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Tag: encryption

  • Private Practice: Encryption Exposed

    Private Practice: Encryption Exposed

    In September 2014, Apple made encryption a default with the introduction of the iPhone 6. Then, in February 2016, a Los Angeles judge issued an order to force Apple to help break into the encrypted iPhone belonging to a terrorist involved in a mass shooting.

    Apple had used some of the strongest encryption technologies and practices to protect its users and their data. The encryption technology did not discriminate between lawful and unlawful users. While there were many sides to this issue, it surfaced many important debates on security, privacy and civil rights.

    Peekaboo

    For developers wanting to add cryptographic libraries to their applications, a number of open-source components are available to them. Of course, anyone seeking to add encryption to an application has an important requirement for the privacy and security it provides.

    One of the more popular choices for encryption is known as the Legion of Bouncy Castle Java Cryptography library. According to the “2016 State of the Software Supply Chain” report, records reveal that 17.4 million Bouncy Castle components across all versions were downloaded last year. Of these, 5.8 million (33 percent) were known vulnerable versions of Bouncy Castle.

    peekabo

    It’s a sobering fact, but it’s true. Last year alone, organizations downloaded vulnerable versions of the Bouncy Castle cryptography library 5.8 million times. The defective components downloads occurred across 93,253 unique IP addresses from 13,824 organizations in 197 countries.

    Think Different

    Think about it. The Bouncy Castle project is developed by experts in cryptography. Occasionally, their crypto library is discovered to have a flaw and the project owners rapidly fix and release a new version. If you use the latest versions without known vulnerabilities, your application, your users and your data are protected. If you use the versions that include known vulnerabilities, you have electively declined those protections.

    Two of the critical principles of using open-source components are to use the highest quality components and to select them from the best suppliers. In this case, the Bouncy Castle project does an excellent job of releasing new and improved versions. While flawed versions are still available, those seeking to protect applications, users and data need to use the highest quality versions.

    Which Version Are You Using?

    Determining which versions of Bouncy Castle or any other open-source component you are using is simple. A number of free and paid services are available to help you analyze your application and report a full list of the components, including dependencies, that are used.

    Some of the free services require you to upload your application for analysis while other services are performed on-premises. One example of a free on-premises tool used to create a software Bill of Materials is the Application Health Check app from Sonatype. Another example is the OWASP Dependency Check app. Precision of these tools may vary, but regardless of the tool you use, you should use one.

    More insights on the quality, security, and integrity of open source components used to build modern applications can be found in the “2016 State of the Software Supply Chain” report.

  • Avoiding Common AWS Security Risks

    Avoiding Common AWS Security Risks

    According to IBM’s Cyber Security Intelligence Index, 95% of all security incidents involve human error. That’s beyond significant, and when rapidly deploying multiple iterations in a DevOps shop, that means there are lots of opportunities to fail.

    Our own independent analysis based on customer configuration data shows that security control mechanisms Amazon Web Services (AWS) makes available to its customers are not always being used consistently due to human error, creating unnecessary security exposures while operating workloads in cloud.

    In this article, we’ve highlighted the five of the most common AWS security risks detected in the first half of 2015, and share simple steps you can follow to address them.

    EBS volumes are missing optional EBS volume encryption…

    EBS volume encryption uses AES-256 and is a convenient mechanism for meeting data-at-rest encryption compliance mandates. An unencrypted EBS volume cannot be converted to an encrypted volume after creation. It is a setting that must be applied on creation of an EBS volume.

    EBS volumes contain no snapshots less than two weeks old…

    Snapshots are a low cost way to recover EBS volumes and they can be made while a system is online. We have seen a number of occasions where clients have benefited from snapshots in IR scenarios by enabling them to forensically analyze systems that had been compromised from recent snapshots in virtual private cloud sandboxes.

    Unused EC2 Security Groups…

    Keeping your EC2 security groups clean eliminates the risk that an unauthorized security group policy will be used by mistake to open attack surface. Often clients have had relatively new AWS users mistakenly launch EC2 instances using insecure security groups that lead to incidents. Practice good security hygiene and remove your unused EC2 security groups.

    Unused or unmaintained ELB Security Groups…

    Keeping your ELB security groups clean eliminates the risk that an unauthorized security group policy will be used by mistake to open attack surface. In large multi-tier architectures, ELBs frontend fleets of backend systems, and ELBs have security groups that should use authorized security group policy. Practice good security hygiene and remove unused ELB security groups.

    Global permissions to access TCP or UDP ports in a security group that is attached to an active instance/ELB…

    Restrict access to known static IP addresses or CIDR ranges within your control. Many clients have experienced scenarios where they found themselves conducting incident response efforts due to unauthorized EC2 instances that were launched using insecure globally accessible security group policies. Monitoring active security groups enables clients to shorten time to detection and time to remediation of firewall related vulnerabilities and enables clients to minimize attack surface.

    About the Author/Justin Lundy

    justinlundyJustin Lundy, CIO & CTO, co-founded Evident.io after leading Adobe’s Cloud Security efforts to identify, implement, and manage security controls and strategies during rapid adoption of the cloud at scale. He has spent more than a decade in the infosec industry, and is a subject-matter expert in multiple domains. Justin previously defended the castle at Adobe, MTV/Viacom, Sun, and CA.