the frustration with website security

The Frustrations with Website Security

Krystle Herbrandson| @kherbrandson #WCBOS Krystle Herbrandson| @kherbrandson #WCBOS



WHAT YOU’RE IN STORE FOR?

• Creating a security risk posture for your website

• Understand Hosting and its role in security

• How to differentiate Security Firewalls

• Dispelling the myth of “Why would anyone hack me?”

• Understanding how websites get hacked

• WP security essentials, tools and resources

Slides Available here: http://goo.gl/ShzPcL



59.6%26.5%Websites Powered By

CMS Market Share Owned

Source: W3Tech

Site upgraded to version 4.0+

87.5%



Hosting Environment

• Shared Servers: Popular choice in hosting for its cost-savings. Multiple sites sharing memory and processing power from one server.

• Virtual Private Servers (VPS): VS provides protected and set amount of memory and processing power. Physical server partitioned into multiple VPS.

• Dedicated Servers: Most expensive option, provides full capacity of a physical server’s resources. Highly customizable with added benefits of control.

• Recommendation: Isolate site groups from one another to help mitigate the risk of infection across all properties.



Differentiating Security Firewalls

Resource: https://blog.sucuri.net/2016/04/ask-sucuri-differentiate-security-firewalls.html



Dispel the Myth “Why would anyone Hack me?”

Resource: https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/02/why-websites-get-hacked.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/02/why-websites-get-hacked.html





July 2016 – 1.05 Billion Websites

Source: Internet Live Stats



Targeted Attacks Attacks of Opportunity

Occurs .001% of the time

There is a specific “target”

How the attack will happen is unknown

The exploit is unknown, defined by what is found

There is enough motivation and return

Automated / Manual

High-level of skill / expertise

Personal (i.e., political, competitor, hatred)

Method of attack for organizations

Occurs 99.99% of the time

Don’t have a specific “target”

The attack is known

The exploit is known, low-hanging fruit

The motivation and return is dependent on mass affect

Mostly automated

Low-mid level skill / expertise

Not-Personal (i.e., wrong place, wrong time)

Method of attack for websites



Automation

• Key in today’s attacks, making it the most effective way to affect 10’s of thousands of websites at the same time (i.e., maximum exposure and increased potential for success)

• Introduces efficiency and effectiveness into the attack sequence, enabling less skill adversaries (i.e., new breed of script kiddies)

• Allows bad actors to be faster to the draw targeting new software vulnerabilities

• Enabled by the development and expansion of global bot networks (botnets)



Motivations



REVENUE• Make money off your website or

it’s resources

• Earning potential could be based on stealing information (i.e., data exfiltration)

• Impression based affiliate marketing schemes

• Criminal enterprises



AUDIENCE

• Make money off your audience

• Extremely valuable to attackers

• Ability to take advantage of the trust you’ve built with your followers / customers



RESOURCES

• Make money off your resources

• Abuse of the infrastructure supporting your website

• Integrated into larger criminal networks (a.k.a botnets)



LULZ

• It’s not about the money

• Bored, why not? • If it allows me to access it, why

wouldn’t I?

• Badge of honor amongst peers!

• Hacktivism



How do Websites Get Hacked?

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/05/website-security-how-do-websites-get-hacked.html





How Websites Get Hacked

Access Control Software Vulnerabilities

Cross-site Contamination

Third-PartyIntegrations Hosting



Access Control• Refers to how access is restricted to specific areas, places, or things. • Websites access control extends to all applications that provide some

form of access to the web environment:• How do you log into your WP-Admin? • How do you log into your Hosting Administration Panel? • How do you log into your Server? (i.e., FTP, SFTP, SSH)• How do you log into your Computer?

• When thinking about access control, think beyond the website application.

• Attacks to access control come many times in the form of Brute Force attacks.



Software Vulnerabilities

• Refers to bugs in code that can be abused to perform nefarious acts. They include things like:• SQL Injection (SQLi), Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Remote Code Execution (RCE), Remote File Inclusion

(RFI), etc.…

• Familiarize yourself with the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), specifically the OWASP Top 10.

