6 min
IT Ops
Signal AND Noise The Best of All Worlds for Logging
One of the absolute, classic pieces of advice that you’ll hear when it comes to
logging is what I think of as the iconic Goldilocks logging advice. It goes
something like this.
When it comes to logging, you don’t want to miss anything important because
logging helps you understand your application’s behavior. But youalsodon’t want
to log too much. If you log too much, the log becomes useless. You want to log
just the right amount.
Sage advice, to be sure. Right?
Or, maybe, when you sto
6 min
Project Sonar
Digging for Clam[AV]s with Project Sonar
A little over a week ago some keen-eyed folks discovered a
feature/configuration
weakness in the popular ClamAV
malware scanner that makes it possible to issue administrative commands such as
SCAN or SHUTDOWN remotely—and without authentication—if the daemon happens to be
running on an accessible TCP port. Shortly thereafter, Robert Graham unholstered
his masscan tool and did a s
ummary blog post
5 min
Automation and Orchestration
AWS Series: Creating a Privoxy, Tor Instance
Synopsis:
If you want to increase your privacy or perform security research with Tor
, Privoxy , etc. a virtual
server is an excellent choice. I’m using Amazon EC2 which provides a years worth
of a VM with limited resources for free. A few benefits are listed below
1. Low cost
2. Access from just about anywhere
3. Low resource allocation
4. Easy to spin up
Creating the Cloud Instance:
After logging into your Amazon cloud account select
6 min
Automation and Orchestration
AWS Series: OpenSWAN L2TP over IPSEC VPN Configuration
Synopsis:
We will look at how to configure an L2TP over IPSEC VPN using OpenSWAN
and how to connect to it using Mac OSX. This guide
is written for running the VPN software on a CentOS 7 x86_64 EC2 instance
(ami-6d1c2007) provided by Amazon Web Services. The VPN will be configured to
use local authentication and a pre-shared key. This is a great way to allow
access into your AWS VPC.
Procedure:
The procedure is broken into 3 parts:
* AWS – Create an EC2 instance
*
5 min
Automation and Orchestration
Bro Series: Creating a Bro Cluster
Synopsis:
This short article will demonstrate how to setup a minimal Bro cluster
for testing. Because of its
minimal nature, this article will exclude discussion of load balancing traffic
across multiple bro workers (processes), security conscious permissions, and
other bro related tuning and features such as sending e-mail. Its purpose is to
get a Bro cluster up and running as quickly as possible so you can begin
familiarizing yourself with cluste
4 min
Penetration Testing
Penetration Test vs. Red Team Assessment: The Age Old Debate of Pirates vs. Ninjas Continues
In a fight between pirates and ninjas, who would win? I know what you are
thinking. “What in the world does this have to do with security?” Read on to
find out but first, make a choice: Pirates or Ninjas?
Before making that choice, we must know what the strengths and weaknesses are
for each:
Pirates
Strengths
Weaknesses
StrongLoudBrute-Force AttackDrunk (Some say this could be a strength too)Great
at PlunderingCan be CarelessLong-Range CombatNinjas
Strengths
Weaknesses
FastNo ArmorStealthySmal
5 min
Vulnerability Disclosure
R7-2016-06: Remote Code Execution via Swagger Parameter Injection (CVE-2016-5641)
This disclosure will address a class of vulnerabilities in a Swagger Code
Generator in which injectable
parameters in a Swagger JSON or YAML file facilitate remote code execution. This
vulnerability applies to NodeJS , PHP, Ruby
, and Java and
probably other languages as well. Other code generation tools
may also be vulnerable to paramete
2 min
Nexpose
Vulnerability Regression Monitoring With Nexpose
Recently I've been diving into some advanced
and targeted
analysis features. Today I'd
like to keep things simple while still addressing a significant use case -
Vulnerability Regression. Often times the immediate response to high visibility
vulnerabilities does not involve setting up future monitoring, leaving the door
open for the same vulnerabilities to show back up time and again.
4 min
IT Ops
Migrating a web app to Angular
At some point many applications get to a state in which a large refactoring or
in some cases a complete rewrite needs to happen. The decision to do so can be
driven by many factors. For example, the code base is growing rapidly and the
current architecture cannot support the growth, components are becoming too
tightly coupled and need to be split, new and better technology becomes
available which offers significant improvements or due to other factors the
current code base is just not maintain
4 min
InsightIDR
Seven Ways InsightIDR Helps Maintain PCI Compliance
If your company processes credit card transactions, you must be compliant with
the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS
.
Any entity that stores, processes, or transmits cardholder data must abide by
these requirements, which provide best practices for securing your cardholder
data environment (CDE) .
Rapid7 InsightVM, InsightAppSec, and Metasploi
3 min
IT Ops
Webinar Recap: Tableau Server Log Analytics
Our webinar
was
broadcasted & recorded on June 16th 2016. During this broadcast Tableau Zen
Master Mike Roberts of Pluralsight discussed how to develop a simple technology
stack for next-gen management of Tableau using Logentries
6 min
Komand
Defender Spotlight: Ryan Huber of Slack
Welcome to Defender Spotlight! In this weekly 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.
Today, we're talking with Ryan Huber. Currently at Slack, Ryan has previously
held positions at companies such as Orbitz and Risk I/O, doing security,
engineering, or a combination of both. He enjoys computers, and can often b
11 min
IT Ops
Monitoring SNS Activity Using a Lambda Function and Logentries
Amazon Web Services Lambda functions are very cool. A Lambda function is a
feature in Amazon Web Services that allows you to put a discrete piece of
computing logic up in The Cloud and then access that logic to meet a particular
need. For example, you can create a Lambda function that takes a list of stock
symbols and does some analysis on the list using other cloud based services in
order to suggest the best stock to buy.
Logentries has put the power of Lambda functions
3 min
IT Ops
Checking Active Directory (AD) Security and Integrity via Log Monitoring
Because AD literally holds the keys to the kingdom for domain-based networks and
runtime environments, it’s usually a good idea to keep a close eye on those
keys, how they’re being used and what kinds of attacks might be directed at
them. Monitoring AD related event logs provides one great tool in exercising due
security and integrity diligence. Alerting on specific high-impact events
provides yet another.
For over two decades now, Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) has provided a
powerful set
1 min
Automation and Orchestration
What are Networking Intrusion Prevention/Detection Systems?
NID(P)S, or Networking Intrusion (Prevention)/Detection Systems
are used by a security team for general network security
monitoring. They
work by passively monitoring (or actively gating, in the NIPS case) network
traffic and applying rules or signatures to trigger alerts.
Advantages
* Easy to deploy: Unlike endpoint devices, they can be placed