Rational Survivability

"Cloud Providers Are Better At Securing Your Data Than You Are…"

To some, this is a contentious point while to others it seems entirely logical.

I must tell you that I've witnessed this very assertion as it has been raised more times in the last few days than I can count.

Before I get into any more juicy bits regarding this topic, I wonder if you wouldn't mind popping over and reading a blog post I wrote in August, 2007 titled "On-Demand SaaS Vendors Able to Secure Assets Better than Customers?" 

Come to think of it, you can read the follow-on post to that one which clearly indicated my point when Salesforce.com and Monster.com (you know, those so-called "Cloud" providers) were breached.

Forgot about those breaches, did you?  Oh, that must have been because they were SaaS providers and not Cloud providers at the time.  Gotcha.

As you read these posts, first do so within the context of what we've come to know as software as a service (SaaS.)  Then kindly re-read it and substitute 'SaaS' with 'Cloud,' won't you?

Thanks.

I have more, but I'll wait till you're done.

/Hoff

I haven't been whipped into this much of a frenzy since Hormel changed the labels on the SPAM cans in Hawaii.

PDP (of gnucitizen fame) masterfully stitched together a collection of mixed metaphors, generalizations, reductions to the ridiculous and pejoratives to produce his opus magnum on cloud computing (in)security titled "The Cloud Is Not That Insecure."

Oh.

Since I have spent the better part of my security career building large "cloud-like" services and the products that help, at a minimum, to secure them, I feel at least slightly qualified to dispute many of his points, the bulk of which are really focused on purely technology-driven mechanical analogies and platforms rather than items such as the operational, trust, political, jurisdictional, regulatory, organizational and economical issues that really go toward the "security" (or lack thereof) of "cloud-based" service.

Speaking of which, PDP's definition of the cloud is about as abstract as you can get:

Well, I'm glad we cleared that up.

At any rate, it's a seriously humorous read that would have me taking apart many of his contradictory assumptions and assertions were it not for the fact that I have actual work to do.  So, in the issue of time, I'll offer up his conclusion and you can go back and read the rest:

So, there you have it.  Those of you who "know what you are doing" are otay and thanks to security by obscurity due to a lack of trust, cloud computing is secure.  That's not confusing at all…

This probably won't end well, but…

Sigh.

/Hoff

…'cos there ain't no clouds in outer space…

The fine folks at NASA, with notable contributors such as the Internet's baby-daddy Vint Cerf, have been bit twiddling a new communications protocol this month that has been in the works since 1998.  The "launch" of Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking protocol is currently being field tested on the comet-seeking EPOXI spacecraft.

While TCP/IP has generally worked well beyond its initial design requirements as the terrestrial Internet has scaled unimaginably, it doesn't work so well in interplanetary deep space.

From the fine folks at Ars Technica:

This month, NASA began testing a new protocol
for communications in outer space that could extend the reliability and
versatility of the Internet out of the Earth's atmosphere. The new
protocol, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, has been in
the works for ten years, passed a month of testing with a just-launched
spacecraft and nine ground stations, but is still scheduled to undergo
further tests.
…
Communicating in interplanetary space is hard. While even the most
remote regions of the earth can be reached by lightspeed communications
in a modest fraction of a second, and voice conversations from the
earth to the moon can be carried out with only a barely noticeable
delay, several light minutes separate planets even at their closest
approaches. Back-and-forth negotiation isn't feasible, and the cost of
starting processes from scratch are high. Furthermore, disruptions of
communication are numerous  and routine. Satellites and planetary
probes have much less power when they're out of the sun, line of sight
must be maintained, dishes properly aimed, etc. Solar flares and other
environmental factors can shut communications channels unexpectedly.

Under the new DTN protocol, nodes retain data in their own memory until
they receive confirmation the data has been received by a suitable
target node. This increases the likelihood that data will arrive at its
destination with a minimum of back-and-forth, communication even when
communication is intermittent or unreliable. 

I wonder if it's IPv6 compatible?  After we assign a DTN/IP-Address to Internet-enable each celestial body, we'll be out of addresses again!

