Mythic Monday – Cúchulainn and the Morrigan

In Celtic myth, Cúchulainn was a classic hero.  The Morrigan, however, was a goddess of battle and fertility (interesting how those two often go together).  Near the end of his life, the Morrigan appeared to Cúchulainn in the guise of a young woman and offered him her help in battle.  Cúchulainn, of course, refused her help and did so in such a way as to cause offense.

Admire the classic heroes as much as you like, but you have to admit that they had a fair amount of arrogance to them.

The Morrigan, upset at Cúchulainn’s attitude cursed him and left.  Later, so the story goes, Cúchulainn entered into battle with another warrior and the Morrigan did her level best to bring about his defeat.  Being a classic hero, of course, he prevailed and later met her again in the guise of an old woman.  Again, he didn’t recognize her.

At a later point, the Morrigan appears as the Washer at the Ford (aka bean nighe, a type of bean sídhe (not this one)) and then, after he ignores this warning, as three old crones (it’s a goddess plurality thing, just go with it).  The three crones trick him into eating dog flesh, which he was sworn to never do.  Cúchulainn is then weakened and loses his next battle.

So, ignoring the obvious lesson here (which is, of course, don’t anger a goddess), what business-applicable lesson might we learn from this story?

I think that the important thing here is that Cúchulainn has numerous chances to treat the Morrigan with respect, and never does.  He is too caught up in his own legend to recognize the power of another.  The classic read on this myth is that he doesn’t recognize feminine power, but I think that business-point works well as a gender-neutral.  As such, he makes an enemy for life and she eventually brings about his downfall.

In business, we often see the same people over and over again. Some of my old coworkers are now working for competitors, some are potential clients, some have started their own businesses.  Odds are that the same applies to you.  If you work in this industry for any length of time, you may well see the same people rise and fall.  You may find yourself sitting across the negotiating table from your worst enemy or your best friend.  You never know what the future may hold.

Thus, it would be wise to pay attention to all people.  Treat them with respect and help them when they ask.  After all, the nice, but inexperienced coworker may not be a goddess in disguise, but it’s quite likely that they may become your boss in the future.

Announcement

I am giving some presentations over the next few months

  • Group: Infragard
  • Topic: Linux and Security
  • Time: Wednesday, March 18th at 8:00 AM
  • Place: FBL – 5400 University Avenue – West Des Moines, Iowa 50266

Infragard is a joint effort of businesses and the FBI. At this monthly meeting, I will be giving a talk on Linux and Security. The talk is aimed at security professionals who may not be very familiar with Linux. This is an open meeting, so anyone may attend, but they have to RSVP. If you wish to RSVP, please leave me a comment and I will get your information to the person running it.

  • Group: ISSA
  • Topic: Virtualization and Security
  • Time: Monday, March 23rd at 11:30 AM
  • Place: Buccaneer Computer Systems – 1401 50th St – West Des Moines, IA 50266

ISSA is a group of security professionals.  At this monthly meeting, I will be giving a talk on Virtualization and Security.  The talk is aimed at security professionals who may not be very familiar with virtualization.  Anyone may attend an ISSA meeting as a guest, but to attend several, you must join.  Leave a comment if you wish to be my guest.

  • Group: Des Moines Web Geeks
  • Topic: Web Applications and Security
  • Time: Monday, April 6th at 7:00 PM
  • Place: Impromptu Studio – 300 Southwest Fifth Street – Suite 220 – Des Moines, Iowa 50309

The Des Moines Web Geeks are a group of web developers.  At this monthly meeting, I will be giving a talk on web applications and security.  The talk is aimed at experienced web developers and technologists.  We will talk about basic attacks and then play with some tools and hopefully run attacks on some web sites.  We’ll try to have some sample sites running, but for a really good time, get permission from your companies to attack your own sites.

After each presentation, I will post the materials on my website.  However, the more the merrier, so please come and join the discussion.

Small Business Defense – Encryption

I think we can probably all agree that the right way to deal with yesterday’s attack is to build a system where only the right and trusted individuals have access to sensitive data. I think we can probably also agree that this will never happen in your average small business. Rearchitecting your data storage system, doing data classification and identifying user roles is just too much work, and any project that requires that much churn and does not impact the bottom line will never get approved.

