TABULA ROSA SYSTEMS

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Tabula Rosa Systems Technical Term For 8/4/2015 - E2EE (encryption)

From whatis.com posted by Margaret Rouse In E2EE, the data is encrypted on the sender's system or device and only the recipient is able to decrypt it. Nobody in between, be they an Internet service provider, application service provider or hacker, can read it or tamper with it. The cryptographic keys used to encrypt and decrypt the messages are stored exclusively on the endpoints, a trick made possible through the use of public key encryption. Although the key exchange in this scenario is considered unbreakable using known algorithms and currently obtainable computing power, there are at least two potential weaknesses that exist outside of the mathematics. First, each endpoint must obtain the public key of the other endpoint, but a would-be attacker who could provide one or both endpoints with the attacker's public key could execute a man-in-the-middle attack. Additionally, all bets are off if either endpoint has been compromised such that the attacker can see messages before and after they have been encrypted or decrypted. The generally employed method for ensuring that a public key is in fact the legitimate key created by the intended recipient is to embed the public key in a certificate that has been digitally signed by a well-recognized certificate authority (CA). Because the CA's public key is widely distributed and generally known, its veracity can be counted on, and a certificate signed by that public key can be presumed authentic. Since the certificate associates the recipient's name and public key, the CA would presumably not sign a certificate that associated a different public key with the same name. The first widely used E2EE messaging software was Pretty Good Privacy, which secured email and stored files, as well as securing digital signatures. Text messaging applications frequently utilize end-to-end encryption, including Jabber, TextSecure and Apple's iMessage
================================================================ Good Netiquette to all! ================================================================

For a great email parody, view the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw&__scoop_post=bcaa0440-2548-11e5-c1bd-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=2455618

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**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo. I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications.

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.

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Monday, August 3, 2015

Top Ten Principles For Job Seekers

Netiquette, as most of you readers know, extends to any electronic communications. One of the most critical forms of business email is that of the employment candidate. Below is a list of Netiquette essential for the job seeker. If you have any to add, your thoughts are welcome might be cited in my soon to be published book, noted below.

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Ten Netiquette essentials for job seekers

1. Be mindful of core Netiquette and email etiquette practices

2. Keywords, keywords and more keywords

3. Note specific accomplishments rather than day to day tasks

4. Include links to positive on-line presence

5. Provide a section for additional accomplishments, not “references available”

6. Make use of all available tools for creating, editing and validating

7. Omit personal opinions

8. Eliminate overused phrases such as “Basic Objectives” or “Career Goals”

9. Embrace polite persistence and include processes for follow-up and maintain a consistent tone

10. Research the competition – how can you beat them


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Tabula Rosa Systems Security Alert - SB15-215: Vulnerability Summary for the Week of July 27, 2015

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National Cyber Awareness System: SB15-215: Vulnerability Summary for the Week of July 27, 2015 08/03/2015 06:25 AM EDT Original release date: August 03, 2015 The US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletin provides a summary of new vulnerabilities that have been recorded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) National Vulnerability Database (NVD) in the past week. The NVD is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) / United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). For modified or updated entries, please visit the NVD, which contains historical vulnerability information.
================================================================ Good Netiquette to all! ================================================================