BTW, I happen to have access to a DTN-enabled uplink which proxy relays my TCP/IP to DTN through the EPOXI spacecraft.  Check out the round-trip times on this badboy:

I am interested in understanding if there are any additional security
mechanisms built into DTN as it would be a shame if an advanced alien
race could perform an interplanetary MITM on our transmissions:
"…this is not the planet you are looking for…"

For the sake of humanity I hope so.  I'm going to go read the drafts.

Botnets?  Data leakage?  Clickjacking?  You think you've got problems,
just think of the firewalls needed to protect against solar flares ;)*

/Hoff

Aviram from the Securiteam blog wrote a post titled "Who's Your SMTP Daddy?" that caught my eye regarding the false sense of security that use of corporate IPSec VPNs brings to traveling road warriors due to the use by providers of so-called transparent proxies.

Let's say that you've got some sort of IPSec VPN solution installed on your laptop using the standard corporate configuration with your mail client pointing to mail.foo.com.  Your machine has AV, HIPS, firewall, etc.

You connect to a provider's network (wired, wifi, hotel, airport, etc…) and fire up your VPN client which authenticates just fine.  You then launch your mail client and type a quick note to your CEO about the confidential M&A project you're working on.  A few minutes later you get a response from your CEO to proceed with the tender.

You disconnect.

Here's the problem: that SMTP session you thought was encrypted through your VPN back to the corporate mail server was actually sent in the clear.  In fact, it wasn't even sent through your mail relay/server.

Here's a great example of why taken from Aviram's blog:

Lesson learned. Changed the hostname to the IP, and will soon switch
to SSL based SMTP who will authenticate the server. In the meanwhile –
be careful from helpful Beijing wifi providers who are only too happy
to forward your mail on! (with some changes, of course).

Aviram is in China, but this example is valid in many countries and you can probably expect that given the behavior of some domestic ISP's, Telcos and Mobile Operators that it is or will go on here too.  It could easily work with other protocols that aren't sensitive to session tampering/MITM.*  Further, Aviram's example was about interception.  There's every reason to believe that one could expect the content of your email to be modified also…

I personally use SSL authenticated SMTP with valid issued certificates so at least if there is tampering with my session, my mail client barfs letting me know something is wrong.  That error probably wouldn't help the average sales droid in the field as he/she would just click OK like most people do to any security error that pops up, but it's worth considering.

/Hoff

* Obviously this example presents a worst case scenario with certain configuration assumptions and license taken for illustration, but take the message for what it's intended: blind faith in VPNs can cause you some serious heartache.  Transparent proxies work very well…

Too many blogs and not enough time for full-blown analysis right now.  Will likely write about most of these if I can.  Here are some links to things I find very interesting:

• James Governor’s Monkchips » 15 Ways I Am Wrong About Enterprise Cloud Computing
  
• Greg Ness' Archimedus » The Beginning Of the End Of Static Infrastructure
• Jon Brodkin, Network World (US) » Private cloud networks predicted for corporate IT
• Dave Rosenberg, CNET » Gartner: Internal clouds are coming
• LynxSecure Embedded Hypervisor and Separation Kernel (EAL-7!)
• Storagezilla >> EMC's Atmos – Cloud Storage and ILM strategy
  
• David Marshall, Virtual Strategy >> [BlueLane/VMware]: The Rumor Is True, But Why the Secrecy?
• Eric Siebert, Virtual Strategy >> Top 10 things you must read about processors (CPUs) and virtualization
• Eric Siebert, Virtual Strategy >> Top 10 things you MUST read about virtualization and compliance
• Joel Hruska, Ars Technica: [Intel] Nehalem [Processor] by the numbers
• Virtualization.com Video: Interview Simon Crosby, CTO of XenSource – Citrix (VMworld 2008) part 1/2
• Virtualization.com Video: Interview Simon Crosby, CTO of XenSource – Citrix (VMworld 2008) part 2/2
• James Urquhart, Wisdom Of the Clouds >> A Quick Guide To The "Big Four" Cloud Offerings
• James Urquhart, Wisdom Of the Clouds >> In Cloud Computing, a Good Network Gives You Control…

Enjoy!

/Hoff

I had a  briefing with Patrick Kerpan and Craig Heimark of CohesiveFT last week in response to some comments that Craig had left on my blog post regarding PCI compliance in the Cloud, here. 