So, let’s accept the reality that you’re not going to follow my advice and you are fully committed to an insecure paradigm. How can you minimize your losses?

They key here is to look for a system that allows your data to be readable by the right people, and unreadable by the wrong people. Naturally, this means encryption. There are a lot of encryption solutions out there. Lots of people will tell you that theirs is better than the others. Some will throw bit length at you, some will talk algorithms, some will focus on speed.

None of this should matter to you.

You want a solution to a problem, not a fight over mathematical intricacies, so here’s the deal.

  • The system has to be publicly verified. If the word “proprietary” appears anywhere in the marketing material, it has probably been unverified and is too weak to use.
  • The system should be inexpensive. If you have to count where you’re using it and pay accordingly, you won’t use it everywhere you need to.
  • The system should handle key management. If an attacker can get the key to unlock the data, you’ve lost.  If the valid users lose the key to unlock the data, you’ve lost.

That’s it.  Three simple rules.  Nothing else matters, because right now you don’t have encryption technology in place so any encryption technology that you deploy will be a win.  Don’t spin your wheels picking solutions.  Get a list together, throw out everything that doesn’t fit these three rules and randomly pick one of the very few solutions remaining.

Then, after you’ve used it for a year or three, you should know enough about encryption to pick a solution that truly matches your business needs.  Best of all, you won’t be out much money and you won’t have lost much data during the learning process.

As a quick note to get you started, TrueCrypt is free and can encrypt entire hard drives and GnuPG is free and can do a lot (it can be hard to use though). On the commercial side, PGP has a 30 day free trial, after which is cripples itself. It’s still usable, but not quite as usable as it used to be.

Small Business Attack – Type of Data: Proprietary Information

All businesses have it. There’s information that is important to the business. Maybe it’s a contract. Maybe it’s a client list. Maybe it’s a product roadmap. Whatever it is, odds are that you’d lose tons of money if a competitor got it. However, it’s also vital to your operations. There are employees that need access to the information to do their jobs. So, there is likely one of to scenarios at work:

1) There’s a shared drive somewhere that has the proprietary information on it, and is open to all people in the company.

2) Each employee has their own copy of the information, so there are multiple versions on multiple workstations.

So, if someone can access your network as a user or even just take an employee’s workstation, they get your data and you lose tons of money.  How likely is that?

  • Have you ever had a virus/malware infection in your business?
  • Have you ever lost a laptop?  A smartphone?
  • Have you ever had an employee that worked for a week or two and then left suddenly?
  • Have you ever had a breech of a web server?
  • Have you ever received an email with a funny attachment?  Did you launch it?

Odds are, that if an attacker wanted that data, they could get it easily. But with so many attack vectors, how do you protect the data and still allow people to access it?

Security lessons from Nature – Playing Dead

The natural world is resplendent with stories of animals that play dead. Some are well known, such as the opossum and the hognose and grass snakes. Others, such as the lemon shark, parasitic wasps and brittle stars are less well known. What is interesting, though, is that this behavior is common across many families of animals.

The root of this behavior is that an animal that is dead is likely less appetizing to an attacking predator than one that is alive. Some even go so far as to foul themselves and release blood from their mouths to be very convincing. In many cases, it works. The attacker looks at the critter, maybe paws it a bit, and then wanders off to find something better.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could use this same technique in our everyday businesses?

Well, in a way we can. Many systems are built to detect attacks and deny traffic. This is much like a turtle hiding in it’s shell. The attacker knows that the attack was detected, and all it has to do is wait or attack from a different direction when it’s blocked. However, if you can make the system unpalatable, the attacker might just stop altogether. What if, instead of just doing a deny, you redirected that traffic to a honeypot or system in an error state. If the attacker started getting back error pages or saw services stopping, they might conclude that they broke something. Thus, instead of constantly trying, they might go on to something else.

Now, it’s important to note that, like most defenses, this one is not perfect. Some attackers would just break into the system faster than you could “play dead”. Others might persist in the attack until they get in, whether or not you are dead. This defense, much like in nature, would only function against non-persistent attackers. It might, however, be a good way to identify which attackers are persistent. That might help you determine and reasonable and targeted defense system.

Other Sites: Business, Photos/Conservation

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