CNCF’s Latest Projects TUF and Notary Aimed at Security

TUF was established first, with Docker Inc. adopting it for the commercialized Notary product.

What is Notary and why is it important to CNCF?

As you may have heard, the Notary project has been invited to join the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Much like its real world namesake, Notary is a platform for establishing trust over pieces of content.

In life, certain important events such as buying a house are facilitated by a trusted third party called a “notary.” When buying a house, this person is typically employed by the lender to verify your identity and serve as a witness to your signatures on the mortgage agreement. The notary carries a special stamp and will also sign the documents as an affirmation that a notary was present and verified all the required information relating to the borrowers.

In a similar manner, the Notary project, initially sponsored by Docker, is designed to provide high levels of trust  over digital content using strong cryptographic signatures. In addition to ensuring the provenance of the software, it also provides guarantees that the content is not modified without approval of the author anywhere in the supply chain.  This then allows higher level systems like Docker Enterprise Edition (EE)  with Docker Content Trust (which uses Notary) to establish clear policy on the usage of content.  For instance, a Continue reading

Is my TPM affected by the Infineon disaster?

I made a tool to check if your TPM chip is bad. Well, it extracts the SRK public key and you can then use marcan’s tool to easily check if the key is good or bad.

Example use:

$ g++ -o check-srk -std=gnu++11 check-srk.cc -ltspi -lssl -lcrypto 2>&1 && ./check-srk
Size: 2048
Outputting modulus…
8490234823904890234823904823904890238490238490238490238490[…]893428490823904231
$ wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/marcan/fc87aa78085c2b6f979aefc73fdc381f/raw/526bc2f2249a2e3f5d4450c7c412e0dbf57b2288/roca_test.py
[…]
$ python roca_test.py 8490234823904890234823904823904890238490238490238490238490[…]893428490823904231
Vuln!

(use -s if you have an SRK PIN)

If the SRK is weak then not only are very likely anything else you generated in the TPM weak, but also anything generated outside the TPM and imported is crackable, since your blobs are encrypted using this crackable SRK key.

PNG-IX Network Security Workshop

The Internet Society (Aftab Siddiqui) and APNIC (Tashi Phuntsho) jointly conducted a Network Security Workshop in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG) on 3-5 October 2017. This was arranged for current and potential members of the first neutral Internet Exchange Point (IX) in the country called PNG-IX, at the request of NICTA – the National Information and Communications Technology Authority – a government agency responsible for the regulation and licensing of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Papua New Guinea. NICTA is also a key partner in establishing the Internet Exchange in PNG.

This first half of Day 1 (3 October) was dedicated to the PNG-IX awareness., such the role of an IX, how it works, why an IX has been established in PNG and why everyone should peer in order to achieve both short- and long-term benefits to the local Internet ecosystem. NICTA CEO Charles Punaha, NICTA Director Kila Gulo Vui, and APNIC Development Director Che-Hoo Cheng shared their views  

There were more than 40 participants in the Network Security workshop, with diverse backgrounds ranging from enterprise environments, state universities, financial institutions, telcos and ISPS. The training alumni completed lab work and learned about important security topics such as Continue reading

Yubikey for SSH after the Infineon disaster

Because of the Infineon Disaster of 2017 lots of TPM and Yubikey keys have to be regenerated.

I have previously blogged about how to create these keys inside the yubikey, so here’s just the short version of how to redo it by generating the key in software and importing it into the yubikey.

When it appears to stall, that’s when it’s waiting for a touch.

openssl genrsa -out key.pem 2048
openssl rsa -in key.pem -outform PEM -pubout -out public.pem
yubico-piv-tool -s 9a -a import-key  --touch-policy=always -i key.pem
yubico-piv-tool -a verify-pin -a selfsign-certificate -s 9a -S '/CN=my SSH key/' -i public.pem -o cert.pem
yubico-piv-tool -a import-certificate -s 9a -i cert.pem
rm key.pem public.pem cert.pem
ssh-keygen -D /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opensc-pkcs11.so -e

Delete all mentions of previous key. It’s good to have a disaster plan ahead of time if keys need to be replaced, but if you don’t have one:

1. Inventory all bad keys. Make sure you have their fingerprints.
2. Inventory all places this key could be installed.
3. Generate new keys.
4. Distribute new keys. (in this case, add to all relevant ~/.ssh/authorized_keys)
5. Remove all old keys.
6. Grep for the keys found in Continue reading

Yubikey for SSH after the Infineon disaster

Because of the Infineon Disaster of 2017 lots of TPM and Yubikey keys have to be regenerated.