I was intrigued, albeit skeptically, with how CohesiveFT was positioning the use of VPNs within the cloud and differentiating their solution from the very well established IPSec and SSL VPN capabilities we all know and love.  What's so special about tunnels across the Intertubes?  Been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt, right?

So I asked the questions…

I have to say that unlike many other companies rushing to associate their brand by rubber cementing the word "cloud" and "security" onto their product names and marketing materials, CohesiveFT spent considerable time upfront describing what they do not do so as to effectively establish what they are and what they do.  I'll let one of their slides do the talking:

Okay, so they're not a cloud, but they provide cloud and virtualization services…and VPN-Cubed provides some layer of security along with their products and services…check. But…

Digging a little deeper, I still sought to understand why I couldn't just stand up an IPSec tunnel from my corporate datacenter to one or more cloud providers where my assets and data were hosted.  I asked for two things: (1) A couple of sentences summarizing their elevator pitch for VPN-Cubed and (2) a visual representation of what this might look like.

Here's what I got as an answer to question (1):

Here are two great visuals to address question (2):

 

So the differences between a typical VPN and VPN-Cubed comes down to being able to securely extend your "internal clouds infrastructure" in your datacenters (gasp! I said it) in a highly-available manner to include your externally hosted assets which in turn run on infrastructure you don't own.  You can't stand up an ASA or Neoteris box on a network you can't get to.  The VPN-Cubed Managers are VM's/VA's that run as a complement to your virtual servers/machines hosted by your choice of one or multiple cloud providers.

They become the highly-available, multiprotocol aribters of access via standardized IPSec protocols but do so in a way that addresses the dynamic capabilities of the cloud which includes service governance, load, and "cloudbursting" failover between clouds — in a transparent manner.

Essentially you get secure access to your critical assets utilizing an infrastructure independent solution, extending the VLAN segmentation, isolation and security capabilities your providers may put in place while also controlling your address spaces within the cloudspaces encompassing your VM's "behind" the VPN Managers.

VPN-Cubed is really a prime example of the collision space of dynamic application/service delivery, virtualization, security and cloud capacity governance.  It speaks a lot to re-perimeterization that I've been yapping about for quite some time and hints at Greg Ness' Infrastructure 2.0 meme.

Currently VPN-Cubed is bundled as a package which includes both product and services and supports the majority of market-leading virtualization formats, operating systems and cloud providers such as Amazon EC2, Flexiscale, GoGrid, Mosso, etc.

It's a very slick offering.

/Hoff

Yo!  BeanSec! is once again upon us.  Wednesday, November 19th, 2008.
Middlesex Lounge: 315 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge 02139. 

BeanSec! is an informal meetup of information security
professionals, researchers and academics in the Greater Boston area
that meets the third Wednesday of each month.

I say again, BeanSec! is hosted the third Wednesday of every month.  Add it to your calendar.

Come get your grub on.  Lots of good people show up.  Really.

Unlike other meetings, you will not be expected to pay dues, “join
up”, present a zero-day exploit, or defend your dissertation to attend.

This week we have a special guest attendee from the UK/France/Hungary*: Craig Balding – Security Pro and Cloud Security Blogger (www.cloudsecurity.org)

Don't worry about being "late" because most people just show up when
they can. 6:30 is a good time to aim for. We'll try and save you a
seat. There is a plenty of parking around or take the T.

In case you're wondering, we're getting about 30 people on average
per BeanSec! Weld, 0Day and I have been at this for just almost 2 years
and without actually *doing* anything, it's turned out swell.

The food selection is basically high-end finger-food appetizers and
the drinks are really good; an attentive staff and eclectic clientèle
make the joint fun for people watching. I'll generally annoy you into participating somehow, even if it's just fetching napkins. 😉

See you there.

/Hoff, /0Day, and /Weld

*The "France" thing was a joke but my strikethrough formatting didn't come out right…you can tell it worked by Craig's comments below 😉

Mogull commented yesterday on my post regarding TCG's IF-MAP and remarked that in discussing cloud security and security models, the majority of folks, myself included, were focusing on the network:

Chris’s posting, and most of the ones I’ve seen, are heavily focused
on network security concepts as they relate to the cloud. But if we
look at cloud computing at the macro level, there are additional layers
which are just as critical (in no particular order):

• Network: The usual network security controls.
• Service: Security around the exposed APIs and services.
• User: Authentication- which in the cloud world, needs to
  move to more adaptive authentication, rather than our current static
  username/password model.
• Transaction: Security controls around individual transactions- via transaction authentication, adaptive authorization, and other approaches.
• Data: Information-centric security controls for cloud
  based data. How’s that for buzzword bingo? Okay, this actually includes
  security controls for the back-end data, distributed data, and any
  content exchanged with the user.

