Media Archives - IT Security Guru

Back and Bigger Than Ever! The Inside Man Season 5 Takes a Stab at Power Hungry Adversaries

Charley Nash — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 10:26:25 +0000

As important as it is, cybersecurity awareness training might not seem like the most exciting thing in the world, but when it involves plots to rival your favourite network crime dramas, expertly crafted cinematography, and characters to root for? Naturally, it all feels a little bit different.

Of course, we’re talking about the long-awaited return of KnowBe4’s network-quality video series The Inside Man. Back for its fifth season, the show, created and produced by Twist & Shout Communications (a KnowBe4 company) is now available to all diamond-level KnowBe4 subscribers.

The Gurus were lucky enough to walk the red carpet alongside the show’s cast and crew last week at the Odeon Luxe Cinema, Leicester Square. A packed-out venue fit for an ambitious and industry-leading series that reunited some of our favourite characters.

What To Expect This Season

Season 5 of The Inside Man has big ambitions that echo, as always, real-world scenarios, genuine real-world threats, and plausible scenarios. If season 4 was a nod to 2021’s Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, season 5 takes a stab at the more political side of cybercrime.

The season’s antagonist, Cyrus, sums the season – and his intentions – up perfectly: ‘Money? You think this is about money? It’s about power… The power to know how people are going to react before they know themselves, to mould their thoughts, to shape their behaviour… The power to choose who wins an election, wins a war.’

Of course, this echoes similar themes that we see in the news frequently, with cyber influence operations becoming all the more common. In fact, just last year US military and intelligence officials announced that they were stepping up efforts to defend the electoral process from foreign influence.

Whilst the show doesn’t go that far, it does dabble in using cyber influence to show the increasingly complex nature of highly personalised attacks. This season we find Mark, AJ, Fiona, Violent and Maurice approached by the security services to help fight against a remorseless adversary deploying vast resources of hacking powers to gain influence and power. From global corporation acquisition to insider threats within hospitals and healthcare, this is definitely the most eager (and high stakes) series of The Inside Man yet.

Jim Shields, Creative Director of Twist & Shout Communications said: “In this season, we see many of these exciting plotlines finally come home to roost. Storylines for which we’ve spent two or three seasons laying the foundations. It’s powerful stuff, and the production team have excelled themselves as usual in bringing it to life. I’m unbelievably proud to be a part of this series.”

Revolutionising Cyber Awareness Training

For many years, KnowBe4 have been reshaping cybersecurity awareness. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is their willingness to invest in something truly different and, perhaps, revolutionary within its field. It’s clear that The Inside Man is an investment, with stunning sets, large productive value and 12-episode story arc. However, it pays off; the show has real, dedicated fans. In fact, three lucky superfans were invited to the premiere, with one having written a full-blown analysis of it. There’s nothing quite like it!

“Security awareness training doesn’t have to be boring, nor should it,” says Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4. “‘The Inside Man’ is the most utilised training that KnowBe4 offers in the optional training category because it is highly captivating, and the production quality is more like a network-quality series than training.”

What The Inside Man does so captivatingly is foreground the human element of cybercrime, with the adversaries not the stereotypical hooded hackers of yesteryear and our victims harrowingly human and relatable. From social engineering to passwords, to social media and deep fakes, this season of The Inside Man covers a lot of ground. Importantly, it reveals how easy it can be for an outsider to penetrate an organisation’s security controls and network. It’s awareness training that doesn’t feel like awareness training – and it’s not preachy either.

The Verdict

Season 5 of The Inside Man is well worth a watch. Whether or not you typically ‘enjoy’ cybersecurity awareness training, you can’t help but feel drawn to the show. It’s both educational and entertaining, and that’s pretty impressive.

Education and awareness are at the heart of everything KnowBe4 does – and The Inside Man is no different, clearly. The Inside Man forces audiences to face safe (or otherwise) cybersecurity practises in an unusual (and rather fun) way. Ultimately, this passion project, beloved within its community, is something vendors should take notice of.

You can watch the full series on The Inside Man microsite on the KnowBe4 platform if you are a diamond member.

