{"id":73,"date":"2017-01-19T23:45:51","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T23:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hjinterim.wordpress.com\/?p=73"},"modified":"2017-01-19T23:45:51","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T23:45:51","slug":"what-are-the-sans-20-critical-security-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/2017\/01\/19\/what-are-the-sans-20-critical-security-controls\/","title":{"rendered":"What are the SANS 20 Critical Security Controls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"sans_20_critical_security_controls_619x330-300x159\"<\/p>\n

The 20 critical controls (I\u2019ll call them the \u201cControls\u201d from here on out) talk about four tenets:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Offense informs defense:<\/strong> Use knowledge of actual attacks that have compromised systems to provide the foundation to build effective defenses.<\/li>\n
  2. Metrics:<\/strong> Establish common metrics to provide a shared language for executives, IT specialists, auditors, and security officials to measure the effectiveness of security measures within an organization so that required adjustments can be identified and implemented quickly.<\/li>\n
  3. Continuous monitoring:<\/strong> Carry out continuous monitoring\/auditing to test and validate whether current security measures are proactively remediating vulnerabilities in a timely manner.<\/li>\n
  4. Automation:<\/strong> Automate defenses so that organizations can achieve reliable, scalable, and continuous measurements of their adherence to the controls and related metrics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    First let me explain what SANS 20 Critical Security Controls are.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    01: Inventory of Authorized and Unauthorized Devices<\/p>\n

    02: Inventory of Authorized and Unauthorized Software<\/p>\n

    03: Secure Configurations for Hardware\/Software on Mobile Devices, Laptops, Workstations, & Servers<\/p>\n

    04: Continuous Vulnerability Assessment and Remediation<\/p>\n

    05: Malware Defenses<\/p>\n

    06: Application Software Security<\/p>\n

    07: Wireless Device Control<\/p>\n

    08: Data Recovery Capability<\/p>\n

    09: Security Skills Assessment and Appropriate Training to Fill Gaps<\/p>\n

    10: Secure Configurations for Network Devices such as Firewalls, Routers, and Switches<\/p>\n

    11: Limitation and Control for Network Ports, Protocols, and Services<\/p>\n

    12: Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges<\/p>\n

    13: Boundary Defense<\/p>\n

    14: Maintenance, Monitoring, and Analysis of Audit Logs<\/p>\n

    15: Controlled Access Based on the Need to Know<\/p>\n

    16: Account Monitoring and Control<\/p>\n

    17: Data Loss Prevention<\/p>\n

    18: Incident Response and Management<\/p>\n

    19: Secure Network Engineering<\/p>\n

    20: Penetration Tests and Red Team Exercises<\/p>\n

    Now you have a better overview of these Critical Security Controls, what they are and for what purpose the being used.<\/p>\n

    <\/h2>\n

    Technique #1: Attackers Will Expose Breached Data Dumps In Dribbles<\/strong><\/p>\n

    According to Ed Skoudis, more organizations will need to face the prospect of attackers not only getting savvy in how they steal information, but also in how they disseminate it, particularly if they\u2019re looking to publicly humiliate their targets.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI\u2019m talking, of course, about the Sony situation.\u00a0 Instead of just doing the big data dump, they put a little bit out there,\u201d Skoudis said. \u201cThe reason this is more damaging is the organization doesn\u2019t really know how to respond.\u00a0 What is the magnitude of this whole thing? Also, the organization\u2019s response, by the time you get to day three or four of the disclosures, makes what they said on day one look silly.\u00a0 So there\u2019s more damage and it amplifies it for the target organization.\u00a0 It\u2019s like you\u2019re boxing with ghosts.\u201d He recommends that organizations start including these scenarios in their tabletop exercises for breach response.<\/p>\n

    Technique #2: Microsoft Kerberos Is Getting Spanked<\/strong><\/p>\n

    As Pass the Hash attacks grew mainstream back in 2011 or so, Skoudis explained that he and other experts always prefaced their talks about the techniques with the aside that these attacks weren\u2019t there yet on Microsoft Kerberos. That\u2019s no longer the case.<\/p>\n

