It’s always interesting reading about larger scale fraud like this one recently with the Bank of Queensland. You wonder in cases like this, had the accused pulled the pin earlier, would he ever have gotten caught? You wonder how many do get away with it – stopping before obvious alarm bells start to ring?

There’s no generic solution/strategy for fraud detection to critique, as each organisation addresses it’s own internal security and risk management practices differently, but there is a scary pattern of misguided thought in regards to securing systems and actually defending against, and detecting fraud. It’s “security” by definition but are many blinkered in regards to what the full definition of “security” encompasses? I think so.

Many in the security industry are focussed to the point of obsession on only vulnerabilities and technical attack vectors (new attack type X, new attack type Y – all generally old stuff just re-invented in different ways but promoted as new big things by many in the industry). It’s such a narrow focused view that stops at the technical exploit. That’s not where the role of a security professional should stop. Read on:

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Good luck to the AGD team with CERT Australia. Further reports:
- Australian IT mentions the role of AusCERT in this.
- AusCERT’s press release here.
*** Should have included this also in original post: http://www.ag.gov.au/cybersecurity

For those attending the AISA National Annual Seminar Day; David Campbell, (Director Australian Government Computer Emergency Readiness Team) will be talking about the new CERT. Should be an interesting presentation.

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Securus Global: IT Security, Penetration Testing, Security Assessments, PCI Compliance, Product Assurance, QualysGuard, Security Strategy, Vulnerability Assessment.



I enjoyed listening to Paul Ducklin on the latest Risky Business podcast that featured interviews on this iPhone “worm”. Worth a click through to Risky Business.

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Securus Global: IT Security, Penetration Testing, Security Assessments, PCI Compliance, Product Assurance, QualysGuard, Security Strategy, Vulnerability Assessment.



- We got a chance to do some Endpoint Security testing for ZDNet here: How effective is endpoint security? Thanks for the feedback on this one. We only had a very small window to get this done and given more time, the results in terms of scope of testing would have been much larger. It is what it is and we hope you liked it. Hopefully a part II, with some really cool stuff.

- Fionnbharr Davies from Securus Global (Thoth) will be presenting at Kiwicon 2009. Fionn’s talk synoposis: “Linux kernel rootkits are everywhere, but no modern (public) detection system exists. Linux rootkit checkers are currently woefully inadequate, often focusing upon mundane and outdated techniques that are only used by the lowest of the kiddies. I will briefly highlight common modern rootkit techniques as seen in real in-the-netz linux rootkits, and walk through my Antilulz tool, which is an LKM designed to be loaded at times of peak paranoia to give your kernel the once over. I’ll continue the conversation discussing what a rootkit would need to do to defeat these checks, and expand upon antilulz to continue the cold war. If I’ve time, I’ll talk a bit about the state of rootkit detection, and will discuss real-time kernel IDS techniques, and why they are extremely hard to do”.

- Thanks to Craig B and fudsec.com for having me on; Testing the Vendor Guarantees. Guaranteed Security….Just Show Us the Money.

- Some articles at Tek-Tips. Here’s a couple of the latest ones:

Clouding the Solution Landscape: Mediocrity vs Strategy – Going the Easy Path

Data Classification Policies – Forgotten Purpose

As always, keen on your thoughts.

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Securus Global: IT Security, Penetration Testing, Security Assessments, PCI Compliance, Product Assurance, QualysGuard, Security Strategy, Vulnerability Assessment.

Posted in: cyber crime, news


Thanks to Peter for the link to this one here:
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/158006,acs-gives-conditional-thumbs-up-to-internet-filtering.aspx

Get the splinters out of your backsides ACS. Did you need to create this piece of work to justify your existence or are you trying to come across as a voice of reason…or do you truly believe you’ve come up with something groundbreaking?

Regardless, you look dumb and as irrelevant as always. A personal opinion. Just my thoughts and as usual, opening myself up to flames. :)



Transcripts from the 4 sessions. Interesting but a concern from the perspective that it seems Government does forget things it has done in the past and seemingly starts from scratch each time. Just my opinion. Light reading (and I mean that), but worth a skim through:

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/coms/cybercrime/hearings.htm

Thanks @cmlh for the link to this.



