All Posts

2 min Nexpose

Adaptive Security: Rapid7 Critical Vulnerability Category

Starting this week, we have added a new vulnerability category: Rapid7 Critical. When we examine a typical vulnerability, each vulnerability comes with various pieces of information such as CVE id, CVSS score, and others. These pieces of information can be very handy especially when you set up Automated Actions in Nexpose. Here is an example: As you can see the example on the right, this trigger will initiate a scan action if there is a new coverage available that meets the criteria of CVSS

4 min Komand

What Security Operations Teams Can Learn From Modern Productivity Software

Between your devices, how many apps do you have?The answer for many is dozens, if not hundreds. And many are designed to help us be more efficient: to keep track of growing to do lists, manage complex work tasks, or streamline communication with teams. The trouble is, many of these apps don’t talk to each other very neatly, efficiently, or at all. So it’s no wonder that when the app orchestration solution IFTTT was launched, over one million tasks

2 min Microsoft

On Badlock for Samba (CVE-2016-2118) and Windows (CVE-2016-0128)

Today is Badlock Day You may recall that the folks over at badlock.org stated about 20 days ago that April 12 would see patches for "Badlock," a serious vulnerability in the SMB/CIFS protocol that affects both Microsoft Windows and any server running Samba, an open source workalike for SMB/CIFS services. We talked about it back in our Getting Ahead of Badlock post, and hopefully, IT administrators have taken advantage of the pre-releas

4 min IT Ops

How to Log from Azure Virtual Machines

You have evaluated the many IaaS providers out there and you have decided on Azure Compute .  Great choice! Azure is an ideal provider with broad support for various operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases and devices. Azure also has the unique ability to facilitate hybrid deploymen

4 min Komand

The Dangers Of Linear Thinking and Why Security Analysts Should Defend in Graphs

One of my favorite tweets-turned-into blogs of last year was one by Microsoft security’s John Lambert: “Defenders think in lists, attackers think in graphs. ” Though it certainly doesn’t entirely sum up the challenges of being a defender, it drummed up some interesting conversation/controversy on twitter. Plus as a nice, pithy statement, it has a good r

15 min IT Ops

How to Compare Google Compute Engine & AWS EC2

Which Virtual Machine is Best: Google’s Compute Engine or Amazon’s EC2? It Depends. The Internet might seem like a Wild West of chaotic connections because it often is. Companies like Google and Amazon have been managing to create order out of the chaos for years by understanding the nature of the World Wide Web. Within the last 10 years, Google and Amazon have leveraged that understanding into a robust suite of product offerings in the field of Infrastructure-as-a- Service, or IaaS. The corn

6 min Government

Vulnerability Disclosure and Handling Surveys - Really, What's the Point?

Maybe I'm being cynical, but I feel like that may well be the thought that a lot of people have when they hear about two surveys posted online this week to investigate perspectives on vulnerability disclosure and handling. Yet despite my natural cynicism, I believe these surveys are a valuable and important step towards understanding the real status quo around vulnerability disclosure and handling so the actions taken to drive adoption of best practices will be more likely to have impact. Hopef

3 min Metasploit

Securing Your Metasploit Logs

Metasploit, backed by a community of 200,000 users and contributors is the most impactful penetration testing solution on the planet. With it, uncover weaknesses in your defenses, focus on the highest risks, and improve your security outcomes. Your Metasploit Pro console produces a lot of important logs. It is essential to be able to review these logs, alert on them, and keep them secure. Why should I monitor these logs? The logs produced by your Metasploit Pro console are helpful when troubl

3 min Automation and Orchestration

What is Security Orchestration?

The best security operation centers (SOCs) are built on efficiency and speed-to-response. But if you’ve ever worked in a SOC or on a security team, you know it’s tough to get your security systems, tools and teams to integrate in a way that streamlines detection, response, and remediation. One of the most tedious tasks of all is cobbling together alert details to assess if a security event is a real threat, along with correlating

5 min Javascript

Client Side Logging In Javascript

Developers are writing Javascript applications of increasing complexity designed to run in web browsers, on desktops, and on servers.  Javascript applications have reached a level of maturity that means they are running important business operations.  They must be more maintainable and supportable now that they have achieved this level of responsibility in the enterprise.  Javascript applications should be expected to provide the same information for support and maintenance as any other applic

3 min Endpoint Security

IDC: 70% of Successful Breaches Originate on the Endpoint

Most organizations focus on their server infrastructure when thinking about security – a fact we often see in our Nexpose user base where many companies only scan their servers. However, IDC finds that 70% of successful breaches originate on the endpoint. This does not necessarily imply insider threats, it is rather a sign that phishing is prevalent, cheap, and surprisingly effective in compromising machines. Given this compelling data, I strongly urge

1 min Incident Response

SANS Review of Rapid7 UserInsight (now InsightUBA) for User Behavior Analytics and Incident Response

Editor's Note - March 2016: Since this review, UserInsight has now become InsightUBA. Along with the name change comes a completely redesigned user interface, continuous endpoint detection, and another intruder trap to reliably detect attacker behavior outside of logs. We also launched InsightIDR, which combines the full power of InsightUBA with Endpoint Forensics, Machine Data Search, and Compliance Reporting into a single solution. User behavior analytics (UBA) is a new space that is still un

2 min InsightIDR

4 Tips to Help Model Your Security Program to the Attack Chain

When building out next year's security initiatives, how do you prioritize and choose projects? At Rapid7, we recommend modeling your security program to the Attack Chain, a graphical representation of the steps required to breach a company. For every successful breach, whether it be from a credential-based attack, malware, or the exploitation of a vulnerability, attackers need to perform at least one or multiple steps in the chain. If you can detect, investigate, and remediate the attack earl

2 min InsightIDR

Calling Your Bluff: Behavior Analytics in Poker and Incident Detection

As a former – or dormant – professional poker player, I'm seeing a lot of parallels between poker and incident detection, especially when it comes to behavior analytics. Detecting a bluff in poker is really not all that different from detecting an intruder on the network. New solutions, like Rapid7's InsightIDR , incorporate machine learning and user behavior analytics to detect stealthy attacks. This is

2 min DAST

Modern Applications Require Modern DAST Solutions

Is your Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) solution leaving you exposed? We all know the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. A dapper Emperor is convinced by a tailor that he has the most incredible set of clothes that are only visible to the wise. The emperor purchases them, but cannot see them because it is just a ruse. There are no clothes. Unwilling to admit that he doesn't see the clothes, he wanders out in public in front of all of his subjects, proclaiming the clothes' beauty unt