USENIX Follow-Up

Given that USENIX finished today, I figured I'd say a few words beyond those already uttered this week. I found two of the "ask-the-experts" sessions to be very informative. Steve Bellovin of AT&T Research Labs and Bill Cheswick of Lumeta gave great talks. Yes, I gave the second edition of their book a three star review. Regardless, their USENIX talks were very helpful. After explaining how Lumeta's IPSonar works, Ches told us of a project called RocketFuel which is mapping the Internet, as Lumeta's most current maps aren't shared anymore due to post-9/11 security concerns. I found Cheswick's patent on "Method and apparatus for tracing packets in a communications network".


Mark Seiden gave a great talk on physical security. He believes digital security is superior to physical security, as physical security is dominated by people who believe obscurity is a legitimate way to achieve security. As a result, only criminals and locksmiths know which systems work, and the public is left vulnerable. Several years a group called Anti Security tried promoting a "closed source" movement. Their web site was down today but you can see an archive. (Incidentally, Matt Blaze's research created a firestorm in the physical security community.) Five years ago, Mark discovered a vulnerability in security systems used in airports, which "could enable terrorists to gain control of the electronic
badges that allow employees with security clearance to enter and
leave restricted areas."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti...
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technica...
Read more