7 ms·

I'd like to think security training can take care of it, that people can be careful and considerate and have a skeptical eye about every single message they rec

I'd like to think security training can take care of it, that people can be careful and considerate and have a skeptical eye about every single message they receive. But it only takes one person and these huge companies employ so many people. So many times, even at companies with really strict security training I've seen people just walk away from their unlocked computers, click random links in emails, stuff like that. People are always the first line of defense but it's one of those one-sided battles, where every single person in the entire company has to make 0 mistakes, and an attacker only has to get lucky once.

spicybright 5y ago
Which is why you need a level above the individual to protet from attacks. It sucks locking things down for each employee, and subjecting them to bureaucracy to unlock things they need to do, but it's better than ransomware. It's unrealistic to expect every employee to catch hacking attempts 100% of the time.
WalterBright 5y ago
A single computer should never have access to all the company's data. Neither should a single login. It's like compartmentalization on a battleship. A single hole won't sink it, in fact, many holes won't.
- hobs 5y ago
  Most people's enterprise software is akin to an already waterlogged dingy.
lurquer 5y ago
> where every single person in the entire company has to make 0 mistakes, and an attacker only has to get lucky once Good post. I don’t mean this criticism for you specifically. But, why is there an assumption among HN types that there are no bad-actors among the insiders? You can have all the safeguards you want, but if an insider deliberately installs something, you’re screwed. In some industries — armored trucks, banks, military stuff — there is a huge emphasis on background checks, security clearances, and the like to weed out bad actors. (And, even then, it often fails.) I sense there is nothing similar for employees handling the company’s data. Obviously, there might be background checks and the like — hell, McDonalds has background checks. But, I’m not aware of the intensive FBI-style screening you see in the aforementioned realms. Am I wrong? How many thousands of people, for instance, could corrupt or lock the data at, say, Amazon? Are these people scrutinized to the same level as standard Brinks Armored Truck driver? I doubt it.
- squiggleblaz 5y ago
  I guess there's two questions: - is protecting against internal sabotage actually different that protecting against external attack. I don't think it's all that different. It comes down to authenticating actions and enforcing the principle of least privilege. If you built a system that was actually secure (i.e. one that depends on reasonable inconveniences, rather than one that depends on people to be perfect all the time or is so inconvenient it inclines them to do the digital equivalent of jamming the door open) it is likely that it will be secure enough against most internal saboteurs. - is protecting against internal sabotage going to pay off? Most people probably aren't inclined to deliberately target their own company. It's far more likely that there is a bad actor in the world who wants to target your company, than that there is in your company. And making a person's job secure less stable is probably going to make them more likely to be a saboteur, so you should carefully evaluate whether gratuitously adding stress to someone who might get behind on their mortgage is a good idea. (Which I suppose is what this kind of background check would cause.)
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Malware comes from the outside. Stealing company secrets and selling them is what I would be worried about from internal threats. Either way least access necessarily where possible is a good strategy.
  - lurquer 5y ago
    > Most people probably aren't inclined to deliberately target their own company. It's far more likely that there is a bad actor in the world who wants to target your company, than that there is in your company. “Most” people are law abiding. So, I agree with the first sentence. The second sentence, however, has little support. The universe of people who can do these types of attacks is large, but not universal. You need computer skills. Necessarily. Those with computer skills are usually already part of the industry. How many disgruntled people pass through the FAANGs each year? Now add in all the IT positions at the banks. In short, there are probably tens of thousands of domestic ‘bad actors’ who have (or will have in their careers) access. Probably more.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> But it only takes one person and these huge companies employ so many people. No. It never takes only one employ clicking a bad link. It takes that click, plus a browser/email/os system that allow for random code to executed. It take an IT department that has allowed individual non-IT employees to use computers with elevated privileges. It requires a management structure that has failed to invest in proper off-site/cold backups. It requires an organization that doesn't have a proper business continuity plan. And at the top of the incompetency pyramid, it requires a vendor that sells an email system that allows evil email messages to somehow infect entire operating systems. Want your email to connect to your office suite? Sure. Want to install random software based on clicked links? Sure thing. Want to update your firewall, install a new browsers and simultaneously backup all your encryption keys to a random server in the far east? Why not! Anything to make your operating system experience seamless.
- ryanmcbride 5y ago
  that's what I'm saying. Just training isn't enough the system has to be hardened.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Notice the previous comment about developers not allowed to be admin of their own machines? On computers with a good security model developers don't need to be admin of their own machines, but that wasn't thought of.
  - mcny 5y ago
    I don’t get the point of not allowing administrator to the local machine to employees. The local machine is practically a throwaway in my opinion. Why should we care about it? The shared folder is much more vital to the business.
    - ryanmcbride 5y ago
      Yeah anytime a job locks admin access to a local machine I assume their network security is full of holes, and I'm usually right about that assumption.
everdrive 5y ago
I genuinely don't put any faith in education. Every phishing education program I've seen has effectively said "look out for weird emails, (perhaps with misspellings) and if you see them report them to security!" I haven't seen any which went into the real specifics which might actually educate users: - A phishing email which can pwn you without user interaction is basically unheard of. - Even malicious sites generally can't do anything bad simply by visiting them. (and yes, I'm aware browser exploitation exists, but it is exceedingly rare) - Ultimately, it's entering your credentials in a malicious site which is what puts users at risk. A user must click a malicious link (sometimes two) and then intentionally enter their credentials into the malicious site. Between this, and the fact that users must read emails, visit sites, and enter their credentials over and over, just to get through their workday, I believe the outcome is that user education doesn't amount to much. It would be much better if a normal user's workflow didn't usually require clicking on email links and then entering their credentials. The fact that this is required means that even a savvy users will eventually be tired / rushed / working on automatic and get owned.
- carlosf 5y ago
  Which is why basic stuff like MFA and MDM (block sign-ins coming from non compliant devices) works wonders against ransomware attacks.
- dcow 5y ago
  Can't wait for WebAuthN to proliferate.
- shakna 5y ago
  > A phishing email which can pwn you without user interaction is basically unheard of. If you extend from "email" to the other communication tools that companies use today (and do use for inter-company communications too), there actually have been a number of these in the past year. Outlook [3] had one that didn't require downloading the file, exactly - the "Preview" window from just clicking the attachment once, was enough. Microsoft Teams [0], Jabber [1] and Slack [2] were all hit by real 0-interaction RCEs. [0] https://github.com/oskarsve/ms-teams-rce/blob/main/README.md https://github.com/oskarsve/ms-teams-rce/blob/main/README.md [1] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-3495 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-3495 [2] https://hackerone.com/reports/783877 https://hackerone.com/reports/783877 [3] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-1349 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-1349

