How The NSA Secures Computers

An Anonymous Reader wrote to mention an NSA site covering secure configuration guidelines for a number of operating systems. From the site: "NSA initiatives in enhancing software security cover both proprietary and open source software, and we have successfully used both proprietary and open source models in our research activities. NSA's work to enhance the security of software is motivated by one simple consideration: use our resources as efficiently as possible to give NSA's customers the best possible security options in the most widely employed products."

Comments

Great Idea..

[digitallystoned]

Leave it to the government to tell us how to secure our computers so they can tap into our data later through some backdoor. Good read, except all they really had to say was 'disconnect your computer from the fucking internet'..

Re:Great Idea..

[aussie_a]

Good read, except all they really had to say was 'disconnect your computer from the fucking internet'..

Uh-huh. And there comes a point where security impinges on usability to an unsatisfactory degree. Sure, not having your computer hooked onto the net will make it incredibly secure compared to if it were hooked to the net. But if you need to use the internet, then this level of security makes it unusable.

Re:Great Idea..

[Martin Blank]

This is not remotely new. These things have been around for YEARS, and Slashdot covered them at that time. They were written for the use of other government agencies to secure their systems when using the listed products, but they also have a great deal of value to the public. They follow all the things we've been told over the years -- put up layered defenses, stop using old, broken protocols, use those with better hashes, disable unneeded services, reduce your attack surface... Or do you believe that these are things meant to make it easier for attackers to get in?

The guides are a valuable learning tool, too, and a number of companies have followed the idea. In fact, when Microsoft wrote its own guide for securing Windows 2003, the NSA decided that it was comprehensive enough that they didn't have to write one themselves. NSA even went so far as to mirror it themselves, presumably for government convenience.

The pace of the documentation has slowed significantly; for a while, there was a new guide coming out every month or two. But every so often, they cover new topics such as evaluating wireless IDS, as well as some other more esoteric titles like So Your Boss Bought you a New Laptop...How do you identify and disable wireless capabilities. You can see a complete list of titles here.

Go try reading the original material before criticizing it. You might actually learn something and be able to earn your karma through something other than a cheap shot.

huh?

[utnow]

The NSA has customers? How long do you think it'll be before Microsoft tries to 'aquire' them as the latest 'innovation' in computer security? :D

Re:huh?

[bhiestand]

The NSA has customers? How long do you think it'll be before Microsoft tries to 'aquire' them as the latest 'innovation' in computer security? :D

I know you're joking, but I believe the intelligence community generally uses that term. Either "customers" or "consumers", as opposed to "producers", of course. I know most of the government refers to other departments, agencies, and offices as their "customers".

From NSA.GOV on SIGINT:
NSA's SIGINT mission provides our military leaders and policy makers with intelligence to ensure our national defense and to advance U.S. global interests. This information is specifically limited to that on foreign powers, organizations or persons and international terrorists. NSA responds to requirements levied by intelligence customers, which includes all departments and levels of the United States Executive Branch.

And on Information Assurance:
NSA's Information Assurance Directorate invites government employees throughout the nation to take advantage of the products, services, and programs we offer to help you secure your critical information systems. Peruse our TEMPEST product lists and descriptions to find exactly the product you need. Discover what the IAD is doing to ensure the security of the emerging Global Information Grid. Download the latest security guides, or enlist the services of IA professionals to help you engineer secure systems or assess the security of existing systems. Learn more about national-level IA programs like those available through the Interagency OPSEC Support Staff and the Information Assurance Training and Rating Program. Or register for IA-related events and conferences to get up-to-speed on the latest IA technologies. Whatever your Information Assurance needs, the IAD is here to help.

In short, their customers include the entire military, who will receive intelligence reports that may be based on sigint information. Other customers include the state department, which might want to know if the NSA manages to get an intercepted telegram of Germany asking Mexico to declare war on America. Or maybe the president wants to know what kind of porn Usama Bin Laden likes to look at. Either way, according to their website, the NSA is tasked to do this stuff by other agencies, who then use that information to do their job. This gives them bonus points when justifying their budget, so it is the government equivalent of being directly paid to do the work. This is quite definitely a "customer".

