BrakeSec Education Podcast

Direct Link:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/brakeingsecurity/2017-023-Jay_Beale-selinux-apparmor-securing_lxc.mp3   Jay Beale works for a pentest firm called "Inguardians", and has always been a fierce friend of the show. He's running a class at both BlackHat and Defcon all about hardening various parts of the Linux OS. This week, we discuss some of the concepts he teaches in the class.  Why do we dis...

Direct Link to Download: http://traffic.libsyn.com/brakeingsecurity/2017-022-windows_and_AD_Hardening.mp3 This week, we discuss hardening of windows hosts, utilizing CIS benchmarks. We talk about the 'auditpol' command. And we dredge up from the ancient times (2000) the Microsoft article from Scott Culp "The 10 Immutable Laws of Security Administration". Are they still applicable to today's enviro...

Due to popular demand, we are adding the extra content from last week's show as a standalone podcast.   Michael Gough (@hackerHurricane) and Mr. Boettcher (BrakeSec Co-Host, and @boettcherpwned) sit down and discuss the popularity of ransomware as a topic They discuss what email attachments to block, how to test your own email gateway, and what controls you should implement to help defend against...

This week, we discussed Ms. Berlin's recent foray to CircleCityCon, 614con (@614con), and her recent webinars with O'Reilly. One topic we discussed this week was how to reach out to small businesses about information security. Mr. Boettcher (@boettcherpwned) had just came from a panel discussion about an initiative in Austin, Texas called "MANIFEST", which sought to engage small business owners wi...

Hector Monsegur (@hxmonsegur on Twitter) is a good friend of the show, and we invited him to come on and discuss some of the #OSINT research he's doing to identify servers without using noisy techniques like DNS brute forcing.   We also discuss EclinicalWorks and their massive fine for falsifying testing of their EHR system, and implications for that. What happens to customers confidence in the pr...

  This week, we invited Ms. Jessy Irwin (@jessysaurusrex) on to discuss the issues Small and medium businesses and startups have with getting good training, training that is effective and what can be done to address these issues. We also go through several ideas for training subjects that should be addressed by training, and what maybe would be addressed by policy.   ------- Upcoming BrakeSec Podc...

We discuss SANS courses, including the one I just took (SEC504). How did I do in class? You can listen to the show and find out. Since it's been a few weeks, we also discuss all the interesting WannaCry reports, the ease at which this vulnerability was exploited, and why would a company allow access to SMB (tcp port 445) from the Internet? We discuss some upcoming training that we are holding star...

 Zero trust networking may be a foreign concept to you, but Google and others have been utilizing this method of infrastructure and networking for quite a while now. It stands more traditional networking on it's head by not having a boundry in the traditional sense. There's no VPN, no ACLs to audit, no firewall to maintain... Sounds crazy right? Well, it's all about trust, or the lack of it. No on...

 Malware is big business, both from the people using it, to the people who sell companies blinky boxes to companies saying that they scare off bad guys. The latest marketdroid speak appears to be the term 'fileless malware', which by definition...   FTA: "Malware from a "fileless" attack is so-called because it resides solely in memory, with commands delivered directly from the internet. The appro...

This week, we have a little story time. Developers should be aware of the kinds of vulnerabilities their code can be attacked with. XSS, Buffer overflows, heap overflows, etc should be terms that they understand. But is it enough that they are 'aware' of them, and yet seem to do nothing? Or should they be experts in their own particular area of development, and leave infosec people to deal with mo...

So, I (Bryan) had a bit of a work issue to discuss. It has become one of my myriad jobs at work to write up some policies. In and of itself, it's not particularly fun work, and for whatever reason, this is causing me all kinds of issues. So this week we take a quick look at why I'm having these issues, if they are because I don't get it, or because the method I must follow is flawed. After that, w...

Most everyone uses some kind of Multi-factor or '2 Factor Authentication". But our guest this week (who is going by "Matt" @infosec_meme)... Wanted to discuss some gotchas with regard to 2FA or MFA, the issues that come from over-reliance on 2FA, including some who believe it's the best thing ever, and we finally discuss other methods of 2FA that don't just require a PIN from a mobile device or to...

