Kurt Baumgartner, Drunken Security News - Episode 331 - May 9, 2013

Kurt Baumgartner of Kaspersky Labs joins us to talk about Red October, a research paper that he co-authored, along with the other areas that he works on at Kaspersky.

It's time for another Drunken Security News. Much of the gang was on the road this week so Patrick Laverty sat in with Paul and Engineer Steve for the show, plus Jack's epic beard called in via Skype from lovely Maryland.

First, Paul admitted it was a stretch to bring this into a security context but he wanted to talk about an article that he found in The Economist (via Bruce Schneier) about one theory that if the US would simply be nicer to terrorists, release them from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and stop hunting them down around the world, that they would in turn be nicer to us. Also, fewer would pop up around the world. The thinking is that jailing and killing them turns others into terrorists. So here's the leap. Can the same be said for black hat hackers? If law enforcement agencies stop prosecuting the hackers, will they be nicer and will there be fewer of them? I think we all came to the same conclusion. "Nah."

Paul also found an Adam Shostack article about how attention to the tiniest details can be important to the largest degree. The example given was the vulnerability to the Death Star in the original Star Wars movie was so small and the chances of it being exploited were so remote that the Empire overlooked it, Grand Moff Tarkin even showing his arrogance shortly before his own demise. The same can be said for our systems. It might be a tiny hole and maybe you think that no one would look for it and even if they do, what are the chances they both find it and exploit it? In some cases, it can have quite dire consequences. The Empire overlooked a small vulnerability that they shouldn't have. Are you doing the same with your systems?

Did we happen to mention that Security BSides Boston is May 18 at Microsoft NERD in Cambridge, MA and Security BSides Rhode Island is June 14th and 15th in Providence, RI. Good seats and good conference swag are still available. We all hope to see you there!

The Onion's Twitter account was breached by the Syrian Electronic Army and they handled it a way that only The Onion can, making light of both themselves and the SEA. Additionally, possibly for the first time ever, The Onion published a non-parody post about exactly how the breach occurred.

Additionally, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) web site got spam hacked/defaced with Viagra ads. The only thing we were wondering is, are we sure it was hacked and not just a convenient online pharmacy for their members?

A new whitepaper was released from MIT talking about "Honeywords". The problem being solved here is creating a way for server admins to know sooner when a passwords file has been breached on a server. In addition to the correct password, this new system would add a bunch of fake passwords as well. When the attacker starts trying usernames and passwords, if they use one of the fake passwords, the server admin would be notified that someone is doing that and it is very likely that the passwords file has been breached. It's an interesting concept to ponder.

Jack had an article from Dennis Fisher at Threatpost, asking the question about what's the point of blaming various people for cyberespionage if we don't have a plan to do something about it.

The NSA also has its own 643 page document telling its members how to use Google to find things like Excel documents in Russian that contain the word "login". Wait, I feel like I've heard of this somewhere before. Oh yeah, that's right. Johnny Long was talking about Google Hacking at least as far back as 2007. It's just interesting some times to see things that the media gets wind of and without the slightest bit of checking, thinks something is "new".