On top of that, since the NSA knows so much about communications, networks, computer systems, and the security of these systems, the NSA is the de facto expert, hence they're also responsible for helping ensure that government computer systems are secure. They say they send advisors to help people out, and I'm sure they have some sort of responsibility for classified networks as well. It's in their best interest if the US has a well-secured communications infrastructure. I'd say it's the digital equivalent of using a sniper as a counter-sniper. But this means the entire government is also their customer. At least anyone who needs their computers to be secure.

So yes, I'd say the NSA has a lot of customers.

As for the comments about "the NSA may as well have said that you should just unplug your computer from the internet", I remember an ask.slashdot question a while ago where a guy asked for advice on securing his business computers for some classification certification. A lot of the replies basically said that the computers couldn't be on the internet, period. From my past experiences with having computers online, I'd have to agree that it's a bad idea to have a computer with sensitive data on an open network like the internet.

not only operating systems,

[ivlad]

... but there are also a few guides to the applications security available: http://www.nsa.gov/snac/downloads_all.cfm

my favorite are Cisco IOS and Microsoft CA guides

Crushing defeat.

[Number44]

As an employee of IBM (I work on enterprise storage products) I have this anecdotal story to relate:

The NSA buys lots of our gear, the large multi-terabyte enterprise-class disk storage arrays. In the case I heard about, there were a small handful of boxes. We keep track of the code loaded on each of them for support reasons, so we have a good sense of where each box is and what it's doing.

Our warranty on those arrays is 3 years.

At the end of the warranty period, it is the policy of the NSA to replace the gear outright and start fresh. What we learned was, these boxes had never been put into operation and sat on their shop floor as "excess capacity" (happens in the larger shops, it's a good idea). They had never been attached as storage to their mainframes.

The NSA crushed them. Brand new, unused and perfectly functional with ZERO data on them. Crushed to scrap.

That hurts, guys. It really does. My tax dollars paid for them, my sweat and tears makes them run, and the gov't just hauls them outside and crushes them when they can't get support via the original warranty terms. They will never let a shred of data leave their shop for fear of losing control of classified info, but damn, these never had any!

Why do they treat our tax money so callously?

Re:Crushing defeat.

[cperciva]

Why do they treat our tax money so callously?

It's cheaper to replace a 3 year old disk array than it is to do all the paperwork necessary to prove that it was never used.

Re:Crushing defeat.

[Sloppy]

Why do they treat our tax money so callously?

What's to stop them? Whatcha gonna do, citizen, hold them accountable? HA! Fire them? HA HA!!

Re:Crushing defeat.

[Crouty]

As your posting clearly shows even the fact that the disks were not used is an information worth keeping secret.

Re:Crushing defeat.

[Decker-Mage]

The problem here, familiar to anyone that has dealt with the classified security system regulations, is that as soon as that equipment went in the door it became classified equipment of some certain level. Forever after that equipment, whether it had data on it or not, is set at the level of classification, period. You can never use it with equipment of a lesser classification nor can you declassify it (which in the eyes of the requlations is using it with unclassified equipment). If you can't deal with it, sorry, but that's the way the system works and it isn't going to change as one mistake can cost not just the country but real lives.

guide to XP

[briancurtin]

the guide to securing Windows XP is actually a link to http://distrowatch.com/ so you can choose one of the many different options they have laid out for you.

NSA guidelines

[Phroggy]

I've read through the NSA's guidelines for securing Mac OS X before; as I recall their instructions included things like deleting the audio input drivers, so software can't record audio in the room by using the built-in microphone. Interesting stuff.

Re:NSA guidelines

[hughk]

Many years ago, there was an issue on Sun workstations. The audio driver was world readable by default so code running on your workstation could literally "bug" you.

