Understanding and mitigating a FREAK vulnerability attack

After the discovery that the FREAK vulnerability can affect a wide variety of OSes, enterprises should amp up mitigation efforts. Here’s some background on the attack and how to stop it.

One day an employee logs onto his company-issued computer and visits an HTTPS-protected website to pay a bill while on his lunch break. A month later the employee is notified by his bank that the credit card used in the transaction to pay his bill has been compromised and fraudulent purchases have been identified.

How did this happen when the site was guaranteed to be protected with an encrypted connection? Doesn’t HTTPS ensure the information to/from the site was safe from malcontents listening to traffic on the Internet? This was a FREAK attack. FREAK is short for “Factoring Attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys” and is a known man-in-the-middle (MitM) vulnerability caused by weak website encryption. In this case, a MitM attacker downgraded the key length of an RSA key to EXPORT-grade length in an encrypted transport-level session. Once done, the attacker could then intercept and decrypt this traffic. But again, how could this happen?

The backstory on the FREAK vulnerability

The story starts with understanding the sophistication of U.S. law enforcement agencies’ previous network traffic monitoring capabilities. About 20 years ago the U.S. federal government imposed an international trade policy on the level of encryption that could be supported in products exported to overseas countries. Why did the government do this? In its agenda to capture illegal and terrorist activities, the government needed the ability to break the cipher of any suspicious encrypted network packets leaving or entering U.S. cyberspace. By imposing this weaker encryption cipher, the NSA had the ability to examine any suspicious activity, even if the contents were fully encrypted.

So what does this have to do with the FREAK vulnerability?Even though the NSA long ago enhanced its monitoring capabilities to break down some of the most sophisticated encryption technologies on the wire today, and lifted the export restrictions on weaker ciphers 10 to 15 years ago, the encryption profile for this old, weaker export encryption mechanism is still sitting on many of today’s browsers — a clear example of the impact of not removing outdated code from common applications.

A FREAK attack has the ability to capture any traffic that has accidently or automatically negotiated to use this old, weaker export cipher between a computer and another site on the Internet — in this case, the payment site the employee visited — and can capture sensitive information the user thought was fully encrypted, without authorization.

FREAK isn’t just for old legacy browsers, either. FREAK vulnerabilities have been found on current operating systems like Android, iOS, Mac OS platforms and many flavors of Microsoft operating systems, including Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012 and Windows RT. While the operating vendors are working hard to remove this old code, there is still a viable chance that workers could accidently fall victim to a FREAK attack, and be unaware it is taking place.

Fixing the FREAK vulnerability

Organizations need ways to mitigate the chance of a FREAK attack. The best way is to examine the certificates used by the company-supported browsers and remove the “RSA key exchange EXPORT ciphers” from the supported ciphers in the browsers’ configuration and registry components. However, this could be a difficult problem, due to lack of resources, size of the organization or the distributed nature of the organization’s various platform support groups.

An alternative is to ensure network edge devices do not allow connections outside the organization that use this cipher. By blocking this traffic, the data never leaves the organization, and thus can’t be intercepted.Finally, the last option is to route all HTTPS traffic through a Web proxy, like Blue Coat, Apache Software Foundation, HAProxy, Squid and others where HTTPS traffic is negotiated on the Internet edge of the Web proxy. This way any HTTPS traffic inside the company boundaries that tries to use the RSA key exchange EXPORT ciphers is only used inside the enterprise to the Web proxy. This allows it to negotiate a stronger cipher between itself and the Internet target to protect the data.

While network edge device blocking and Web proxies can be a quick fix, organizations should not consider the vulnerability closed until the RSA key exchange EXPORT ciphers have been patched by the operating system vendors or by the organization’s support teams.

The future of FREAK attacks

Unfortunately, vulnerabilities like FREAK will continue to be a problem. Software bloat is a common issue and keeping track of all the 20+ year modules in products is difficult since many of the original coders are no longer doing development, or may even be retired. Luckily, the FREAK vulnerability was caught and can be patched to eliminate the risk it imposes. However, for other operating systems and applications, some of the foundational components in use have remained unchanged for decades.

FREAK attacks should be a wake-up call to vendors — not only to quickly patch this vulnerability — but also to take the time and allocate sufficient resources to do a deep inventory of their code to ensure other legacy components that are no longer required are removed.

Finally, this is also a call to organizations that purchase these products to encourage their trusted vendor partners to do these reviews. While cyber insurance and financial liability limits soften the blow, every organization needs to maintain vigilant security practices in the protection of their data and the data of their customers. FREAK will soon be a thing of the past, but who can predict the next big legacy vulnerability to surface? And the next one may be magnitudes worse than FREAK.

One day an employee logs onto his company-issued computer and visits an HTTPS-protected website to pay a bill while on his lunch break. A month later the employee is notified by his bank that the credit card used in the transaction to pay his bill has been compromised and fraudulent purchases have been identified.

