Tenable Network Security Podcast - Episode 61

Welcome to the Tenable Network Security Podcast - Episode 61

Hosts: Paul Asadoorian, Product Evangelist & Kelly Todd, Compliance Analyst

Announcements

• Don't forget to sign up for Advanced SIEM Webinar Series - November through December
• Be certain to check out our video channel on YouTube that contains the latest Nessus and SecurityCenter 4 tutorials, including the new Nessus Perimeter scanning service.
• We're hiring! - Visit the web site for more information about open positions.
• You can subscribe to the Tenable Network Security Podcast on iTunes!
• Tenable Tweets - You can find us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tenablesecurity where we make various announcements, provide Nessus plugin statistics and more!

Stories

• Metasploit Meterpreter scripts for privilege escalation - Every month Microsoft releases the security bulletins, and many of the remote exploit threats are describes as somewhat "mitigated" if the user is not running as an administrator. I believe that techniques, such as the ones presented in this post, are reasons why we all need to re-adjust our perception of risk as escalation of privilege is now commonplace. For example, a new Metasploit module was released that will "...interactively send keystrokes to an open application window using the vbscript SendKeys method. Can be used to escalate privileges into RunAs-invoked command shells on XP." Nice...
• Packet Payloads, Encryption, and Bacon - Great post on how to analyze a packet dump to determine if the data is encrypted, multiple techniques are presented. It's always a good idea to make sure that if you expect data to be encrypted, at some point you sniff the traffic and check it!
• There are no more internal applications - I think a great point to add to this would be that if you give your users access to the Internet, you shouldn't use the word "internal" in the context of security and risk.
• D-Link DIR Series routers authentication bypass - Here's a great example of a vulnerability that will largely go unnoticed, but in the right (or wrong) hands could lead to compromise. Through a PHP script in the admin interface, the admin username and password could be changed. Identification of these routers is not difficult, as I discussed in my recent embedded hacking talk. An attacker could place code on any web site that changes the admin password and enables remote administration of the device and gain access to people's routers. So far, models D-Link DIR-300, DIR-320, DIR-600 and DIR-615 are confirmed as vulnerable. Software patches have been released, but who applies them anyway?
• Malware Encrypts Hard drive, demands ransom - Remember when 99% of all viruses would infect the boot sector and destroy your computer? Fast forward to today and your hard drive gets encrypted, then the malware demands payment and ransom. Actually, I wish more malware would do this. I think its really a wake up call for security as it puts the user in quite the predicament!
• Know what's on your network - I ask this of you: if someone installed a device on your network, would you know? In most cases if someone put an embedded system on the network, you could detect it. However, if it was firewalled off properly and simply sniffed traffic and conducted passive attacks, this could get tricky. I've always theorized that trojaned hardware could bypass most people's security, and most believe it to be an urban myth. It would require physical access, but have a high degree of success.