2702, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Static Data Leak Prevention In SAP – The Next Generation Of DLP

René Pfeiffer/ February 27, 2014/ Conference, Stories

Leaks are problems you don’t want in your infrastructure. While this is clear for water pipes, it is not so clear for digital data. Copying is a part of the process, and copying data is what your systems do all day. A leak comes into existence when someone without access privileges gets hold of data. The industry has coined the term data leak/loss prevention (DLP) for products trying to stop intruders from ex-filtrating your precious files. Just like other defence mechanisms DLP systems cannot be bought and switched on. You have to know where your data lives, which software you use, what data formats need to be protected, and so on. We invited Andreas Wiegenstein to talk about data loss prevention in SAP systems. His presentation was held at the DeepSec 2013 conference and

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0302, 2014

DeepSec 2013 Video: Uncovering your Trails – Privacy Issues of Bluetooth Devices

René Pfeiffer/ February 3, 2014/ Conference, Security

Devices with Bluetooth capabilities are all around us. We have all gotten used to it. Smartphones, laptops, entertainment electronics, gaming equipment, cars, headsets and many more systems are capable of using Bluetooth. Where security is concerned Bluetooth was subject to hacking and security analysis right from the start. Bluedriving, Bluejacking, cracking PIN codes, and doing more stuff severely strained the security record. Either people have forgotten Bluetooth’s past, ignore it, or have it turned off. At DeepSec 2013 Verónica Valeros and Sebastián García held a presentation which revisits the information Bluetooth devices transmit into their environment. They developed a suite to do Bluedriving more efficiently and shared their findings with the DeepSec audience. If you think Bluetooth is not a problem any more, you should take a look at their talk.

2009, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Talk: Static Data Leak Prevention In SAP – The Next Generation Of Data Loss Prevention

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2013/ Conference, Security

Once you use information technology you will have to worry about leaks. Applications can leak data when attached to the network (any network!). That’s no breaking news, but it might be bad news for you and your data. Fortunately there are good news, too. There is a talk by Andreas Wiegenstein about ways of data leak/loss prevention (DLP) and a new methodology which might help your organisation: In the age of digital industrial espionage, protecting intellectual property has become a key topic in every company. In the past, companies addressed data leaks by implementing so called content-aware Data Loss/Data Leak Prevention (DLP) software. Such software analyzes data moving through an IT landscape and reports unauthorized transfer of critical data, i.e. transfers beyond the company’s network borders. The key purpose of this methodology is to

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0906, 2013

Protect your Metadata

René Pfeiffer/ June 9, 2013/ Discussion

In the light of the recent news about the collection of call detail records (CDR) the term metadata has come up. Unfortunately the words cyber, virtual, and meta are used quite often – even as a disguise  to hide information when not being used in a technical context. We have heard about all things cyber at the last DeepSec conference. The word virtual is your steady companion when it comes to All Things Cloud™. Now we have a case for meta. Actually metadata is what forensic experts look for – a lot. Metadata usually lives in transaction logs or is part of a data collection. It describes the data it accompanies. Frequently you cannot make sense out of or use the data without the corresponding metadata. A well-stocked library seems like a labyrinth if

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2505, 2012

Bring Your Own Spy – BYOD gone wrong

René Pfeiffer/ May 25, 2012/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security

It is reasonably safe to assume that anyone doing business has meetings from time to time. Meeting people and talking to them (or listening) is part of many company’s culture. What do you bring for your meeting? A computer? Maybe. Paper and pencils? Old school but why not. Your cell phone? Most probably! Unfortunately this also means that you might invite some spies to the conference. We have already bashed described talked about the BYOD conundrum challenge. Combining the BYOD approach with information security is hard bordering on the impossible. There are some strategies out there for securing your device(s) (in this case from Software Advice, but others have check lists, too). You can also use the Might of Security Policies™ against the threat (we all know that all users follow any written policy

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1405, 2012

Data Loss Prevention

René Pfeiffer/ May 14, 2012/ Discussion, Security

None of us likes to lose data. Usually data loss is tied to defects of storage media. You can counter physical data loss by having sufficient and recent copies of your data. This is where the logical data loss kicks in – unauthorised copies. Espionage thrives on these copies, and since information can be sold so does crime. Establishing a proper data loss prevention strategy and implementing it, requires a combination throughout all branches of information security. First you need to define some classifications for all your data. Public, private and confidential is common. Then you must find all places where your data is stored. You noticed the small word „all“. Yes, that’s right, all places and every single bit of your data. If you start getting sloppy at this stage, your defence against

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0703, 2012

Disinfect your Information Environment

René Pfeiffer/ March 7, 2012/ High Entropy, Security, Stories

Since information technology relies heavily on analogies (as does lot of other „cyber“ things), we have a question for you. What do an intercepted phone call, infectious diseases and nuclear waste spilling into the environment have in common? Faulty containment. The Naked Security blog explains in an article how Anonymous was able to record the FBI phone call whose audio file was published in January 2012. Apparently „an Irish Garda police officer who was invited to attend the conference call about ongoing hacking investigations forwarded the message to a personal email account“. This personal e-mail account was compromised, and the information about the conference call was used to participate and to record the audio stream. This teaches a couple of lessons. Conference calls can be attended by having the correct string of characters (i.e.

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0811, 2011

Conference Network Survival Guide for DeepSec 2011

René Pfeiffer/ November 8, 2011/ Administrivia

For all of you who frequently visits „hacking hot spots“ this should be familiar. For all others who blindly trust the Net it should be a wake-up call. Here’s a short and probably incomplete check-list in case you are preparing for DeepSec 2011 or any other event with a public Internet access (the CCC has a more complete list on their event web site). Secure your operating system (vendor and type doesn’t matter). Backup your data. Do run a firewall or a similar filter on your device (vendor and type doesn’t matter). The hostile network starts right at your antenna or Ethernet jack (again regardless of vendor and layer 1 technology). Try to use a VPN tunnel to a trusted network (such as your company or home network). Tunnel all traffic through your VPN

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1406, 2011

Is your car on the Internet?

René Pfeiffer/ June 14, 2011/ Security, Stories

We published some press releases in the past that dealt with networked subsystems in cars. Security researchers connected to the Controller-Area Network (CAN) and tried to inject commands (which worked scarily well). We claimed that automobile manufacturer were way behind in security compared to everyone who has to secure systems in the Internet. The claim was half-part fact and half-part conjecture. Now it’s time to correct our claim. Cars can now leak information and push it to the Internet: Electric cars manufactured by Nissan surreptitiously leak detailed information about a driver’s location, speed and destination to websites accessed through the vehicle’s built in RSS reader, a security blogger has found. … “All of these lovely values are being provided to any third party RSS provider you configure: CNN, Fox News, Weather Channel, it doesn’t

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2804, 2011

Data Leaks Reviewed

René Pfeiffer/ April 28, 2011/ Internet, Security

Often single incidents don’t attract much attention, but the combination does. We’re getting used to lost laptops, USB sticks, CDs/DVDs/HDs and gadgets containing data. There’s even a project trying to keep track of data loss incidents world-wide, it’s called DataLossDB. Compromised web sites are also quite common. Only figures raise eyebrows, so this week’s favourite news item is Sony and the PS3 network. Someone created unauthorised backups of database tables containing (encrypted) credit card information, user names, passwords, birth dates and home addresses of PlayStation Network users. We still don’t know the nature of the security breach, however the impact is substantial both in terms of number of stolen records and very probably financial damage. There’s been not much talk about the passwords and their data format, but we all know that few people

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