Open Source DefenseBuilding a Security Program with Zero Budget

NOTE: Special awkward standalone edition

I use a lot of humor in my talks and I often try to avoid throwing too much text or explanation on slides. The resulting slides aren’t very useful without my voice overlaying them.

Since many people ask for my slides following my talks, I do my best to modify the slide deck so that the bulk of the information is still useful, even without me.

I still highly recommend the live edition. You can’t ask this one any questions ;)

Agenda

•Budget challenges beyond CapEx/OpEx

•Foundations: The big picture and where to start

•Specific free & open-source tools to help at each step

•Real-World Experiences and Fun Stories*

*Randomly dispersed throughout

whoami – Adrian Sanabria

IT Practitioner

Security Practitioner

Security Consultant

Industry Analyst

Business Owner

$

Savage Security

Applied Research

Community Projects

Market Research

and Services

Enterprise Services

https://savagesec.com info@savagesec.com

(also, we’re good listeners)

What do we mean when we say “zero budget”?

What do we mean when we say “zero budget”?

We’re talking having little to no CapEx budget. There’s no getting around needing people. The more smart and creative your people, the more likely you will be to succeed with what we’re talking about today.

Security: What’s the “True Cost”?

• Security = People + Processes + Products

People

• Salary

• Training

• Personal Dev

• Management

Processes

• Plan (policy)

• Build (controls)

• Test (controls)

• Improvement

Products

• CapEx/OpEx

• Support

• Time to Value

• Labor:Value

Why FOSS?

Because Richard Stallman, of course!

Ha…

No, that was a joke.

I’m sorry.

There are better reasons.

Why FOSS?

Not just for people with budget constraints!

It’s about time and control.

Commercial

1. Google search

2. Choose three

3. Contact vendors

4. Proof of concept

5. Wine & dine

6. Procurement

7. Implementation

Elapsed time: weeks/months

FOSS

1. Google search

2. Download

3. Configure

Elapsed time: minutes/hours

Why FOSS?

Shelfware

Products that are purchased, but never get used or never fully achieve their intended value

What ends up on the Shelf?

What would keep them off the shelf?

Build versus Buy?

Start with a solid foundation.

Foundational Blueprints and Frameworks

• NIST Standards and Frameworks

• CIS Critical Security Controls

• ISO 27000

• MITRE @ttack

Document everything!

A core documentation repository is critical

• Policy, procedure, how-tos, etc:MediaWikiAtlassian Confluence ($10 for up to 10 users)

• Incident Response Ticketing/Documentation:RTIR (https://bestpractical.com/download-page)The Hive (https://thehive-project.org/)

Build from the ground up

1. Identify

2. Protect and Harden

3. Detect

4. Respond

5. Recover

Map your network

The Asset Discovery Dilemma

Active Scanning? Nmap? Vuln Scanner? No. Ask your network!

NetDB https://netdbtracking.sourceforge.net/

.ova available at https://www.kylebubp.com/files/netdb.ova

Other network mapping approaches

• nmap + ndiff/yandiffNot just for red teams.Export results, diff for changes.Alert if something changed.

• Netdisco https://sourceforge.net/projects/netdiscoUses SNMP to inventory your network devices

Data Discovery

• Users are good at putting sensitive data on the network.

• Find it with OpenDLP

OpenVAS

• Fork of Nessus

• Still maintained

• Default vuln scanner in AlienVault

• Does a great job in comparison w/ commercial products

Web Apps too!

• Arachni Framework (arachni-scanner.com)

• OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy)

• Nikto2 (more of a server config scanner)

• Portswigger Burp Suite (not free - $350)

• For a comparison – sectoolmarket.com

In addition to fixing vulnerabilities…

• Build in some additional security on your web servers.(also part of a secure configuration)

• Fail2banPython-based IPS that runs off of Apache Logs

• ModsecurityOpen source WAF for Apache & IIS

Build from the ground up

1. Identify

2. Protect and Harden

3. Detect

4. Respond

5. Recover

Protect

Intrusion Detection/Prevention

Host-based IDS

• Monitor Critical and Sensitive Files via Integrity Checks

• Detects Rootkits

• Can monitor Windows Registry

• Alert on Changes

Windows 10 – Out of the box – CIS Benchmark

22%The goal shouldn’t be 100%, but we can do better than 22%! Also, you should probably try some basic Windows hardening best practices before spending $75 per endpoint on the latest next gen AI super-APT defenderer anti-badware silver bullet.

Secure Configuration

• CIS Benchmarks / DISA Stigs

• Configuration Management, while not exciting, is important

• Deploy configs across your enterprise using tools like GPO, Chef, Puppet, or Ansible

• Change Management is also important

• Use git repo for tracking changes to your config scripts

Explaining the next slide: Patch it all! (kinda)

The general idea here is that whenever someone gets breached, we hear the industry’s brightest loudest stars lob criticisms at the victims about ‘patching’ and ‘doing the basics’. In most cases, the critics have never had to install a patch across 35,000 endpoints running 27 distinct gold images across three major operating system versions. They’ve never had to deal with a vendor that had to ‘certify’ a patch before it is allowed to be installed.

They don’t appreciate the fact that patching is singlehandedly the most disruptive thing that happens to an IT environment… on purpose.

PATCH IT ALL (kinda)

Patching Windows

+

Patching Linux

+

Build from the ground up

1. Identify

2. Protect and Harden

3. Detect

4. Respond

5. Recover

What’s happening on the endpoint?

• Facebook-developed osquery is effectively free EDR

• Agents for MacOS, Windows, Linux

• Deploy across your enterprise w/ Chef, Puppet, Ansible, or SCCM

• Do fun things like, search for IoCs (hashes, processes, etc.)

• Pipe the data into ElasticStack for visibility & searchability

• If you only need Windows, check out Microsoft Sysinternals Sysmon

What’s happening on the network?

• Elkstack

• Suricata

• Bro

• Snort

• SecurityOnion: put it all together

Logging and Monitoring

• Central logging makes detection and analysis easier

• Many options here, such as Windows Event Subscription, rsyslog

• Can also pipe to one central location with dashboards, such as ElasticStack

• Good idea to include DNS logs!

Education

Phishing Education Phishing FrenzySocial Engineering Toolkit (SET)

GoPhish

Parting thoughts…

• Build versus Buy

• Security Requirements don’t change, regardless of budget.

• Build a strong foundation and branch out.

• Consider scenarios – solve one scenario at a time, NOT all at once!

• Stay curious and contribute to projects you like.

• Community! Share ideas – learn from others

• DOCUMENT EVERYTHING

Adrian Sanabria

adrian@savagesec.com

@sawaba

@savagesec