Easy as 1-2-3

   It's US Cyber Security Month and the key themes I've been discussing here for years are very bit as relevant today.  In honor of Cyber Security Month I'm re-running a post from 2016.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Happy Cyber Security Month!

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   Well, I was trying for something catchy like Stop, Drop and Roll.  That's a saying we learned in school, back in the day, for what you should do if your clothes catch on fire.

   Fortunately, it seems like everyone has heard that saying and it rolls off the tongue.

   Unfortunately, my three word phrase Patch, Vault and Fob, is not nearly as catchy.

   Fortunately, the odds of your clothes catching on fire is low.

   Unfortunately, the odds of your software, browsers or accounts being compromised is very high.

   A couple of weeks ago the internet was hit with the highly impact-full and publicized distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Dyn, a DNS provider.  I won't go into the details here but I think I will cover DDoS in a future post.  Anyway, shortly after that I was chatting with someone at a dinner who asked me about this attack, internet safety in general and what they could do.  To keep it simple and because, as a math person I like things in 3's!, I provided these 3 simple (well, maybe straight-forward is more accurate) things that absolutely everyone should do at home...

Equi-Fail!

   Or maybe we should say Equi-Fiasco!

   By now you've certainly heard about the Equifax breach including leaked social security numbers and other personal information on over 143 million people.  And there's plenty more info to come with this one as the facts continue to get uncovered.

   I certainly don't mean to be jumping on the bandwagon here.  There has already been so much coverage of this breach, but it is a big deal.  And, while I've seen a number of articles on what to do now, I haven't seen any that really cover everything you must do to protect yourself.

   Let's do that now!

   The bottom line is this... it's 2017... no one can or will protect your personal information.  You must take appropriate steps to protect yourself.  And here they are... in no particular order... the top-10 things you should do to protect your personal and financial information:

World Password Day and Teen Power

   Thurs May 4, 2017 is World Password Day!  I know that's coming up fast, but don't worry, you still

have time to plan your celebration.  No, that's not the day when you share your password with the world.  Nor is it about changing your bank password from 123456 to 1234567.

   I've written about this in the past.  World Password Day is a day to learn and it's yet another opportunity to take a look at what is protecting your personal information, your financial information, your medical information as well as your internet presence and reputation.  Most passwords provide a thin veil of protection

   On World Password Day, we should at the 4 main problems we can very easily fix:

1. People choose weak or easily guessable passwords - the simple fix is to choose better passwords!  As I've said many times in the past, when it comes to passwords, size matters!  Make 'em long.  But even if you choose a good password...
2. Passwords get reused among sites - this is a major problem because the attackers will try stolen passwords at other sites.  And it works.  So choose a unique password for every site on which you have an account.  But...
3. We can't remember all our passwords - so, as we've discussed in the past, use a password vault.  The vault is a program that will help you choose great passwords, recall those passwords and protect them.  But sometimes that's not enough because...
4. Even well-chosen passwords can be guessed or hacked - so for extra protection use two-factor authentication (also called multi-factor authentication).  Typically this means using an app on your smartphone as part of the login process.  That means, to break into your account, an attacker would need both your (long, strong) password AND your smartphone.  That's hard for the attacker to do.  And using multi-factor is easy!    Setting up 2-factor authentication is easier than ever before and is in use on many mainstream sites including Google, Facebook and Twitter.  Here's some info on sites offering 2-factor authentication.

   The WPD website has some high level guidance on each of these as well as those great Betty White videos!

   And if those all aren't enough reasons to move to 2-factor authentication, now... that pinnacle of journalism... Teen Vogue, has put out a really good article on the subject!  You can read it here.

   In addition to really good coverage of 2-factor methods and websites, the article also goes into more advanced topics like the use of a physical fob called a Yubikey.

   What is really significant is that this article is directed at a population who both grew up with technology and is used to sharing everything. The key message is that there are good reasons for protecting your information and reputation, even if you don't yet have financial assets or a job.

   So, are you ready to take the World Password Day challenge?  Start slowly.  Get a password vault and start with your most important sites: banks, insurance, investment and social media.  Change the passwords to unique long strong ones.

