BrakeSec Education Podcast

Brakesec Podcast joined: Edgar #Rojas (@silverFox) and Tracy #Maleef (@infosecSherpa) from the #PVC #Security #podcast (@pvcsec) Joe Gray (@C_3PJoe) from the Advanced Persistent Security Podcast Jerry #Bell (@maliciousLink) and Andrew #Kalat (@lerg) from the #Defensive Security podcast (@defensiveSec) And Amanda #Berlin (@infosystir) for a light-hearted holiday party. We discuss things we learned...

 "Always Be Closing" is the mantra that Alec Baldwin's character "Blake" intones in the movie "#GlenGarry #Glen #Ross". Ironically, the film about 4 men selling was a failure in the theaters. A lot of times as #blue #teamers, we find ourselves in the sights of a #sales person, or often enough, we are inviting them into our conference rooms to find out how their widget will help save the day. There...

As part of our ongoing discussion about the #SDLC and getting security baked in as far left as possible, Joe Gray, host of the  Advanced Persistant Security #Podcast (find it at https://advancedpersistentsecurity.net/), Mr. Boettcher, and I sat down with Dr. Gary McGraw, author of "Software Security: Building Security In" to discuss his book. We are also doing this book as part of the Brakeing Sec...

Just a quick episode this week... As part of the Brakesec Book Club (join us on our #Slack Channel for more information!) we are discussing Dr. Gary McGraw's book "Software Security: Building Security In" (Amazon Link: https://is.gd/QtHQcM) We talk about the need to inserting security into your company's #SDLC... but what exactly can be done to enable that? I talk about abuse cases, #risk #analysi...

This week, Mr. Boettcher found himself with an interesting conundrum concerning what happened when he converted a Windows DOCX file to a PDF using a popular #PDF converter software. We discuss what happened, how Software Restriction Policy in Windows kept him safe from a potential malware infection, and about the logging that occurred. After that, we discuss some recent vulnerabilities, like the B...

During a Security Incident, or in the course of an investigation, it may become necessary to gather evidence for further use in a possible court case in the future. But if you don't have 4-10,000 dollars USD for fancy forensic software, you'll need to find methods to preserve data, create proper integrity, and have a proper custody list to show who handled the data, how it was collected, etc. This...

  **Brakeing Down Security has a Slack channel now... just go to https://brakesec.signup.team and follow the instructions to have the bot add you to our show's official channel.** Every year, organizations come out with industry reports that show how well or, more often than not, how poorly we are doing. We always even reviewing the BSIMM report, because it's an unvarnished, and a good measure of...

Join us for a special episode this week! I (Bryan) was able to attend my first Source Seattle convention. Two days of talks, technical and non-technical, combining red/blue team concepts, as well as professional development, to help you navigate the corporate waters easier. I was able to interview a number of people from the conference. You can see a partial list of them here: http://www.sourcecon...

Ben Johnson has been around the industry for a good while, and has seen a lot of ugly things in our industry. Ben had written a recent blog post ( https://www.carbonblack.com/2016/08/12/benvlog-3-negative-forces-driving-security/) detailing the issues that seem to plague many companies and many people in the infosec community. We talked about these issues in depth, and how companies and even the e...

If you work in a #DevOps environment, you're on one side of the fence... you're either with the devs, you have freedom to make changes, and everything is great. If you're on the Security and/or Compliance side, it's a desolate wasteland of watching people play fast and loose with policies, no one documenting anything, and you're seen as a 'barrier' to getting the new hotness out. But does it have...

Join us this week as Robert Hurlbut (@roberthurlbut on Twitter), is an independent consultant with over 25 years of application experience, helps us understand best methods to getting developers on the same level as security professionals with application security flaws. We also discuss some of the soft skills involved in bringing new concepts to organizations, like teaching proper coding conventi...

Mr. Brian Boettcher and I had a great time at DerbyCon. We met so many people and it really was excellent meeting all the fans who came up and said "Hello" or that they really enjoyed the #podcast.  It is truly a labor of love and something that we hope everyone can learn something from. We got some audio while at lunch at #Gordon #Biersch talking about log monitoring inspired by @dualcore's talk...

