Email address as identity

A few months ago I was talking about different mailbox tools and mentioned email addresses are the keys to our online identity. They are, email addresses are the magic key that authenticates us and opens access to different accounts.
The bad guys know this too. The Justice department recently announced a plea deal related to compromised email accounts. The individual in question gained access to faculty, staff and student email accounts. They then used access to these accounts to access Facebook, iCloud, Google, LinkedIn and Yahoo accounts.
https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/897930523120738304
https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/897931383431061504
https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/897932050111406081
Mediapost published an article this week referencing a survey performed at this year’s BlackHat conference.

Of 250 hackers polled, 32% said that accessing privileged accounts was the easiest and fastest way to get at sensitive data.
The second most effective route to data, cited by 27%, was access to user email accounts.

Email accounts are the keys to the kingdom. Protecting them is a vital part of protecting yourself online.
 

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Compromises and phishing and email

Earlier this month, Sendgrid reported that a customer account was compromised and used for phishing. At the time Sendgrid thought that it was only a single compromise. However, they did undertake a full investigation to make sure that their systems were secure.
Today they released more information about the compromise. It wasn’t simply a customer account, a Sendgrid employee’s credentials were hacked. These credentials allowed the criminals to access customer data, and mailing lists. Sendgrid has a blog post listing things customers should do and describing the changes they’re making to their systems.
Last month it was Mandrill. Today it’s Sendgrid. It could be anyone tomorrow.
Security is hard, there’s no question about it. Users have to have access. Data has to be transferred. Every user, every API, every open port is a way for a bad actor to attempt access.
While it wasn’t said directly in the Sendgrid post, it’s highly likely that the employee compromise was through email. Most compromises go back to a phish or virus email that lets the attacker access the recipient’s computer. Users must be ever vigilant.
We, the email industry, haven’t made it easy for users to be vigilant. Just this weekend my best friend contacted me asking if the email she received from her bank was a phishing email. She’s smart and she’s vigilant, and she still called the number in the email and started the process without verifying that it was really from the bank. She hung up in the transaction and then contacted me to verify the email.
She sent me headers, and there was a valid DMARC record. But, before I could tell her it wasn’t a phishing email, I had to go check the whois record for the domain in question to make sure it was the bank. It could have been a DMARC authenticated email, but not from the bank. The whois records did check out, and the mail got the all clear.
There’s no way normal people can do all this checking on every email. I can’t do it, I rely on my tagged addresses to verify the mail is legitimate. If the mail comes into an address I didn’t give the sender, then it’s not legitimate – no matter what DMARC or any other type of authentication tells me. But most people don’t have access to tagged or disposable addresses.
I don’t know what the answers are. We really can’t expect people to always be vigilant and not fall for phishing. We’re just not all present and vigilant every minute of every day.
For all of you who are going to tell me that every domain should just publish a p=reject statement I’ll point out DMARC doesn’t solve the phishing problem. As many of us predicted, phishers just move to cousin and look alike domains. DMARC may protect citi.com, but citimarketingemail.com or citi.phisher.com isn’t.
We’ve got to do better, though. We’ve got to protect our own data and our customer’s data better. Email is the gateway and that means that ESPs, with their good reputations and authentication, are prime targets for criminals.

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Target breach started from email

According to Brian Krebs the compromise of Target’s POS system probably originated with a phishing attack against one of Target’s vendors. This attack compromised credentials of the HVAC vendor and possibly allowed the hackers entrance into Target’s systems.
Interestingly, Brian mentions Ariba, a company I’ve been forced to deal by a large customer of ours. I’m not sure if there really is an attack vector where a vendor can get access through Ariba to the internal systems of the customers. However, my experience with Ariba has been frustrating and problematic, so I’ll be happy to believe their security is as broken as their email.
Email is a great way to interact with people and companies. It’s great for growing communities and businesses. But it is also a way for attackers to get access to your computer and the websites you interact with. Protect yourself, and your company, by running security software. And, please, don’t open attachments or click on links in emails and provide usernames and passwords.

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People are your weakest link

Social engineering is a long standing way to compromise security. Chunkhost reports today that they discovered accounts being compromised through social engineering of Sendgrid support. While the compromise did not work it was a close call. The only thing that saved the targeted customers was their implementation of 2 factor authentication.
We know many of our customers individually and personally, and are still careful about changing contact addresses and passwords. With larger customer bases, it’s vital that every person in the change follow security processes.

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