- Didn’t the 4 Corners Episode; “Fear in the Fast Lane” generate some discussion and debate this week? I didn’t post anything about it myself here for a couple of reasons; (1) I didn’t think anything new and worthwhile was worth highlighting, and, (2) People were “twittering up a storm” over it – some of it very over the top. (Refer to #4corners on Twitter search for more on that). Interestingly, from within our own industry, the discussion was more personal – questioning people’s credentials as “experts” as opposed to the actual content itself in many cases. Some fair questions raised and some not so in my opinion. I welcome your thoughts here.

-Which leads me to discussions and analysis on who are the “experts”. Anton Chuvakin, our Qualys and PCI friend ponders the question here; “A Myth of an Expert Generalist“. The same question was also raised in the Beast or Buddha forums a little while ago in the post titled; “Internet Security ‘Expert‘”. I had some thoughts on this topic (and the 4 Corners episode) on my twitter; here and here. Chris Gatford, an industry colleague in Australia and one of the people heavily featured during the 4 Corners episode responded to this here.

- Hackers vs Federal Police was a big story this week here as reported in the SMH; “Hackers break into police computer as sting backfires“. Some things get reported and some don’t: http://r00tsecurity.org/files/zf05.txt. No more to add. Everyone’s a target and everyone’s ownable (well at least you’d bet on it it being the case). Kind of makes a mockery of some of the talk on the conference circuit. Waffle vs substance…what do people want to listen to? Can most even judge?

- I’ve recently been invited to write for Tek-Tips Forums. Yep, that’s my mug. I’ll link the posts from here also when I remember to do so. After coming back from a holiday, the inspirational juices aren’t really flowing but I expect things will start to annoy me and then I’ll be back to normal. :)

- Had to repost this one: “How not to setup a Hotel Safe”; I took this photo recently in a hotel in Croatia. At first I thought I must be missing something here (like being able to program the code) but no, this is it. Needless to say, I didn’t use the “safe”. :)

- And finally, off the Information Security topics. The latest issue of Top Gear magazine (which I thought was not the Australian one – yuk….but seems now like some sort of a combination of Aus and UK) has a home fridge magnet Cool Wall – most cool! Here’s my “Cool Wall“.



From Australian IT; “AusCERT sidelined in CERT revamp“. Sadly the big question that most will raise from this is; “What will happen to the yearly junket, (I mean conference), on the Gold Coast?” Be shocked if anyone even responds to this post.

Positive to see the Government doing things. Hopefully it’s being well planned and thought out.



By SGirl:

An interesting question came across our desk this week to do with police checks on current employees and potential new employees.

Things like PCI and the increasing awareness of the human factor of security threats means more and more organisations are getting police checks done on candidates and as part of an ongoing assurance program.

So what happens if you get a report returned that shows a conviction?  What do you do? Sack the employee? Not hire them? Perhaps, perhaps not.

While some organisations have a legal requirement not to employ anyone with a criminal history (working with children, issuing licences to name a few), for others the requirements and boundaries that need to be considered are a little greyer.

Essentially there are basic human rights that prevent discrimination in the workplace, including whether or not a person has a criminal conviction. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission have a discussion paper on it:

http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/criminalrecord/summary.html

To avoid discrimination on the basis of criminal record, an employer can only refuse to employ a person if their criminal record prevents them from being unable to perform the ‘inherent requirements’ of the job.

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Just got back and saw this was confirmed:
http://www.iirme.com/securecon/workshops/c.html

CEOs, CIOs and Middle East Gov and Gov Security seems to be the audience.

Should be fun…..there is no slides…….just talk…..they accepted that….(somewhat I think). :) I prefer to just talk……

This will be an all-out session and I hope Bruce S (Keynote) will be there….Pass this link to 20 of your friends and you will receive…magically a new notebook.



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