Slashdotted?

[Splintax]

Holy shit, have we just slashdotted the NSA? I can't reach the article.

Re:Slashdotted?

[saynt]

Oh crap, I wasn't here, you never saw me.

Re:Slashdotted?

[Tezkah]

Holy shit, have we just slashdotted the NSA? I can't reach the article.

Coral Cache works beautifully, although directly from site wouldn't for me, neither would google's cache.

Re:do not confuse /. with \.

[digitallystoned]

/. means slashdot" thats troll -1 obviously \. means "heil hitler" or "sieg heil" in use heavily on Counter-Strike servers around Europe. Funny? Well.. not. So be damn sure u write /. and not \. LOL

Careful now you might piss of some Vietnamese twins in South Africa if you mention that again.

Because the data they protect is very sensitive

[Sycraft-fu]

The problem is that if you start to allow some things to be sold without being destroyed, the possibility that something is classified incorrectly, and thus has data on it increases. When you are dealing with TS/SCI shit, you just don't take the risk.

When it comes to spy games, there's no such thing as "parinoid enough".

Impressions

[josephdrivein]

I have read the OsX guide a year ago and everything was written there seemed obvious to me. (ie usual "Don't use rsh, use ssh" stuff or similar).

Anyway, not a bad guide for beginners (as it's supposed to be).

Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

So, since the NSA doesn't provide instructions on how to secure a Linux computer, they're either saying Linux is so good it doesn't need to be secured (yay slashdot mentality) or its red commie software that no freedom-loving american would dare use

Re:Linux

[SecureTheNet]

The NSA has released it's over version of linux, SELinux, the Security Enhanced Linux.

Slashdot and national security

[HungSquirrel]

If Slashdot takes down a government website so quickly, is it a threat to our national security?

Goddamn brainless manager-speak

[Money for Nothin']

NSA's work to enhance the security of software is motivated by one simple consideration: use our resources as efficiently as possible to give NSA's customers the best possible security options in the most widely employed products."

No fucking shit. Suppose somebody said "let's use our resources INEFFICIENTLY! And given our title of NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, let's NOT PROMOTE THE BEST SECURITY OPTIONS!" Would anybody really jump up and say "that's a *brilliant* idea!"?

Hell no.

Look, to anybody with any common sense at all, it's implicit in any organization that efficiency is important. But so is security. So is safety. So is customer satisfaction. So is employee satisfaction. So is profit (if a private for-profit org).

Is it *really* especially insightful to say "we should be efficient!" anymore? Or, now that 9/11 has warped our psyche to care singlemindedly about security (almost invariably at the expense of liberty), that another top priority is security? Not to anybody with a brain.

Why do we pay people to make such broad, fucking-obvious statements again? To remind us of what we already have known since we were teenagers?

Oh yes, I swear here and ruthlessly criticize somebody for making statements that have coincided with the goal of economy (implicitly or explicitly) for the last 230 years. Mod me troll now.

Re:not needed! Re:Missing guide?

[Hymer]

NSA is deeply involved in SeLinux, as far as I remember... and they have btw. forgotten to mention xBSD too... and AIX... and HPUX... and Tru64...

^BumP^

[TubeSteak]

Lol, this probably isn't as far from the truth as we think.

Part of it is that they pretty much have to spend their budget, or it'll get reduced during the next cycle.

The other thing is, lets say that they rip out all the HD's and RAM in order to auction off the hardware... well, someone has to do that, someone has to file a bunch of paperwork (in triplicate, everything is in triplicate), someone else is going to file the paperwork that's just been generated, someone else has to make sure the HD's & RAM get destroyed, more paperwork...

The costs can snowball very quickly. It may seriously be cheaper to de-mill the stuff and buy it again.

Re:^BumP^

[Anonymous Coward]

The costs can snowball very quickly.

I work in the French civil service, and the rule here is that we change computers every 3 years. I'm due to get a new toy in December.

