by Michael Davis on February 1, 2010
So I was talking with a client last week and they mentioned that they haven’t seen any new blog posts from me in a while. I said that was weird because I had just posted yesterday.When i get back to the office, I go online to this site from another PC and low and behold, no blog post.
Apparently, I was logging into and using our beta site because I had my hosts file specifically pointed to a different server that hosted our beta site. So…there are a bunch of blog posts that you will see coming that were actually posted months ago!
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by Michael A. Davis on February 1, 2010
Since the Christmas Day underpants bomber revitalized our terrorism fears, I have been thinking about the similarities between preventing terrorists from physically attacking us and protecting our digital information from hackers and cyberwarfare groups.
The Department of Homeland Security is reluctant to admit that there are no amount of security measures that can be taken to guarantee 100% safety at all times from terrorist attacks. Security engineers must also be aware of this fact. Cyberdefenses can never fully guarantee protection. What can be done in both cases is to make it as difficult as possible for the enemy to bypass the cyber and physical defenses we do create. We analyze their current attacks and schemes to make sure that existing attacks will not breach defenses. We also attempt to understand what future attacks will look like, always trying to be one step ahead of the enemy.
The enemy in both cases consists of small, agile groups that operate within networks. Whether it is an Al Qaeda branch or the Ukranian Fan Club, both organizations are small and nimble enough to promote faster organization than their adversaries. Most IT security teams as well as the Department of Homeland Security are large, powerful organizations whose greatest weaknesses is their slow response time due to their sizes and internal bureaucracies. As we have seen from the underpants bomber, the DHS has perhaps become too large and slow to connect disparate pieces of information that would have prevented the bomber from boarding the plane.
In both struggles, the main problem is the issue of safety versus freedom, or protection versus convenience. How many airport security measures will people endure in order to improve their safety? IT security professionals struggle with the idea of promoting safety without impeding the freedoms of the business. Social networking and file sharing can be very useful tools for businesses, but they also greatly increase the chances of malware infections and cybercrime hacks.
It would be unreasonable to eliminate freedom entirely for the sake of safety in both scenarios. After all, if you never take your business online then you will never be hacked – just like if you never go on a plane you will never attacked by a terrorist passenger.
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by Michael A. Davis on December 20, 2009
With the end of 2009 approaching, cybersecurity engineers as well as cybercriminals are looking to next year to see what the future of internet security holds. Where will current cybercrime trends go and what new ones will emerge? Well, here are a few of my predictions on what virtual mines the Internet landscape will have in 2010.
Emboldened Social Engineering – This should be no surprise to anyone in cybersecurity or who has read this blog before. In 2009 cybercriminals realized that social engineering is the easiest way to obtain sensitive information from users. And while social engineering was big this year, it will continue to grow exponentially next year. Expect social engineers to become more organized and bolder in their methods. There may be more incidents where social engineers visit sites physically to gain trust and information that no software can physically protect.
Social Networking Sites Will Become a Bigger Target – Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are only gaining popularity and no amount of security warnings are going to keep users away. Cybercriminals will use these sites to their advantage in two ways. While I believe the sites themselves will become more proactive in creating security defenses, the third party applications made for these sites will have exploitable vulnerabilities. Additionally, social networking site users will increasingly become the victims of social engineering. These sites give social engineers a terrific medium for contacting, communicating with, and taking advantage of users.
Ransomware Will Replace Scareware – Hijacking a users PC and holding it for ransom may seem outrageous, but it’s happening now and proving to be more profitable than scareware tactics that users are now growing wise to. Expect cybercriminals to go where the money is – users would rather pay a small price to regain control of their PCs than go through the trouble of manually removing malware – or nuking their PCs.
Mobile Devices Will Be Hit Hard – Mobile phones have enjoyed their short lives mostly free of threats while continuing to propagate. But now that they have increased in complexity, becoming mini notebook computers, the likelihood of vulnerabilities has also increased. 2009 saw the Sexy Space botnet and the iPhoneOS.Ikee – what awaits our precious smartphones in 2010?
Organized Cybercrime – The cybercrime underground has evolved into an elaborate economy where, in 2009, cybercriminals have begun to network, collaborate, and pool resources for mutual gain. Malware infected PCs and botnets are bought and sold like commodities. I expect this trend will continue in 2010, and it may be the most dangerous prediction. Combating such cybercrime organizations will require the same organization among security experts.
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