All Posts

3 min Malware

Malware and Advanced Threat Protection: A User-Host-Process Model

In today's big data and data science age, you need to think outside the box when it comes to malware and advanced threat protection . For the Analytic Response team at our 24/7 SOC in Alexandria, VA, we use three levels of user behavior analytics to identify and respond to threats. The model is defined as User-Host-Process, or UHP. Using this model and its supporting datasets allows our team to quickly neutralize and pr

6 min Automation and Orchestration

SQL Injection Attacks

Synopsis Let’s examine, understand, and learn how to prevent one of the most common attacks people use to ‘hack’ websites, 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

5 min Public Policy

Rapid7 Supports Researcher Protections in Michigan Vehicle Hacking Law

Yesterday, the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill – S.B. 0927 – that forbids some forms of vehicle hacking, but includes specific protections for cybersecurity researchers. Rapid7 supports these protections. The bill is not law yet – it has only cleared a Committee in the Senate, but it looks poised to keep advancing in the state legislature. Our background and analysis of the bill is below. In summary

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

2 min Metasploit

Important Security Fixes in Metasploit 4.12.0-2016091401

A number of important security issues were resolved in Metasploit (Pro, Express, and Community editions) this week. Please update as soon as possible. Issue 1: Localhost restriction bypass (affects versions 4.12.0-2016061501 through 4.12.0-2016083001) On initial install, the Metasploit web interface displays a page for setting up an initial administrative user. After this initial user is configured, you can login and use the Metasploit web UI for th

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. 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.

3 min Nexpose

Managing Asset Exclusion to Avoid Blind Spots

Don't Create Blind Spots As a consultant for a security company like Rapid7, I get to see many of the processes and procedures being used in Vulnerability Management programs across many types of companies. I must admit, in the last few years there have been great strides in program maturity across the industry, but there is always room for improvement. Today I am here to help you with one of these improvements – avoid

13 min Vulnerability Disclosure

Multiple Disclosures for Multiple Network Management Systems, Part 2

As you may recall, back in December Rapid7 disclosed six vulnerabilities that affect four different Network Management System (NMS) products, discovered by Deral Heiland of Rapid7 and independent researcher Matthew Kienow . In March, Deral followed up with another pair of vulnerabilities

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

2 min Security Strategy

The One Aspect of Selling Security That You Don't Want to Miss

This is a guest post from our frequent contributor Kevin Beaver . You can read all of his previous guest posts here . When it comes to being successful in security, you must master the ability to “sell” what you're doing. You must sell new security initiatives to executive management. You must sell security policies and controls to users. You even have to sell your customers and business partners on what you're doing to minimize information risks. Thi

2 min Authentication

Credential Status in Reporting Data Model

The new version of Reporting Data Model (1.3.1) allows Nexpose users to create CSV reports providing information about credential status of their assets, i.e. whether credentials provided by the user (global or site specific) allowed successful login to the asset during a specific scan. Credential Status Per Service The new Reporting Data Model version contains fact_asset_scan_service enhanced with the new column containing the information about creden

5 min Log Management

Log Search Simplified

Hi, I'm Laura, UX Designer at Logentries and today I'm going to discuss how just about anyone can use Logentries to search and analyze their log data no matter what their job title or technical skill level. What is Logentries? At Logentries, the team works tirelessly to provide an easy to use log management service that allows users to stream their logs from just about anything. Logentries can accept data from almost any device that generates log data, inclu