Posts Tagged ‘attacks’

DDOS defense function mainstream hardware firewall comparison

January 13th, 2010

In recent years, with the Trojans, the increasing spread of the virus, the Internet denial of service attack frequency and attack traffic also will be a rapid increase in attack, attack and attack resources, technology continues to mature at the same time, anti-denial of service related to hardware and software products also received considerable development. Today’s IDC market has basically to the lack of effective means of defense of denial of service attacks will not be able to conduct a stable IDC operations position.

However, denial of service a wide range of defense products, the price difference is very large, from several hundred dollars installed on the target server on a single server to tens of thousands of software firewall protection, and even more than a dozen million Fast, Gigabit hardware firewall, including the provision of new and emerging hardware firewall programs and DIY hardware firewall to help customers cost-effective alternative to programs, customers are often at a loss, especially for the DIY hardware firewall used by the relevant technical, defensive ability did not understand that it often at a loss in the choice.

The use of various denial of service attack prevention products and solutions, this paper I will present the mainstream of denial of service attack, the corresponding means of defense and the corresponding analysis of the current defense strategy to attack a variety of means of defense of the merits of the mainstream because of denial of service attack , IDC industry, the invisible barriers to entry been raised a lot. Understanding of the IDC market, investors in making investment in IDC room from time to time have to consider the corresponding denial of service attack defense strategy. The current choice of denial of service attack (DDoS) solutions, roughly divided into:

1, the software firewall solution

2, the hardware firewall solution

3, DIY hardware firewall solution

Section Cost Comparison

For the IDC operations in terms of cost and defensive characteristics of the sub-line, its advantages and disadvantages are as follows:

1, the software firewall solution because it is installed on the server being protected, their defense capabilities and defense area is limited, larger flow in the attack case, on the target server hardware resources to take up serious, and if the number of servers more room, the overall the cost is also high. But the software firewall easy installation, without moving the hardware device, the deployment of very flexible.

2, the hardware firewall is the extensive use of IDC and can play the actual effect of the defense program, the drawback is the cost of investment is too high, small and medium IDC difficult to accept the purchase cost is usually in the Fast products in the 2-4 million, Gigabit in the 6-8 million. If you need high-bandwidth defense, the cluster cost.

3, the emerging DIY hardware firewall program. And a different software firewall, DIY hardware firewall program is installed on the client by preparing their own hardware platform kernel software and hardware firewall in general the same defense capabilities and defense capabilities. As the hardware platform has user-ready, so it can use existing equipment, the total cost of ownership to a minimum. In general, Fast defense costs will be about 1,000 yuan per room per month, Gigabit defense as 1,500 yuan a month.

For the defense capability, the software firewall because of its mode of defects can not be right to establish protection of the entire cabinet or the room, filtering attack packets will also affect the system resources consumed by the normal application of the target system, so no rating here.

Hardware firewalls are all X86 architecture, popular for the hardware firewall is a computer, not specifically dedicated for the network processing chip, and DIY hardware firewall defense the same pattern all along the entire cabinet and the room for protection, and be able to cluster high-volume attack on defense, so we will be focusing our attention on the hardware firewall and DIY hardware firewall.

Defense capability and overall cost of ownership compared:

Cost of Ownership Form from the right point of view, the hardware firewall as a mainstream means of defense, its total cost of ownership is also high, as a compromise of the DIY hardware firewall, which provides a monthly charge for his services a good way to solve the IDC Daoshi facing financial pressures and investment risks and other issues.

II defense function contrast (attack articles)

On defense function, we can not fail to analyze the major domestic Internet denial of service attack tool, today the main use of the Internet means of attack are: SYN-FLOOD: Veteran DDOS attack, using TCP protocol weaknesses initiated three-way handshake attack, is characterized by attacks on the source address is a false address, is not easy to trace the attack source. Attacker in the unit time constructed TCP-SYN packet number of the more effective their attacks on the more remarkable.

A single site SYN attack: the use of three-tier defense against the current cluster switching equipment (such as the Cisco three-layer switch) for port aggregation and load balancing algorithms, when balancing the loopholes in the use of real or virtual into a single source address and the same source port attack. Such attacks in the majority of three-way switching device will be exchanged through a single line, thus weakening the effect of the cluster defense.

Real-situ SYN attack: for some of the software firewall and hardware firewall’s defense theory, specifically addressing the reverse firewall defense style of the attack was launched. The network the last two years the establishment of a puppet machine value chain, enabling real-SYN attack site on the Internet is now becoming more of a attack, an attacker by controlling the puppet of the many machines to send attack packets.