The post Back and Bigger Than Ever! The Inside Man Season 5 Takes a Stab at Power Hungry Adversaries appeared first on IT Security Guru.

Has that password been compromised?

The Gurus — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 10:13:21 +0000

Password security has many well-debated weaknesses but one that gets surprisingly little attention is how organisations can know whether and when theirs have been compromised by outsiders. This lack of interest is surprising. Almost all cyberattacks today, including ransomware attacks, exploit stolen or leaked credentials (a password + username), which makes any compromise a critical incident in the making.

The traditional defence is to change them on a schedule basis on the assumption that a compromise is likely at some point, but this has always been a blunt defence that risks encouraging re-use as users try to cope with constant resets. In 2016, NIST put a pin in this balloon by recommending that organisations no longer mandate automatic password changes unless they have a reason to do so.

The mistaken assumption is that once a password is lost (with or without the username), there is no way to detect that this has happened. In fact, a way does exist – query databases of leaked passwords culled from dark net sources so see if a known password or password is present.

Although the idea of monitoring criminal sites for leaked passwords is not new (public databases such as Have I been Pwned? have been around for years), the trick has been finding a way to integrate them into password management systems. Without that integration, password detection would risk becoming a management chore that burdens IT staff with alerts they struggle to react to.

One company that thinks it has cracked the problem is Authlogics, which has integrated its Password Breach database of 4.1 billion leaked credentials into the company’s Password Security Management system. In this podcast, IT Security Guru editor John E. Dunn and CEO Steven Hope discuss the complex design challenges this posed for Authlogics.

Integrating a database of leaked passwords into a password management system turned out to be the easy part. The much bigger nut to crack was making it easy for IT teams to fix the credential problems the software detected, weeding out dormant accounts, encouraging users to create secure passwords or phrases.

Most important of all, time is of the essence. The detection of compromised passwords must allow for real-time detection as soon as compromised credentials appear in the database.

One day, all password management systems will be built this way.

Have a listen HERE!

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Developing a Strong Security Posture in the Era of Remote Work

The Gurus — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 17:36:46 +0000

Many of us have had to adopt remote working for a large proportion of the past year. But remote working is about more than saving yourself time on the morning commute and navigating Zoom etiquette: The security implications for thousands of businesses sending their employees home to work for a year have been massive. In this podcast, veteran security journalist Dan Raywood waxes lyrical on remote working security practices with Niamh Muldoon, Global Data Protection Officer at OneLogin.

The post Developing a Strong Security Posture in the Era of Remote Work appeared first on IT Security Guru.

Book Review: ‘The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity’ By Christian Espinosa

The Gurus — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 11:23:13 +0000

Growing up was not easy for entrepreneur, Iron Man and author, Christian Espinosa. “I played football, but I was also smart, but I also liked heavy metal, so I felt out of place from each particular clique” Espinosa revealed reminiscing on his formative years. As a response to various socio-economic difficulties beyond control, Espinosa’s mindset changed dramatically as he threw himself at every challenge and character development opportunity, trying to be the best he could be. This path took Espinosa through the US military, to mountain summits, scuba dives, and the boardroom as he rose to prominence as a VP in what he calls ‘the intelligence-ego driven world of cybersecurity’.

This all changed in 2014 when Espinosa’s itch to succeed led him to start his own cybersecurity company: Alpine Security. Now, Alpine Security has been acquired by security consulting firm Cerberus Cyber Sentinel Corporation, bringing in a new era with Espinosa offering his expertise as a new Managing Director.

However, Espinosa’s hard-earned experience is not simply limited to the boardroom. In his latest book, ‘The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity’, Espinosa shares his decades of experience in the fast-paced world of IT Security. The decades of combined experience can practically be felt dripping through the pages as the chapters outline the essential steps to overcome the biggest adversary in cybersecurity. No, not the cybercriminals, but the toxic culture that many cybersecurity professionals find themselves in. The book takes a holistic approach to self-betterment, discussing the importance of so called ‘soft skills’ in the world of cybersecurity.

