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NIST Releases Guide to Cyber Attacks
treerex writes "NIST (the US National Institute of Standards and Technology) has just released a 148 page report entitled Computer Security Incident Handling Guide (PDF). It covers the gamut, from setting up a response team to dealing with specific types of attacks: DoS, trojans, worms, malicious code, and unauthorized access. While written by a team from NIST and the contractor Booz-Allen Hamilton (BAH), they appear to have taken input from CERT and luminaries like Spafford. It is an interesting read."
I would think that if the majority of people did something so simple as to patch their machines, worms would posed half the threat they do now. So, yes, Education is a simple but effective measure to combat security exploits.
This might be unnescessary for "professionals", people who know these things from before and work with it. But for the average sysadmin, this is just great! He/she could know how to:
;)
1. Find out what happened
2. Close the breach
3. Report the breach.
If the sysadmin doesn't know how to do this, they also know where to seek help.
I'll probably get messages back saying this is just dumb and generic, but it's better than not knowing anything at all. A lot better. All too few people know how to handle situations like this, and they will need somewhere to start.
I'll give this thing a skim read (just read contents and some interesting paragraphs now) and get back to this
The International Journal of Digital Evidence is also worth keeping up with, if this type of stuff interests you.
Beyond the typical vapid governmental reports, this is a step in the right direction. Anything to create a buzz around security, especially computer security, will serve the public well. This is what needs to happen: standardization. The government has done a commendable job in creating standards for dealing with national security - why not extend that to computer security. All these posts that do nothing to note the fact that this is a good thing don't see past the .gov TLD
Not too long ago, they were in hot water with the US Navy for letting some websites get hacked by leaving the default admin passwords in place. No joke, my friends work there!
It's all Hood
They also have a 1-800 number.
Thank you for calling the US National Institute of Standards and Technology Security Hotline.
Please say "HOLA" now if you espanol...
Otherwise please select one of the following selections dealing with your security problem.
Press 1 if you have suffered a DOS attack
Press 2 if your network has been infected with a worm
Press 3 if your site is being slashdotted
Press 4 if 13 year olds have defaced your web site
Press 5 if you are running windows as your server
Press 666 if you are a missle silo control room and have realized that someone has gained root or administrative access on your control system
Have a nice day.
The fact that the guvmint machines are the easy targets is apparently the point.
This if for federal agency use, and anyone elses.
This also effectively says "You WILL do it like this" to the federal agencies.
There will be a quiz.
Guide for Sysadmins: Upon learning that your systems have been penetrated, proper incident response is as follows:
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
...what to do in case of a Slashdotting?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
right on. currently, in the real world, if there is no procedure then things are only done if they are "business critical." most suits think that security events are unlikely, so that means security is low-prio. Most IT depts since the tech bubble popped are no longer autonomous. They are low on cash, low on available man-hours, and tied into caring more about the company's core business in terms of cash out, and risk management be damned. with an SOP, the cost and effort are easier to nail down, it's a slightly easier sell, and any sysadmin worth his salt will at least try to sneak some of it into the day-to-day.
another thing - the idea that uniform SOP means that things will be easier to hack is pure bullshit - what would anyone recommend to the unwashed vulnerable? Maybe it would sound like this:
- run only necessary services
- audit and change your passwords
- follow security news and patch accordingly
- use virus protection
- consider an IDS
etc.
sounds a hell of a lot like best practices / standard procedure to me. and NONE of that shit makes it "easier to hack." sheesh.
I think it's actually a good use of taxpayer money, which is the first time that I've said that in public.
If nothing else, it provides a good framework to start from, especially small companies/non-profits etc, where they don't have the resources to hire a full-time crack security team. This helps them set priorities and useful business things like that.
I'm really quite surprised people are being negative about it.
I don't understand why people immediately dismiss a report coming from NIST as being worthless USG noise while many of the same "arguments" against this paper could be made against books like Incident Response: Investigating Computer Crime or Counter Attack or any of the other n+1 books on this topic that exist.
Harumph.
Apparently, somebody who knows how smart slacker geeks get their porn, and wants to put a stop to it.
No really, blocking SSH/ESP and tracking HTTPS is a reasonable suggestion -- if anything, I'd say the above doesn't go far enough. The excerpted paragraph doesn't mention the more serious risks of SSH (port forwarding, tunneling, etc).
I'm not particularly worried about a smart internal user establishing an SSH session to the Internet and downloading "illegal materials",
I'm worried about the airhead secretary who brings in a floppy provided by her uberhacker boyfriend, and runs a rootkit, setting up an outbound SSH session providing him with a command prompt on her workstation...
That's just one risk of permitting outbound crypto channels...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.