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Sunday, August 2, 2015

Tabula Rosa Systems - Overview Of Self Destructing Email Products

=========================================================== Many products and services have made reference or offered services to hide their identity, guarantee the safe message delivery and have even created self-destruct email. Is this good Netiquette? it is an interesting question. There is a hint of deceptiveness being a reason for utilizing these methods. But, in light of the lack of Internet security combined with eroding privacy lead me to conclude this is acceptable when done for good purposes. Notwithstanding, there are now more of these products than ever. Below is a good article referencing these. I will leave it to you, the reader, to make your own conclusion. Whatever you do, it remains an interesting topic. Good Netiquette to all! This blog will not self-destruct! ==================================================== This Email Will Self-Destruct In Five Seconds A raft of new companies aim to deliver the dream of the secure, easy-to-use and ephemeral email. By Kevin Lincoln - fastcompany.com In early September, Bruce Levenson, owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, announced that he would sell the team after self-reporting a racist email he had sent in 2012. The Hawks are valued at over $400 million. That’s a strong tribute to the power of the written word. Wouldn’t be nice if, in classic Mission Impossible fashion, emails could actually self-destruct? Or take the case of the missent email. This past July, a Goldman Sachs employee accidentally typed “gmail” instead of “gs” into address bar and sent confidential information to a Gmail random account. The brokerage house then sued to have that email deleted, which Google said it would only do with a court order. It seems fair that a racist email from a powerful sports figure should be disclosed or maybe even that misspent emails stay where they land. But after Snowden’s revelations, it also seems likely that even innocent text communications can be stored and sifted. Wouldn’t be nice if, in classic Mission Impossible fashion, emails could actually self-destruct? A handful of companies are trying to fleeting email a reality. Normal email accounts—Gmail, Yahoo!, etc.—can’t add this feature because of the way Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) works. (In 2009, Gmail debuted an “undo send” feature but it doesn’t actually yank email back—it just adds five seconds before it sends.) To create truly disposable messaging, you need to build it from the ground up. “We decided we wanted to make crypto that people would use 100 times a day, and crypto that exceeds the NSA’s top-secret encryption technology,” says Nico Sell, the CEO of a company called Wickr. Sell is a DefCon vet and white-hat hacker notorious for her secrecy—she refuses to be photographed on camera without sunglasses, which mess with facial-recognition software, and most details of her life are a mystery, from where she lives to the names of her husband and daughters to whether her “Nico Sell” is even her real name. She founded Wickr in 2011 after 10 years of trying to get other companies to use her encryption technology. Now, she provides an app that uses “seamless key management” to allow the anonymous sending and receiving of messages that are timed to self-destruct and, because they are stored exclusively on devices, cannot be accessed from a cloud or server. “Wickr is processing millions of messages a day, which is more top-secret messages than the Internet has ever seen,” she says. “Which is really great too, because a lot of what we’re doing is working with human rights activists, and you’ve got tons of great cover traffic—I’m pushing people to encrypt as much as they can, it helps to control the surveillance state and give power to the people.” Matching her background, Sell’s rhetoric and behavior is couched in the philosophies of activists—she famously refused to allow the FBI a backdoor into Wickr. But she also believes that Wickr is the best messaging app, period, and she sees Facebook, Skype, Whatsapp, and Snapchat as its competition. Eventually, the company will move beyond even that: Sell wants to use Wickr’s tech to facilitate financial-industry and peer-to-peer transactions securely and secretly. With a business model built on these trades, as well as premium content and licensing, Wickr also has no need for ads, which means no need for any user data. While Wickr might be the most ambitious and well-known of the secure messaging apps, it’s far from the only one. Telegram, an Android-only app that originated out of Russia, is a fast-growing service that also provides encryption and self-destruct options, though, unlike Wickr’s, those features aren’t always activated. And Gliph combines messaging with completely secure bitcoin payments, making it an attractive service for a certain kind of user—the kind that cares enough to use bitcoin. If you delete a message in Gliph, it will delete it on the other side as well. It’s a complete deletion, no backup. Gliph allows users to send messages across platforms, including the web browser and desktops. This flexibility comes with a caveat—instead of local encryption, like Wickr and Telegram, Gliph uses server-side encryption—but founder and CEO Rob Banagale believes that the trade-off is more than worth it in terms of improving the user experience. “We host the conversations, so you can lose your phone and still pick up the conversation on the web and on somebody else’s phone by logging in,” Banagale says. “Another key aspect of what we have is you can delete messages. If you delete a message in Gliph, it will delete it on the other side as well. It’s a complete deletion, no backup.” Like Wickr, Gliph is ad-free, and it protects user details via messaging as well as a service called cloaked email, which hides email addresses behind a pseudonym. Regardless of which app you opt for—and there are others—their rise is both a reaction to current events as well as a curious harbinger of what’s to come in communication. Sell says that Wickr is a tool, and like all tools, it can be used by both good people and bad people. But in her eyes, that doesn’t change the need for the tool itself. “We believe in power to the people,” Sell says. “We really think that no matter the frontier, if we can get freedom of communications and freedom of information to everyone around the world, then we can have significant change, in a good way.” It also means that, if Levenson’s email had self-destructed, he’d still be the owner of the Hawks. Or maybe the next time an intern decides to accidentally reply instead of forward an email—maybe the whole office won't get it.
================================================================ Good Netiquette to all! ================================================================

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Tabula Rosa Systems Security Alert 8/2/2015 - US CERT - Phishing Bulletins

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Original release date: August 01, 2015

Systems Affected

Microsoft Windows Systems, Adobe Flash Player, and Linux

Overview

Between June and July 2015, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) received reports of multiple, ongoing and likely evolving, email-based phishing campaigns targeting U.S. Government agencies and private sector organizations. This alert provides general and phishing-specific mitigation strategies and countermeasures.

