4 min
IT Ops
Goodbye to the VCR: Rewinding Down Memory Lane
The VHS tape was a thing of a magic that is alien in the world of on-demand
media. It represented a promise of entertainment. A promise only realized when
loading the tape into the player and pressing the play button. There was an air
of excitement around every video, and you could never be entirely certain about
what the video contained.
I was reminded of the mystique of the VCR just this month when I read about its
final demise. Funai Electric, the last major manufacturer of VCR players,
6 min
Rapid7 Perspective
Conflicting perspectives on the TLS 1.3 Draft
In the security industry, as in much of life, a problem we often face is that of
balance. We are challenged with finding the balance between an organization's
operational needs and the level of security that can be implemented. In many
situations an acceptable, if less than optimal, solution can be found but there
are cases where this balance cannot be achieved. I recently saw a case of this
on the
mailing list of the IETF
5 min
CIS Controls
Using CIS Controls To Stop Your Network From Falling in With the Wrong Crowd
Earlier this month Kyle Flaherty wrote a post
on the Rapid7 Community Blog about how Rapid7 came out on top for coverage of
the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Top 20 Security Controls
. In light of recent DDoS events I'd like
to take a little time to discuss at a high level what the controls are, how they
would help, and what organizations can do to improve th
9 min
Project Sonar
Project Sonar Study of LDAP on the Internet
The topic of today's post is a Rapid7 Project Sonar
study of publicly accessible LDAP services on
the Internet. This research effort was started in July of this year and various
portions of it continue today. In light of the Shadowserver Foundations's
recent announcement regarding the
availability relevant reports we thought it would be a good time to make some of
our results public. The study was originally intended to be a
3 min
Nexpose
Patch Tuesday, November 2016
November
continues a long running trend with Microsoft's products where the majority of
bulletins (7) address remote code execution (RCE), closely followed by elevation
of privilege (6) and security feature bypass (1). All of this month's critical
bulletins are remote code execution vulnerabilities, affecting a variety of
products and platforms including Edge, Internet Explorer, Exchange, Microsoft
Office, Office Services and
3 min
Project Lorelei
Election Day: Tracking the Mirai Botnet
by Bob Rudis , Tod Beardsley , Derek
Abdine & Rapid7 Labs Team
What do I need to know?
Over the last several days, the traffic generated by the Mirai family of botnets
has changed. We've been tracking the
ramp-up and draw-down patterns of Mirai botnet members and have seen the peaks
associated with each reported large scale and micro attack since the DDoS attack
against Dyn, Inc. We've tracked over 360,000 uniqu
4 min
Komand
The 5 Security Processes That Should Be Automated
According to CSO Online, the average time it takes a security team of a
mid-sized company to respond to a successful attack is 46 days
. This includes time spent manually investigating the incident, analyzing the
data, jumping between unintegrated systems during triage, and coordinating the
response. And while there are many reasons for slow incident response times,
manu
4 min
Automation and Orchestration
How to Use OpenVAS to Audit the Security of Your Network (1/2)
Synopsis
The Open Vulnerability Assessment System
(OpenVAS), is a Free/Libre
software product that can be used to audit the security of an internal corporate
network and find vulnerabilities in a free and automated fashion. It is a
competitor to the well known Nessus vulnerability scanning tool. Analyzing the
results from tools like Nessus or OpenVAS is an excellent first step for an IT
security team working to c
3 min
IT Ops
Widely-used Android App Leaks MS Exchange Credentials
In October, Rapid7 researchers
uncovered a significant vulnerability in the Nine mobile application
for
Android. Baldly stated, this app leaks Microsoft Exchange user credentials, plus
mail envelopes and attachments, mailbox synchronization data, caleandar entries
and tasks to attac
2 min
Events
Rapid7 Rapid Fire at UNITED Summit: A Spirited Debate
Rapid Fire returned for the third time to the UNITED Security Summit and once
again brought together the infosec community to join the spirited debates. With
great questions and participation from the audience, the Rapid7 team would like
to first thank everyone who attended this evening – from our customers and
UNITED attendees, to the Boston infosec community.
Our panel this year featured:
* Josh Corman @joshcorman (Founder, I am The
Cavalry)
* David Kenn
2 min
IoT
Research Lead (IoT)
It has been an amazing journey serving as the Research Lead for the Internet of
Things (IoT) at Rapid7 for past 10 months. I came into the role with more than a
decade of experience as a security penetration tester and nearly 15 years of
experience conducting security research across such areas as protocol based
attacks, embedded device exploitation, and web vulnerabilities, so taking on the
role, as Research Lead for IoT was the next obvious progression for me. Being
able to focus on IoT specif
2 min
IoT
[Free Tool] IoTSeeker: Find IoT Devices, Check for Default Passwords
So there's this Thing...
We need to talk about Things, you and I. Specifically those connected Things.
This isn't a weird breakup discussion regarding a relationship you didn't know
we had (I hear that's called stalking actually, and is an altogether different
type of problem). There may be Things on your network that are harbouring a
security issue, and that's not a good place to be either. We can help you track
them down (which does bear a slight resemblance to stalking, granted, but we're
se
3 min
Nexpose
Nexpose and DXL Integration: Now We're Talking
Staying Ahead of New Vulnerabilities
The security threat landscape is constantly shifting and there are a multitude
of solutions for managing threats. An unfortunate effect of having a large
toolbox is, the more tools and vendors you have in your toolbox, the more
complex your management task becomes. When one facet of your security
infrastructure becomes aware of risks, how can you most effectively utilize your
full security ecosystem to combat them? With Nexpose's Adaptive Security,
integratio
3 min
Nexpose
Publishing Nexpose Asset Risk Scores to ePO
Security professionals today face great challenges protecting their assets from
breaches by hackers and malware. A good vulnerability management solution
could help mitigate
these challenges, but vulnerability management solutions often produce huge
volumes of data from scanning and require lots of time spent in differentiating
between information and noise.
Rapid7 Nexpose helps professionals
4 min
Research
NCSAM: The Danger of Criminalizing Curiosity
This is a guest post from Kurt Opsahl , Deputy
Executive Director and General Counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
.
October is National Cyber Security Awareness month and Rapid7 is taking this
time to celebrate security research. This year, NCSAM coincides with new legal
protections for security research under the DMCA
and the 30th anniversary of the