Have you ever found a #vulnerability and wondered if it was worth the time and effort to reach back to the company in question to get the fix in? This week, we have a story with Mr. "B1ack0wl" who found a vulnerability with certain #Belkin #embedded network devices for end users...  We also find out how B1ack0wl learned his stock and trade. https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/40332/ Find out how h...

Nick Selby (@nselby on Twitter) is an independent consultant who works a wide variety of jobs.  During a recent engagement, he ran into an interesting issue after a company called him in to handle an incident response. It's not the client, it was with the Managed Security Service Provider (#MSSP). His blog post about the incident made big news on Twitter and elsewhere. Nick's Blog Post:  https://n...

Paul Coggin is my SME when I need to know about anything network #security related. And this time, we wanted to have him on our show to discuss Software Defined Networking (#SDN) Software defined networking allows for applications to make connections, manage devices and even control the network using #APIs. It in effect allows any developer become a network engineer.  Obviously this could be a rec...

Another great #rejectedTalk we found was from Sean Malone (@seantmalone on Twitter). The Cyber Kill Chain is a method by which we explain the methodolgy of hackers and the process of hacking. In this discussion, we find Sean has expanded the #killchain, to be more selective, and to show the decision tree once you've gained access to hosts. This expanded #killChain is also effective for understandi...

Bill V. (@blueteamer on Twitter) and was the 1st of a series we like to call "2nd Chances: Rejected Talks". Bill had a talk that was rejected initially at DerbyCon (later accepted after someone else cancelled)  Here is the synopsis of his talk that you can now see at DerbyCon: Privileged Access Workstations (PAWs) are hardened admin workstations implemented to protect privileged accounts. In this...

Co-Host Brian Boettcher went to BlackHat and Defcon this year, as an attendee of the respective cons, but also as a presenter at "Arsenal", which is a venue designed to show up and coming software and hardware applications. We started off by asking him about his experiences at Arsenal, and how he felt about "Hacker Summer Camp" Our second item was to discuss the recent Brakesec PodCast CTF we held...

A couple of weeks ago, we discussed on our show that not all incident response events required digital forensics.  We got quite a bit of feedback about that episode, so in an effort to address the feedback, we brought Brian Ventura on. Brian has 20+ years in Information Technology, ranging from systems administration to project management and information security. He is an Information Security Arc...

In the last few years, security researchers and hacker have found an easy way of gaining access to passwords without the use of dumping the Windows hash table. When improperly configured, the passwords are stored in memory, often in plain text.   This week, we discuss Mimikatz, and methods by which you can protect your environment by hardening Windows against such attacks.   Links to blogs: https:...

Jarrod Frates (@jarrodfrates on Twitter) has been doing pentests as a red-team member for a long time. His recent position at #InGuardians sees him engaging many companies who have realized that a typical 'pentest #puppymill' or pentest from certain companies just isn't good enough. Jarrod has also gone on more than a few engagements where he has found the client in question has no clue of what a...

Long time listeners will remember Ms. Cheryl #Biswas as one of the triumvirate we had on to discuss #mainframes and mainframe #security. ( http://traffic.libsyn.com/brakeingsecurity/2016-008-mainframe_secruity.mp3) I was interested in the goings on at BlackHat/DefCon/BsidesLV, and heard about #TiaraCon (@tiarac0n on Twitter). I went to find someone involved to understand what it was all about, and...

Mr. Boettcher is back!  We talked about his experiences with the #DFIR conference, and we get into a discussion about the gap between when incident response is and when you're using #digital #forensics. Mr. Boettcher and I discuss what is needed to happen before #incident #response is required. We also discuss the Eleanor malware very briefly and I talk about finding Platypus, which is a way for y...

 Adam Crompton (@3nc0d3r) and Tyler Robinson (@tyler_robinson) from Inguardians came by to fill in for my co-host this week. We talk about things a company should do to protect themselves against data exfil. Adam then shows us a tool he's created to help automate data exfil out of an environment. It's called 'Naisho', and if you're taking the 'Powershell for Pentesters' class at DerbyCon, you'll b...

The windows registry has come a long way from it's humble beginnings in #Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups).  This week, we discuss the structure of the Windows registry, as well as some of the inner workings of the registry itself. We also discuss where are some good places to find malware, some of the key values that you can find in the #registry and their meanings. We also discuss what atomi...