Description

US-CERT is aware of three phishing campaigns targeting U.S. Government agencies and private organizations across multiple sectors. All three campaigns leveraged website links contained in emails; two sites exploited a recent Adobe Flash vulnerability (CVE-2015-5119) while the third involved the download of a compressed (i.e., ZIP) file containing a malicious executable file. Most of the websites involved are legitimate corporate or organizational sites that were compromised and are hosting malicious content.

Impact

Systems infected through targeted phishing campaigns act as an entry point for attackers to spread throughout an organization’s entire enterprise, steal sensitive business or personal information, or disrupt business operations.

Solution

Phishing Mitigation and Response Recommendations

Implement perimeter blocks for known threat indicators:

Email server or email security gateway filters for email indicators
Web proxy and firewall filters for websites or Internet Protocol (IP) addresses linked in the emails or used by related malware
DNS server blocks (blackhole) or redirects (sinkhole) for known related domains and hostnames

Remove malicious emails from targeted user mailboxes based on email indicators (e.g., using Microsoft ExMerge).
Identify recipients and possible infected systems:

Search email server logs for applicable sender, subject, attachments, etc. (to identify users that may have deleted the email and were not identified in purge of mailboxes)
Search applicable web proxy, DNS, firewall or IDS logs for activity the malicious link clicked.
Search applicable web proxy, DNS, firewall or IDS logs for activity to any associated command and control (C2) domains or IP addresses associated with the malware.
Review anti-virus (AV) logs for alerts associated with the malware. AV products should be configured to be in quarantine mode. It is important to note that the absence of AV alerts or a clean AV scan should not be taken as conclusive evidence a system is not infected.
Scan systems for host-level indicators of the related malware (e.g., YARA signatures)

For systems that may be infected:

Capture live memory of potentially infected systems for analysis
Take forensic images of potentially infected systems for analysis
Isolate systems to a virtual local area network (VLAN) segmented form the production agency network (e.g., an Internet-only segment)

Report incidents, with as much detail as possible, to the NCCIC.

Educate Your Users
Organizations should remind users that they play a critical role in protecting their organizations form cyber threats. Users should:

Exercise caution when opening email attachments, even if the attachment is expected and the sender appears to be known. Be particularly wary of compressed or ZIP file attachments.
Avoid clicking directly on website links in emails; attempts to verify web addresses independently (e.g., contact your organization’s helpdesk or sear the Internet for the main website of the organization or topic mentioned in the email).
Report any suspicious emails to the information technology (IT) helpdesk or security office immediately.

Basic Cyber Hygiene
Practicing basic cyber hygiene would address or mitigate the vast majority of security breaches handled by today’s security practitioners:

Privilege control (i.e., minimize administrative or superuser privileges)
Application whitelisting / software execution control (by file or location)
System application patching (e.g., operating system vulnerabilities, third-party vendor applications)
Security software updating (e.g., AV definitions, IDS/IPS signatures and filters)
Network segmentation (e.g., separate administrative networks from business-critical networks with physical controls and virtual local area networks)
Multi-factor authentication (e.g., one-time password tokens, personal identity verification (PIV cards)

Further Information
For more information on cybersecurity best practices, users and administrators are encouraged to review US-CERT Security Tip: Handling Destructive Malware to evaluate their capabilities encompassing planning, preparation, detection, and response. Another resource is ICS-CERT Recommended Practice: Improving Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity with Defense-In-Depth Strategies.

