Aten Labs

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Personal details were revealed, emails, chat logs – pretty scary stuff – and very sobering. A clear demonstration that things like cross site scripting and the spreading of malware (likely for the use of cascading spam or addition to botnets) is the least of our problems. Also clear proof that people who consider themselves security folks have to be very wary of using creature comforts such as reusing passwords or even operating a wordpress blog (3 updates in a month?! and 2.8.2 is vulnerable? gaw!).

The textfile the group distributed was called zf05.txt and after skimming it’s abundantly clear that wordpress played a huge part in these folks getting rooted. Almost every example was sort of an ‘all in one’ server that was used for ‘whatever’. Its also become clear that jam packing one server with a bunch of services makes it more vulnerable to compromise. Ever heard of KISS? “Keep it simple, stupid”. It’s used very commonly among engineers, computer people – you name it. Anyone that has to build things or design things. The minute you start adding complexity for no reason the proverbial altimeter begins its decline.

People who fake tech exacerbate things. There are groups that call themselves “tech” when in reality they are simply PR or Marketing. The Web 2.0 craze has hypnotized people into putting almost everything they think and do ‘behind the scenes’. They let someone else worry about it. Some ruby programmers I’ve met are incapable of manually issuing a sql query. Others are incapable of interacting with sql unless they have phpmyadmin. These folks generate a requirement to artificially make systems more complex and less secure entirely to suit their evergrowing hatred of looking things up themselves or actually learning anything about the technology they use every day. The easiest way to think about it is this: Think of some people. Now think of these people all owning cars. Think of these people now requiring something as simple as an oil change, a tire change, or a simple tune up. Now think of these people taking their cars to a shop to get work done – for whatever reason: maybe they lack the tools, maybe their HOA doesn’t allow them to perform work on their cars on the grounds (those HOA people desperately need to be stabbed in the lungs, by the way) or maybe they just don’t know how. Now lets imagine these people have the work done, and are talking to the mechanics as they are preparing the invoice behind the counter. The mechanic begins to explain how their oil was changed, and these people abjectly refuse to learn or understand how this works even from a top-level non-technical aspect – they plug their ears and yell “NO! NO! AAALALALALA!! NOT LISTENING NO NOOOO! ALLALAAAAAA!”.

These people strongly support a fancy new term. “Cloud Computing”. Cloud computing will make this worse for everyone.

Let me jump away for a moment. I’d like to point out a fact. The attackers that distributed zf05.txt made a valid point – a point I’ve tried to make to peers, friends and clients alike – If your site/data are on shared hosting and you consider them secure that may mitigate some amount of risk. But if the other people hosting their data are vulnerable and your data is on the same system, you’re still vulnerable.

Now we have some ingredients – lets make a stew. Lets take these bits of information and put them all together and let it simmer.

- Non technical people whos requirements and behavior are insecure and promote systems being rooted

- Systems with lots of various services running on them

- A new trend of mashing these systems together to form giant systems that do the same thing, ending up being bigger and more powerful

- Commonly used software being exploited within a week of a patch.

Mix in a bowl with a wisk until creamy. Add a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil to a cast-iron skillet. Add a bit of freshly cracked pepper to the oil and some freshly pressed/minced garlic. Let simmer until the pepper and garlic begin to bubble, then pour the mixture from the bowl into the skillet and add a squeeze of fresh key lime if you wish. Cook until firm or golden brown, flip once, then serve! Let stand for 10 minutes to cool. What do you get? What does it smell like? (Well if people actually taste of chicken then that may make one hell of a breakfast omlette). We dont know. Here’s why we don’t know:

- “Business people” like the idea of getting rid of systems administrators and IT overhead

- “Cloud Computing” does not have a security model yet

- There are no standards – this stuff is too new

- Far too many people are comfortable being hacked, and say “oh there’s nothing important on that sit/box”

.. Really, guys? You don’t use that same wordpress password everywhere? For your bank, for gmail, for your car insurance or your mobile provider to login? If a blackhat gets that password you’re really okay with it? If thats the case, I’d like you to kindly leave the internet, never to return. Please – do us all a favor, for the people that like keeping their privates private and their secrets secret, go away.

So we’re going to take all of these insecurities, vulnerabilities and holes – package them up with non-technical people demanding insecure practices so that they don’t have to learn or think and we’re going to replicate this ad nauseum and store the results in one gigantic computer grid system? Awesome. Maybe I should trade in my whitehat for a black one – since thats obviously where all the focus, media, fear and money are going to be. Or maybe I’ll just make my white hat bigger – perhaps people will come to their senses and listen to fact and reason. Perhaps not. I guess we’ll see.

I’m not the only one, either…

http://darkreading.com/securityservices/security/app-security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218102139&cid=RSSfeed

http://www.sensepost.com/blog/3706.html – open the ppt, this was the defcon talk. they pwned amazon ec2.

http://evilpacket.net/ – see the ‘theft of a rackspace cloud api key’. These guys got root on the rackspace/mosso cloud.