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4 min Automation and Orchestration

What is Penetration Testing?

Synopsis Penetration testing or as most people in the IT security field call it, pen testing, is the testing of software and hardware for vulnerabilities or weaknesses that an attacker could exploit. In the IT world this usually applies, but is not limited to, PCs, networks, and web applications. Also known as “red teaming ” pen testing is done by everyone from government agencies

4 min IT Ops

Overview of 'online' algorithm using Standard Deviation example

Here at Logentries we are constantly adding to the options for analysing log generated data. The query language ‘LEQL’ has a number of statistical functions and a recent addition has been the new Standard

6 min Penetration Testing

Establishing an Insider Threat Program for Your Organization

Whether employees realize it or not, they can wreak havoc on internal and external security protocols. Employees' daily activities (both work and personal) on their work devices (computers, smartphone, and tablets) or on their company's network can inflict damage. Often called “insider threats,” employees' actions, both unintentional or intentional, are worth paying heed to whenever possible. Gartner's Avivah Litan reported on this thoroughly in her “Best Practices for Managing Insider Security

3 min Vulnerability Management

Warning: This Blog Post Contains Multiple Hoorays! #sorrynotsorry

Hooray for crystalware! I hit a marketer's milestone on Thursday – my first official award ceremony, courtesy of the folks at Computing Security Awards , which was held at The Cumberland Hotel in London. Staying out late on a school night when there's a 16 month old teething toddler in the house definitely took it's toll the following morning, but the tiredness was definitely softened by the sweet knowledge that we'd left the award ceremony brandishing so

4 min Nexpose

Creating your First Vulnerability Scan: Nexpose Starter Tips

Welcome to Nexpose and the Rapid7 family! This blog is a step by step guide for new Nexpose customers to show you how to set up your first site, start a scan, and get your vulnerability management program under way. First thing's first: A few definitions in Nexpose: Site: A (usually) physical group of assets; i.e. what you want to scan Scan Template: The things that your scan will look for and how it does discovery; i.e. how you scan Dynamic Asset Group: A filtering of the assets from your s

4 min Research

NCSAM: Independent Research and IoT

October is National Cyber Security Awareness month and Rapid7 is taking this time to celebrate security research. This year, NCSAM coincides with new legal protections for security research under the DMCA and the 30th anniversary of the CFAA - a problematic law that hinders beneficial security research. Throughout the month, we will be sharing content that enhances understanding of what independent security research is, how it benefits the digital ecosystem, and the challenges that researchers f

5 min IT Ops

Logging OwnTracks to Logentries

A previous blog showed how MQTT logs can be sent to Logentries for storage, analysis and how those logs can be to alert on potential MQTT security threats, as well as to store and visualize sensor data. This blog follows that by showing how to build a fully connected IoT system composed of the OwnTracks iOS app as an MQTT publisher, a Raspberry Pi with Mosquitto embedded as an MQTT messaging broker and Logentries as

2 min Nexpose

Patch Tuesday, October 2016

October continues a long running trend with Microsoft's products where the majority of bulletins (6) address remote code execution (RCE) followed by elevation of privilege (3) and information disclosure (1). All of this month's critical bulletins are remote code execution vulnerabilities, affecting a variety of products and platforms including Edge, Internet Explorer, Exchange, Microsoft Office, Office Services and Web Apps, Sharepoint as

4 min Android

Pokemon Go, Security, and Obsolescence

Pokemon Go started it. The crusty old house cell phone, which we had years ago ported from a genuine AT&T land line to a T-Mobile account, suddenly caught the attention of my middle son. > "Hey Dad, can I use that phone to catch Pokemon at the park?" "Sure! Have fun, and don't come back until sundown!" A few minutes later, he had hunted down his first Pikachu, which apparently required running around the block in Texas summer heat a few times. Sweat-soaked but proud, he happily presented hi

5 min IT Ops

Logging Mosquitto Server logs (from Raspberry Pi) to Logentries

The Internet is evolving and part of this is the emerging Internet of Things (IoT). IoT allows us to use the Internet to seamlessly connect the cyberspace and real world using physical sensors at huge scale, allowing us to gather and analyze the data across many domains. It is estimated that there will be 20 billion Things connected to the Internet by 2020, generating an enormous amount of data. A previous blog post

3 min Awards

Rapid7 On Top in SANS Top 20 Critical Security Controls

Being great is, well… great, right? But as we all know it doesn't happen in a vacuum, it's an equation: Greatness = Individual Excellence + Teamwork + Meaningful Customer Relationships Coincidentally (or not), these items make up three of the five core values we strive towards here at Rapid7 – the other two play a role as well in ‘Disciplined Risk Taking' and ‘Continuous Learning', but we all know blog posts need three things, it's some sort of Internet rule. Now, let's be honest, public displ

3 min Komand

How Security Orchestration and Automation Saves up to 83% of Time Spent Investigating Alerts

You have the tools to detect and notify your team about security threats. You’ve hired the best security practitioners who know what an effective security posture looks like. You’re all set to stop attackers from compromising your systems. Just one more thing: How can you maximize the value of these resources, especially in the face of complex threats and a huge volume of alerts? While processes can go a long way in harmonizing your tools and personnel to accelerate tedious tasks such as alert

2 min Nexpose

New and Improved Policy Manager

This year we've made many enhancements to the configuration policy assessment capabilities in Nexpose, including adding 4 new reports and NIST 800-53 controls mapping . Last week we unveiled a new and improved user interface for the Policy Manager, providing you with more information on your compliance position at your fingertips. With the new interface, you can quickly see how compliant you are overall, understand where you need to

7 min Vulnerability Disclosure

R7-2016-07: Multiple Vulnerabilities in Animas OneTouch Ping Insulin Pump

Today we are announcing three vulnerabilities in the Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump system, a popular pump with a blood glucose meter that services as a remote control via RF communication. Before we get into the technical details, we want to flag that we believe the risk of wide scale exploitation of these insulin pump vulnerabilities is relatively low, and we don't believe this is cause for panic. We recommend that users of the devices consult their healthcare providers before making major

3 min Automation and Orchestration

Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks

Synopsis Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks 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');