SYN big pack attacks: SYN attacks and general different, SYN packet attack is large by constructing a very large TCP data packets, causing network congestion have been targeted attacks on the way to achieve results, and general SYN is different from attacks initiated by the same flow rate, sending large data packet sender occupy less system resources.

UDP big pack attack: relative to the TCP protocol data packets, the attacking side less system resources need only be able to build a UDP packet, which also vigorously for an attacker to send a UDP packet to provide the conditions for the attack, UDP attacks generally through Large data packets clogging network bandwidth to achieve.

Agent CC attacks: the initial attack by the Chinese to attack the software off the Internet triggered a large number of agents CC attack. Appeared on the Internet through the collection of a large number of free and open proxy server, through the submission of a large number of targeted attacks on these servers destination address of the access request by the proxy server transit attacks. CC to launch attacks on their client agent requires only a common broadband lines, its attack is the real address of address (the proxy server address), once led a number of network operators suffer.

SYN-ACK, PSH-ACK, etc.: for TCP connections initiated by a variety of weaknesses in attack.

Legend DB Attack: Legend of the database-specific attack, but also by the Chinese to attack the first customer to write exploits, the attack is to simulate the legendary customer segment Create account movements, making the legendary server to its knees.

Legends Brush villain attacks: the last off the assembly line through the non-stop and simulated landing, making the legendary server crashes

squid+apache = good cache, protection from ddos

December 10th, 2009

just reconfigured my webserver runing on localhost why?
read under ….
1. what is best practice to have good performance ? – CACHE ! which means if your webserver know where is file(image,song, swf .. etc) located on hard drive and already opened it ones with another customer, why it must be opened second time ? with webserver ? it will make a good lick on performace site if youre runing heavy site with lot of pictures.
2. what is the best program for working on many simple GET/POST/CONNECT requests ? – Squid – caching proxy server runing under Linux and using all power of linux fs for making cache and make it fast
i just made a hibrid combination on my squid ( runing on 80 port) and apache (runing on 127.0.0.1:80).
here is simple config of my squid
http_port 62.75.250.93:80 transparent

icp_port 0

htcp_port 0

hierarchy_stoplist cgi-bin ?

acl QUERY urlpath_regex cgi-bin \?

no_cache deny QUERY

cache_swap_low 64

cache_swap_high 128

maximum_object_size 2048 KB

cache_replacement_policy heap LFUDA

memory_replacement_policy heap GDSF

fqdncache_size 2048

cache_dir ufs /tmp/squid 2000 11 11

cache_access_log /var/log/squid/access.log

cache_log /var/log/squid/cache.log

cache_store_log /dev/null

hosts_file /etc/hosts

dns_nameservers 127.0.0.1

refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080

refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440

refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320

peer_connect_timeout 30 seconds

acl all src 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0

acl site dst 127.0.0.1/32

acl max_con maxconn 20

http_access deny max_con all

forwarded_for off

http_access deny all !site

http_reply_access deny all !site

icp_access deny all !site

miss_access deny all !site

cache_effective_user proxy

cache_effective_group proxy

visible_hostname Wishmaster

cache_mgr moushegh@nazaretyan.com

always_direct allow all

never_direct deny all
on apache you just need to change Virtual host and LISTEN to 127.0.0.1 (remeber to add your host under localhost at /etc/hosts)
max_con – is a acl that will not allow more then 20 concurrent connections from 1 IP – good method for protecting from http get and syn flood attacks
any questions ? ready to answer on comments or via skype

IPhone -Flu Season and Mobile Security

November 30th, 2009

About once a year, usually around Black Friday, and coinciding with the flu season, mobile security takes center stage. Maybe more so this year, given the ascendency of the smartphone coupled with browsers finally good enough to make the mobile Web a worthwhile experience.

A week or so ago, RIM’s security chief spoke about smartphone viruses and their potential usurpation of the phone as a platform for DDoS attacks. This coupled with a critical mass of open operating system devices now make the mobile phone a tempting target. We’ve been talking about mobile viruses for half a decade. This time, the threat is real.

In the same way, these virtual petri dishes are black holes into which corporate IT has no visibility. Sybase (News – Alert) recently commissioned a study of European IT executives to evaluate the magnitude of this potential exposure. The findings are downright scary, and make one wonder about the level of attention IT departments have devoted to addressing the security requirements of their mobile workers. 66 percent stated that they have no visibility into the sensitivity of data stored on mobile devices, 38 percent have no visibility into applications, and only 15 percent are confident in their ability to contain exposure if the phone is lost or stolen. In my book, considering the magnitude of exposure, this lack of security should have these IT managers camped out at the corner unemployment office (or in a more draconian mood, at the local lockup).