How did this happen when the site was guaranteed to be protected with an encrypted connection? Doesn’t HTTPS ensure the information to/from the site was safe from malcontents listening to traffic on the Internet? This was a FREAK attack. FREAK is short for “Factoring Attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys” and is a known man-in-the-middle (MitM) vulnerability caused by weak website encryption. In this case, a MitM attacker downgraded the key length of an RSA key to EXPORT-grade length in an encrypted transport-level session. Once done, the attacker could then intercept and decrypt this traffic. But again, how could this happen?

The backstory on the FREAK vulnerability

The story starts with understanding the sophistication of U.S. law enforcement agencies’ previous network traffic monitoring capabilities. About 20 years ago the U.S. federal government imposed an international trade policy on the level of encryption that could be supported in products exported to overseas countries. Why did the government do this? In its agenda to capture illegal and terrorist activities, the government needed the ability to break the cipher of any suspicious encrypted network packets leaving or entering U.S. cyberspace. By imposing this weaker encryption cipher, the NSA had the ability to examine any suspicious activity, even if the contents were fully encrypted.

FREAK attacks should be a call to vendors to not only quickly patch this vulnerability, but to take this as a shot across the bow warning.

So what does this have to do with the FREAK vulnerability?

Even though the NSA long ago enhanced its monitoring capabilities to break down some of the most sophisticated encryption technologies on the wire today, and lifted the export restrictions on weaker ciphers 10 to 15 years ago, the encryption profile for this old, weaker export encryption mechanism is still sitting on many of today’s browsers — a clear example of the impact of not removing outdated code from common applications.

A FREAK attack has the ability to capture any traffic that has accidently or automatically negotiated to use this old, weaker export cipher between a computer and another site on the Internet — in this case, the payment site the employee visited — and can capture sensitive information the user thought was fully encrypted, without authorization.

FREAK isn’t just for old legacy browsers, either. FREAK vulnerabilities have been found on current operating systems like Android, iOS, Mac OS platforms and many flavors of Microsoft operating systems, including Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012 and Windows RT. While the operating vendors are working hard to remove this old code, there is still a viable chance that workers could accidently fall victim to a FREAK attack, and be unaware it is taking place.

Fixing the FREAK vulnerability

Organizations need ways to mitigate the chance of a FREAK attack. The best way is to examine the certificates used by the company-supported browsers and remove the “RSA key exchange EXPORT ciphers” from the supported ciphers in the browsers’ configuration and registry components. However, this could be a difficult problem, due to lack of resources, size of the organization or the distributed nature of the organization’s various platform support groups.

Is it time for a DLP system in your enterprise?

An alternative is to ensure network edge devices do not allow connections outside the organization that use this cipher. By blocking this traffic, the data never leaves the organization, and thus can’t be intercepted.

Finally, the last option is to route all HTTPS traffic through a Web proxy, like Blue Coat, Apache Software Foundation, HAProxy, Squid and others where HTTPS traffic is negotiated on the Internet edge of the Web proxy. This way any HTTPS traffic inside the company boundaries that tries to use the RSA key exchange EXPORT ciphers is only used inside the enterprise to the Web proxy. This allows it to negotiate a stronger cipher between itself and the Internet target to protect the data.

While network edge device blocking and Web proxies can be a quick fix, organizations should not consider the vulnerability closed until the RSA key exchange EXPORT ciphers have been patched by the operating system vendors or by the organization’s support teams.

The future of FREAK attacks

Unfortunately, vulnerabilities like FREAK will continue to be a problem. Software bloat is a common issue and keeping track of all the 20+ year modules in products is difficult since many of the original coders are no longer doing development, or may even be retired. Luckily, the FREAK vulnerability was caught and can be patched to eliminate the risk it imposes. However, for other operating systems and applications, some of the foundational components in use have remained unchanged for decades.

FREAK attacks should be a wake-up call to vendors — not only to quickly patch this vulnerability — but also to take the time and allocate sufficient resources to do a deep inventory of their code to ensure other legacy components that are no longer required are removed.Finally, this is also a call to organizations that purchase these products to encourage their trusted vendor partners to do these reviews. While cyber insurance and financial liability limits soften the blow, every organization needs to maintain vigilant security practices in the protection of their data and the data of their customers. FREAK will soon be a thing of the past, but who can predict the next big legacy vulnerability to surface? And the next one may be magnitudes worse than FREAK.

Randall Gamby is an Identity and Access Management (IAM) professional with over 25 years of IAM experience. He is currently the IAM strategist for a Fortune 500 company. Prior to this position he was a Master Security Consultant, a state Information Security officer and the enterprise security architect for an insurance and finance company. His experience also includes many years as an analyst for the Burton Group’s Security and Risk Management Services group. His coverage areas included: secure messaging, security infrastructure, identity and access management, security policies and procedures, credential services and regulatory compliance.

Can thinking like cyberattackers improve organizations’ security?

