Leadership
A mRr3b00t Adventure
Join me on an adventure of rambling and exploring the idea that you can in fact not lose the security leadership game! This blog is WIP, it’s just my brain wondering around the question of: can we win the in the face of a seemingly insurmountable force? What do we do as a security leader to protect ourselves and the organisation? How do we start?
Read more “How to not lose your job as a CISO”
Leadership
I am seeing lots of “debate” about the value in red teaming, so I thought I would put together my thought process of how I look at as a broad stroke when I consider a generic starting position in an organisation. When I’m defending a business, I tend to ask myself (and the team/customers etc.) these kind of questions (they are not exhaustive):
Read more “Red Team Readiness Assessment”
Leadership
I am not a legal export! Haha get used to saying that a lot if you work in cyber and are not in fact a legal expert! I wanted to put together a list of common laws that people should be aware of when doing business in the UK, it’s just a starter for 10 and there are likely others, but this should get people started for their security awareness and security policy documentation:
Read more: UK laws and cyber security considerations for businesscan you think of any others that I should add?
Thanks Gary and Kevin and the other AVIS I can’t name for inputting!
Education
I wrote this in 2018 and don’t believe it ever made it to the interwebs, so I’m basically posting as is with an extra section for some useful links! Hopefully it still stands the test of time!
Risk assessments are complex, they require cross domain knowledge and generally do not deal in absolutes. Threats, vulnerabilities and asset intelligence is combined, weighed and assessed, leading to the construct of a risk assessment document. It can be easy to overcomplicate this process, which in turn (in my experience) often leads to far wider reaching consequences (the business starts to bypass security management or take short cuts), so I thought I would write a short post to clarify what I’ve seen work out in the field. So, to start with let’s try and align on what exactly a risk is.
Read more “Information Security Risk Management “
Defense
Availability, Confidentiality, and Integrity are good building blocks for considerations. We can probably split this into two major views to start with:
A typical consumer may be about:
Leadership
How an organization approaches the challenge of technology and security management, well that’s the difference between leveraging technology to deliver value efficiently and effectively vs technical debt and inefficient deployment of technology which may hinder the organisation in its pursuit of its mission.
When we consider how technology is managed, we need to look at it from multiple viewpoints with different views:
Read more “Organisational Approach to Technology and Security”
Vulnerabilities
Yesterday I created a honeypot running Exchange 2019 in the lab. I configured very little and setup a test rule as per the MS blog to stop the SSRF from the “Autodiscover” endpoint to the Powershell function call. I put a custom response with some humour (coz why not!) but I disabled the rule:
This rule was placed in the Autodiscover virtual directory which in Exchange by default is here:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\FrontEnd\HttpProxy\autodiscover\web.config
My custom rule:
Read more: Exchange Emergency Mitigation (EM) service|
<rewrite> <rules> <rule name=”RequestBlockingRule1″ enabled=”false” patternSyntax=”Wildcard” stopProcessing=”true”> <match url=”*” /> <conditions> <add input=”{REQUEST_URI}” pattern=”.*autodiscover\.json.*\@.*Powershell.*” /> </conditions> <action type=”CustomResponse” statusCode=”403″ statusReason=”No Hacks for You” statusDescription=”Say no to exploits!” /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> |
This morning I checked the Honeypot, and I found the following:
This rule is hosted in:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\web.config
|
<rewrite> <rules> <rule name=”EEMS M1.1 PowerShell – inbound” stopProcessing=”true”> <match url=”.*” /> <conditions> <add input=”{REQUEST_URI}” pattern=”.*autodiscover\.json.*\@.*Powershell.*” /> </conditions> <action type=”AbortRequest” /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> |
As you can see this was modified at 03:21 01/10/2022
This comes from:
Exchange Emergency Mitigation Service (Exchange EM Service) | Microsoft Learn
“Exchange Emergency Mitigation (EM) service”
You can check if this is enabled by running the following PowerShell:
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.SnapIn;
Get-OrganizationConfig | Select-Object MitigationsEnabled
So here we can see that with this enabled, the Exchange server will download and deploy the HTTP re-write rules automatically (if the server has the required version/config etc.)