These metrics align with the percentage of employee-liable phones used in the enterprise, now approaching 50 percent as reported by Yankee Group (News – Alert). I won’t go into the not unexpected conclusion from the presentation about the iPhone’s readiness (or lack thereof) for enterprise use.

So what’s an operator, an enterprise, or a smartphone subscriber to do?

Needless to say, once the phone is lost or infected, it is too late. An effective over-the-air security solution, deployed as part of an overall care architecture by the operator, for employee liable devices, or by the enterprise for corporate liable devices, is the foundation. This solution will be responsible for pushing firmware or software updates to the phone, ensuring that discovered vulnerabilities are quickly patched. Extensions to widely deployed FOTA architectures meet this requirement. In some cases, the operator may mandate anti-virus software, pushed to the device (or pre-loaded at time of manufacture) by the same update conduit. If the phone is lost or stolen, the management client of the device should be capable of locking the phone and/or wiping all data.

In parallel to the operator’s care platform, user education is essential. Password protection is a given, as well as the need for backup. However, it is almost criminal that employees using their smartphone for work purposes ignore this first line of defense. And, if the user wants that which happened in Vegas to stay in Vegas, he or she can’t wait a week to report a lost phone, hoping that it will miraculously re-appear. A phone locked after compromising photos or a corporate roadmap have made it to the Internet is not nearly as good as a phone locked before. Unlocking is as easy as making a call, nothing is lost if/when the “lost” device is once again found, as an over-the-air unlock is just as fast and easy as a lock.

The real area for improvement is in the area of IT control over employee liable devices. At Interop (News – Alert) in NYC, I participated in a panel addressing just this concern. We exchanged best practices, painting a picture of what should be, though not what necessarily currently exists. Our joint observation was that IT departments need to understand that mobile devices fall into a continuum. On one extreme, there are corporate liable Blackberries or mission-specific platforms upon which you can enforce restrictive, but safe, policies (on device encryption, strong passwords etc.). There will always be a place for this. On the other are the unwashed masses with a variety of personal devices with no policy or control enforced or deployed.

But the middle? Devices with reasonable VPN or ActiveSync support with on device encryption like Windows Mobile or the iPhone (News – Alert) 3GS? Good call, it is reasonable to expect encryption on the device, something that is supported by ActiveSync policies. However, some handsets, like earlier iPhones, will report back to the server that they support on-device encryption, when they don’t.

Convenient, but dangerous because you think that you are more secure than you are. Then there are devices which will fetch your mail off the Exchange server (if the server is configured to allow low security devices), but make no claim of any sort of ActiveSync on device encryption, such as recent Android devices like the Motorola (News – Alert) Droid or the Palm Pre. Even this is not cut and dried. For example, Touchdown, an ActiveSync corporate email app, runs on Android devices but reports support of on device encryption (at least as of late November 2009) even if that capability does not yet exist. The situation is complex.

The level of visibility into these devices, and IT’s willingness (and/or ability) to lock down an employee owned device , will inform what corporate resources are made available. This in effect addresses the concerns raised by the Sybase study. No visibility. No access to ERP or Exchange.

And if the enterprise does deploy security along the lines of Credant or Good, they’ve got to make doubly sure that there is no leakage of content (i.e., contacts or photos) from the ‘public’ to the ‘enterprise’ side of the device, certifying conformance on each and every OS platform and hardware family introduced. Here, the onus is on the IT department.

As I got onto the plane in JFK, I looked around at a rather unhealthy cross-section of the traveling population (compared to SFO), wondering if it was just my phone that I needed to protect…

More security experts needed

November 26th, 2009

CYBERJAYA: The International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (Impact) believes that what the world needs now is more cybersecurity experts.

Although it may sound less whimsical than the famous song, in reality, Impact said cyberspace is ever changing and the number of threats is growing everyday.

Threats are also getting more sophisticated and targeted compared to 10 years ago, said Philip Victor, Impact centre for policy and international cooperation, head of communications and outreach.

Aside from attackers being driven by financial gains from attacking global systems, Philip said that terrorists are also turning to the Internet to launch their attacks or execute their plans.

One of the more popular example of the realities of a cyberattack is the 2007 cyberwar in Estonia where attackers launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Estonian websites including the Estonian parliament, banks, ministries and newspapers, he said.