    \u201cSo what\u2019s happening? We have the pass the ticket attack.\u00a0 That\u2019s where a bad guy hacks into a machine in your environment\u2014maybe it\u2019s a client machine, maybe it\u2019s a server machine\u2013 and they harvest the Kerberos tickets for the user that\u2019s authenticated on that machine,\u201d he says, explaining the attacker is able to use those tickets for up to 10 hours. \u201cYou can do a lot of damage in 10 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Technique #3: Real-World Exploits of Internet of Things Will Multiply<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The more the workforce moves beyond bring your own device with phones and tablets and further into bring your own anything, be it printers or wireless routers, the more that Internet of Things vulnerabilities will intrude into the enterprise, Skoudis warned. This gets amplified as embedded hardware in all nature of devices becomes so cheap.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWith all these different things coming into the environment, if you don\u2019t know it\u2019s there, you can\u2019t defend it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

    And, unfortunately, these devices are frequently vulnerable to very old attacks and methods that were taken care of in traditional devices years ago. But these common vulnerabilities will start causing new and unexpected consequences in IoT devices. (Internet Of Things)<\/p>\n

    For example, one device Skoudis and his team looked into were actually irrevocably broken following a simple cross-site scripting attack.<\/p>\n

    \u201cYou could launch a cross side scripting attack against the darn thing and it would break the device,\u201d he said. \u201cLook, I\u2019ve seen a lot of scripting in my day, I\u2019m sure maybe you have as well, and I\u2019ve never seen one that would break a device.\u00a0 It was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Technique #4: Encryption Is Becoming Security\u2019s #1 Frenemy<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Encryption is security\u2019s number one frenemy, not just because when poorly implemented it can cause problems\u2014see Heartbleed and BASH bug\u2014but also because it can be used against you, explained Ullrich.<\/p>\n

    As crypto ransomware has grown in popularity, it has been seen largely as a consumer problem. But that\u2019s changing as attackers start to shift their encryption ransomware delivery techniques, he says.<\/p>\n

    \u201cAnd in some ways, from an enterprise point of view, encrypted information is probably less of a problem for you than leaked information, because they have backups\u201d he said. \u201cUntil those backups start being encrypted.\u201d<\/p>\n

    For example, he explained that attackers are starting to dedicate efforts in breaking into NAS devices and others commonly used for backup storage in order to carry out ransomeware attacks against businesses.<\/p>\n

    \u201cAnd it only moves forward from there,\u201d explaining that attackers are using web application vulnerabilities to break into web servers, then effectively encrypting data for a period of time and eventually removing the key before making a demand for ransom<\/p>\n

    \u201cSo all data altered over the last six months on that particular web server got encrypted now, including all the backups for the last six months.\u201d \u201cThen on your website you get to see the ransom notice asking you for a substantial amount of money to get your data back.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Technique #5: Denial of Service Attacks Are Advancing<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cDenial of service attacks have been a huge problem over the last few years, but for the most part, enterprises sort of have learned to live with it\u201d<\/p>\n

    Attackers are now taking denial of service to another level in a couple of ways. In one way, the attacker is focusing on actual applications. \u201cSo, these are layer 7-style denial of service attacks.\u201d With a relatively low level of traffic, like a couple megabits or maybe a gigabit, attackers can cause substantial harm to the application and render it unusable. Additionally, instead of reflection attacks off the DNS server, attackers are setting up their attacks so the request from actual clients, rather than denial of service botnets or the like.<\/p>\n

    Technique #6: ICS Attacks Are Becoming Targeted<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Attackers are getting savvier about how they go after industrial control systems. There are now customized ICS exploits, that is big news. \u201cIt means your adversary did spend time thinking and focusing on it to build these.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Additionally, attackers are taking advantage of controls over specific features within ICS systems. And they\u2019re also learning the importance of delivery. \u201cAdversaries also demonstrated the understanding that many of the control systems out there today are at least hidden behind one firewall, one logical segmentation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey came to the same thinking about that and figuring how do I focus on what, not necessarily payload, but delivery.\u00a0 How do I get in to where I want to be? And the number one thing we say is they focus on ICS trusted relationships. \u201d<\/p>\n

    As a result, there\u2019s increased level of phishing attacks against production engineers and those on the plant floor area, as well as watering hole attacks against sites with information for ICS engineers. Even scarier, they\u2019re starting to trojanize ICS files and components that are available for updating firmware and finding ways to replace them in the supply chain in order to get malware over the firewall and into production environments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The 20 critical controls (I\u2019ll call them the \u201cControls\u201d from here on out) talk about four tenets: Offense informs defense: Use knowledge of actual attacks that have compromised systems to provide the foundation to build effective defenses. Metrics: Establish common metrics to provide a shared language for executives, IT specialists, auditors, and security officials to … Read moreWhat are the SANS 20 Critical Security Controls<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gdpr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hjinterim.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}