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After months of defining, redefining, extending deadlines and planning, a new law in Massachusetts that affects all businesses that handle personal data of Massachusetts residents is finally about to go into effect. According to Massachusetts 201 CMR 17:

"The objectives of this regulation are to insure (sic) the security and confidentiality of customer information in a manner fully consistent with industry standards; protect against anticipated threats or hazards to the security or integrity of such information; and protect against unauthorized access to or use of such information that may result in substantial harm or inconvenience to any consumer."

Recent investigations into the Google "Aurora" incident uncovered evidence that Chinese attackers used a 0-day exploit for Internet Explorer to gain access to Google employees’ computer systems. This event has sparked the release of Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-002 - Critical , and a public exploit for the vulnerability. To mitigate this vulnerability, Microsoft originally recommended that customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, and enable DEP (Data Execution Prevention). On January 21, 2010 Microsoft released an "out-of-band" patch for the vulnerability, which fixes the problem on Internet Explorer version 6, 7 and 8. Methods exist to reliably exploit Internet Explorer versions 6 & 7, and there are several people who have working exploits for IE version 8, including Dino Dai Zovi, a well-respected vulnerability researcher. (A concise list of the details surrounding this issue can be found in this article).

Being Proactive

Many organizations are likely to implement the patch released by Microsoft since the issue has been receiving a lot of media attention. Patching because of a media event is an all-too-common mistake made by many organizations that cannot be convinced to implement new security measures until exploits make the news. Patching systems needs to be part of an organization’s overall strategy – not just a reaction to a media event. When new technologies become available as upgrades to your existing systems, put a plan in place to test and migrate to them, especially if they offer increased security. The organizations doing this today are looking at the latest exploit and implementing their patch strategy as part of the standard operating procedure.

A customer recently asked us to provide a count of patches issued in 2009 for various Unix and Linux-based operating systems. To honor their request, we turned to OSVDB, the Open Source Vulnerability Database. OSVDB covers over 60,000 vulnerabilities, spans over 26,000 products and has a powerful search engine that can produce search results based on disclosure date(s), vendor and/or product, CVSSv2 scores, references, vulnerability classifications and more. When generating any statistic regarding vulnerabilities, it is important to qualify the statistics and understand they are only as good as the data set that generated them. While OSVDB does not have a complete data set, it is the only Vulnerability Database (VDB) that provides powerful and flexible search capabilities.

Welcome to the Tenable Network Security Podcast - Episode 19

Announcements

• A new blog post has been released titled "Microsoft Patch Tuesday - January 2010 - "Aged Cheese" Edition" and covers the latest patches released from Microsoft, in addition to some useful plugins to detect deprecated operating systems. Marcus Ranum also published an article titled, "Afterbytes with Marcus Ranum - Using A Dedicated PC For Online Banking".
• You can provide feedback to this podcast and all of our social media outlets by visiting our discussions forum and adding messages to the "Tenable Social Media" thread. I would love to hear your feedback, questions, comments, and suggestions!
• We're hiring! - Visit the web site for more information about open positions, there are currently 12 open positions listed!
• You can subscribe to the Tenable Network Security Podcast on iTunes!
• Tenable Tweets - You find us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tenablesecurity where we make various announcements, Nessus plugin statistics, and more!

Interview: Jake Kouns

Jake Kouns is the co-founder and President of the Open Security Foundation which oversees the operations of the Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) and the Dataloss DB project.. Kouns' primary focus is to provide management oversight and define the strategic direction the project.

ABA Recommends Using Dedicated PC for Online Banking

Date: January 1 & 4, 2010

Synopsis: The American Bankers' Association (ABA) issued guidance to small and mid-sized businesses regarding how to protect themselves from the growing problem of unauthorized Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions. Of special note is the recommendation that businesses use a dedicated PC that is never used for email or web browsing to conduct online banking transactions.

Sources: Online banking warning surprises some experts, Businesses warned about online banking

This particular bit of news seems to have gotten disproportionate attention. On one hand, people see it as "ABA tells home users to use a dedicated PC!" and on the other it's business as usual.

But, it's not business as usual - what ABA is doing is recommending a specific response to a deeper problem. The problem is not "online banking" or anything like it; what we're seeing here is an implicit statement that endpoint trust is finally beginning to matter, as cybercriminals are increasingly attacking the shoddy operating systems that everyone seems to use for general purposes.