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Bad information security advice

Security
  • It’s not often that I post anything on LinkedIn, but the post below caught my eye, and raised an eyebrow (to say the least) when I read it.

    Screenshot_2023-08-24-20-39-47-54_254de13a4bc8758c9908fff1f73e3725.jpg

    I typically remain impassive and neutral to most of these types of post as they are usually aimed at selling you something. However, the frankly absurd security advice here being offered was so bad, I found it hard to ignore and posted the below response

    Forgive me if I decide not to take any of your cyber security advice as all of the points you’ve raised are the entire point of phishing exercises. Do you really think a nefarious actor isn’t going to send emails that look just like this (mostly because they have succeeded elsewhere as others have highlighted)?

    Your profile states that you are the leader of a world class cyber security team, yet you offer really bad advice like this? This is exactly how all cyber security campaigns work and their effectiveness is blatantly obvious by the screenshot you posted.

    “Hurt feelings” are irrelevant when you are measuring the effectiveness of your cyber security program. As the primary defense in any organization, the security department needs to be in a position to detect and repel as many attacks as possible. The paradigm here being that an organization needs to stop thousands of these attacks getting through per day (probably way more) yet an attacker only needs one link to be clicked for their campaign to succeed.

    Employee security awareness should in fact be everything that the original poster claims it shouldn’t be. Just look at the success rate of previous campaigns which any decent training program is based on.

    The bottom line here is that I really don’t understand the reasoning for the original post. This guy claims to be the leader of a world class cyber security team, yet he decides to give poor advice like this?

    Speechless. And this is a so called professional?? We’re all doomed 😱


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    @crazycells good question. Gmail being provided by Google is going to be one of the more secure by default out of the box, although you have to bear in mind that you can have the best security in the world, but that is easily diluted by user decision.

    Obviously, it makes sense to secure all cloud based services with at least 2fa protection, or better still, biometric if available, but email still remains vastly unprotected (unless enforced in the sense of 2fa, which I know Sendgrid do) because of user choice (in the sense that users will always go for the path of least resistance when it comes to security to make their lives easier). The ultimate side effect of taking this route is being vulnerable to credentials theft via phishing attacks and social engineering.

    The same principle would easily apply to Proton Mail, who also (from memory) do not enforce 2fa. Based on this fact, neither product is more secure than the other without one form of additional authentication at least being imposed.

    In terms of direct attack on the servers holding mail accounts themselves, this is a far less common type of attack these days as tricking the user is so much simpler than brute forcing a server where you are very likely to be detected by perimeter security (IDS / IPS etc).

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    @DownPW 🙂 most of this really depends on your desired security model. In all cases with firewalls, less is always more, although it’s never as clear cut as that, and there are always bespoke ports you’ll need to open periodically.

    Heztner’s DDoS protection is superior, and I know they have invested a lot of time, effort, and money into making it extremely effective. However, if you consider that the largest ever DDoS attack hit Cloudflare at 71m rps (and they were able to deflect it), and each attack can last anywhere between 8-24 hours which really depends on how determined the attacker(s) is/are, you can never be fully prepared - nor can you trace it’s true origin.

    DDoS attacks by their nature (Distributed Denial of Service) are conducted by large numbers of devices whom have become part of a “bot army” - and in most cases, the owners of these devices are blissfully unaware that they have been attacked and are under command and control from a nefarious resource. Given that the attacks originate from multiple sources, this allows the real attacker to observe from a distance whilst concealing their own identity and origin in the process.

    If you consider the desired effect of DDoS, it is not an attempt to access ports that are typically closed, but to flood (and eventually overwhelm) the target (such as a website) with millions of requests per second in an attempt to force it offline. Victims of DDoS attacks are often financial services for example, with either extortion or financial gain being the primary objective - in other words, pay for the originator to stop the attack.

    It’s even possible to get DDoS as a service these days - with a credit card, a few clicks of a mouse and a target IP, you can have your own proxy campaign running in minutes which typically involves “booters” or “stressers” - see below for more

    https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/ddos-as-a-service-attacks-what-are-they-and-how-do-they-work

    @DownPW said in Setting for high load and prevent DDoS (sysctl, iptables, crowdsec or other):

    in short if you have any advice to give to secure the best.

    It’s not just about DDos or firewalls. There are a number of vulnerabilities on all systems that if not patched, will expose that same system to exploit. One of my favourite online testers which does a lot more than most basic ones is below

    https://www.immuniweb.com/websec/

    I’d start with the findings reported here and use that to branch outwards.

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    @DownPW yeah, I seem to spend a large amount of my time trying to educate people that there’s no silver bullet when it comes to security.

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    @phenomlab

    yep but I use it since several month and I haven’t see any bugs or crash
    In any case, I only use him anymore 🙂

    Tabby offers tabs and a panel system, but also themes, plugins and color palettes to allow you to push the experience to the limit. It can support different shells in the same window, offers completion, has an encrypted container for your passwords, SSH keys and other secrets, and can handle different connection profiles.

    Each tab is persistent (you can restore them if you close one by mistake) and has a notification system, which will let you know if, for example, a process is finished while you are tapping in another tab.

    It’s really a great terminal that will easily replace cmd.exe for Windowsians or your usual terminal. And it can even work in a portable version for those who like to carry their tools on a USB key.

    –> To test it, you can download it, but there is also a web version. Handy for getting an idea.

    https://app.tabby.sh

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    @phenomlab
    Sorry to delay in responding, yes as i mentioned above, i had to remove my redis from docker and reinstall a new image with this command

    docker run --name=redis -p 127.0.0.1:6379:6379 -d -t redis:alpine

    and now when i test my ip and port on
    https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/

    the status of my redis port is closed. I think which to configure firewall in droplet digital ocean is a good idea too, and i will configure soon.
    Thanks for the help!

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