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K.I.S.S. up, or we lose

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There is a distinct possibility we overlooked it. It is just that little nagging in the back of our head, but still we know better, or do we?

 

So there I was, wondering why the Powershell script I modified and was using was not working. Why I was getting access denied errors. I went over the script again and again. I tried limiting the scope, hard coding information instead of having to input it, and still that same damn error. The answer was there, I just had to find it…

Yes, this was me recently. I bet you have been in a similar situation though. Can’t quite find that issue. Come on, we are smart, we know our stuff, but still we can’t find the answer. In my case it was I was using the wrong account to run the script. Stupid, simple and maddening. Only took a few days of troubleshooting to realize it. I should have known to double check the simple though, it has been a recurring theme in my life. Looking at a lot of the IT and infosec world, I think we all need to look at this.

I was a teenager back in the 80’s, tired of entering data statements to get the cool graphics on my Commodore 64. Compute’s Gazette had a program in there that would allow me an easier path once I inputted it and loaded it. Turtle graphics and commands, and I was going to get this going except it didn’t work. I checked the hundreds of numbers in all the data lines. Everything was right. I checked all my statements, compared back and forth for weeks, months, years. Still error when ran. The only way I could get it to not error was if I increased the if-then loop by one. That kept hitting me as I had to have messed up the data statements in some way. Five years passed, and I found the extra comma at the end of one of the data statements by total accident. That fixed the issue. A simple typo cause 5 years of troubleshooting off and on. I was bound to learn from this, to check for the simplest things. I would learn from it dammit, at least until I didn’t.

Think about it. Look at phishing, how we treat users, how we treat each other. How many times have you turned and said, “Oh that isn’t something I need to check,” and yet that was the problem. The simple answer. The one thing you didn’t feel the need to do.

I was learning to build and upgrade my own computers in the early to mid 90’s. I had changed out cards in the PC many times, and this was just a new sound card. Put it in, put everything back together, loaded the driver and… nothing. Only the boot beep code of the motherboard’s little speaker. No music, no sound effects, no nothing. Re-seat the card, check to make sure plugs are in solid. Still nothing. Try the old card, and nothing. Try a different slot, nothing. Six months of this, and I went to do some cabling cleanup. Yeah, I found that for 6 months I had the speakers plugged into the microphone jack and the microphone plugged into the speaker jack (the male ends of the plugs were not color coded back then). Switch the two plugs and I tried to make myself deaf from how loud I had the volumes turned up.

So where does this leave us. How many layers of devices do we have to “secure all the things?” What does each thing do? Do we know how to work with each device, piece of software, policy to its fullest extent? Do they even make sense or is it the old, “lets just throw things at it until it sticks,” scenario? How convoluted and complex has it all become, and why? I think for me ti is best summed up in a classic episode of Doctor Who during the Tom Baker era. He went to open a door with a complex electronic lock and pulled out a bobby pin to do it. When asked why he said,” the more complex the system the simpler it is to break with something simple.” Have we all gotten to the point where we have forgotten where we came from? Where we are just outsmarting ourselves? Do we listen to fresh eyes, fresh ideas or just throw them away as a bunch of nonsense? Are we willing to learn how to keep it simple, or have we made it easier for the bad guys to get through because of how overly complex we have made everything? Is our own cleverness our actual real weakness being exploited?

Have we lost sight of the future?

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The InfoSec industry is short handed, and we all know it. The question is what are we doing about it. Seriously, we have a community that is pretty welcoming. That is all fine and good, but have we not thought the process through enough. What happens when we are not here? With how fast things change, and come up, how are we getting people to want to get into our industry?

I look at our industry and am worried. We all know about the skills shortage, the amount of job openings, and how insecure everything is. We keep saying security is a process, not a destination and that is true. The issue though is we are focused on the here and now, at least most of us are. Those that are forward thinking, looking for the next issue, are only looking at technology. There is a bigger crises, and that is who will take over from our generation? Yes, we see people in their twenties at the conventions, but seriously look at how many there are. Who will take over from them?