Although the attacks may seem low-tech, a DDoS attack can disrupt everyday activities that require Internet connectivity.

“Unfortunately, there’s a lack of global cooperation to fight this due to the shortage of information security professionals,” Philip said.

In Malaysia, he said the information security professional to population ratio is 1:20,000.

“We believe the number of security professionals is growing but as the Internet population increases, we will need more,” he said.

Working towards this effort, Impact has alligned with information security certification company ISC2 to provide information security training to Impact partner countries.

“This is in line with our mandate of operationalising the Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA)in escalating cybersecurity capabilities to better defend againts cyberthreats,” said Datuk Mohd Noor Amin, chairman of the Impact management board.

The GCA is the United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union’s framework to enhance confidence and cybersecurity in the information society.

Through this agreement, ISC2’s certification courses such as the Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Systems Security Certified Practitioner and the Certified Secure Software Lifecycle professional will be offered in Impact’s partner countries to enhance the organisation’s position in providing a holistic approach to public sector cybersecurity.

Impact will kick off the first course, the Systems Security Certified course, in Africa in the first quarter of next year.

“Africa is a continent with growing Internet users so its logical to train security profesionals there to ensure its cyberspace is safe,” Philip said.

Impact and ISC2 are expecting 100,000 security professionals to be trained through this partnership.

“We will be working with governments to realise this goal in order to provide enough security professionals for the world,” Philip said.

W. Hord Tipton, executive director for ISC2 said the organisation is happy to work with Impact.

“We jointly believe that only by professional development can we enable the community to protect against cyberthreats and we look forward to educating more individuals,” he said.

Major Problems in Korean Security Industry

November 24th, 2009

Park Dong-hoon makes a keynote speech

Park Dong-hoon, the president of the Korea Information Security Industry Association, made a keynote speech at the 2009 Korea Information Telecommunication Facilities Engineering fall seminar on Nov 19. The presentation covered the current status and problems of knowledge information security regarding to recent DDoS crisis.

With the development of IT technology, people are now living in a ubiquitous environment where everything is connected such as cellphones, computers, and mobile devices. However, more information through various networks created more demand for security. As the network became bigger and more complex, the trend in security is also changing from technical network protection to service security. Most people have some type of information stored in more than one network and many businesses have crucial information to protect. Due to the increase of cyber crimes, the knowledge information security industry has risen and it will continue to grow to be a convergence security industry. The information security industry is defined as the industry providing services to prevent crimes and disasters through security technology like passwords, encoding, surveillance, and recognition. The industry consists of information security, physical security and convergence security.

The potential for knowledge information security is tremendous. The estimated global market for 2013 is expected to be US$368 billion. Currently, the market is dominated by the US and EU at 88%. Korea has only 1.7% of global market share. The Korean knowledge information security market is estimated at W3.1 trillion in 2007, but it is expected to reach W18.4 trillion by 2013. For information security, most high-end security hardware is imported, but Korean software is exported to Japan, the US and other countries. For physical security, the market has expanded with 32% of annual growth. The 2009 market analysis showed that law enforcement has been strengthened due to several major information theft cases. Also, the public and finance sectors plan to establish the convergence security business against DDoS attacks and the industry will get bigger through M&A.

There have been several major security breaches since 2008 – the Blue House hacking, auction.com with over 10 million id thefts, Hanaro Telecom with 6 million id thefts, GS Caltex with 1.1 mil id thefts, and the 7/7 DDoS attack crisis. These types of cases show how vulnerable sites are with low security levels. The government does not have enough human resources in the security department. Many companies do not recognize security as investment but an expense. Also, most computer users do not use anti-virus programs, and their computers are exposed to hackers and are sometimes used as zombie PCs. The level of security systems does not meet the demand for increased internet use. The R&D investment is about 1,000 times less compared to the US, based on a 2007 survey. The solution for increasing cyber attacks is to establish a cyber crisis management system and produce more security professionals with more investment. The collaboration efforts between public and private sectors will help the security industry to grow.

RioRey appoints Network Defence deliver its DDoS protection solution in the UK market

November 23rd, 2009

RioRey has appointed leading IT security specialist Network Defence as its UK partner to help deliver its security solutions to the UK. RioRey will use Network Defence’s strong position in the IT security and vertical markets to deliver a new level of Internet protection to customers.

