Stuxnet's Legacy: Get Back to Basics or Get Owned

Gunkerty Jeb writes "Attacks such as Stuxnet, Operation Aurora or GhostNet are not what most enterprises and organizations need to be worried about. The plain fact is that most organizations are falling far short in protecting against the same threats that they've faced for the last 10 years. SQL injection, phishing, malicious attachments, social engineering. Old, every one of them. And yet, still incredibly effective at compromising networks in some of the best-known and theoretically best-protected companies."

Comments

Security is hard

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how much companies (and individuals) would like to pretend otherwise, security is really hard to do. It's not just a matter of having the right technology in place; people have to follow some inconvenient rules and exercise self control and common sense.

So we're always going to have some of these problems.

Perspective

[TheRealMindChild]

SQL injection, phishing, malicious attachments, social engineering. Old, every one of them.

And every one of them gets learned the hard way by the new batch of up-and-comers. It isn't like the average knowledge of us IT folk has gotten any bigger. Old, season folks leave, and new, green folks join. Also, management.

Re:Perspective

[COMON$]

Now this is a mixed message because coming up through the IT field it was the old timers causing the security problems. "What? I have to clean my inputs? This is the way I have always done it and this is how I am going to keep doing it" as well as "bah, our company is not a target".

Now it is 10 years after I entered the field full time, things are FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR better. Yes there are still old sites out there, there are still companies that don't update their security because they are struggling to keep the lights on. But seriously as opposed to 10 years ago, Infosec is widespread, companies have security training seminars for employees, Pentests are a regular phenomenon. This increased security is largely because those of us who grew up with tech, intentionally went into the field, and really enjoy the work are now getting to the 10-15 year range on experience and fixing all the damn problems our predecessors set before us. All the while doing our best to defend against the up and comers who are trying to push out projects as fast as possible to pad their resume.

Re:Perspective

[Rary]

Shouldn't it be possible for the old seasoned professionals to write libraries and tools that make SQL injection all but impossible? Then all you have to do is convince the green new up and comers to use the existing tools. Only downside is that the newbies don't learn the lesson, but this particular lesson is pretty costly to learn the hard way.

In IT, there is this general belief that the seasoned professionals, also known as "old timers", are filled with antiquated and useless knowledge, while the green newbies, also known as "cutting edge fresh talent", know all the whiz-bang new way of doing things.

Sometimes, this is true, but sometimes it is not. As long as we continue to view this industry as being one that changes so rapidly that everything learned last week is obsolete, we will continue to make the same mistakes and reinvent the same flawed wheels.

PHP is a big part of the problem

[Animats]

PHP is a big part of the problem. PHP's interface to SQL encourages putting in parameters without proper escaping. Python has a slightly different interface, one where there's one SQL statement with fields represented by %s, and a tuple with the values to be filled in. The values are escaped automatically. If PHP had only such an interface, most SQL injection attacks would fail.

It would help if there was simply a restriction that only one SQL statement can be submitted per call. Since all the major SQL implementations now have transactions, there's no reason to put two statements in one call any more.

Another problem with PHP is a tendency to install a large number of standard PHP scripts which shouldn't be installed at all. Look at your server logs and you'll see constant attempts by hostile sites to call common bad scripts.

Hosting "control panels" implemented in PHP are part of the problem. If you have one of those, you can't just turn off PHP, even if you're not using it. Worse, "control panels" tend to run with very high privileges, and present a large attack face.

Re:Give a damn

[causality]

Thank you, Anonymous Coward. You've helped me to figure out exactly why Linux is more secure than Windows. It isn't the operating system. It isn't the user. It isn't any application, set of applications, or combination of utilities. It's right there in your post. "average users wont start giving a damn" For the most part, Linux users are those who give a damn. The attitude - nothing more, nothing less. You've got to give a damn, or the best system is just a non-secure mess of code!

I would add that there are reasons why systems like Linux appeal so much to this kind of user.

The biggest single one is that it doesn't assume you're an idiot. The system is built for users who intend to gradually become more and more familiar with how their systems work and how to maintain them. Users who traverse the learning curve at their own pace are rewarded with more and more ability to assume control and enjoy a system that does what they want the way they want to do it. You can also peek under the hood and see for yourself how things really work, with your skill level being the only limit. Generally things are made as simple as possible but no simpler, unlike Windows.

I would not classify Windows as easy to use, myself. I would call it easy to learn. Linux is quite easy to use if you have learned it. Learning how to use it is a one-time investment that continues to pay off. You can learn all about Windows but that won't make it much more convenient to automate, won't stop it from getting in your way whenever you try to do something advanced, and it won't stop it from trying to make you do things the way Microsoft intended.

The culture around Windows tends to encourage treating it like a black box and memorizing a set of steps to take in order to accomplish a specific task. The culture around Linux and Unix tends to encourage actually understanding how and why the tools work.

Linux also tends to be logical and predictable, the way you'd expect a machine to function. If something breaks, it broke for a good reason. It will stay broken until you fix it. When you fix it, it will stay fixed. You can actually get a meaningful error message that really does help you identify and isolate the problem. Windows has come a long, long way on these two points but it has yet to match the elegance of Linux and Unix. It's also helpful that all of the important configuration ultimately resides in plain text files. There is no opaque single point of failure like the Windows registry, which is a binary database that tends to become a mess over time.

I'd also say that the package management systems that come with Linux distros are vastly superior to the way software is acquired and installed on Windows. Instead of each third-party program having to chase down its own updates, often popping up nag screens requiring the user to complete the final step, you can update every last piece of software on your system with a single command. It's neater, less error-prone, and frankly less annoying. That counts for a lot considering how important it is to keep your system updated, considering how many Windows machines are compromised by exploiting already-patched vulnerabilities. Unfortunately I do not believe central software repositories would be possible on Windows, as the proprietary licenses of most Windows software would not allow third parties to redistribute them.

The users contributing the most to the rampant security problems are what I call permanent newbies. They hate learning new things. Somehow, they can use a tool for ten years without ever knowing much more about it than when they started. They don't even pick up knowledge here and there over time, let alone would they actively study anything. It is like they are too proud to do that. Asking them to do a bit of light reading for their own good is like asking an aristocrat to "fraternize with the help". It is a mentality to which I cannot easily relate. I cannot name anything non-trivial I do on a daily basis that I never learn new things about as I acquire more experience.