Our First Birthday

Its been a year since the first post appeared in ISL blog! On September 1st, we celebrate our birthday and in order to thank all our loyal followers we have setup a small giveaway as the least we can do to thank you for all your support. The whole process is powered by Rafflecopter and all you have to do is follow us on Twitter, tweet about our birthday, or visit our Facebook page. Each of these actions will give you one chance to win one of the prizes.

1. One (1) winner will receive a 12 months Heimdal Pro premium subscription, (approximate retail value or "ARV": €34)
2. One (1) winner will receive quertyCard (approximate retail value or "ARV": €4.99)

The giveaway will last for the entire September, so the winners will be announced in the first couple of days of October.

You can enter the giveaway through our special Giveaway page.

Read More

Tell Me Who You Are, and I Will Tell You Your Lock Pattern

You are predictable, your passwords are predictable, and so are your PINs. This simple fact is often exploited by hackers, as well as the agencies watching you. But what about your Android lock patterns? Can who you are reveal what patterns you create?

Pattern unlock is one of the entry protection mechanisms in Android system for unlocking the screen. It was introduced by Google in 2008. By connecting 4–9 dots in a 3 x 3 grid, the user can set up an unlock pattern which is equivalent to a password or a PIN. As an alternative to the traditional password/PIN, the visual pattern has gained its popularity because of the potential advantages in memorability and convenience of input. However, the limited pattern space and existing attacks such as shoulder surfing, or smudge attack make this mechanism weak in security.

A recent study by Marte Loge, as part of her MSc thesis, presents the results from a set of 3400 users and their selected lock patterns.

"Humans are predictable, we're seeing the same aspects used when creating a pattern locks [as are used in] pin codes and alphanumeric passwords."

Lock patterns, for Android, can contain a minimum of four nodes and a maximum of nine, making there 389,112 possible combinations. In a similar fashion as passwords, the number of possible combinations grows exponentially with the length, at least up to a point.

Loge asked subjects to create three ALPs, one for an imaginary shopping app, a second for an imaginary banking app, and the last to unlock a smartphone. Sadly, the minimum four-node pattern was the most widely created one by both male and female subjects, followed by five-node ALPs. For reasons Loge still can't explain, eight-node patterns were the least popular, attracting significantly fewer subjects than nine-node choices, even though both offered the same number of possible combinations.

The minimal use of eight-node patterns, by both males and females, was a surprise. Both sexes were two to four times more likely to choose a nine-node pattern rather than one with eight nodes, even though both provided precisely the same number of possible combinations. Another unexpected finding, left-handed users tended to pick the same starting places as their right-handed counterparts.

Males were much more likely than females to choose long and complex patterns, with young males scoring the highest. The slide below illustrates the overall breakdown between men's and women's choices differently.

Loge said the number of nodes isn't the only thing that determines how susceptible an ALP is to guessing attacks. The specific sequence of nodes is also key in how complex a pattern is. Assigning the nine nodes the same digits found on a standard phone interface, the combination 1, 2, 3, 6 will receive a lower complexity score than the combination 2, 1, 3, 6, since the latter pattern changes direction.

A team of researchers formalized this scoring system in a 2014 paper titled Dissecting pattern unlock: The effect of pattern strength meter on pattern selection. They analyzed the characteristics of all valid patterns and proposed a way to quantitatively evaluate their strengths. They also designed two types of pattern strength meters as visual indicators of pattern strength.

Data breaches over the years have repeatedly shown some of the most common passwords are "1234567", "password", and "letmein". Loge said many ALPs suffer a similar form of weakness. More than 10% of the ones she collected were fashioned after an alphabetic letter, which often corresponded to the first initial of the subject or of a spouse, child, or other person close to the subject. The discovery is significant, because it means attackers may have a one-in-ten chance of guessing an ALP with no more than about 100 guesses. The number of guesses could be reduced further if the attacker knows the names of the target or of people close to the target.

Loge had several suggestions for ways to make lock patterns more secure. The first, naturally, is to choose one with more nodes and a higher complexity score. Another is to incorporate crossovers, since it makes it harder for an attacker looking over the target's shoulder to trace the precise sequence. Better yet, she suggested people open the Security category in their Android settings and turn off the "make pattern visible" option. This will prevent the drawing of lines that connect each pattern node, making shoulder surfing even more difficult.

Full disk encryption won't save you if your lock pattern is L - as in "loser"

Read More

Patch Management for Home Users

For system administrators, patch management is a routine activity. But for most home users, patch management is a uncharted waters. Knowing when to patch products and how often patches need to be applied are some of the questions that most home users never think about. Knowing what to patch and when can make a difference in the security of your home computer or network.

First things first, let's clarify some terms. The following definitions come from a post of Allen Householder in CERT Blog.