Perhaps this is what makes this book so challenging and engaging is that it peels back the cultural aspects of the cybersecurity industry that have been fermenting for decades. Espinosa states that “business leaders rely on their cybersecurity staff to protect their data”, yet “in my more than thirty years of experience in cybersecurity and leadership, I found that these technical employees are the root of the problem”. In order to solve this problem, Espinosa proposes “The Secure Methodology” and its seven steps, beginning with ‘Awareness’, and culminating in ‘Kaizen’ –the Japanese philosophy of continuous self-improvement in a world where the need to be the smartest person in the room stems from deep rooted insecurity rather than confidence.

The book outlines how technical employees, who may struggle with interpersonal skills and insecurity, can deploy Espinosa’s methodology, not just to help security professionals to communicate better and reduce risk overall, but for anyone that would like to work on becoming more confident and fulfilled with the life we are given. While I will not outline each step – that is for you to discover when you read the book – I will state that they intuitively link together to form a comprehensive formula for self-betterment.

Espinosa’s choice words make for an interesting read as humorous anecdotes are woven in seamlessly with heartfelt advice and genuine concern for industry and personal wellbeing. Espinosa is certainly one to watch as his knack for storytelling and his experience in business and the world promises exciting things in the future as Christian and Cerberus Sentinel use their combined experience to better the world of cybersecurity.

You can buy the book here now for less than the price of a coffee!

The post Book Review: ‘The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity’ By Christian Espinosa appeared first on IT Security Guru.

‘Twas the night before InfoSec

Joel — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 10:24:43 +0000

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and fresh off the LAN

The packets were coming fast out of the span.

My wireshark was up with my templates in place,

In hopes that I’d find an IP I could trace.

The smart home was snug in its /28

With a meager allow-list, and a lock on the gate.

With a few hours to setup and wrap this year’s catches

I’d been charging them up, and applying their patches,

When down in the VLAN there’d been such a spike

I’d opened the logs to see what it looked like.

Away to the dashboard I stumbled and flew;

Most days I’m on Red, but tonight, I was Blue.

The DST in the headers was a weird bogon range.

“Two oh three... zero? You can’t route there... how strange.”

When what, to my wondering eyes, should come back

But a TCP handshake -- not a RST, but an ACK!

A cool sweaty IR-like calm to me came,

As the nightmares and malwares, I ruled out by name:

“The SPIDERs and PANDAs don’t care about me,

It’s not running Windows, so it’s not IcedID…

Not Trickbot, not Ryuk, not Buer or Clop,

Not Scarab or Locky, no second-stage drop.”

A session had opened on port 443,

And a download began - not one started by me.

I looked back to ensure that the capture was on,

And stood by to cut comms once the vandal was gone.

But the session closed up just as fast as it came

And the download just sat there - “GIFT.BIN” was its name.

I’d retrieved a live sample! And without any warning,

Had got something fun to unwrap Christmas morning.

I checked on the rulesets, configs, and permissions,

And rebooted each box for the sake of tradition.

I waited for more but there wasn’t a peep,

So I finished my wrapping and popped off to sleep.

And after the coffee and presents and nog,

The matching pajamas, the pickle, the grog,

Video calls with our family and friends,

Things had settled, so I went to tie up the loose ends.

I ran strings right away and my jaw opened wide,

For there, unencrypted, a message I spied:

“2020’s been awful, with so much that you’ve missed

Just to keep others healthy - so you made the Good List!

And like all of your friends, I have had to stay distant,

But your record’s been stellar, so the elves were insistent.

You already have surplus gadgets that light up

So I got you this PoC, and a CVE writeup.

The binary is an iPhone zero-day,

And I’ve left enough out that you’ll have room to play.

And once you’ve dissected and filled in the blanks,

And disclosed it responsibly, you can cash in my thanks!

Thanks for staying inside this year, hunkering down,

Thanks for wearing your mask, though you felt like a clown,

Thanks for not hoarding groceries, and for learning to cook,

Or for trying a language, or reading a book.

And following rules from your state and your county.

Now warm up your debugger, and cash in that bounty!”

This poem was written by J.R Parsons for AT&T Cybersecurity. You can read more of their blogs here

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People who have WOWED us over 25 years

Joel — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 10:21:53 +0000