Category: Editorial

Today we have an editorial that was originally published on Nov 7, 2006 as Steve is at DevConnections. 

It’s not bad enough that people get tons of spam, some of it cleverly disguised and hidden in messages we might be expecting, but this idea is doubly wrong. Apparently someone setup a spam message that informed people they’d been laid off. When they followed a link, a keystroke logger was installed on their machine.

So not only did their emotions skyrocket with the news they might be let go, but they potentially could get let go anyway after someone discovers they’ve installed software on their machine that could compromise the company.

I’d like to think that administrators wouldn’t be fooled by this and get something installed that would grab their passwords, but it’s not that easy. As an administrator, you should be wary of users on your machine without supervision, even under their own accounts. It’s the same reason I don’t let me kids work my computer without me being their; I’m not sure they won’t get some trojan installed.

The other part of this is ensuring that your security paradigm is properly set up. Anyone could fall for one of these and if they had administrative or other “superuser” rights, who knows what would be compromised. It’s also a good reason to ensure that you don’t share passwords, especially high level ones, for some quick fix. If someone needs some extra rights for a day, grant them rights and then remove them as soon as possible.

And change your passwords. I’ve worked in places where passwords were in force for years and everyone knew what they were. Might as well have a blank password.

I think targeted SPAM will become and more common in the future. Writing scripts to change senders, customize messages, change logos, etc. and target specific groups of people is not difficult and as more filters become able to deal with the large blasts of identical email, those looking to trick you will evolve as well.

So spread the word and warn your users. A large part of security is education on everyone’s part.

This editorial was originally published on Oct 21, 2006. It is being re-run as Steve is out at SQL in the City today.

I’m not talking about soup at the employee cafeteria or summer trips to 7-11, but rather the newest definition of slurping: siphoning off data with portable storage devices. It started to become a big concern with the wide deployment of iPods with their 20+GB storage capacity and easy connection to PCs. The advent of this scale of portable device, made more disturbing because of their benign appearance, has raised the concern of IT security folks. Now someone could appear to be listening to music while doing their work and siphon off an entire database!

Now a number of companies are starting to build software to secure USB devices and help prevent data theft. And they’re taking an interesting approach, similar to that taken by networks: they control the access to USB devices at the PC level.

This is a step in the right direction, but it still doesn’t limit what data can be downloaded to the device if USB access is enabled. It does report on access, which is probably as important as blocking the transfer. Being able to respond to security events and track them down is critical since someone will always find ways around the limits you impose.

The is of particular concern for DBAs as the sizes of these devices grow close to that of our databases. Losing a record or two of data is one thing. Losing an entire database is something else.

This editorial was originally published on Nov 7, 2006. It is being re-run as Steve is at SQL in the City today.

I read a novel some time back about the CIA. Well, not exactly about the CIA, but it was a spy novel and the CIA was in it. One thing in there that caught me eye, and probably the only thing since I can’t remember which book it was, was the use of a secondary computers by one of the analysts.

In this situation, the analyst had a computer that was connected to the internal network, but not anything outside. Instead there was a second machine that could connect to the Internet and allow research, checking on things outside the internal network, etc. There wasn’t an easy way to transfer information between the computer (other than typing it in), so it provided some aspect of security.

That same type of architecture may be the answer to IT control of user’s browsing. Imagine if a virtual computer were installed on everyone’s machine. With the high power we have and free Virtual PC, this might make sense. Have it automatically installed and connect on a different IP network than the regular machine. This virtual machine could have outside access for Hotmail, browsing, etc., while the internal machine would only allow access to corporate information.

I know there are some issues and the cut-and-paste problem could still exist. There also might be issues with trying to track browsing for regulatory and compliance purposes, but it would prevent some of the secruity issues.

Have a virus hit? Clean out and reset the virtual machine.

It would also help propgations by users who run as adminsitrator. I know you’re not supposed to do this, but sometimes it’s not practical. You’re doing a lot of administrative work and need to check something on TechNet. With cross site scripting issues, even this might not be safe anymore.

Actually the more I think about it, this might be the solution out here at the ranch for letting the kids browse their music sites 🙂