You can enable or disable it with the following:
Set-OrganizationConfig -MitigationsEnabled $true
Set-OrganizationConfig -MitigationsEnabled $falseYou can check this feature works using the following (modify path as required for relevent exchange version)
. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Scripts\Test-MitigationServiceConnectivity.ps1"
Check the MS docs and check your Exchange Server version to see if you have this feature etc.
GCM exsetup |%{$_.Fileversioninfo}You learn something new everyday!
Vulnerabilities
The latest guidance from Microsoft (released on the 02/10/2022) says to disable administrators from being able to execute remote PowerShell via the exchange PowerShell web endpoint /PowerShell
October 2, 2022 updates:
Obviously bear in mind this needs auth! but also auth isn’t always that hard..
Microsoft Research have just released (0825 30/09/2022) this: Customer Guidance for Reported Zero-day Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server – Microsoft Security Response Center
Microsoft have released a Exchange Server Emergency Mitigation (EMS) which includes URL re-write rules to HELP mitigate this (but likely don’t eliminate all risks due to potential bypasses)
Likely “Zero day” exploit in the wild being used to attack exchange servers via a simmilar endpoint to ProxyShell. A mitigation is to apply URL rewrite rules, or to disconect the service internet from untrsuted networks until a patch is available. The Exploit is reported to required AUTHENTICATION, which may significantly limit the volume of exploitation (however credentials are only a phish away). It’s also reported the exploitation in the wild used /Powershell after exploiting the autodiscover endpoint.
Yesterday it was reported there was a “new” zero day vulnerability being exploited in the wild. But there appears to be some confusion and a lack of speciifc evidence to showcase the vulnerability being “new” or simply being a differnt exploit path/approach for an existing CVE (e.g. ProxyShell).
The situation from my pov (at time of writing) is still unclear. It would be odd to not advise people ensure they are running the latest supported Exchange CU and Security update release (check both!) – if the exploits are 0-day (which it looks like they are) you will need to also patch when MS release a patch!
New Microsoft Exchange zero-days actively exploited in attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Upcoming | Zero Day Initiative
Upcoming | Zero Day Initiative
Read more: Exploitation of Microsoft Exchange Servers seen in the wild
https://www.shodan.io/search/report?query=http.title%3Aoutlook+exchange
There are 201,995 Exchange Servers with Outlook Web Access Exposed (According to Shodan)
cve-2021-31206 (19,311)
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-31206
9.5% of the worlds Exchange attack surface is vulnerable to CVE-2021-31206
CVE-2021-34473 (4388)
CVE-2021-34523 (4388)
CVE-2021-31207 (4388)
2.1% of the worlds Exchange attack surface is vulnerable to ProxyShell CVEs (above) (based on the shodan data)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/new-features/updates?view=exchserver-2019
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/new-features/updates?view=exchserver-2019
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=58392
The situation appears to be evolving, as always security vulnerabilities and in the wild exploitations can be a fast moving landscape, internet facing systems need suitable and adequate protections, that doesn’t include just exposing IIS on TCP 443 and walking away. It requires capabilities such as:
and many more things!
This post is a fast publish and may contain errors and/or the situation may change. I’ll try and keep it updated.
Guides
Recently I was helping a friend out when they were being targeted by a criminal online. I thought I’d put some notes down to try and help people. This isn’t a “how to” it’s more like thoughts and ideas. It’s UK centric, but probably works in lots of places.
One thing to note, preparation is greater than response, the more prepared you are, the less vulnerable you may be, the more prepared the smaller the attack surface.
You may for a variety of reasons become under heightened threat from an internet perspective. The information on here is not a catch all, a detailed guide to personal (PERSEC) and operational security (OPSEC). Read more “What to do when you think you are being targeted in cyberspace”
Threat Intel
We’ve all been there haven’t we! We’ve pwn3d a network, pivoted and moved around for months and then accidentally got the wrong company name… oh wait.
Well, this story isn’t fiction, CLOP ransomware group have breached a water company and then written it up as the wrong organisation. Read more “CLOP Ransomware Group Breaches Water Company and then misattributes to THAMES WATER”