Locking down the edge

SPONSORED POST: Edge security is a growing headache. The attack surface is expanding as more operational functions migrate out of centralized locations and into distributed sites and devices. …

The post Locking down the edge first appeared on The Next Platform.

Locking down the edge was written by Martin Courtney at The Next Platform.

A Platform For Securely Scaling Operations At The Edge

COMMISSIONED: Innovation at the edge is happening at light speed. Everywhere you turn, organizations are seeking to shift their center of data processing gravity from central locations like head offices and datacenters to the outer limits of the operation – to factory floors, hospital wards, truck fleets and smart cities. …

The post A Platform For Securely Scaling Operations At The Edge first appeared on The Next Platform.

A Platform For Securely Scaling Operations At The Edge was written by Martin Courtney at The Next Platform.

Cisco Dynamic Trunk Protocol Hacking with Scapy

A port on a Cisco switch is either an access port or a trunk port. […]

The post Cisco Dynamic Trunk Protocol Hacking with Scapy first appeared on Brezular's Blog.

Is BGP TTL Security Any Good?

After checking what routers do when they receive a TCP SYN packet from an unknown source, I couldn’t resist checking how they cope with TCP SYN packets with too-low TTL when using TTL security, formally known as The Generalized TTL Security Mechanism (GTSM) defined in RFC 5082.

TL&DR: Not bad: most devices I managed to test did a decent job.

Is BGP TTL Security Any Good?

After checking what routers do when they receive a TCP SYN packet from an unknown source, I couldn’t resist checking how they cope with TCP SYN packets with too-low TTL when using TTL security, formally known as The Generalized TTL Security Mechanism (GTSM) defined in RFC 5082.

TL&DR: Not bad: most devices I managed to test did a decent job.

Video: Outages Caused by Bugs in BGP Implementations

The previous BGP-related videos described how fat fingers and malicious actors cause Internet outages.

Today, we’ll focus on the impact of bugs in BGP implementations, from malformed AS paths to mishandled transitive attributes. The examples in the video are a few years old, but you can see similar things in the wild in 2023.

Video: Outages Caused by Bugs in BGP Implementations

The previous BGP-related videos described how fat fingers and malicious actors cause Internet outages.

Today, we’ll focus on the impact of bugs in BGP implementations, from malformed AS paths to mishandled transitive attributes. The examples in the video are a few years old, but you can see similar things in the wild in 2023.

The GDPR’s new ally

SPONSORED FEATURE: A convergence of cutting-edge technology, generative AI and advanced server infrastructure has unleashed a wave of innovation in the realm of cyber security. …

The post The GDPR’s new ally first appeared on The Next Platform.

The GDPR’s new ally was written by Martin Courtney at The Next Platform.

Open BGP Daemons: There’s So Many of Them

A while ago, the Networking Notes blog published a link to my “Will Network Devices Reject BGP Sessions from Unknown Sources?” blog post with a hint: use Shodan to find how many BGP routers accept a TCP session from anyone on the Internet.

The results are appalling: you can open a TCP session on port 179 with over 3 million IP addresses.

Open BGP Daemons: There’s So Many of Them

A while ago, the Networking Notes blog published a link to my “Will Network Devices Reject BGP Sessions from Unknown Sources?” blog post with a hint: use Shodan to find how many BGP routers accept a TCP session from anyone on the Internet.

The results are appalling: you can open a TCP session on port 179 with over 3 million IP addresses.

Rapid Progress in BGP Route Origin Validation

In 2022, I was invited to speak about Internet routing security at the DEEP conference in Zadar, Croatia. One of the main messages of the presentation was how slow the progress had been even though we had had all the tools available for at least a decade (RFC 7454 was finally published in 2015, and we started writing it in early 2012).

At about that same time, a small group of network operators started cooperating on improving the security and resilience of global routing, eventually resulting in the MANRS initiative – a great place to get an overview of how many Internet Service Providers care about adopting Internet routing security mechanisms.

Rapid Progress in BGP Route Origin Validation

In 2022, I was invited to speak about Internet routing security at the DEEP conference in Zadar, Croatia. One of the main messages of the presentation was how slow the progress had been even though we had had all the tools available for at least a decade (RFC 7454 was finally published in 2015, and we started writing it in early 2012).

At about that same time, a small group of network operators started cooperating on improving the security and resilience of global routing, eventually resulting in the MANRS initiative – a great place to get an overview of how many Internet Service Providers care about adopting Internet routing security mechanisms.