Patch, Vault 'n Fob

   Well, I was trying for something catchy like Stop, Drop and Roll.  That's a saying we learned in school, back in the day, for what you should do if your clothes catch on fire.

   Fortunately, it seems like everyone has heard that saying and it rolls off the tongue.

   Unfortunately, my three word phrase Patch, Vault and Fob, is not nearly as catchy.

   Fortunately, the odds of your clothes catching on fire is low.

   Unfortunately, the odds of your software, browsers or accounts being compromised is very high.

   A couple of weeks ago the internet was hit with the highly impact-full and publicized distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Dyn, a DNS provider.  I won't go into the details here but I think I will cover DDoS in a future post.  Anyway, shortly after that I was chatting with someone at a dinner who asked me about this attack, internet safety in general and what they could do.  To keep it simple and because, as a math person I like things in 3's!, I provided these 3 simple (well, maybe straight-forward is more accurate) things that absolutely everyone should do at home...

Say It Ain't So LastPass!

   There are so many data breaches happening each week that it's easy to become numb to all the announcements.  Sometimes one or two dominate the news because of the size or importance of the breach.  Sometimes there is confusion in the media about the breach or the significance.  Sometimes the experts don't agree.

   I think most people have heard about the OPM - Federal (US) Office of Personnel Management - breach in which personal information on over 4 million people, including security clearance information, possibly dating back to 1985 was stolen in attack on federal computers.  Everyone agrees that this one was big and bad.  But also in the news was the breach of information at LastPass, and there is far less consensus on the impact.

   LastPass is a password vault - a program that lets you store all your passwords in an encrypted "safe".  I've talked about password vaults many times in the past.  I have always recommended the use of a password vault and I still do.

   First, let's discuss what happened.

How crackers ransack passwords - Sort of...

   I am not trying to make this the password rant blog.  But we just can't go a full week without more news about password problems!

   Last week the excellent tech new site, Ars Technica, did a feature article in which they had first a journalist, then three different password hacking experts, try to decrypt passwords from an encrypted password file.  They were all quite successful... frighteningly so.
   Steve Gibson discussed this for a bit in Security Now episode 406.

   But, I think there were some critical flaws in the test.  And there were also some excellent lessons.

   I'll comment on the article using the sandwich method, starting with what was good...

So Long and Thanks for All the Passwords!

   If you've been following any online news lately you read about the recent Living Social breach.  They reported "unauthorized access" of their systems resulting in a download of customer data including name, email address and encrypted passwords.

   We have heard of many similar instances over the past few years.  I've written about this in previous posts and will be giving a talk at Secure360 in St. Paul, MN in a couple of weeks talking about authentication and passwords.

   In their defense, Living Social did do a couple of things well.  First of all, fortunately, they did store only encrypted passwords.  Unfortunately many organizations don't.  Unfortunately they used an older, weaker encryption algorithm.  And, of course, unfortunately they got breached and had the file downloaded.

So What's the Authentication Answer? - 3 Factors of Fail (part 7 - last!)

   We've been discussing the authentication problem for the better part of two months, and now it's time to wrap things up.  If you've gotten to this post through a link but haven't read the rest of the series, it starts with part 1 here.

   Each of the 3 factors of authentication have serious issues when used individually.  The challenge is that we need to log a person into a system or application in a way that reasonably assures the person is who they say they are and has rights to the system.  And, perhaps most importantly, any method we use has to work well for people!

   So, how do we find a solution?

   The key is to think about the user and the use.

Multi-Factor Fail - 3 Factors of Fail (part 6)

from: brainyquote.com

   In December I was at the NG Security Conference in Austin, TX.  We had a fantastic discussion with a group of key security leaders focusing on this "quote" and how it applies to information security.  I say "quote" because there is some question as to who said this or if anyone actually did!

   As I've been saying throughout this series of posts, it seems that this statement is exactly what we are doing in the world of authentication!  None of the typical factors of authentication have really solved our authentication and access problems, yet we continue to use the same mechanisms over again.