In the Verizon DBIR report they have an interesting graph on page 26. It shows the percentage of malware infections that have been customized. (That is to say that the malware itself is customized). In 2005-2007 the percentage held steady between 21%-28%. In 2008 is jumped to 59% and in 2010 is it still high at 54%. Perhaps not surprisingly, even though only half of the malware is customized, that half is responsible for 97% of the stolen records. Presumably non-customized malware and all other methods are responsible for the remaining 3%. Why the huge discrepancy? It’s easy – antivirus. Non-customized malware gets detected, customized doesn’t. This just goes back to something many people have started to feel in the last few years – antivirus is inherently flawed, and we’re starting to see it’s flaws. Blacklisting is inherent a losing battle, because there will always be new bad things, and there will always be something you didn’t think of. Whitelisting may seem like a pain at first, but in the long run it’s almost always easier and more efective.

I looked over the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center’s annual report covering 2009. There wasn’t a whole lot that was interesting (electronic crime is on the rise), but one thing caught my eye. One page 6 there is a chart showing the number of cases divided up by the monetary loss associated with it. Only 7.5% of the cases involved damages of more than $10,000 and only 1% involved damages of over $100,000. Gone I suppose are the days of the million dollar heists, replaced instead by the facilitation of many smaller crimes. The scammers are only making money because they steal in bulk.

We all know that very few people read the fine print before clicking the “I accept button”. It turns out that 12% of people do read it. I’m surprised it’s that high.

I’ve been reading up on new Windows 7 security features (more on them perhaps later), but one caught my eye – SmartScreen. It’s a web filter (like the one Firefox has) that checks the websites you visit against a list of known bad websites. If it’s on the list, you get a red nasty warning screen telling you not to visit. What I was thinking about though was the privacy aspect – whenever you visit a new website your browser automatically sends the URL to Microsoft. Not just the domain, but the entire URL. They do of courser have a privacy policy, but nowhere in that policy do they actually say how they will or won’t use the data collected (we can of course, always assume the worst).  They also do other data collection:

From time-to-time, information about your usage of SmartScreen Filter will also be sent to Microsoft such as the time and total number of websites browsed since an address was sent to Microsoft for analysis. Some information about files that you download from the web such as name and file path may also be sent to Microsoft. Some website addresses that are sent to Microsoft may be stored along with additional information including web browser version, operating system version, SmartScreen Filter version, the browser language, and information about whether Compatibility View was enabled for the website.

I don’t know about this one – sounds more like a marketing tool masquerading as a security tool.

I was thinking some more about the RAM skimmers mentioned in the last post. I wasn’t really paying attention the first time I read the report, but I later noticed that Verizon mentions that the RAM scraper was found on a P.O.S.  (point of sale – the system a cashier will use to check out a customer in a store) system. A P.O.S. system would seem to be a system which could be very well defined in terms of what should be running on it, and would seem to be an ideal candidate for whitelisting software. Getting rid of the AV on P.O.S. systems and replacing them with whitelisting software which only allows specific applications to run would seem to be an ideal way to greatly increase the security of these systems, and make them future-proof against whatever the next generation of malware is.

In Verizon Business’ most recent data breach investigation report they mentioned a new class of malware which I’d never heard of before but found interesting – RAM scrapers. The basic idea is that they grab data straight from RAM. Verizon goes on the conclude that the recent increase in the use of encryption and limitations on what data can be permanently stored (mostly thanks to PCI), scammers have had to start looking to other areas to gain access to unencrypted data. I guess this shouldn’t really surprise anyone too much – we already know that for every measure there is another countermeasure. This is also another good example of Shamir’s third law of cryptography – “Cryptography is typically bypassed, not penetrated”.

According to Symantec, Cybercrime is now the number 1 crime in terms of profit, having recently passed Illegal drug trafficking.

A few weeks ago Bruce Schneier wrote an article entitled “memo to the next president“. In it he has several pieces of advice, including asking the president to use the government’s immense buying power to increase the security of products. The government’s buying power has been used before to influence products, whether deliberately or accidentally, and Schneier wants to see the government weild this power for the greater good. This is logical – after all the government exists to provide for the greater good where no other actor is able to do it.

On the same theme, OMB recently announced that it was requiring all government agencies to start deploying DNSSEC, and then gave them a deadline of January 2009. (See the wikipedia page on DNSSEC if you don’t know what it is). While it will almost assuredly be completed behind schedule (it is government after all), it is great news. Simply put, DNS is inherently flawed. As was pointed out by commenters in a previous post, assuming that the first response is the correct one is just a bad idea. DNSSEC fixes all of that by enforcing digital signatures. Most commercial enterprises right now are simply applying the newest patch and leaving it at that. As everyone knows though, continuing to try and patch over breaches in the dike will only work so long – eventually you have to build a whole new dike (In this case DNS). Hopefully with such a large entity getting behind DNSSEC, we’ll see a large movement to it, and we can avoid the next DNS cache poisoning attack before it ever comes, because we all know it will.

In general, when people try to use the legal system to prevent free speech, they fail.

The DoJ wants private corporations to more openly disclose cybercrime when it occurs. This is one of the major differences between the way government works and the way private industry works. (I’ve got information security in both, and it’s something I’d noticed a long time ago). In government, there is a strict procedure and a chain of reporting for everything, and one of the main focuses is openness. Individuals in government are rarely accountable as long as they follow the correct procedures. (In other words, the “I was just following orders” argument has worked countless times inside the beltway). In the private sector, the main focus is profit, and people are held accountable for what occurs, even if they feel they did nothing wrong. Reputation loss is a serious concern, and corporations are loath to report information breaches. This is one of the reasons data breach laws have been necessary – without them private entities would rarely disclose when something bad happened. Now the DoJ and FBI want corporations to disclose even more so that it can allocate it’s crime fighting abilities correctly. While this is clearly a laudable goal (and crime fighting is one of the major responsibilities of a modern government), private entities will not comply unless they are either required to by law (like the breach notification laws), or have a compelling financial interest (as in the case where they believe the authorities can help recover lost assets).