I told the person in charge that I'm happy with my current machine, and was willing to keep it. I was answered that by using a machine out of warranty, I risk creating extra hassle when it breaks down, and that the salary I'd spend on changing a disk drive would more than offset any savings.

Re:Missing guide?

[Motherfucking Shit]

Where is the guide for linux?

Right here.

Eheh

[SmallFurryCreature]

I use parts of SElinux and am right now running a linux tool called foremost wich seems to be written by some part of the US airforce.

American tax dollars hard at work to keep my socialist PC running nicely. Got to love the modern world.

Afraid that the US goverment (the one that makes speeches) might be firmly up MS backside but the parts of the US goverment that actually do stuff seem to like linux.

Re:Missing Option(s). Kinda.

[zippthorne]

2) what you want to do is sell people a turnkey solution. i.e. a device which solves the problem, no thought needed. Just make sure to give it a fancy name like, "Airgap Firewall" claim it's 100% effective and slap a $50 price tag on it.

Re:BSDs?

[Homology]

I run two colocated web servers on NetBSD. Both are stock installations and I haven't had any problems. The one thing I would like to see change is that a single IP address can do a dictionary attack on sshd for hours on end without OpenSSH saying "ok lets not listen to that IP address for a while. Getty does this, or something like it, why not ssh?

Unless you have weak passwords, then this is not much of of a problem.

In the sshd_config you may disable password logins, and login using a certificate. In addition, you may specify which users/groups that may login:

Protocol 2
PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no
ClientAliveCountMax 5
ClientAliveInterval 30
AllowTcpForwarding no
AllowUsers someuser

Many of those automated attempts to bruteforce sshd is run from a Linux machine, so a simple fix (if you use the OpenBSD packet filter that is ported to NetBSD) is qute simply to drop all packets to sshd that is sendt from a Linux computer.

Alternative source of info

[Linker3000]

If you find the main site slashdotted, I have a link to someone hosting all the docs on their own PC - the guy's name is Frank and he works in some government office in Washington DC - you'll find all the docs in a sub-folder just next to the MP3 and porn store managed by someone called ZoM61e Kar1.
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Note to NSA and FBI: This is a Joke. Honest.

Link to NIST Server Guide?

[mpapet]

I found the NIST WindowsXP Security guide,
http://csrc.nist.gov/itsec/guidance_WinXP.html

Is there a comparable server guide?

OS X already ready for government?

[v1]

I have done some digging into the less accessible files in the OS, and was quite surprised to find US government things buried deep within the OS. The first thing I found were two images of key cards, and the code to support their use. The other fun thing I ran into were large emblems of the army, navy, air force, marines, FBI, noaa, coast guard, DoD, public health service, and several other US government departments. Clearly OS X has some built-in support for use in US government roles. (no images from non-US governments were found) This is in client as well as server. I'd love to know how to enable those features. Anyone happen to run across this info anywhere?

(for those interested, in 10.3, do Go, Go to Folder... /System/Library/CoreServices/SecurityAgentPlugins/ SCLoginPlugin.bundle/Contents/Resources/)

Re:BSDs?

[Poeir]

I wrote a script that did this not so long ago on OpenBSD; unfortunately, that system isn't immediately accessible. What it boiled down to was grepping /var/log/messages for any failed logins, sedding out everything but the IP address, piping the output to sort, doing uniq -c, finding any IPs listed "many" times (for whatever definition of "many" is reasonable), and then piping those IPs to pfctl to add to a blacklist. Since the logs rotate every week, if anyone tries to log in too many times, they'll be permanently blacklisted. Stick the script in a cronjob and call it good. Not exactly user-friendly to implement, but highly adaptable.

Beware bad players

[coyote-san]

You don't just have to worry about something being classified incorrectly, you have to worry about bad players who deliberately make "mistakes" when declassifying hardware. That's not acceptable so you need to second- and triple-check everything, and that drives the cost way up since everyone must have the appropriate clearances, all of the paperwork is classified, etc.