than genomes can.  You just have to keep your eyes open.

Mythic Monday – Stables of Augeas

Cleaning the stables of Augeas, for those that do not recall, was the fifth labor of Heracles. His task, as one of many to gain the forgiveness of the gods for accidentally killing his wife and children, was to remove all the dung that was produced by the immortal cattle of King Augeas’s. Unlike most of his other labors, this one was deemed to be impossible, not due to the inherent danger but for the shear amount of work. On the positive side, if Heracles did it, he would get one tenth of the cattle.

Heracles managed the task by thinking outside of the box. Instead of cleaning the stables in the traditional manner, he rerouted two rivers to wash it all out (and, presumably, causing a fish kill somewhere downstream).I n one day’s work, Heracles managed to make the stables more efficient and eliminate many of the legacy problems equated with an unclean stable – bacteria, fungus, pests, misplaced pitchforks. Then, King Augeas was perfectly positioned to make improvements and run his stable better than ever before. Of course, he doesn’t do this… preferring instead to try to steal from Heracles and got killed.

But our security lesson today isn’t about Augeas (though “don’t tick off demigods” isn’t a bad general rule). Instead it’s about cleaning things up. Just as various threats lurk in manure and compound over time, the same applies to source code. If you develop software, I’m sure that your developers have come to you at various times and suggested that the code base be wiped clean and they be allowed to start over. Odds are that you’ve said “no”. Odds are that you were right.

It usually doesn’t make sense to throw work away and start over. Doing so would give your competitors a time advantage and while you’re making the newest whizz-bangiest system out there, you’re losing marketshare. However, if you let the bad code pile up too deeply, the internal threats will grow and you may not be able to handle them. Then, like King Augeas, you may choose to ignore the problem and hope for a hero to come by. In the meantime, other systems will be getting whizz-bangier and you’ll be losing marketshare.

So where’s there to do?

You basically have two options. You can hire yourself a hero (consultant) to throw away what you have and start over, which could cost you one tenth of your profits, or you could just get better at cleaning your own stable in the conventional manner. When your developers come to you, you know that it is impossible to clean the entire stable (code base), but you could allow them to clean a few stalls (modules). By taking such an approach, you can prevent pests (vulnerabilities) from mounting up without needing to worry about losing your stable entirely or even one tenth of your cattle.

So, your stables may never be completely clean, but they might be able to be kept “clean enough” so that the vulnerabilities don’t mount up and cause you problems.

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Josh More - Entropologist
Expert in removing chaos from
I.T. and business systems.