• CMS applications struggle with vulnerabilities in their extensible parts (i.e., plugins, themes, extension, modules, etc…)



Cross-site Contamination

• Refers to the lateral movement an attacker makes once in the web server.

• This is referred to as an internal attack, not an external one. An attacker is able to gain entry into the web server via a vulnerable site, then use that to leap frog into all other websites on the web server.

• It’s often the contributing factor to a number of reinfections, website owners focus on the website affected and the symptoms, but spend little time looking at the websites that show no external signs of compromise.

• Rampant in environments that do not employ functional isolation on the web server, and employ improper permissions and configurations.



Third-Party Integrations

• Third-party integration refer to a number of things, the most prevalent affecting security is the integration of ads and their associated ad networks.

• These integrations are introducing a weak link into the security chain, where ad networks are attacked and used to penetrate unsuspecting websites - malvertising

• Malvertising is the act of manipulate ads to distribute malware, often in the form of malicious redirects and drive-by-downloads

• Exceptionally difficult to detect because of their conditional nature, and the fact that they are outside of the website environment



Hosting

• Its been a long time since there has been a mass-compromise of a large shared-hosting provider (circa 2011)

• The issues with hosts today revolve around hosts that aren’t really hosts; organizations that try to offer a complete solution – marketing / development / security / hosting / SEO, etc.. • Inexperienced service providers that introduce confusion and noise to an already

crowded marketplace• They know enough to be dangerous, but rarely house the in-house skills or

knowledge• Contribute to a number of cross-site contamination issues due to poor

configurations



Malware Distribution

Search Engine Poisoning

Spam Email

Phishing Lures

Infection Types

Defacement

DDoS/Bots/Backdoors

Ransomware



Type Description Motivation Association

Malware Distribution Drive-by-DownloadsEnd-points are the target

RevenueAudience

Search Engine Poisoning (SEP)

Search Engine Result Pages (SERP)

Pharma / Casino / Luxury GoodsRevenueAudience

Phishing Lures Email / Social Phishing campaignsFinancial / Credential Theft

Spam Email Email spam campaignsLeverage your server / IP / domain

RevenueAudienceResource

Defacement Hacktivism Lulz

DDoS/Bot Scripts/Backdoors

Server level scriptsAbuse resources / access control

RevenueResource

Ransomware Hold you hostageHow your audience hostage

RevenueAudience

Data Exfiltration Steal data from your environmentE-Commerce / PCI

ResourceAudience

RevenueAudience



Thinking Website Security

How to improve your WordPress security posture



THE IMPACTS OF COMPROMISE

Brand Website Blacklisting

Emotional Distress

Economic

Business

Visitor Compromise

Technical

SEO Impacts



Business Impacts EconomicBrand Emotional Distress

Brand Reputation• Your brand is made up of the unique user experience you offer

through your design, content, product offering and services• Your website, and the experience your audience has plays a critical

part in the reputation of that brand• Tolerance is the highest its ever been around website compromises,

so reputation is recoverable • Loss of trust in your brand can drive your audience to look for

alternatives to your brand



Economic Impacts• Our research has shown a little over 90% drop in traffic immediately

following a compromise, that number goes up if a website gets blacklisted

• Whether your website leverages ads, static content, or sells product, it directly or indirectly helps your business generate some form of revenue / exposure

• Costs associated with post-compromise services, to include time / money spent on tools, education and consultation




Emotional Distress• Anxiety – nothing ever goes fast enough• Confusion – unclear what steps to take, who to talk to, where to start• Anger – you want to reach across the matrix and shake someone • Sadness – a general feeling of feeling overwhelmed, exhausted• Distrust – an erosion of trust in technology, internet, people




Website Blacklisting• The most impactful in that it has the ability deter people from

reaching your website and its content / product / services• Blacklists extend beyond search engines like Google and Bing, but

can be found in end-point AntiVirus Solutions like Malwarebytes, Norton, EST, McAfee and so many others.

