All Posts

3 min

Thank You! Five Years of Metasploit at Rapid7

On October 20, 2009 -- five years ago today -- Rapid7 acquired Metasploit. At the time, there was skepticism about the deal, and what it would mean for Metasploit and the open source community. The skepticism was, of course, fair. If Rapid7 was going to fund (and therefore, control) the development of the Metasploit Framework, why would anyone contribute to it any more? Why give away work product for free when Rapid7 is just going to turn around and sell it? Today, Metasploit is still actively

4 min IT Ops

4 Alerts You Need In Case System Events Stop Occurring

“Silence is golden” This is not always true, especially when something you were expecting to happen* doesn’t* happen. However, this is true when you have a system or a service you are trying to maintain and things stop happening or go quiet. We recently developed a new service — Inactivity Alerting —  to help you with this common challenge and, as you might expect, it fires alerts when there is noted inactivity around a specific log or eve

2 min Nexpose

Site Consolidation with the Nexpose Gem

The introduction of the scan export/import feature opens up the ability to merge sites, at least through the Ruby gem. Imagine a scenario where you had split up your assets into several sites, but now you realize it would be easier to manage them if you just merge them into one. Maybe you have duplicate assets across sites and that wasn't your intent. The script below allows you to merge multiple sites into one. I replays the scans from each site into the new one (in just a fraction of the amou

3 min Vulnerability Disclosure

Block the POODLE's bite: How to scan for CVE-2014-3566

A severe vulnerability was disclosed in the SSL 3.0 protocol that significantly jeopardizes the protocol's ability to secure communications. All versions of SSL have been deprecated and its use should be avoided wherever possible. POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) is the attack that exploits this vulnerability and allows a hacker to potentially steal information by altering communications between the SSL client and the server (MitM). Learn more about CVE-2014-3566

4 min

POODLE Unleashed: Understanding the SSL 3.0 Vulnerability

Three researchers from Google have published findings about a vulnerability in SSL 3.0 , a cryptographic protocol designed to provide secure communication over the internet. Although SSL 3.0 is nearly 15 years old, it's still used all over the place – browsers, VPNs, email clients, etc. In other words, this bug is pretty widespread. Successful ex

2 min Microsoft

October Patch Tuesday + Sandworm

Microsoft is back in fine form this month with eight upcoming advisories affecting Internet Explorer, the entire Microsoft range of supported operating systems, plus Office, Sharepoint Server and a very specific add on module to their development tools called “ASP .NET MVC”.  Originally nine advisories were listed in the advance notice, but one of the vulnerabilities affecting Office and the Japanese language IME was dropped for reasons unknown (the dropped advisory was bulletin #4 in the advanc

1 min

Sandworm aka CVE-2014-4114

UPDATED: 2.30pm, ET, Tuesday, Oct 14. There's another vulnerability with a clever name getting a lot of attention: Sandworm aka CVE-2014-4114. This is not a cause for panic for the average system administrator or home users, but you should take it seriously and patch any vulnerable systems ASAP. While the reach is pretty broad because the vulnerability in question affects all versions of the Windows operating system from Vista SP2 to Win

4 min IT Ops

How to Format Nginx and Django Logs Using KVPs

Interested in learning a couple insider tips to gain more value from your logs using additional structure? Specifically, we will show how to easily introduce key-value pair (KVP) format on Nginx and Django logs. Of course, the approach is not restricted to those two types of logs, and can be applied to numerous applications. Previously, our Head of Product, Marc Concannon explained how logging information in JSON format makes it possible to leverag

3 min IT Ops

Logs: The Most Fine-grained Data Source

As co-founder of Logentries I am often asked – “Why Logs?”  And I have to admit, upon first impression, ‘log management and analytics’ does not seem like the sexiest space 🙂 However at Logentries we are here to redefine that space, to provide a solution to access, manage and understand your log data that is easy to use, cost effective and intelligent (i.e. it does the hard work so you don’t have to).  But that being said it sti

3 min Public Policy

Petition for Reform of the DMCA and CFAA

Here's the TL;DR: Software now runs everything and all software has flaws, which means that we, as consumers, are at risk. This includes YOU, and can impact your safety or quality of life. Sign this petition to protect your right to information on how you are exposed to risk: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/unlock-public-access-research-software -safety-through-dmca-and-cfaa-reform/DHzwhzLD The petition Last weekend a petition

8 min

Adventures in Empty UDP Scanning

One of the interesting things about security research, and I guess research in general, is that all too often the only research that is publicized is research that proves something or shows something especially amazing.  Research that is incomplete, where the original hypothesis or idea ends up being incorrect, or that ends up at non-spectacular conclusions rarely ends up getting published.  I feel that this trend is doing a disservice to the research community because the paths that the authors

2 min IT Ops

How to Master the Installation of the Windows Agent

Over the past month we have been updating the LogentriesWindows Agent to make it more powerful for our growing customers needs. One particular area we felt needed updating was the Command Line capabilities of the Windows Agent . Logentries is now proud to announce that you now have even more ways to install our Windows Agent to your environment.

2 min API

Scan Export/Import Using the nexpose-client Gem

The latest release (5.10.13) introduces a new feature into Nexpose, scan exporting and importing. We're looking to address a need in air-gap environments, where customers can have multiple consoles to address network partitioning. This approach is not without its warts. For example, if you have deleted assets from a site, this process will bring them back to life. This post is going to walk through a pair of Ruby scripts using the nexpose-client gem. The first script will export the site config

5 min IT Ops

In the Log Management World: Are you a Fox or Hedgehog?

I’ve recently been reading Nate Silver’s book, “The Signal and the Noise.” In the book, Silver looks at a number of areas where predictions have been made and considers how successful they have been, as well as the reasons why they have been accurate (or not). I couldn’t help but draw the similarities how most companies use log management tools today. Silver’s particular interests are political forecasting (see www.fivethirtyeight

2 min Incident Detection

UserInsight Integrates with LogRhythm SIEM to Accelerate Incident Detection and Response

Rapid7 UserInsight finds the attacks you're missing by detecting and investigating indications of compromised users from the endpoint to the cloud. UserInsight now integrates with LogRhythm, a leading Gartner-rated SIEMs in the industry. If you have already integrated all of your data sources with LogRhythm, you can now configure UserInsight to consume its data through LogRhythm, significantly simplifying your UserInsight deployment. UserInsight