I'd say that's a reasonable assertion and a valid set of additional "layers."  There also not especially unique and as such, I think Rich is himself a little disoriented by the fog of the cloud because as you'll read, the same could be said of any networked technology.

The reason we start with the network and usually find ourselves back where we started in this discussion is because the other stuff Rich mentions is just too damned hard, costs too much, is difficult to sell, isn't standardized, is generally platform dependent and is really intrusive.  See this post (Security Will Not End Up In the Network) as an example.

Need proof of how good ideas like this get mangled?  How about Web 2.0 or SOA which is for lack of a better description, exactly what RIch described in his model above; loosely coupled functional components of a modular architecture. 

We haven't even gotten close to having this solved internally on our firewalled enterprise LANs so it's somewhat apparent why it might appear to be missing in conversations regarding "the cloud."  It shouldn't be, but it is. 

It should be noted, however that there is a ton of work, solutions and initiatives that exist and continue to be worked on these topics, it's just not a priority as is evidenced by how people exercise their wallets.

And finally:

Down the road we’ll dig into these in more detail, but any time we
start distributing services and functionality over an open public
network with no inherent security controls, we need to focus on the
design issues and reduce design flaws as early as possible. We can’t
just look at this as a network problem- our authentication,
authorization, information, and service (layer 7) controls are likely
even more important.

I believe we call this thing of which he speaks, "the Internet."  I think we're about 20 years late. 😉

/Hoff

I've made no secret of my displeasure with the PCI Security Standards Council's lack of initiative when it comes to addressing the challenges and issues associated with virtualization and PCI compliance*. 

My last post on the topic  brought to light an even more extreme example of the evolution of virtualization's mainstream adoption and focused on the implications that cloud computing brings to bear when addressing the PCI DSS.

I was disheartened to find that upon inquiring as to status of the formation of and participation in a virtualization-specific special interest group (SIG,) the SSC's email response to me was as follows:

The follow-on email to that said there were no firm plans to form a virtualization SIG. <SIGh>

So assuming that was the carrot approach, I'm happy to see that VMware has taken the route that only money, influence and business necessity can bring: the virtualization vendor 'stick.'  To wit (and a head-nod to David Marshall🙂

In my previous post titled "Cloud Computing: Invented By Criminals, Secured By ???" I described the need for a new security model, methodology and set of technologies in the virtualized and cloud computing realms built to deal with the dynamic and distributed nature of evolving computing:

This
basically means that we should distribute the sampling, detection and
prevention functions across the entire networked ecosystem, not just to
dedicated security appliances; each of the end nodes should communicate
using a standard signaling and telemetry protocol so that common
threat, vulnerability and effective disposition can be communicated up
and downstream to one another and one or more management facilities.

Greg Ness from Infoblox reminded me in the comments of that post of something I was very excited about when it
became news at InterOp this last April: the Trusted Computing Group's (TCG) extension to the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) architecture called IF-MAP.

IF-MAP is a standardized real-time publish/subscribe/search mechanism which utilizies a client/server, XML-based SOAP protocol to provide information about network security objects and events including their state and activity:

While the TNC was initially designed to support NAC solutions, extending the capabilities to any security product to subscribe to a common telemetry and information exchange/integration protocol is a fantastic idea.

I'm really interested in how many vendors outside of the NAC space are including IF-MAP in their roadmaps. While IF-MAP has potential in convential non-virtualized infrastructure, I see a tremendous need for it in our move to Infrastructure 2.0 with virtualization and Cloud Computing. 

Integrating, for example, IF-MAP with VM-Introspection capabilities (in VMsafe, XenAccess, etc.) would be fantastic as you could tie the control planes of the hypervisors, management infrastructure, and provisioning/governance engines with that of security and compliance in near-time.

You can read more about the TCG's TNC IF-MAP specification here.

/Hoff