• This can lead to your website being flagged globally in large networks (i.e., cisco, websense, etc… )

Technical Impacts SEOBlacklisting Visitor Compromise



SEO Impact• The ability to control or manipulate what Search Engines see when

they crawl your website, leading to dirty Search Engine Result Pages (SERP), impacts to your Domain Authority and Value

• Injection of keywords and phrases that might be contrary to your brand, inclusion of things like: Viagra, Cialis, Casinos, Gucci, and use those references to redirect your website to other sites

• Directly tied to the creditability of the website, and potentially affects the blacklisting of your website with search engines like Google, Bing, and others.




Visitor Compromise• Malware distribution can include various forms of “Drive by

Download” attempts that look to install nefarious applications on your visitors machines (i.e., rogue AntiVirus systems)

• Websites can be used to attack browser plugins like Java, Flash, Adobe and others technologies. Can also be used to attack other websites within the same browser.

• Compromise include the distribution malware like Ransomware that can encrypt local environments, making them unusable until the user pays a fine.




Technology will never replace your responsibility as a website owner.



Tips For Managing Website Security1. Employ Defense in Depth Principles – layers like an onion. Complement your tools,

one may fail and so it’s important to have a next step. Example having a firewall in conjunction with continuous monitoring and detection.

2. Leverage best practices like Least Privilege – not everyone needs administrative privileges.

3. Place emphasis on how people access your website, leveraging things like Multi-Factor and Two-Factor Authentication.

4. Protect yourself against the exploitation of software vulnerabilities through use of a Website Firewall – focus on Known and Unknown Attacks.

5. Backups are your friends – your safety net – try to have at least 60 days available.

6. Register your website with Search Engines – Google and Bing have Webmaster Tools, leverage their infrastructure to tell you the health of your website.

https://sucuri.net/website-firewall/



Tools to Help Mitigate Online Risk INFOSEC Institute WP Security Plugins: http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/7-best-wordpress-security-plugins/

PCMag Password Managers- My pick LastPass: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407168,00.asp

Backups- WPBeginner Pros & Cons: http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/7-best-wordpress-backup-plugins-compared-pros-and-cons/

How did my WP Site get Hacked- A Tutorial: https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/08/ask-sucuri-how-did-my-wordpress-website-get-hacked-a-tutorial.html

WPScan- How to install WP vulnerability scanner: https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/10/install-wpscan-wordpress-vulnerability-scan.html

WP-CLI Series- Secure WordPress Management: https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/07/wp-cli-guide-connect-to-wordpress-via-ssh-intro.html

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/7-best-wordpress-security-plugins/

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/7-best-wordpress-security-plugins/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407168,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407168,00.asp

http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/7-best-wordpress-backup-plugins-compared-pros-and-cons/

http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/7-best-wordpress-backup-plugins-compared-pros-and-cons/

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/08/ask-sucuri-how-did-my-wordpress-website-get-hacked-a-tutorial.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/08/ask-sucuri-how-did-my-wordpress-website-get-hacked-a-tutorial.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/10/install-wpscan-wordpress-vulnerability-scan.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/10/install-wpscan-wordpress-vulnerability-scan.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/07/wp-cli-guide-connect-to-wordpress-via-ssh-intro.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/07/wp-cli-guide-connect-to-wordpress-via-ssh-intro.html



Resources for Staying Informed WordPress Security: https://wordpress.org/about/security/

Hardening WordPress : https://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress

Sucuri Blog- Defining Common Website Terminology: https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/07/common-website-security-terminology-defined.html

Sucuri Blog- Understanding the WP security plugin ecosystem: https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/09/understanding-the-wordpress-security-plugin-ecosystem.html

Sucuri Blog- Understanding WP plugin vulnerabilities: https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/03/understanding-wordpress-plugin-vulnerabilities.html

https://wordpress.org/about/security/

https://wordpress.org/about/security/

https://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/07/common-website-security-terminology-defined.html



https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/09/understanding-the-wordpress-security-plugin-ecosystem.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/09/understanding-the-wordpress-security-plugin-ecosystem.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/03/understanding-wordpress-plugin-vulnerabilities.html

https://blog.sucuri.net/2015/03/understanding-wordpress-plugin-vulnerabilities.html



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