The way I am seeing it, if we really want to be about security, we have to nurture the next generation. Think about it, how many times do people in our industry say it takes passion and a desire to learn to be part of the world of InfoSec? How many times do people in our industry brush off degrees, some of the certs, and say you need a cert that will run you $6000 and experience? How much of that can we actually impart on those that cannot afford a SANs class, or let alone a computer?

There are organizations out there such as Hak4Kidz who are aimed at the teen and pre-teen and are awesome about inspiring the next generation. Even with that though, how many slip through the cracks? How many do not have parents that can see it, or are able to pay for their children to attend these conferences? I recently talked with someone from Boys and Girls club and it got me thinking about all this. I was told how much these children loved it when they were being shown a little on how games were programmed. The interest in technology that they showed. Inner city youths who are poor, have to share a computer with the family if they are lucky, show interesting in the technology field. Now ask yourself, how many of these children will slip through the cracks, and how many innovations will be missed because of that.

We as a community need to start taking a long hard look at this. there are groups, Boys and Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Girls Inc., and many others that we can get in touch with and work out some sort of program. It might just be a one time thing, going in and showing them how to be a bit more secure, show them what some of the tricks are and how it can affect them. Sure we might only get a few per group, but think about it, that is a few more that will be interested in securing the future. The teen and pre-teens that show interest need to be mentored. If we really are about securing all the things, don’t we have to include the future? Isn’t that part of the scope, to make sure that we have enough people behind us for when we retire or are gone?

Get Over It…

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“I turn on the tube and what do I see

A whole lotta people cryin’ “Don’t blame me”
They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else
Spend all their time feelin’ sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma’s too thin; your daddy’s too fat
Get over it” – Get Over It by The Eagles
     Some of the most true lyrics for these times. Everyone wants things fixed, no one is willing to own up to their mistakes. Security is an illusion.
     There is a group, that professes to be all about our security. We hate them. They have put up barriers, slowed us down, made us uncomfortable. They have shown that they can’t do their job, stuff gets through, we are not much more secure with them around. The watch us, scan us, stop us from having things with us that we feel we need. Still, we are no more secure. They limit access, have special lanes, and can be invasive all in the name of better security. Yet we are still vulnerable. It is a show, security is an illusion.
   Yes, I’m talking about the TSA in the previous paragraph, but think about it. I could very easily be talking about our industry, information security. We all know there is no way to make us 100% secure. so we posture, put out new products and still get pwned. We make the end users life more difficult. This world keeps accelerating, first to market is the thing. The end user doesn’t really care about security though. They want it, yes, but they don’t want to think about it. Instead though, products that might be superior security wise tend to not be popular. Why? Simple, first to market is first to market. Unless that first to market item has some super major usability issue to it (see Android 1) or is priced too high (the original Windows PDA phones), first to market is hard to dethrone.
   What do we, our community of infosec professionals and hobbyists do about this? We berate, we laugh, we joke and we act superior. Now we are even doing that among ourselves. We are the jerks, and that jerkishness doesn’t help, it hinders. We are not educating the end users. Yes it is their fault, but it isn’t. they shouldn’t have to worry about the security of computers, networks, IoT, and other devices. They have to though because of first to market. We have to educate them to care, and we have to figure out a way of taking our snark out of the process. to empower them to make the choice for the better, more secure product. Then we might start seeing companies trying to bake better security into devices from the start.
   I mentioned us being jerks to each other. that needs to calm down also. doing that is a good way to scare people away from becoming part of the solution. Who wants to work and deal with jerks? Yeah, we can snark, but we need to know when and where to use it. We need to be more welcoming for new people and more understanding of each other. As our industry becomes more and more compartmentalized, we need to work more and more on our soft skills. We need each other, because not a single one of us can know it all.
   Security is an illusion, yes, but we can make things more secure than they were. We just need to get our heads on straight and stop being the problem.