spicybright 5y ago

Which is why you need a level above the individual to protet from attacks. It sucks locking things down for each employee, and subjecting them to bureaucracy to unlock things they need to do, but it's better than ransomware. It's unrealistic to expect every employee to catch hacking attempts 100% of the time.

WalterBright 5y ago

A single computer should never have access to all the company's data. Neither should a single login. It's like compartmentalization on a battleship. A single hole won't sink it, in fact, many holes won't.

hobs 5y ago
Most people's enterprise software is akin to an already waterlogged dingy.

lurquer 5y ago

> where every single person in the entire company has to make 0 mistakes, and an attacker only has to get lucky once Good post. I don’t mean this criticism for you specifically. But, why is there an assumption among HN types that there are no bad-actors among the insiders? You can have all the safeguards you want, but if an insider deliberately installs something, you’re screwed. In some industries — armored trucks, banks, military stuff — there is a huge emphasis on background checks, security clearances, and the like to weed out bad actors. (And, even then, it often fails.) I sense there is nothing similar for employees handling the company’s data. Obviously, there might be background checks and the like — hell, McDonalds has background checks. But, I’m not aware of the intensive FBI-style screening you see in the aforementioned realms. Am I wrong? How many thousands of people, for instance, could corrupt or lock the data at, say, Amazon? Are these people scrutinized to the same level as standard Brinks Armored Truck driver? I doubt it.