Network Defence will distribute the complete range of RioRey products, offering SMEs through to major enterprises protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The Internet security solutions detect attacks and nullify their effects on the network; ensuring e-commerce and web hosting services remain uninterrupted in order to maintain smooth business operations.

Director of sales and education (EMEA) for RioRey, Duncan Hume, said: “As sophisticated security technology requires focus RioRey looks for top quality partners across Europe. We have worked with Network Defence for several years and the team has always impressed me, and with their combination of technical ability plus sales and marketing skills they show clear focus in a rapidly growing market sector.

“Network Defence has a strong client base in a number of vertical sectors and are clearly trusted advisors to their customers. RioRey provides DDoS protection that no other supplier can offer, by working with a dedicated partner who fully understands our needs and the needs of their customers we can ensure the clear messaging required around DDoS mitigation is delivered; they are the perfect partner for our technology.”

Dave Beesley, managing director for Network Defence, said: “DDoS threats are very real and impact the market sectors we work in everyday. RioRey’s easy-to-install and intelligent range of products complement the solutions and services Network Defence has to offer, adding great value to our portfolio. Working together we can benefit our customers by providing an additional layer of protection to those who rely on their website.”

RioRey are currently developing new products around DDoS mitigation and plan to use Network Defence as a key partner in their UK market strategy.

EU Security Agency Highlights Cloud Computing Risks

November 20th, 2009

Cloud computing users face problems including loss of control over data, difficulties proving compliance, and additional legal risks as data moves from one legal jurisdiction to another, according to a assessement of cloud computing risks from the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).

The agency highlighted those problems as having the most serious consequences and being among the most likely for companies using cloud computing services, according to ENISA.

ENISA examined the assets that companies put at risk when they turn to cloud computing, including customer data and their own reputation; the vulnerabilities that exist in cloud computing systems; the risks to which those vulnerabilities expose businesses, and the probabilities that those risks will occur.

When moving to cloud-based computing services, companies have to hand over control to the cloud provider on a number of issues, which may affect security negatively. For example, the provider’s terms of use may not allow port scans, vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. At the same time, service level agreements (SLAs) may not include those services. The result is a gap in defenses, ENISA said in the report.

Compliance could also prove to be a big problem if the provider can’t offer the right levels of certification or the certification scheme hasn’t been adapted for cloud services, the report said.

One of the advantages of cloud services is that data can be stored in multiple locations, which could save the day in the event of an incident in one of the data centers. However, it could also be a big risk if the data centers are located in countries with a shaky legal system, according to the report.

Other areas of concern are vendor lock-in, failure of mechanisms separating different companies, management interfaces that get accessed by hackers, data not deleted properly and malicious insiders.

To minimize these risks the report proposes a list of questions that a company needs to ask potential cloud providers. For example, what guarantees does the provider offer that customer resources are fully isolated, what security education program does it run for staff, what measures are taken to ensure third-party service levels are met, and so on.

In the end a good contract can lessen the risks, according to the report. Companies should especially pay attention to their rights and obligations related to data transfers, access to data by law enforcement and notifications of breaches in security, it said.

ENISA’s report isn’t all doom and gloom, though. Using cloud computing services can result in more robust, scalable and cost-effective defenses against certain kinds of attack, according to the report. For example, the ability to dynamically allocate resources could provide better protection against DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, ENISA said.

Smartphone attacks on horizon

November 18th, 2009

Hackers could one day turn ordinary smartphones into “rogue” devices to attack major wireless networks, Research In Motion’s security chief warned.

Scott Totzke, RIM’s vice-president of BlackBerry security, said hackers could use smartphones to target wireless carriers using a technique similar to one used in assaults that slowed Internet traffic in the United States and South Korea in July.

In what’s known as a distributed denial of service, or a DDOS attack, criminals use phone signals to order tens of thousands computers to contact a targeted site repeatedly, slowing it or eventually crashing it.

”I think that’s an area of concern,” Totzke said in an interview this week at the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario.

Totzke said a technique involving data packets might be used to bring down a wireless network, though hackers might accomplish that using a relatively small number of smartphones.

Malicious software that could launch such attacks would likely come from applications that smartphone users install on their devices, said Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer at Flexilis, a mobile security software maker.

Flexilis researchers have already identified virus-tainted versions of popular smartphone applications such as Google Inc’s Google Maps software and computer games.

”These are not telephones anymore. These are computers. So people are going to have all the problems on their phones that they have on their computers,” Mahaffey said.

The best way to protect against such an attack is through regularly applying security patches, which smartphone makers such as RIM release as they identify potential security flaws in their devices, Totzke said.