Recent huge databreaches

Since last few weeks a set of really important databreaches were posted. Looks rather real about current state of affairs. I'm wondering if this is because of some offensive escalation in attacks or just more effective monitoring or more strict reporting rules ?
Anyhow it is hard to find impact results for this databreaches I start to worry if this is maybe result of an effort to do a real economical damage ?
We will see in the future how things will develop

30.9.2017
Reports about size and impacts of recent databreaches are still coming with new information. The Delloite story is going one and getting more scary.  Maybe we are here talking of new type of asymmetric warfare ? All events and strategic value of data stolen, information learned and knowledge achieved is frightening. Also we don't know about other economical targtes in same class if and how being affected. Just think about what analysts and strategic usage of all this data collected can do do US economy and indirectly to military power.
Looks like my paranoia kick in, into some global conspiracy theory :) But why not it is like adding a new dimension to existing human activities and one dimension in which all activities are interconnected, accessible and almost not defended. 

Mipro 2017 conference in Opatija

MIPRO 2017 finished last week in Opatija. It is a nice conference where we usually presents a few papers. This year I've put there a cooperation with my former student Antonio Zekic. Paper was supposed to be something else but it morphed differently, into "Uvođenje novih sadržaja u nastavu digitalne forenzike i kibernetičke sigurnosti upotrebom studentskih radova"

The day before I was presenting there was lecture  "Životni ciklus elektroničkog dokaza" at Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka. It was a two hours talk about digital forensics and digital evidence for law students. more or less usual intro, but this time I feel some better more alive examples and cases are needed.

Incident response and forensic tools my fears

Since 2008 when we mastered Encase Enterprise and its derivatives it was our tool of choice for enterprise / system level of forensic data collecting. It was reliable and easy to use for data collecting with ability to script "specific" tasks. Also it was easy to put collected data to other tools for further tasks.  It had its quirks and really not to helpful user interface but it was much better than anything else on the market.  Unfortunately with version 7 things start to become worse and now, last few months with version 8 we have continuous problems. It is not so much with tool but with licencing, getting extension certificates, reliability of licence manager, documentation, support response , etc. Last change from Safe/NAS configuration in v7 to Safe for enterprise and LM for distributed licencing caused surge of problem with customers. At the moment it almost looks like situation when Cellebrite was hacked,  when Cellebrite support database was compromised. Anyhow whatever cause is, conclusion is even tool is functional, because of this licensing issues it is not reliable enough to be used reliably in any real incident situation.  In the lab environment in sterile and not being time bound it is OK for forensic analyses, but for incident response in compromised network it is simple not reliable enough, especially in a sense of targeted attacked, like recent SWIFT affair.  Anything of that type with strategic implications is situation where we can expect well organised and prepared attack aiming at weak points of response chain, For such attacker it will be relatively easy to attack licensing and authentication mechanisms of EnCase enterprise tool to disable it, and trough this rendering IR useless or at least very slow. There is even more cunning, an paranoid scenario, which will include attack on GuidanceSoftware itself to damage its capabilities to maintain licences and certificates for products, Current SMS extension scheme which is now in action, with current  forced moving customers from "bad" v7 to new v8 is almost perfect opportunity for such idea.  
Having all this in mind some alternative should be found, I was working with several tools to see its features in such conditions and still there is no silver bullet, Conclusion is to have a set of tools which complicate things a lot, with stress on ability of early detection. Combination of GRR as opensource at one end of spectrum to Fidelis cybersecurity at the other one looks as a good but complicated situation. 

Interesting new webcast on SANS "Forensic State Analysis: A New Approach to Threat Hunting"

A new title  "Forensic State Analysis: A New Approach to Threat Hunting" , for old cumbersome name "preemptive enterprise forensic". Very interesting one, lightweight approach :)
It is worth of watching and projecting to your system.

Farrady bags

We have a set of new Farady bags, at first glance very good ones, from disklabs.com
It was just a few test mobiles and tablets tested, but looks very good even one  was able to cut off wifi, 3g, bluetooth signals completely.

I think maybe of planning some student research work, as for possible graduation  thesis, to do set of measurements with different devices and different bags and summarize at the end.

15th May 2017

After about 2 months of looking we found no one interested in this type of research. I've contacted local universities but unfortunately no candidates  get back, The idea, tools and rest will be left in waiting till something happen.
Unfortunately it is not the first time to get such response ...

23rd Sep. 2017
No activity even after summer vacation :)
the idea will be shelved for good 

Lectures in ORF just started

Lectures in Basics of Digital Forensics (ORF) just started last week. This time we have 6 students
so it is small easy to work group, there is one peculiarity .. classroom is huge :) It is stark contrast whren we had about 18 students in very tiny classrom :) :)
First lecture was also videtaped, but video failed in the second half.

very cute animation on BBC about IoT

Nice animation on BBC site The era of ‘computerised catastrophic failure’ is here
based on  what Bruce Schneier  believes is a ‘grand challenge’ in his field for 2017.
Simple to understand and beautifull to see, also based on vunerable flash ?

Just a few minutes later I've noticed this post on local news portal
"Proizvodjaci vibratora moraju korisnicima isplatiti 4 milijuna dolara zbog spijuniranja"  it goes so well, at the end of the article is one very curious line "An unwanted activation of the vibrator is a potential rape" ... maybe far fetched but ..


15th May 2017
There is very good article on the  SANS  reading room  about securing home IOTs "Securing the Home IoT Network" it si worth of reading and applying it to your home :)