I have previously blogged about how to create these keys inside the yubikey, so here’s just the short version of how to redo it by generating the key in software and importing it into the yubikey.

When it appears to stall, that’s when it’s waiting for a touch.

openssl genrsa -out key.pem 2048
openssl rsa -in key.pem -outform PEM -pubout -out public.pem
yubico-piv-tool -s 9a -a import-key  --touch-policy=always -i key.pem
yubico-piv-tool -a verify-pin -a selfsign-certificate -s 9a -S '/CN=my SSH key/' -i public.pem -o cert.pem
yubico-piv-tool -a import-certificate -s 9a -i cert.pem
rm key.pem public.pem cert.pem
ssh-keygen -D /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opensc-pkcs11.so -e

Delete all mentions of previous key. It’s good to have a disaster plan ahead of time if keys need to be replaced, but if you don’t have one:

1. Inventory all bad keys. Make sure you have their fingerprints.
2. Inventory all places this key could be installed.
3. Generate new keys.
4. Distribute new keys. (in this case, add to all relevant ~/.ssh/authorized_keys)
5. Remove all old keys.
6. Grep for the keys found in Continue reading

‘Treacherous 12’ Cloud Security Threats: Is Your Company Exposed?

Cloud security threats are "moving up the stack."

McAfee, Cisco Share Threat Intelligence Across Security Fabrics

McAffee also added new partners to its Security Innovation Alliance ecosystem including IBM and Juniper Networks.

Huawei Q&A: Paving a Trusted Way for Cloud-based Transformation

Thanks to all who joined us for the Huawei 2017 Infrastructure Security Report Webinar: Paving a Trusted Way for Cloud-based Transformation. During the webinar, Huawei discussed a fresh approach when it comes to your cloud journey that is characterized by the transition to cloud computing, mobile Internet, Big Data, and virtual networks. After the webinar, we... Read more →

Cloud Revenue Makes Up 20% of IBM’s Revenue in 3Q

The company's security revenue jumped 51 percent from the same quarter a year earlier.

Live Today : HPC, Machine Learning, And Security – Can HPC Be Self Healing?

SPONSORED WEBCAST

Today at 10 am Eastern / 15:00 UK this free webcast will broadcast live.

In this webcast, we learn from Nick Curcuru, vice president of the big data practice at MasterCard, about what needs to be in place both technically and in terms of management models and processes so that the benefits can be fully achieved.

High performance computing, long the domain of research centers and academia, is increasingly becoming a part of mainstream IT infrastructure and being opened up to a broader range of enterprise workloads, and in recent years, that includes big data analytics and machine …

Live Today : HPC, Machine Learning, And Security – Can HPC Be Self Healing? was written by Matt Proud at The Next Platform.

ForeScout Plans for $101 Million IPO

The company will sell 4.8 million shares priced between $20 and $22 per share later this month.

Security Companies’ Growth Outpaces NASDAQ, S&P 500

SecureWorks, a Dell Technologies brand, saw the most growth at 33 percent.

Real world use cases for NSX and Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading PaaS solution for enterprise customers today, providing a fast way to convert their ideas from conception to production. This is achieved by providing a platform to run their code in any cloud and any language taking care of all the infrastructure “stuff” for them.

From building the container image, compiling it with the required runtime , deploying it in a highly available mode and connecting it to the required services, PCF allows dev shops to concentrate on developing their code.

While the platform is providing developers with the most simplified experience conceivable, under the hood there are many moving parts that make that happen and plumbing all these parts can be complex. That’s where customers are really enjoying the power of VMware’s SDDC, and the glue between the PaaS and SDDC layers is NSX, it is the enabler that makes it all work.

In this blog post I detail some of the main uses cases customers have already deployed NSX for PCF on top of vSphere and how PCF and NSX are much better together in the real world.