squiggleblaz 5y ago
I guess there's two questions: - is protecting against internal sabotage actually different that protecting against external attack. I don't think it's all that different. It comes down to authenticating actions and enforcing the principle of least privilege. If you built a system that was actually secure (i.e. one that depends on reasonable inconveniences, rather than one that depends on people to be perfect all the time or is so inconvenient it inclines them to do the digital equivalent of jamming the door open) it is likely that it will be secure enough against most internal saboteurs. - is protecting against internal sabotage going to pay off? Most people probably aren't inclined to deliberately target their own company. It's far more likely that there is a bad actor in the world who wants to target your company, than that there is in your company. And making a person's job secure less stable is probably going to make them more likely to be a saboteur, so you should carefully evaluate whether gratuitously adding stress to someone who might get behind on their mortgage is a good idea. (Which I suppose is what this kind of background check would cause.)
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Malware comes from the outside. Stealing company secrets and selling them is what I would be worried about from internal threats. Either way least access necessarily where possible is a good strategy.
- lurquer 5y ago
  > Most people probably aren't inclined to deliberately target their own company. It's far more likely that there is a bad actor in the world who wants to target your company, than that there is in your company. “Most” people are law abiding. So, I agree with the first sentence. The second sentence, however, has little support. The universe of people who can do these types of attacks is large, but not universal. You need computer skills. Necessarily. Those with computer skills are usually already part of the industry. How many disgruntled people pass through the FAANGs each year? Now add in all the IT positions at the banks. In short, there are probably tens of thousands of domestic ‘bad actors’ who have (or will have in their careers) access. Probably more.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> But it only takes one person and these huge companies employ so many people. No. It never takes only one employ clicking a bad link. It takes that click, plus a browser/email/os system that allow for random code to executed. It take an IT department that has allowed individual non-IT employees to use computers with elevated privileges. It requires a management structure that has failed to invest in proper off-site/cold backups. It requires an organization that doesn't have a proper business continuity plan. And at the top of the incompetency pyramid, it requires a vendor that sells an email system that allows evil email messages to somehow infect entire operating systems. Want your email to connect to your office suite? Sure. Want to install random software based on clicked links? Sure thing. Want to update your firewall, install a new browsers and simultaneously backup all your encryption keys to a random server in the far east? Why not! Anything to make your operating system experience seamless.

ryanmcbride 5y ago
that's what I'm saying. Just training isn't enough the system has to be hardened.
bluGill 5y ago
Notice the previous comment about developers not allowed to be admin of their own machines? On computers with a good security model developers don't need to be admin of their own machines, but that wasn't thought of.
- mcny 5y ago
  I don’t get the point of not allowing administrator to the local machine to employees. The local machine is practically a throwaway in my opinion. Why should we care about it? The shared folder is much more vital to the business.
  - ryanmcbride 5y ago
    Yeah anytime a job locks admin access to a local machine I assume their network security is full of holes, and I'm usually right about that assumption.

everdrive 5y ago

I genuinely don't put any faith in education. Every phishing education program I've seen has effectively said "look out for weird emails, (perhaps with misspellings) and if you see them report them to security!" I haven't seen any which went into the real specifics which might actually educate users: - A phishing email which can pwn you without user interaction is basically unheard of. - Even malicious sites generally can't do anything bad simply by visiting them. (and yes, I'm aware browser exploitation exists, but it is exceedingly rare) - Ultimately, it's entering your credentials in a malicious site which is what puts users at risk. A user must click a malicious link (sometimes two) and then intentionally enter their credentials into the malicious site. Between this, and the fact that users must read emails, visit sites, and enter their credentials over and over, just to get through their workday, I believe the outcome is that user education doesn't amount to much. It would be much better if a normal user's workflow didn't usually require clicking on email links and then entering their credentials. The fact that this is required means that even a savvy users will eventually be tired / rushed / working on automatic and get owned.

carlosf 5y ago
Which is why basic stuff like MFA and MDM (block sign-ins coming from non compliant devices) works wonders against ransomware attacks.
dcow 5y ago
Can't wait for WebAuthN to proliferate.
shakna 5y ago
> A phishing email which can pwn you without user interaction is basically unheard of. If you extend from "email" to the other communication tools that companies use today (and do use for inter-company communications too), there actually have been a number of these in the past year. Outlook [3] had one that didn't require downloading the file, exactly - the "Preview" window from just clicking the attachment once, was enough. Microsoft Teams [0], Jabber [1] and Slack [2] were all hit by real 0-interaction RCEs. [0] https://github.com/oskarsve/ms-teams-rce/blob/main/README.md https://github.com/oskarsve/ms-teams-rce/blob/main/README.md [1] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-3495 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-3495 [2] https://hackerone.com/reports/783877 https://hackerone.com/reports/783877 [3] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-1349 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-1349