One of our Slackers (people who hang with us on our Slack Channel) mentioned that he was writing exam materials for one of the programs created by the UK Government to train high school and/or people headed to university in skills without the traditional 4 year education track. I was very intrigued by this, since we don't appear to have anything like this, outside of interning at a company, which...

We talked with Jason Garbis this week about Software Defined Perimeter (SDP). Ever thought about going completely without needing a VPN? Do you think I just made a crazy suggestion and am off my medications? Google has been doing it for years, and organizations like the Cloud Security Alliance are expecting this to be the next big tech innovation. So much so, that they are already drafting version...

Our very own Ms. Berlin and Mr. Lee Brotherston ( @synackpse ), veteran of the show, co-authored an #O'Reilly book called the "Defensive Security Handbook" We talk with Amanda and Lee (or Lee and Amanda :D ) about why they wrote the book, how people should use the book, and how you can maximize your company's resources to protect you. The best thing is that you can pick up the ebook right now! It'...

Wikileaks published a cache of documents and information from what appears to be a wiki from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This week, we discuss the details of the leak (as of 11Mar 2017), and how damaging it is to blue teamers. To help us, we asked Mr. Dave Kennedy  (@hackingDave) to sit down with us and discuss what he found, and his opinions of the data that was leaked. Mr. Kennedy is...

If you were under a rock, you didn't hear about the outage that #Amazon #Web Services (#AWS) suffered at the hands of sophisticated, nation-state... wah?  "an authorized #S3 team #member using an established #playbook executed a command which was intended to remove a small number of servers for one of the S3 subsystems that is used by the S3 billing process. Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the...

Bryan had the pleasure of attending his 3rd Bsides Seattle a few weeks ago. Lots of great speakers, great discussion. We have 3 interviews here this week: Justin Case (@jcase) discusses some of his talk about hacking the Google Pixel, an HTC produced phone. We discuss why Android gets the 'insecure' moniker by the media, and whether it's warranted or not. Next, Sam Vaughn (@sidechannel_org) talks...

Joel Scambray joined us this week to discuss good app design, why it's so difficult, and what can be done to fix it when possible. Joel also co-authored many of the "Hacking Exposed" series of books. We ask him about other books that could come from the well known series. We also ask about why the #infosec person often feels like they need to protect their organization to the expense of our own po...

Mick Douglas is always great to have on. A consummate professional, and blue team advocate for years now, he teaches SANS courses designed to help defenders against the forces of the red team, pentesters, and even bad actors. But this week, we have a different Mr. Douglas.  This week, he's here to talk about sales tactics, #neuro #linguistic #programming, leading the question, and other social eng...

This week, we discuss sandboxing technologies. Most of the time, infosec people are using sandboxes and similar technology for analyzing malware and malicious software. Developers use it to create additional protections, or even to create defenses to ward off potential attack vectors. We discuss sandboxes and sandboxing technology, jails, chrooting of applications, and even tools that keep applica...

Amanda Berlin attended Shmoocon this year, and sat down with a few people. She discussed a bit with John about what HackEd is about (http://hackeducate.com/) Amands writes: "I had an amazing time at my 3rd #Shmoocon. I was able to interview a handful of really cool people working on several different types of infosec education. I was able to watch a few talks, spend some time in the lockpick villa...

In your environment, you deal with threats from all over the world. Many groups out there pool resources to help everyone deal with those #threats. Some come in the form of threat #intelligence from various intelligence companies, like #Carbon #Black, #FireEye, and #Crowdstrike. But what if your company cannot afford such products, or are not ready to engage those types of companies, and still nee...

We start Brakeing Down Security with a huge surprise! A 3rd member of the podcast! Amanda #Berlin (@infosystir) joins us this year to help us educate people on #security topics. During the year, she'll be getting us some audio from various conventions and giving us her perspective working as an #MSSP, as well as a blue team (defender). We start out talking about new #California #legislation about...

It's the final episode of the the year, and we didn't slouch on the #infosec. Mr. Boettcher discussed what should happen when we find risk and how we handle it in a responsible manner. I also issue an 'open-letter' to C-Level. We need C-Levels to listen and accept the knowledge and experience of your people. Infosec people are often the only thing keeping a company from making the front page, and...