Video: Hacking BGP for Fun and Profit

At least some people learn from others’ mistakes: using the concepts proven by some well-publicized BGP leaks, malicious actors quickly figured out how to hijack BGP prefixes for fun and profit.

Fortunately, those shenanigans wouldn’t spread as far today as they did in the past – according to RoVista, most of the largest networks block the prefixes Route Origin Validation (ROV) marks as invalid.

Notes:

• ROV cannot stop all the hijacks, but it can identify more-specific-prefixes hijacks (assuming the origin AS did their job right).
• You’ll find more Network Security Fallacies videos in the How Networks Really Work webinar.

Video: Hacking BGP for Fun and Profit

At least some people learn from others’ mistakes: using the concepts proven by some well-publicized BGP leaks, malicious actors quickly figured out how to hijack BGP prefixes for fun and profit.

Fortunately, those shenanigans wouldn’t spread as far today as they did in the past – according to RoVista, most of the largest networks block the prefixes Route Origin Validation (ROV) marks as invalid.

Notes:

• ROV cannot stop all the hijacks, but it can identify more-specific-prefixes hijacks (assuming the origin AS did their job right).
• You’ll find more Network Security Fallacies videos in the How Networks Really Work webinar.

Restoring Hashcat Cracking

Hash cracking is often paused or stopped for various reasons. Hashcat has a Pause button […]

The post Restoring Hashcat Cracking first appeared on Brezular's Blog.

Generative AI Meets Cybersecurity: Use Cases for Lateral Security and the SOC

With security, the battle between good and evil is always a swinging pendulum. Traditionally, the shrewdness of the attack has depended on the skill of the attacker and the sophistication of the arsenal. This is true on the protection side of the equation, too—over $200B in investments have been poured in year on year to strengthen cybersecurity and train personnel.

It is fair to say that Generative-AI has upended this paradigm on its head. Now, an unskilled hacker with low sophistication could leverage Gen-AI “crowdsourced” constructs to become significantly more destructive with relatively little to no investment and training. This explodes the threat surface significantly.

Consider a recent example that one of VMware’s security technologists shared leveraging generally available ChatGPT. When he requested ChatGPT to create an exploit code for a vulnerability, it resulted in an appropriate denial.

Note that the software can understand the malicious nature of the request and invokes its ethical underpinning to justify the denial.

But what if you slightly shift the question’s tonality, and frame it as seeking “knowledge” instead?

What was previously denied is now easily granted with just a few keystrokes, and the exploit code is dished up.

Admittedly, you Continue reading

Video: History of BGP Route Leaks

I’ll be talking about Internet routing security at the Deep conference in a few days, and just in case you won’t be able to make it¹ ;) here’s the first bit of my talk: a very brief history of BGP route leaks².

Note: you’ll find more Network Security Fallacies videos in the How Networks Really Work webinar.

Video: History of BGP Route Leaks

I’ll be talking about Internet routing security at the Deep conference in a few days, and just in case you won’t be able to make it¹ ;) here’s the first bit of my talk: a very brief history of BGP route leaks².

Note: you’ll find more Network Security Fallacies videos in the How Networks Really Work webinar.

Will Network Devices Reject BGP Sessions from Unknown Sources?

TL&DR: Violating the Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, the answer is “Yes, but the devil is in the details.”

It all started with the following observation by Minh Ha left as a comment to my previous BGP session security blog post:

I’d think it’d be obvious for BGP routers to only accept incoming sessions from configured BGP neighbors, right? Because BGP is the most critical infrastructure, the backbone of the Internet, why would you want your router to accept incoming session from anyone but KNOWN sources?

Following my “opinions are good, facts are better” mantra, I decided to run a few tests before opinionating¹.

Will Network Devices Reject BGP Sessions from Unknown Sources?

TL&DR: Violating the Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, the answer is “Yes, but the devil is in the details.”

It all started with the following observation by Minh Ha left as a comment to my previous BGP session security blog post:

I’d think it’d be obvious for BGP routers to only accept incoming sessions from configured BGP neighbors, right? Because BGP is the most critical infrastructure, the backbone of the Internet, why would you want your router to accept incoming session from anyone but KNOWN sources?

Following my “opinions are good, facts are better” mantra, I decided to run a few tests before opinionating¹.