The use cases customers are deploying with NSX for PCF are varied and ill Continue reading

NSX Real World Use Cases for Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Pivotal cloud foundry is the leading PaaS solution for enterprise customers today, providing a fast way to convert their ideas from conception to production. This is achieved by providing a platform to run their code in any cloud and any language taking care of all the infrastructure stuff for them.

From building the container image, compiling it with the required runtime, deploying it in a highly available mode and connecting it to the required services, PCF allows dev shops to concentrate on developing their code.

While the platform is providing developers with the most simplified experience conceivable, under the hood there are many moving parts that make that happen and plumbing all these parts can be complex. That’s where customers are really enjoying the power of VMware’s SDDC, and the glue between the PaaS and SDDC layers is NSX, it is the enabler that makes it all work.

In this blog post, I detail some of the main uses cases customers has already deployed NSX for PCF on top of vSphere and how PCF and NSX are much better together in the real world.

The use cases customers are deploying with NSX for PCF are varied and ill divide them Continue reading

KRACK proves we need more encryption on the Internet

A serious weakness in Wi-Fi security was made public earlier today. The Key Reinstallation Attack (KRACK) can break Wi-Fi encryption, opening your data up to eavesdropping. This, combined with issues in Linux and Android, make it possible for attackers to change websites you view. This is a serious problem for Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2), a protocol used in millions of networks worldwide.

Luckily, the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) is on the rise. Mozilla’s data shows that over 60% of pages loaded in Firefox use TLS. More and more companies are using encryption for all traffic and removing the ability to connect to unencrypted versions of their sites. When connecting to these sites, KRACK isn’t as big of a deal, because the data is encrypted before it’s sent across Wi-Fi. Even if WPA2 is broken, the data is still secure.

Unfortunately there are still millions of sites that don’t provide this security. Their users are vulnerable to eavesdropping, fake content, malware injection, and more. We need more companies and operators to use TLS and HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to mitigate the potential impact of KRACK.

Internet traffic exists in layers, which makes it possible to use more Continue reading

KRACK proves we need more encryption on the Internet

A serious weakness in Wi-Fi security was made public earlier today. The Key Reinstallation Attack (KRACK) can break Wi-Fi encryption, opening your data up to eavesdropping. This, combined with issues in Linux and Android, make it possible for attackers to change websites you view. This is a serious problem for Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2), a protocol used in millions of networks worldwide.

Luckily, the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) is on the rise. Mozilla’s data shows that over 60% of pages loaded in Firefox use TLS. More and more companies are using encryption for all traffic and removing the ability to connect to unencrypted versions of their sites. When connecting to these sites, KRACK isn’t as big of a deal, because the data is encrypted before it’s sent across Wi-Fi. Even if WPA2 is broken, the data is still secure.

Unfortunately there are still millions of sites that don’t provide this security. Their users are vulnerable to eavesdropping, fake content, malware injection, and more. We need more companies and operators to use TLS and HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to mitigate the potential impact of KRACK.
Internet traffic exists in layers, which makes it possible to use more Continue reading

Some notes on the KRACK attack

This is my interpretation of the KRACK attacks paper that describes a way of decrypting encrypted WiFi traffic with an active attack.

Details

On Approaches to Internet Security, Cybersecurity, and the Path Forward

On 5 October, I had the pleasure of speaking at the New York Metro Joint Cyber Security Conference, which brings together a community of security practitioners from the New York Metro area. Two talks stood out for me. First, the keynote by Maria Vullo, Superintendent Financial Services for the state of New York, who explained her drivers for regulating cybersecurity requirements for the Financial Sector [link to the presentation]. Second, a presentation by Pete Lindstrom from IDC, who, in a presentation on how perimeter security needs a thorough rethink, kept returning to the economics of security.

The reason I refer to these two talks is because I can appreciate them for their own, almost diametrical approaches for improving security. Pete Lindstrom making a strong economic and risk-based approach, questioning whether patching every vulnerability that comes along makes any sense from an economic risk and scale analysis. Maria Vullo, on the other hand, using capacity-based regulation to incentivise stronger security controls.

Those two points resonate strongly with what I was trying to get across: There is no magic security bullet, there is no security czar, and maintaining trust needs an active approach from all stakeholders.

Starting off with how our Continue reading

Sysdig Taps its Forensic Platform for Container Security Product

Company claims breadth and depth of its platform differentiates it from rivals.