NSA’s EthernalBlue exploit ported to Windows 10

If you were running Windows 10, then you didn’t need to worry about your box being hit with the leaked NSA EternalBlue exploit; but things change and now researchers have ported EternalBlue to Windows 10.After the WannaCry ransomware attack, some defenders focused on building detection rules to protect against the DoublePulsar backdoor implant; but beware as RiskSense researchers completely removed DoublePulsar. They warned that DoublePulsar is a “red herring for defenders to focus on, as stealthier payload mechanisms can be crafted.”While they are not revealing all the details about the exploit chain so attackers can jump on them, they hope white hat security researchers benefit from the technical overview of the exploit process “so that new generic and targeted techniques can be developed to prevent attacks.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NSA’s EthernalBlue exploit ported to Windows 10

If you were running Windows 10, then you didn’t need to worry about your box being hit with the leaked NSA EternalBlue exploit; but things change and now researchers have ported EternalBlue to Windows 10.After the WannaCry ransomware attack, some defenders focused on building detection rules to protect against the DoublePulsar backdoor implant; but beware as RiskSense researchers completely removed DoublePulsar. They warned that DoublePulsar is a “red herring for defenders to focus on, as stealthier payload mechanisms can be crafted.”While they are not revealing all the details about the exploit chain so attackers can jump on them, they hope white hat security researchers benefit from the technical overview of the exploit process “so that new generic and targeted techniques can be developed to prevent attacks.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Good Samaritans with network visibility

In a big open office 30 feet from me, a team of US Veterans speak intently on the phone to businesses large and small, issuing urgent warnings of specific cyber security threats. They call to get stubborn, confused people to take down hidden ransomware distribution sites. They call with bad news that a specific computer at the business has malware that steals login credentials. They call with good news — you can beat the bad guys this time by not sending the money — minutes before an email arrives to the business with fraudulent wire transfer instructions. —CircleID

The post Worth Reading: Good Samaritans with network visibility appeared first on rule 11 reader.

25% off Logitech K780 Multi-Device Wireless Keyboard for Computer, Phone & Tablet – Deal Alert

Rewrite the rules of desktop typing. Logitech's K780 is the type-on-everything keyboard with full-size keys and a convenient number pad. Enjoy quiet, comfortable typing, on your Windows PC or Mac, and switch typing to your phone or tablet at the touch of a button. An integrated rubber stand holds your mobile devices within reach and always at the perfect typing angle. A generous two-year battery life virtually eliminates the need to switch out batteries. The K780 typically lists for $79.99, but right now is discounted 25% to $59.99. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Counting things, a lot of different things…

Counting things, a lot of different things…

Back in April we announced Rate Limiting of requests for every Cloudflare customer. Being able to rate limit at the edge of the network has many advantages: it’s easier for customers to set up and operate, their origin servers are not bothered by excessive traffic or layer 7 attacks, the performance and memory cost of rate limiting is offloaded to the edge, and more.

In a nutshell, rate limiting works like this:

  • Customers can define one or more rate limit rules that match particular HTTP requests (failed login attempts, expensive API calls, etc.)

  • Every request that matches the rule is counted per client IP address

  • Once that counter exceeds a threshold, further requests are not allowed to reach the origin server and an error page is returned to the client instead

This is a simple yet effective protection against brute force attacks on login pages and other sorts of abusive traffic like L7 DoS attacks.

Doing this with possibly millions of domains and even more millions of rules immediately becomes a bit more complicated. This article is a look at how we implemented a rate limiter able to run quickly and accurately at the edge of the network which Continue reading

Survey says: Enterprise IT needs a Zoloft and a life coach

For the past seven years, I’ve conducted Uptime Institute’s Annual Data Center Industry Survey (over 1,000 end user respondents from around the globe, conducted by email).Every year, some trend jumps out as the main theme. Maybe it’s because I’m turning 40 this year, but my takeaway from 2017 is that enterprise data center professionals need to relax—and reevaluate what’s important to their organizations.Over the course of the survey, I’ve watched our respondents wrestle with uncertainties as the IT profession continues to evolve. But the data from this year’s survey illustrates that many of the industry’s concerns are not coming to pass, meanwhile chronic management problems go untended.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Survey says: Enterprise IT needs a Zoloft and a life coach

For the past seven years, I’ve conducted Uptime Institute’s Annual Data Center Industry Survey (over 1,000 end user respondents from around the globe, conducted by email).Every year, some trend jumps out as the main theme. Maybe it’s because I’m turning 40 this year, but my takeaway from 2017 is that enterprise data center professionals need to relax—and reevaluate what’s important to their organizations.Over the course of the survey, I’ve watched our respondents wrestle with uncertainties as the IT profession continues to evolve. But the data from this year’s survey illustrates that many of the industry’s concerns are not coming to pass, meanwhile chronic management problems go untended.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Episode 5 – All You Ever Wanted To Know About EIGRP

In episode 5 the Network Collective panel dives deep into the inner-workings of EIGRP and how to tune the protocol to work best for you. This isn’t your run of the mill EIGRP training session though, so buckle up and dig in to learn a lot about a protocol which appears pretty straight forward on the surface.