It’s becoming increasingly important for security leaders to think like cyberattackers, which lends to new defenses and security techniques for enterprises. And while enterprises may never fully be ahead of attackers, they can at least be better prepared. Clearly it’s important to secure company data from multiple attack vectors, but beyond this, what specific steps can security leaders take to provide better attacker-minded defenses?

Hackers attack for a variety of reasons, including for fun, financial gain, retribution, espionage or for no particular reason at all. Regardless of the reason, enterprises need to know their attackers and the techniques they use to exfiltrate valuable data.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu states, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

The major difference between Sun Tzu’s message and today is that cybersecurity is predominantly defensive. Enterprises do not go after hackers or cyberattackers. They are too busy running a business and maintaining a productive, secure IT environment to support that effort. But are there better attacker-minded defenses we need to consider and deploy to strengthen cybersecurity protections? Having an attacker-minded defense is a good defense.

Know the enemy: Who are the attackers? What is their motive for targeting your organization? What techniques do they use to gain unauthorized access or launch destructive attempts, such as denial of service attacks? The attacker landscape for enterprises consists predominantly of criminals, underground hackers, insiders and state-backed hacking groups.

The 2015 PWC Global State of Information Security Survey states the “total number of security incidents detected by respondents climbed to 42.8 million” in 2014 — a 48% increase over 2013. Not surprisingly, the report also finds, “insider crimes are the most costly or damaging than incidents perpetrated by outsiders.” Insiders have time, access and knowledge to their favor, but outsiders clearly get the most press. In spite of the insider threat, the 2015 ISACA Cybersecurity Status Report stated that 55% of respondents expressed concern over corporate reputation.

Know yourself: What do attackers want from your organization? The obvious targets are large corporations, especially in the government, financial and retail industries, but many fail to realize that others, such as SMB’s with less critical enterprises, are targets for use of their resources to attack others. Some specific steps to help protect your organization include:

• Implement protection measures to secure critical assets commensurate to enterprise risks.
• Correlate log data, their sources and types of attacks to identify where to strengthen controls.
• Join other enterprises and participate in threat intelligence groups to share and learn how to identify attack vectors and protect your environment.
• Establish a strong and well-vetted incident response program to restore capably to normalcy in the event of a major incident or attack.
• Implement a continuous monitoring process that alerts you to unusual activity externally and internally.
• Develop a security awareness program that trains employees, including executives, on a periodic basis.
• Report to management the state of security on a recurring basis.

Cyberattacks are unrelenting. The PWC Information Security Study stated that in 2014, the 42.8 million incidents translated to 117,339 incoming attacks every day. In comparison, this same study reported 3.4 million incidents in 2009. But, as Sun Tzu said, “You need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Attacks can be, and for the most part are, thwarted with existing protection systems, such as next-generation firewalls and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). However, they must not be neglected or overly relied on for continuous protection.

Perhaps your organization has not experienced a breach and believes existing controls are sufficient, but these cyberattacks evolve and become more sophisticated every day.

“If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle,” Sun Tzu said. Expect to be a target. Implement protection schemes based on the business model, risks and value of critical data. Review attacks experience from your log analysis tools — SIEM and IPS — and determine how your company is being attacked. These will help organizations understand how to deploy the proper protection scheme. There is no such thing as absolute security, but if you don’t think like cyberattackers or know your pain points, the results will undoubtedly be unfavorable.

Gmail is finding smarter ways to keep spam out of your inbox

Google boasts that Gmail filters stop 99.9% of all spam, but it wants to do even better. Can Gmail become spam-free?

Google announced a number of improvements to Gmail spam filtering in a blog post on Thursday. That includes applying machine learning technology, such as artificial neural networks to make filters smarter and new tools for businesses to ensure relevant mail always makes it into inboxes.

Artificial Neural Networks are essentially computers that mimic the connections of neurons in the brain, allowing the computers to “learn.” Google uses these to identify images, making tasks like reverse image search possible. These neural networks are also used to create those trippy images you may have seen online lately.

For Gmail, the networks will be used to filter out phishing scams that can easily be mistaken for a legitimate email. You know, the ones that ask you to log in to your Facebook account — but the email comes from a website designed to steal your login credentials.

The threshold for what is considered spam varies from person to person

The threshold for what is considered spam varies from person to person, so the networks will adjust over time, learning which emails you might want in your inbox versus an email someone else might regard as spam.

Google is also rolling out Gmail Postmaster Tools, which will allow “qualified high-volume” senders to get better analytics on the emails they send. With the new tools, users will be able to better avoid sending messages that end up in anti-spam filters; after all, no one wants to have to check a spam folder for bank statements.

Gmail Postmaster Tools launched on Thursday, and the usage of Artificial Neural Networks began earlier this year.

In 2012 Gmail missed 1% of spam messages, according to Google. Now, it only misses 0.1% of spam and only 0.05% of email ends up in the spam folder when it shouldn’t, but the company thinks it can improve on those figures.