3 min
Automation and Orchestration
Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks
Synopsis
Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks
[https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/cross-site-scripting/] are the second
category of the three largest web attacks used today. Here, we’ll set up a node
server to demonstrate an XSS attack, see browser based XSS prevention, and
finally discuss what further exploits exist based on this attack.
Setup
Here’s our normal, tiny node server to demonstrate XSS.
Create the file server.js as follows:
var http = require('http');
var url = require('url');
7 min
Komand
Defender Spotlight: Mike Arpaia of Kolide
Welcome to Defender Spotlight! In this monthly blog series, we interview
cybersecurity defenders of all varieties about their experience working in
security operations. We’ll inquire about their favorite tools, and ask advice on
security topics, trends, and other know-how.
In this edition, we spoke with Mike Arpaia, the Co-Founder and CSO of Kolide
[https://kolide.co/].
Mike is the original creator of osquery [https://osquery.io/], which he created,
open-sourced, and widely deployed while work
6 min
Automation and Orchestration
SQL Injection Attacks
Synopsis
Let’s examine, understand, and learn how to prevent one of the most common
attacks [https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/types-of-attacks/] people use to
‘hack’ websites, SQL injection attacks
[https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/sql-injection-attacks/].
Setup
We’ll start by setting up an ultra-lightweight PHP page (server side) connected
to a MySQL database, simulating a web application.
We need mysql and php. On macOS:
$ brew install mysql && brew install php
On Linux:
Install m
4 min
Komand
The Komand Tech Stack: Why We Chose Our Technology
Choosing a technical stack that fits your organization's needs can be tough.
When choosing the technology to build your product, there are a few things to
consider:
* The experience of the team
* The impact on recruiting efforts (e.g., how easy will it be to find these
skills)
* The ability to execute fast and to maintain quality
We took all of these points into heavy consideration when choosing the Komand
tech stack. Below is a breakdown of what we chose, why we
5 min
IT Ops
Moving away from MVC
In of all my years as a software engineer, trying new libraries, frameworks and
paradigms has been such a pleasure especially in web development. Even before
the well known javascript libraries, web development was based on backend apps
which render heavy html code within css and some js code. Frameworks such as
spring, .NET MVC, django and rails helped us with abstractions and predone tasks
increasing development speed and quality (reuse principles). But, it was not
enough. Apps were getting
9 min
Komand
Microservices – Please, don’t
This article originally appeared on Basho.
[http://basho.com/posts/technical/microservices-please-dont/] It is adapted from
a lightning talk Sean gave at the Boston Golang meetup in December of 2015.
For a while, it seemed like everyone was crazy for microservices. You couldn’t
open up your favorite news aggregator of choice without some company you had
never heard of touting how the move to microservices had saved their engineering
organization. You may have even worked for one of those compan
5 min
Automation and Orchestration
Malware Attack Vectors
Synopsis
You’re a malware writer. You’ve been tasked with infecting a remote computer,
one that you have never seen before, have no physical contact with, and don’t
have the IP address of. Maybe you have the email address of a user of that
computer, or just the name of the facility in which that computer is stored. How
do you proceed?
Hopefully I’m not describing you or someone you know, but sometimes it can be
helpful to consider the mindset of an adversary when devising defensive
measures. In
3 min
InsightIDR
3 Ways for Generating Reports on WAN Bandwidth Utilization
3 popular ways of getting visibility into WAN bandwidth monitoring, one of the most popular use cases for network traffic analysis.
13 min
Automation and Orchestration
OSSEC Series: Configuration Pitfalls
Synopsis:
OSSEC is a popular host intrusion and log analysis system. It’s a great tool,
and when configured and customized properly it can be a very powerful and
holistic addition to your environment.
In this article I will list a number of problems I’ve encountered while using
OSSEC over the years. Many of these are the result of incomplete documentation.
The purpose of this article is to save you time if you’re having trouble getting
things working while doing similar tasks.
Pitfalls:
A gro
5 min
IT Ops
Get your work done even faster with the Logentries REST API
Now you can get your work done even faster by automating tasks with the
Logentries REST API. With the ability to programmatically query data, manage
users, create alerts and integrate third party tools, it’s now easier to finish
the job and get on with your day.
Table of contents
* Query API- Example Usage
* Team and User Management API- Example Usage
* Tags and Alerts API- Example Usage
* LeExportPy- Read More
* LeCLI- Read More
On-demand Webinar
Interested in learning more about the
4 min
Automation and Orchestration
Secure Password Storage in Web Apps
Synopsis
We like writing web applications. Increasingly, software that might have once
run as a desktop application now runs on the web. So how do we properly
authenticate users in web contexts? Passwords, of course! Let’s look at how to
handle password authentication on the web.
What not to do
It’s very tempting to use plaintext authentication for web applications. Let’s
whip up a quick python web server that we’ll use to test authentication. Let’s
say we want to provide access to magic number
5 min
Komand
5 Reasons Companies Are Losing Security Talent (And What to Do)
It’s hard enough finding security talent, but losing the talent you already have
can be a particularly painful blow. That’s why we’ve put together a quick guide
to help you:
* Address some of the underlying causes of attrition
* Increase retention of your security talent
* Solve the security gap at your organization
Here are five common talent-retention challenges and how to address them
head-on.
Challenge #1: Constrained Budgets and Disproportionate Strategy
According to Kaspersky Labs, 8
5 min
Komand
Filtering and Automated Decisions with PEG.js and React-Mentions
Here at Komand, we needed an intuitive way to filter data from a trigger step.
When automating security operations and processes, sometimes you don’t want a
workflow to start on every trigger. Splunk logs may be firing off millions of
events, but running a workflow for each one may not really be what you need. If
we were to set up a privilege escalation rule in Sysdig Falco and index it in
Splunk, we would want to run a specific workflow for that rule, but a separate
workflow for detecting SQ
5 min
IT Ops
Hashing Infrastructures
Engineers in fast moving, medium to large scale infrastructures in the cloud are
often faced with the challenge of bringing up systems in a repeatable, fast and
scalable way. There are currently tools which aid engineers in accomplishing
this task e.g. Convection, Terraform, Saltstack, Chef, Ansible, Docker. Once the
system is brought up there is a maintenance challenge of continually deploying
and destroying the resources. What if we can hash the inputs for describing an
infrastructure, where
3 min
Komand
Defining the Roles & Responsibilities of Your Security Team
Muddling together security responsibilities often leads to tasks falling through
the cracks. Instead, organizations should be as clear as possible about which
member of the security staff is responsible for which tasks. Moreover, the
division of those tasks should reflect the unique capabilities and strengths of
each team member.
For instance, SOC personnel should be given tasks that require immediate
attention, such as alert handling and incident response. Security engineers, on
the other hand