Are you ready for the next attack?

ESPs are under attack and being tested. But I’m not sure much progress in handling and responding to the attacks has been made since the Return Path warning or the Epsilon compromise.
Last week a number of email marketers became aware that attacks against ESPs and senders were ongoing. The shock and surprise many people exhibited prompted my Spear Phishing post on Friday.
The first round of phishing went out on Wednesday, by Friday they were coming from a different ESP. Whether this was a compromised ESP customer or employee it doesn’t matter. ESPs should have reaction plans in place to deal with these threats.
It’s been months since the first attacks. This is more than enough time to have implemented some response to reports of attacks. Yet, many people I talked to last week had no idea what they should or could be doing to protect themselves and their customers.
Last time the attacks were publicly discussed I was frustrated with many of the “how to respond” posts because few of them seemed to address the real issue. People seemed to be pushing agendas that had nothing to do with actually fixing the security holes. There were lots of recommendations to sign all mail with DKIM, implement 2 factor authentication, deploy validation certificates on web properties, or adhere to sender’s best practices.
None of those recommendations actually addressed the gaping security hole: Humans.

Criminals aren’t just hacking networks. They’re hacking us, the employees.
“The security gap is end users,” says Kevin Mandia, chief executive of security firm Mandiant Corp. The majority of corporate security breaches his firm is currently investigating involve hackers who gained access to company networks by exploiting well-intentioned employees. Geoffrey Fowler, WSJ

An effective response to attacks must include improving employee and customer security. We cannot fix compromises by simply improving authentication, or buying access to pretty colored browser bars. We must teach users to think about security first when they get an unexpected email.
An effective response to attacks must include technical solutions that scan incoming mail for potential viruses. We cannot rely solely on the ability of users to not click on links, no matter how well trained and security thinking they are.
An effective response to attacks must include technical solutions that scan outgoing mail for potential viruses. We must minimize the ability of attackers to use our systems to attack others if our systems do get compromised.
An effective response to attacks must include virus resistant software and programs to read email and deal with hostile traffic. We must acknowledge that attackers will find any hole in an operating system or software program. More secure software is one way to protect our systems from attack.
An effective response to attacks must include clear response channels inside an organization. Employees who think they get a phishing or virus email must know who to inform. Once the attack is verified, specific responses should be activated, everyone notified and outgoing traffic monitored.
An effective response to attacks means security must be drilled into every employee. Employees should never consider using cloud storage or webmail in order to bypass filters or get access prohibited by firewalls.
An effective response to attacks doesn’t mean the end to compromise attempts. It does mean fewer attempts succeed.

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Time for a real security response

I’ve seen a number of people and blogs address the recent breaches at some large ESPs make recommendations on how to fix things. Most of them are so far from right they’re not even wrong.
One group is pointing at consumers and insisting consumers be taught to secure their machines. But consumers weren’t compromised here.
Another group is pointing to senders and insisting senders start authenticating all their email. But the failure wasn’t in authentication and some of the mail is coming through the ESP systems and is authenticated.
Still others are claiming that ISPs need to step up their filtering. But the problem wasn’t with the ISPs letting too much email through.
The other thing that’s been interesting is to watch groups jump on this issue to promote their pet best practices. DKIM proponents are insisting everyone sign email with DKIM. Extended SSL proponents are insisting everyone use extended SSL. But the problem wasn’t with unsigned email or website trust.
All of these solutions fail to address the underlying issue:
ESPs do not have sufficient security in place to prevent hackers from getting into their systems and stealing their customers’ data.
ESPs must address real security issues. Not security issues with sending mail, but restricting the ability of hackers to get into their systems. This includes employee training as well as hardening of systems. These are valuable databases that can be compromised by getting someone inside support to click on a phish link.
Not everyone inside an ESP needs access to address lists. Not everyone inside an ESP customer needs full access to address lists. ESPs must implement controls on who can touch, modify, or download address lists.  These controls must address technical attacks, spear phishing attacks and social engineering attacks.
What’s happening here actually looks a lot like the Comodo certificate attack or the RSA compromise.
It’s time for the ESP industry to step up and start taking system security seriously.

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MAAWG: Just keeps getting better

Last week was the 22nd meeting of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG). While I am prohibited from talking about specifics because of the closed door nature of the group, I can say I came out of the conference exhausted (as usual) and energized (perhaps not as usual).
The folks at MAAWG work hard and play even harder.
I came away from the conference feeling more optimistic about email than I have in quite a while. Not just that email is vital and vibrant but also that the bad guys may not be winning. Multiple sessions focused on botnet and crime mitigation. I was extremely impressed with some of the presenters and with the cooperation they’re getting from various private and public entities.
Overall, this conference helped me to believe that we can at least fight “the bad guys” to a draw.
I’m also impressed with the work the Sender SIG is doing to educate and inform the groups who send bulk commercial messages. With luck, the stack of documents currently being worked on will be published not long after the next MAAWG conference and I can point out all the good parts.
There are a couple specifics I can mention. One is the new list format being published by Spamhaus and SURBL to block phishing domains at the recursive resolver. I blogged about that last Thursday. The other bit is sharing a set of security resources Steve mentioned during his session.
If your organization is fighting with any messaging type abuse (email, social, etc), this is a great place to talk with people who are fighting the same sorts of behaviour. I do encourage everyone to consider joining MAAWG. Not only do you have access to some of the best minds in email, but you have the opportunit to participate in an organization actively making email, and other types of messaging, better for everyone.
(If you can’t sell the idea of a MAAWG membership to your management or you’re not sure if it’s right for you, the MAAWG directors are sometimes open to allowing people whose companies are considering joining MAAWG to attend a conference as a guest. You can contact them through the MAAWG website, or drop me a note and I’ll make sure you talk with the right folks.)
Plus, if you join before October, you can meet up with us in Paris.

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The weak link in security

Terry Zink posts about the biggest problem with security: human errors. Everyone who is looking at security needs to think about the human factor. And how people can deliberately or accidentally subvert security.

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