In Flight Hacking System
In my five years with IOActive, I’ve had the opportunity to visit some awesome places, often thousands of kilometers from home. So flying has obviously been an integral part of my routine. You might not think that’s such a big deal, unless like me, you’re afraid of flying. I don’t think I can completely get rid of that anxiety; after dozens of flights my hands still sweat during takeoff, but I’ve learned to live with it, even enjoying it sometimes…and spending some flights hacking stuff. What helped a lot to…
Five Attributes of an Effective Corporate Red Team
After talking recently with colleagues at IOActive as well as some heads of industry-leading red teams, we wanted to share a list of attributes that we believe are key to any effective Red Team. [ NOTE: For debate about the relevant terminology, we suggest Daniel’s post titled The Difference Between Red, Blue, and Purple Teams. ] To be clear, we think there can be significant variance in how Red Teams are built and…
Red Team Testing: Debunking Myths and Setting Expectations
The term “cyber” seems to be overused in every corner of the information security industry. Now there is a new buzz phrase in computer security, “red team engagements.” Supposedly (to get “cyber” on you), you can have a red team test, and it will help move your organization in the correct “cyber direction.” But what is red team testing really? And what is it not? In this post I’ll try to make some sense of this potent term. The red team concept has been around for ages. It…
Tools of the Trade – Incident Response, Part 1: Log Analysis
There was a time when I imagined I was James Bond zip lining into a compromised environment, equipped with all kinds of top-secret tools. I would wave my hands over the boxes needing investigation, use my forensics glasses to extract all malware samples, and beam them over to Miss Moneypenny (or “Q” for APT concerns) for analysis. I would produce the report from my top-notch armpit laser printer in minutes. I was a hero. As wonderful as it sounds, this doesn’t ever happen in real life. Instead of sporting a…
The Demise of Desktop Antivirus
Are you old enough to remember the demise of the ubiquitous CompuServe and AOL CD’s that used to be attached to every computer magazine you ever brought between the mid-80’s and mid-90’s? If you missed that annoying period of Internet history, maybe you’ll be able to watch the death of desktop antivirus instead. 65,000 AOL CD’s as art Just as dial-up subscription portals and proprietary “web browsers” represent a yester-year view of the Internet, desktop antivirus is similarly being confined…