Zero Day Exploit (a.k.a 0-day)

There are many definitions of zero-day exploit available. These definitions are not merely diverse wordings that map onto the same concepts; they refer to distinct (albeit related) concepts.

"A zero-day exploit is one that takes advantage of a security vulnerability on the same day that the vulnerability becomes generally known. There are zero days between the time the vulnerability is discovered and the first attack." — SearchSecurity

By the way, nothing in this definition talks about patch availability. We'll come back to that in a moment.

"A zero day exploit attack occurs on the same day a weakness is discovered in software. At that point, it's exploited before a fix becomes available from its creator." — Kaspersky

Stating it explicitly: if the following events occur (a) a vulnerability is announced by a vendor, (b) a patch is provided along with the announcement, and (c) it is exploited on the same day (whatever you decide that means, just be consistent), definition 1 says it's a zero-day exploit while definition 2 says it isn't.

 "An attack on a software flaw that occurs before the software's developers have had time to develop a patch for the flaw is often known as a zero-day exploit. The term "zero-day" denotes that developers have had zero days to fix the vulnerability.  It can also refer to attacks that occur on the same day (day zero) a vulnerability is disclosed. In fact, some zero-day exploits are the first indication that the associated vulnerability exists at all."  — Tom's Guide

Here we find that the definition hinges on the existence of a patch. A strict interpretation of this definition would permit someone to apply the zero-day exploit label even if the vulnerability is known to the vendor and the public long before the first attack. The vulnerability may have been known to the vendor for months, and a patch is in development but not does not yet exist. Thus definition 3 directly conflicts with both definitions 1 and 2 above. Definition 1 says nothing of patches. Definition 2 talks about patch availability, not existence.

"Zero-day attacks...software or hardware vulnerabilities that have been exploited by an attacker where there is no prior knowledge of the flaw in the general information security community, and, therefore, no vendor fix or software patch available for it." — FireEye

Granted, this definition is for a zero-day attack, but since it mentions exploitation, I think we are justified to include it here. FireEye adds hardware to our growing list of definitions. Further, they discriminate based on the state of knowledge of the general information security community, with the implication that if that community is unaware of the vulnerability, there must not be a patch available. From context, this general information security community appears to be larger than the affected vendor(s) yet smaller than the public. So while it shares some degree of overlap with the other definitions discussed above, it remains distinct in its referents.

There is no generally accepted formal definition for "0Day (also known as zero-day) vulnerability." The term has been used to refer to flaws in software that no one knows about except the attacker. Sometimes the term is used to mean a vulnerability for which no patch is yet available.

Shortly after the Italian firm Hacking Team was hacked and at least two zero-day exploits the firm possessed were released to the public, along with about 400GB of company emails and other data.

Hacking Team has long been a source of controversy because the company sells surveillance tools to law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world—among them repressive regimes that use the tools to spy on human rights activists and political dissidents.

But the hack of last week highlights another serious issue around Hacking Team and companies like it that stockpile or store zero-day exploits, including software vendors who run bug bounty programs: they can be rich targets for hackers who might want to steal the zero-days to use them for nefarious purposes or sell them. This places an added onus on companies to protect their repositories to prevent the zero-days from getting into the hands of unintended parties.

Automating Patch Management

Enable auto update of your software. Apply patches any time a program asks (needs) to be updated. Although these updates don't always mean it is for security reasons, a security patch may be issued along with the update. Microsoft Windows offers automatic windows updates and in their newest release, of Windows 10, it will not be an option to install them or not. So updating windows is easier than ever when users choose this option.

Problems with Patches

The main risk with patching software is breaking other programs. This is usually only the case with updates from larger programs that other programs hang on. Such as operating systems, anti virus software, etc. Applications that other software does not rely on are usually immune from this. During automated patch management, this may happen and you don't realize it has happened. The problem can be combated with manual patches, but knowing when and what to patch may be a hassle for home users.

When to Patch?

The short answer is: As soon as a stable pach or fix is released by the vendor. It is a good practice to check for patches to your software products about once per month. If you use your computer on a daily basis, or the computer stays online constantly, such as with high speed connections, you may need to opt for a stricter schedule on patches. Such as weekly or bi weekly. Of course, using automated patch management software can eliminate this need for such time consuming tasks.

As mentioned, automating patch management can save much time and energy. Check with your software vendor for information on when patches are usually available. And also check if the program offers automatic updates to its software. This mundane task can be handled with little user intervention and may be possible to run at times when the computer is idle or late at night when it is not in use and doesn't restrict your browsing bandwidth.

Act proactively in order to minimize exposure to known vulnerabilities and zero day attacks.

Information Security League, through our partnership with Heimdal Security, offers you a 70% discount to the Heimdal Pro. Just use infosecleague34 as voucher code in their site when you order the product.

Read More