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Good Netiquette to all!
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Saturday, August 1, 2015

Tabula Rosa Systems - Five Top Email Sesucrity Products

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Email remains as a source of malware proliferation and is now rapidly become a vehicle of data leakage or exfiltration. Here is a summary from SC Magazine of five of the top products to secure your email!
================================================================ Good Netiquette to all! ================================================================ Email security by Peter Stephenson September 02, 2014 scmagazine.com GROUP SUMMARY: We have seen email encryption for some years now, but in the face of inbound threats we have a new problem: unintended data exfiltration. In the face of external email-borne attacks, email security should reflect the three basic aspects of security: confidentiality, integrity and availability, says Peter Stephenson. This month we take a deep dive into email security. Looking at the products we have this year in contrast to last year's bunch we found that the new functionality is remarkable for its innovation and convergence with other, similar product types. Briefly, email gateways are more comprehensive than ever before and this is a big benefit to users. The players this year are a mix of old and new. The old standbys, mellowed and matured by experience, have come up with some interesting new wrinkles on old themes. To reverse a metaphor, this is new wine in old bottles, surely a good thing if the vintner knows what it's doing. Old school email security was pretty much encrypt to outgoing email and stop the phishing attacks. Occasionally we would see non-repudiation and there were some specialized products that did things such as destroy outbound messages after some period of time. A lot of that functionality moved into data leakage protection and now, ironically, some DLP functionality is moving into email security gateways. A good place to start is to get a bit of a handle on what we mean by email security, then. For that we referred to a paper called "Email Security Threats," written for SANS Reading Room by Pam Cocca. Ms. Cocca tells us that email security should reflect the three basic aspects of security: confidentiality, integrity and availability. She tells us that confidentiality means that email "...is protected from unauthorized access." Integrity means that "...it has not be modified or destroyed by an unauthorized individual." And, availability means "...ensuring that mail servers remain online and able to service the user community." We think Cocca is on the right track and we will use her definitions as our straw-man. (Incidentally, we recommend her paper which can be found with a simple Google search). While this month's products do not particularly address availability, they certainly address the other two. And, if we reverse Ms. Cocca's availability definition a bit to reflect keeping our systems online and available in the face of external email-borne attacks, she's right on target. So, let's look at each of these criteria in the context of selecting a product to secure your email communications channel. Confidentiality is simple...on the surface. We have seen email encryption for some years now, but in the face of inbound threats we have a new problem: unintended data exfiltration. We usually look to DLP systems for that, but why not look to our email gateway? Why not, indeed? And that is what at least one of this month's products does. So, to address confidentiality we should look for encryption - which needs to be easy to use and as transparent to the user as possible, including the users on both ends of the message - and we should look at how we might benefit from having some DLP functionality built in. How much, of course, is up to you and what tools you have currently deployed. Attachments also can pose a confidentially issue. For that we tend to use something such as DropBox secured with some form of encryption, such as nCrypted Cloud. Some of this month's products address that requirement directly as well, adding both security and convenience to the mix. Integrity is an extension, functionally, of confidentiality. By that we mean that achieving confidentiality in the ways we describe may very well address integrity as well. For example, if I encrypt an email and I ensure its integrity by applying a hash, tampering - decrypting attempts - may reflect in the hash. There are other ways to address integrity and it is important that you examine the product for some form of protection in this area. Finally, we come to availability. We do not want inbound email-borne malware to affect our internal systems. To some degree, this also impacts integrity since databases may be altered by mail-borne malware attacks. One of the important - and traditional - functions of an email security gateway is thwarting these attacks, which may be the result of some form of phishing or infected (html) email. This aspect - the most important functionality traditionally and still extremely important - is critical to a good email security product and you should look carefully at how the tool accomplishes this protection as well as how effective it is. So, that takes us to the end of our ramblings and to the succinct analysis by our lab. There are good products - old and new - in this batch and we commend them to you for your perusal. The group is small but, we believe, rather elite. On with the show! All products in this group test Axway MailGate SC v5.4 Barracuda Spam Firewall 400 v6.1 EdgeWave ePrism Email Security v9.7 McAfee Email Protection Safe-T Data Safe-T Box v5.1 WatchGuard XCS 580 v10 ===========================================================

For a great email parody, view the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw&__scoop_post=bcaa0440-2548-11e5-c1bd-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=2455618

==============================================
**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo. I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications.

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Pages

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Tabula Rosa Systems Technical Term For 8/4/2015 - E2EE (encryption)

Monday, August 3, 2015

Top Ten Principles For Job Seekers

Tabula Rosa Systems Security Alert - SB15-215: Vulnerability Summary for the Week of July 27, 2015

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Tabula Rosa Systems - Overview Of Self Destructing Email Products

Tabula Rosa Systems Security Alert 8/2/2015 - US CERT - Phishing Bulletins

Systems Affected

Overview

Description

Impact

Solution

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Tabula Rosa Systems - Five Top Email Sesucrity Products