Security sites to bookmark: krebsonsecurity.com and grahamcluley.com

Information security journalism: Creating a Personal Brand

Human Resources 2.0 is revolutionizing the workplace. The relationship between employers and professionals is changing. The traditional long-term contract is giving way to other means of collaboration. These are much more varied and adapted to specific needs from both sides. In this context, the creation and maintenance of a personal and professional public brand becomes a clear value.

The world of information security also lives this change. These two sites are two examples of this new trend: krebsonsecurity.com by Brian Krebs, a former Washington Post reporter and grahamcluley.com by Graham Cluley, an antivirus developer in the nineties.

Brian Krebs worked as a reporter on security issues at the Washington Post for 14 years, until 2009. His interest on digital security grew since 2001, when his home network was compromised.

Unlike Brian Krebs, Graham Cluley is a security professional with a technical background. He wrote the first version of the Windows-based Dr. Solomon antivirus and, outside the security field, two MS-DOS based games, still available on their website. He was one of the security specialists blogging for "naked security", the Sophos antivirus vendor's site. In June 2013 he left Sophos, a company where he worked since 1999 and released his own information portal for Internet security,  grahamcluley.com, to market his personal brand as independent security analyst. This site deals with IT security topics and it is not so cybercrime-focused as krebsonsecurity.com.

As they both confirm, they are now their own bosses. They regularly publish security news that could well appear in general-purpose newspapers and news portals, related to espionage, newly discovered vulnerabilities or the latest security breaches.

The simple architecture of these sites makes them easy to read and follow. Krebsonsecurity.com and Grahamcluley.com are platforms that both authors use to publish news while growing their personal professional brand and marketing their expert security analysis services in the form e.g. of articles in the case of Brian and public appearances in the case of Graham.

Finally, two questions I would like to pose to the reader:
- One for security entrepreneurs: have you already created your own personal brand?
- One for security practitioners in order to facilitate public awareness of the need for 'effective' security in the organization: do you regularly provide security news to your top executives?

A version of this post in Spanish is available here.

Looking through the glass

Happy reading!

Physical safety - Checking CPU temperatures in Linux Ubuntu

Dear all,
Short post to propose two easy ways to check physical parameters via sensors in our Ubuntu Linux box.

The first one is command line based and it is described in this Ubuntu help page.

Basically we need to install lm-sensors:
# apt-get install lm-sensors

Run the sensors-detect routine:

# sensors-detect

Type YES several times ;-) and load the module:
# service module-init-tools start

Finally run sensors and we will see the rpms of the fan and several internal temperatures including their usual functioning range.

The second one is a graphical but lightweight application called gkrellm with lots of configuration possibilities.

Sensing the sky!

Happy sensor-based monitoring!

Security site to bookmark: www.pentest-standard.org

In current times, the option to abandon a company's payroll and become an entrepreneurial Information Security freelancer appears as a plausible option to many IT Sec professionals. This choice comes either as a thoughtful decision or as a "last resort" before "being forced" to leave the industry and test their luck in other, more generic, IT areas.

Firms depend heavily on IT. They increasingly engage security professionals. A typically demanded service is the security analysis of their information systems, also known as a penetration test. Pentest-standard.org is a valuable initiative that provides both security vendors and their customers with one common "pen testing" language and scope, as you can read in their FAQ section.

Key players such as Chris Nickerson , Dave Kennedy , Chris John Riley , Carlos Perez and Wim Remes, among many others, have contributed to make pentest-standard.org a necessary go-to site for security pen testers. First thought of in 2009 and created in 2010, the site has had over 1800 content reviews and it continues evolving. Pentest-standard.org uses a handy wiki format and it welcomes contributions from the community via either the corresponding Linkedin group or a PDF-based collaboration site powered by Adobe.

I highlight two components of this site:

• The seven pen-testing execution stages: Each of them starts off with a valuable mind map that could very well be the script to follow in a formal pen-testing engagement. Non-technical, but pivotal, elements such as scoping and payment methods are also present.

• The technical guidelines: An excellent compilation of links and tools, both free and commercial software, required for each of the pen-test phases.

Finally , I would like to thank everyone involved in this "pen-testing vademecum" and invite the Infosec community to contribute. A revealing question would be: How much of what you can read in pentest-standard.org do you already know?

A version of this post in Spanish is available here.

A nice tool to fly ... and to pen test?

Unattended updates in Ubuntu Linux

A key measure to keep our IT boxes in a healthy state is to regularly update the operating system and applications. This simple measure could save us from the "low-hanging hacks". Let's take this statement and link it with the fact that automation in IT is worth-considering. The following lines provide some tips on how to automate the software upgrade process that, otherwise, would require typical manual steps such as these ones:

- For a complete update:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

- For a specific update
$ sudo apt-get install package-names

There is a nifty package in Ubuntu Linux called unattended-upgrades that would do the magic for us, as mentioned in this Ubuntu Help page. The command line I would highlight from that page is:


$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

The AskUbuntu community also provides juicy input for this. In this case, I highlight the following steps I extracted from the AskUbuntu page:

- Uncomment the Ubuntu packages to be installed silently, mainly security patches and updates. This is also the place to prevent any package from being silently upgraded by using the Package-Blacklist section:

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

- The command line to check whether things are OK is this one:

$ sudo unattended-upgrades --dry-run and --debug.

- The line to check whether the upgrades are really taking place:

$ tail /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log

Finally, for those using Google Chrome, it can also be included in this silent process with the info provided by this AskUbuntu page:

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

and adding

 "Google\, Inc.:stable";

 in the Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins section of the

etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades file.


Nothing to do with Ubuntu, however, the way to silently update Java in Windows 7 using Powershell and VisualBasic is explained in this Superuser page. The security catch with this one is that the Task Scheduler would need to save the admin password in order to run the silent update.

Good to keep the house updated!

 Happy silent updating!

Security site to bookmark: www.reddit.com/r/netsec - The IT Security global bulletin board on the Internet

Wikipedia reminds us that the Agora was a meeting place, an open space, the center of commerce, culture and political life in Ancient Greece. The section in reddit.com devoted to information technology security, located at reddit.com/r/ netsec, is the agora of our security community and profession. The place to visit to stay on top of the security news, both politically correct and incorrect.
 
Since its foundation in 2005, reddit became the global Internet bulletin board, especially for US-based users, living up the role that the "Bulletin Board Systems" (BBS) played in past decades. As an example of the relevance and currency of reddit net sec articles, the same day that Cisco has announced the purchase of Sourcefire, on July 23, 2013, a user on reddit (they are called "redditors") shared the piece of news in reddit.com/r/netsec. Reading the comments shared on reddit posted by users after reading the news hints the so important "market sentiment". It is comparable to follow a related "hashtag" on twitter.  

This network security section in reddit links to related subsections. For example, the social engineering, computer forensics or reverse engineering pages are valuable. The popularity of this site makes it an optimal site to witness and to participate in fruitful conversations between Information Security professionals (itsecuriteers) on technical, organizational and business-related topics. Anyone asking questions can receive interesting and alternative answers. Noteworthy is the link to a jobs site. While most positions are based in the U.S., there is a growing number of postings for positions in Europe and to work remotely.

Finally, there is also a place for those who starting in this field: The academic discussion forum (e.g. the "2013 Q3 Academic Program Thread"). There, students post their evaluations regarding security degrees and training courses. 
A wise piece of general advice given by reddit.com to those who want to post news or comments is to avoid creating unnecessary conflict: Something that we can also apply almost in any aspect of our lives.

Sometimes there is no room to manoeuvre

You can also read this entry in Spanish here.

Happy redditing!