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Was This the Phishing E-mail That Took Down RSA?
alphadogg tips this IDG News report: "'I forward this file to you for review. Please open and view it.' As a ploy to get a hapless EMC recruiter to open up a booby-trapped Excel spreadsheet, it may not be the most sophisticated piece of work. But researchers at F-Secure believe that it was enough to break into one of the most respected computer security companies on the planet, and a first step in a complex attack that ultimately threatened the security of major U.S. defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, L-3, and Northrop Grumman. The e-mail was sent on March 3 and uploaded to VirusTotal a free service used to scan suspicious messages, on March 19, two days after RSA went public with the news that it had been hacked in one of the worst security breaches ever."
Looking closer, Hirvonen found that the file seemed to match RSA's description in possible every way.
I assumed this was a poorly translated phishing article and immediately closed my browser window and reinstalled Windows.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
So why did the non-security support staff have access to the same network the private keys were on? It doesn't just take one careless user, RSA should know about defense in depth.
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I wouldn't necessarily say it was something "really dumb". It looked like a legitimate e-mail from a legitimate contact, exploiting a zero-day flaw in a system. From a user standpoint, I'm not sure they could have done anything different to avoid getting infected. Users still have to get their work done. Your average user can't spend twenty minutes researching every attachment to make sure it doesn't have a zero-day attack in it.
That said, could RSA as an organization have done anything different to prevent this? Of course they could have, starting with not running an OS that's two major revisions out of date (let's not get into a Windows vs. *nix discussion here). But let's not put all the blame on the user for this.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Being the most secure company on earth is awesome until you go out of business because nobody could get any work done and make the company any money.
There is a balance between convenience and security.
There is a balance between convenience and security.
Of course there is, but given how often these problems are happening as of late, it seems clear that very few of these companies are finding that balance. One would think the inconvenience of higher security would pale in comparison to the inconvenience of rebuilding your reputation after the entire world watches your organization get brought to it's knees, or lose copious amounts of proprietary data, due to ridiculous things like phishing expeditions.
And look at the extension of the file, if it looks suspicious don't open it.
You mean the file extension that is hidden by default on Windows for the last decade?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
My understanding is that the attack proceeded in multiple steps and that knocking over a soft target was just a convenient opening move. Anybody who can be cracked just by duping some support person is Doing It Wrong; but it is hard to imagine a structure where having access to one or more low privilege accounts wouldn't make an attacker's life somewhat easier.
Now, as for the broader question of why RSA retained the seed keys for a nontrivial slice of the US's more security-touchy corporations in any remotely online-accessible form, or why those customers accepted that arrangement... There are not words enough to condemn that level of folly.
I join F-Secure in asking, "why the heck does Excel support embedded Flash"?
If you use a commodity OS inside your secure network. you will get hacked and you will get it knocked over.
If you have a high security network and run windows and office on it, it's not high security anymore.
you run apps and Operating systems rated for the security that are tightened down. only a moron would let someone edit a spreadsheet on a PC that is connected to the secure network. You flip to the insecure network machine for tasks like that. No connections between them other than the eyeballs and fingers of the user.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
By analogy, this is part of the reason why high security buildings around Washington DC have no windows. Too easy to 'peek' through (using some arbitrary 'peaking' technology), or break in through.
Most normal buildings are only *apparently* secure, since a simple lock pick or broken window gets you in. I think this phishing attack is analogous to the classic Hollywood entry using a glass cutter and shorting across the alarm wiring. This gets you in the building so you can do your dirty work.
Those high security buildings also sometimes have Faraday cages and other systems built into the structure, but that's another story.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Well, that's an interesting question: how much business *does* a company actually lose by being embarrassed in an event like this? Companies keep getting hacked (Citigroup, Sony, TJmaxx, RSA), but they don't seem to be going out of business because of it, or even taking that much of a financial hit...so I'm beginning to suspect that there isn't that much impact after all.
So, if there's no real financial impact aside from PR and cleanup, why should they bother being secure?