Josh Cabrera's Cybersecurity Blog

  I've been getting this request both at work and outside of work, so here's a PSA: If you get an anonymous email from personal (non-business email) account from any of the major email  providers and you're looking to identify the owner/sender of that email, you're mostly out of luck. No, you cannot identify the location of the sender by looking at the email headers (what a privacy  violation that would be!) Google/Microsoft/other email providers are not in the habit of releasing the identity of their users, at least as long as they want to stay in business. You could, in theory, seek legal action to compel an email provider to release such data, but that's a question for your legal counsel. :)

 Guest WiFi Today I discovered one of our clients has only one WiFi SSID. They also provide the WiFi password to all their visitors on a convenient little business card.  What's the big deal with this? The average internal network is going to be full of juicy targets for a malicious attacker. Normally, these targets hide behind a firewall and threat actors can't access them directly. This includes domain controllers, workstations, databases, etc. But if you just give attackers access on an index card, the external network defenses are useless. Of course, we'd like to believe that only legitimate guests to the business will be invited onto the network. In reality, once a password starts to get shared, it finds its way out there. Pieces of paper with the preshared key inevitably make their way into the trash, where a determined dumpster diver will cackle with glee as they open their gift-wrapped point of entry. Companies need to follow best practices here, which starts with ...

 Credentialed Vulnerability Scans To do a credentialed or uncredentialed vulnerability scan as part of a security assessment? Pros:  Will find more vulnerabilities. Finds vulnerabilities that are not only network attack paths (browser insecurity, OS patch levels, etc.) Required by the CIS Framework. Pretty easy if you are using an agent-based scanner. Cons: Take a decent amount of work to set up. Also can be quite difficult if there are some/all devices that are not tied to AD/RMM/other type of central management. Creates another potential attack path if you are performing this on the network and not with an agent. If you can perform the scan, so can the attackers. Loose admin accounts are also a problem. You'll have to remember to roll back these changes when you're not actively scanning. Doesn't mimic an attacker scanning your network. If the attackers have admin credentials, they don't need to scan much. Agent-based scanning is expensive for small and medium business...

 RedAlert Ransomware #2 My shift will be over the time this happens, but I will be able to analyze a RedAlert decrypter tomorrow to see what I can see.While their ransom note and web page indicates they accept Monero only, we discovered that this group will accept BTC if you request it. Shady Webinar I signed up for a webinar from a well-known security vendor. Once I put in my name, the form auto-filled a phone number that I haven't used in about 10 years and haven't associated with my current employer at all. I suppose the takeaway is that security vendors employ shady marketing tactics just like everyone else? Active Directory Pentesting Mindmap I found this on Twitter as a nice cheatsheet to use.

RedAlert Ransomware On Friday, a new client reached out to us after they got hit with the new ransomware strain RedAlert . We will possibly get our hands on some sample encrypted files over the next 24 hours to play around with. Caffeinate I have been working on getting some files from a Mac M1 laptop for forensic reasons, but having trouble completing a remote capture. But today I learned about the caffeinate command. This little tool with a -s flag will do the trick.