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Bad information security advice

Security
  • phenomlabundefined

    It’s not often that I post anything on LinkedIn, but the post below caught my eye, and raised an eyebrow (to say the least) when I read it.

    Screenshot_2023-08-24-20-39-47-54_254de13a4bc8758c9908fff1f73e3725.jpg

    I typically remain impassive and neutral to most of these types of post as they are usually aimed at selling you something. However, the frankly absurd security advice here being offered was so bad, I found it hard to ignore and posted the below response

    Forgive me if I decide not to take any of your cyber security advice as all of the points you’ve raised are the entire point of phishing exercises. Do you really think a nefarious actor isn’t going to send emails that look just like this (mostly because they have succeeded elsewhere as others have highlighted)?

    Your profile states that you are the leader of a world class cyber security team, yet you offer really bad advice like this? This is exactly how all cyber security campaigns work and their effectiveness is blatantly obvious by the screenshot you posted.

    “Hurt feelings” are irrelevant when you are measuring the effectiveness of your cyber security program. As the primary defense in any organization, the security department needs to be in a position to detect and repel as many attacks as possible. The paradigm here being that an organization needs to stop thousands of these attacks getting through per day (probably way more) yet an attacker only needs one link to be clicked for their campaign to succeed.

    Employee security awareness should in fact be everything that the original poster claims it shouldn’t be. Just look at the success rate of previous campaigns which any decent training program is based on.

    The bottom line here is that I really don’t understand the reasoning for the original post. This guy claims to be the leader of a world class cyber security team, yet he decides to give poor advice like this?

    Speechless. And this is a so called professional?? We’re all doomed 😱

    Author of OGProxy, Swatch, Threaded, Card, and most of Sudonix's bugs…

    1

  • DownPWundefined

    Installing and Configuring CrowdSec in Cloudflare

    Security
    4
    +0
    3 Votes
    4 Posts
    285 Views
    phenomlabundefined

    @DownPW yeah, I seem to spend a large amount of my time trying to educate people that there’s no silver bullet when it comes to security.

  • phenomlabundefined

    Secure SSH connectivty

    Security
    7
    6 Votes
    7 Posts
    384 Views
    DownPWundefined

    @phenomlab

    yep but I use it since several month and I haven’t see any bugs or crash
    In any case, I only use him anymore 🙂

    Tabby offers tabs and a panel system, but also themes, plugins and color palettes to allow you to push the experience to the limit. It can support different shells in the same window, offers completion, has an encrypted container for your passwords, SSH keys and other secrets, and can handle different connection profiles.

    Each tab is persistent (you can restore them if you close one by mistake) and has a notification system, which will let you know if, for example, a process is finished while you are tapping in another tab.

    It’s really a great terminal that will easily replace cmd.exe for Windowsians or your usual terminal. And it can even work in a portable version for those who like to carry their tools on a USB key.

    –> To test it, you can download it, but there is also a web version. Handy for getting an idea.

    https://app.tabby.sh

  • WesleyMouraundefined

    How to restrict external access to Redis instance installed in a docker image

    Solved Configure
    8
    4 Votes
    8 Posts
    603 Views
    WesleyMouraundefined

    @phenomlab
    Sorry to delay in responding, yes as i mentioned above, i had to remove my redis from docker and reinstall a new image with this command

    docker run --name=redis -p 127.0.0.1:6379:6379 -d -t redis:alpine

    and now when i test my ip and port on
    https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/

    the status of my redis port is closed. I think which to configure firewall in droplet digital ocean is a good idea too, and i will configure soon.
    Thanks for the help!

  • DownPWundefined

    Windscribe VPN offered for free with a lifetime license

    General
    6
    5 Votes
    6 Posts
    868 Views
    phenomlabundefined

    Missed out on this deal ? Windscribe offer a limited free version. More about that here
    https://sudonix.org/topic/13/which-product-is-the-best-for-vpn/164?_=1652206628456

  • Mike Jonesundefined

    Securing javascript -> PHP mysql calls on Website

    Solved Security
    2
    1 Votes
    2 Posts
    265 Views
    phenomlabundefined

    @mike-jones Hi Mike,

    There are multiple answers to this, so I’m going to provide some of the most important ones here

    JS is a client side library, so you shouldn’t rely on it solely for validation. Any values collected by JS will need to be passed back to the PHP backend for processing, and will need to be fully sanitised first to ensure that your database is not exposed to SQL injection. In order to pass back those values into PHP, you’ll need to use something like

    <script> var myvalue = $('#id').val(); $(document).ready(function() { $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "https://myserver/myfile.php?id=" + myvalue, success: function() { $("#targetdiv").load('myfile.php?id=myvalue #targetdiv', function() {}); }, //error: ajaxError }); return false; }); </script>

    Then collect that with PHP via a POST / GET request such as

    <?php $myvalue= $_GET['id']; echo "The value is " . $myvalue; ?>

    Of course, the above is a basic example, but is fully functional. Here, the risk level is low in the sense that you are not attempting to manipulate data, but simply request it. However, this in itself would still be vulnerable to SQL injection attack if the request is not sent as OOP (Object Orientated Programming). Here’s an example of how to get the data safely

    <?php function getid($theid) { global $db; $stmt = $db->prepare("SELECT *FROM data where id = ?"); $stmt->execute([$theid]); while ($result= $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){ $name = $result['name']; $address = $result['address']; $zip = $result['zip']; } return array( 'name' => $name, 'address' => $address, 'zip' => $zip ); } ?>

    Essentially, using the OOP method, we send placeholders rather than actual values. The job of the function is to check the request and automatically sanitise it to ensure we only return what is being asked for, and nothing else. This prevents typical injections such as “AND 1=1” which of course would land up returning everything which isn’t what you want at all for security reasons.

    When calling the function, you’d simply use

    <?php echo getid($myvalue); ?>

    @mike-jones said in Securing javascript -> PHP mysql calls on Website:

    i am pretty sure the user could just use the path to the php file and just type a web address into the search bar

    This is correct, although with no parameters, no data would be returned. You can actually prevent the PHP script from being called directly using something like

    <?php if(!defined('MyConst')) { die('Direct access not permitted'); } ?>

    then on the pages that you need to include it

    <?php define('MyConst', TRUE); ?>

    Obviously, access requests coming directly are not going via your chosen route, therefore, the connection will die because MyConst does not equal TRUE

    @mike-jones said in Securing javascript -> PHP mysql calls on Website:

    Would it be enough to just check if the number are a number 1-100 and if the drop down is one of the 5 specific words and then just not run the rest of the code if it doesn’t fit one of those perameters?

    In my view, no, as this will expose the PHP file to SQL injection attack without any server side checking.

    Hope this is of some use to start with. Happy to elaborate if you’d like.

  • phenomlabundefined

    Securing your webserver against common attacks

    Blog
    1
    1 Votes
    1 Posts
    201 Views
    No one has replied
  • phenomlabundefined

    Security, Or Just Obscurity?

    Blog
    1
    +0
    0 Votes
    1 Posts
    199 Views
    No one has replied
  • phenomlabundefined

    Wasting a scammer's time is hugely entertaining

    Blog
    1
    +0
    1 Votes
    1 Posts
    324 Views
    No one has replied