On-Premise IT Roundtable

On another note… If you like the technical and community aspects of Network Collective, we wanted to tell you about a podcast that our friends over at Gestalt IT have just started up that you’ll probably enjoy as well.  The name of their podcast is the On-Premise IT Roundtable and in addition to networking they will be covering topics like system architecture, storage, big data, virtualization, hyper-converged, and a slew of other topics.  You should check them out.

 

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 

Russ White
Guest
Nicholas Russo
Guest
Jordan Martin
Co-Host
Eyvonne Sharp
Co-Host
Phil Gervasi
Co-Host

 

Audio Only Podcast Feed:

The post Episode 5 – All You Ever Wanted To Know About EIGRP appeared first on Network Collective.

Episode 5 – All You Ever Wanted To Know About EIGRP

In episode 5 the Network Collective panel dives deep into the inner-workings of EIGRP and how to tune the protocol to work best for you. This isn’t your run of the mill EIGRP training session though, so buckle up and dig in to learn a lot about a protocol which appears pretty straight forward on the surface.

On-Premise IT Roundtable

On another note… If you like the technical and community aspects of Network Collective, we wanted to tell you about a podcast that our friends over at Gestalt IT have just started up that you’ll probably enjoy as well.  The name of their podcast is the On-Premise IT Roundtable and in addition to networking they will be covering topics like system architecture, storage, big data, virtualization, hyper-converged, and a slew of other topics.  You should check them out.

 

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 

Russ White
Guest
Nicholas Russo
Guest
Jordan Martin
Co-Host
Eyvonne Sharp
Co-Host
Phil Gervasi
Co-Host

 

Audio Only Podcast Feed:

The post Episode 5 – All You Ever Wanted To Know About EIGRP appeared first on Network Collective.

Leaf-and-Spine Fabrics: Implicit or Explicit Complexity?

During Shawn Zandi’s presentation describing large-scale leaf-and-spine fabrics I got into an interesting conversation with an attendee that claimed it might be simpler to replace parts of a large fabric with large chassis switches (largest boxes offered by multiple vendors support up to 576 40GE or even 100GE ports).

As always, you have to decide between implicit and explicit complexity.

Read more ...

The First Question in Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity professionals know that security cannot be a bolt on process or technology. Likewise, I also believe that that the thought of including the security team is rarely  goes far enough. To be effective, security should be ingrained and it should be pervasive. With a this commitment, there is at least one primary question that every organization should be asking in regards to Cybersecurity. That question is simply “Why?”

Not only should this question be asked organizationally, it should also be asked by individuals that are assuming security related roles within an organization. Some would think that the answer is simple or obvious. In many cases it is, but the complete answer WILL differ from organization to organization and differ based on the type of organization. What is important is that the organization itself agree upon the answer to this question.

Relevant answers to the Why question might be any or all of the following:

Governance—Specific regulatory requirements that the organization is required to meet. When these exist, they are often considered a top priority and a baseline requirement to transact business.

Cost/Expense—This could be direct and/or indirect. A direct example would be the typical scenario that occurs with ransomeware. Continue reading

What about other leaked printed documents?

So nat-sec pundit/expert Marci Wheeler (@emptywheel) asks about those DIOG docs leaked last year. They were leaked in printed form, then scanned in an published by The Intercept. Did they have these nasty yellow dots that track the source? If not, why not?

The answer is that the scanned images of the DIOG doc don't have dots. I don't know why. One reason might be that the scanner didn't pick them up, as it's much lower quality than the scanner for the Russian hacking docs. Another reason is that the printer used my not have printed them -- while most printers do print such dots, some printers don't. A third possibility is that somebody used a tool to strip the dots from scanned images. I don't think such a tool exists, but it wouldn't be hard to write.

Scanner quality

The printed docs are here. They are full of whitespace where it should be easy to see these dots, but they appear not to be there. If we reverse the image, we see something like the following from the first page of the DIOG doc:


Compare this to the first page of the Russian hacking doc which shows Continue reading

Microwave

Two interesting things I saw when listening to the output from my microwave:

  1. The frequency is not stable. I assume it’s not thermally controlled.
  2. Probably not a good idea to use WiFi channel 6, being 2.437GHz+-11MHz and all.

Near the microwave

Near the microwave

Some rooms away from the microwave

Separate measurement some rooms away.

Further from microwave

How to generate the graphs

# Edit usrp_spectrum_sense.py so that it prints time.time() instead of datetime.now()
./usrp_spectrum_sense.py --dwell-delay=0.1 -A RX2 -s 8000000 --real-time 2.4e9 2.5e9 > near-microwave.txt
# Edit near-microwave to remove the stupid verbose messages from the top.
cat > microwave.plot << EOF
set view map
set size ratio .9

set object 1 rect from graph 0, graph 0 to graph 1, graph 1 back
set object 1 rect fc rgb "black" fillstyle solid 1.0

set xlabel 'Time in seconds'
set ylabel 'Frequency'
set zlabel 'dB'
set terminal epslatex color
set output "near-microwave.eps"
splot 'near-microwave.txt' using ($1-1496693552.11):((($5/1000-2400000)/1000)):4 with points pointtype 5 pointsize 3 palette linewidth 30 title 'Signal'
EOF
gnuplot microwave.plot
convert near-microwave.{eps,png}

I can’t have GNUPlot output PNG directly because it hangs.

The magic value 1496693552.11 is the first timestamp in the file.

1 … 2,075 2,076 2,077 2,078 2,079 … 3,889