Category: Security Community
OpenDNS Security Labs at BSides Las Vegas, Black Hat, and Defcon
It’s that time of year where security folks descend upon the desert of Las Vegas for what many call “Security Summer Camp” or, in some circles, “Hacker Summer Camp”. We, of course, mean the Holey Trinity (see what we did there?) of Security BSides Las Vegas, Black Hat, and Defcon.
Security Analysts Kevin Bottomley and Josh Pyorre will be attending BSides Las Vegas to see a number of great talks including one from OpenDNS Engineering’s Andrew Hess entitled Advancing Internet Security Research with Big Data and Graph Databases. In the talk, Hess will provide an overview of OpenDNS’s threat intelligence database system and focus on how it has influenced security research at OpenDNS. This is the system that we, the OpenDNS Security Labs team, relies on for both data ingestion from our resolvers and serves as the repository for our threat model results….hopefully he doesn’t give away too many secrets about how the cyber-sausage is made.
OpenDNS will also have a booth at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino for Black Hat USA 2015. Why not stop by booth 753 to catch up with the OpenDNS Security Labs team, watch a demo of our products, snag a fancy t-shirt, and enter to win an Apple Watch? Dr. Dhia Mahjoub, Sr. Security Researcher, Anthony Kasza, Security Researcher, Andrew Hay, Director of Research, and Dan Hubbard, CTO will be at the booth throughout the day. If you happen to drop by and the person you’re looking for is not there, please leave a business card, written note, or verbal message and we’ll try and sync up with you. You can also meet with Dhia, Andrew, or Dan by scheduling a one-on-one meeting through our scheduling form. We have a meeting room off the show floor so private conversations are welcomed (and encouraged).
You should also plan on attending Dan Hubbard and Andree Toonk’s presentation entitled BGP Stream on Thursday, August 6th, from 12:10-1:00pm in South Seas IJ. In the presentation, Dan and Andree will talk about their methodology and tool—conceived during a recent OpenDNS Hack-a-thon—that can be used to monitor BGP ASN hijacks, historical relationships, and geographic locations of announcing Internet routers. This “alert system for the Internet” is described on our OpenDNS blog, found here. You can, and should, also follow the dedicated Twitter account @bgpstream.
Finally, you may have already started to notice complaints about the long wait times for a taxi at McCarran International Airport.
Vegas needs @Uber so bad. Standing in cab line. About one cab showing up every 2 minutes.
— Chris Eng (@chriseng) August 3, 2015
Why not skip the line and jump on the OpenDNS Limo? We’re picking up from the Las Vegas airport Tuesday & Wednesday every 30 minutes. Just follow signs. We will make sure you get the details if you sign up here. Please note, the limo runs Tuesday (5am to 10pm) and Wednesday (5am to 1pm) and only travels between McCarran and the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. If you’re lucky enough to be arriving between 8am and 10am on Wednesday, Andrew Hay will regale you with tales of security from his adventures on the tropical island of Bermuda and of a far away and magical land…called Canada.
The OpenDNS Security Labs team will also be headed to Defcon to learn about some of the cutting edge research our peers have published – some responsibly, some not as responsibly. Dhia, Andrew, Kevin, Josh, and Anthony will be joined by Thibault Reuille, Sr. Security Researcher. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to connect at one of these amazing venues, at a party, or while waiting in a long line for food or a taxi.
We should be easy to spot as we’ll likely be wearing the t-shirts that get us noticed wherever we go. See you there!
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Infosecurity Europe and Intelligent Defence Wrap-up
The first week of June saw Dr. Dhia Mahjoub and I (Andrew Hay) hopping on a plane at SFO and waking up in London – well, I was able to sleep, Dhia wasn’t able to. We were both in London to speak at Infosecurity Europe and at the new Infosecurity Intelligent Defence conference.
This was the first time the conference was held at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. It was a good thing the event moved from the Earls Court Exhibition Centre as I’m not sure the old venue could have held the number of vendors or attendees. It was packed.
OpenDNS had a booth on the show floor in one of the most trafficked thoroughfares in the building. Whenever we walked by the booth, it was bustling with activity. People looking for more information about our products, requesting demos, or just wanting to ask questions about specific threats and trends.
Luckily our expert booth staff were able to handle any and all questions that popped up. They were also not shy about grabbing Dhia and I as we walked by to introduce us to individuals looking to collaborate or share security information after the show.
On Tuesday, June 2nd Dhia and I both presented sessions. Dhia presented his malicious domain tracking research in a talk entitled Tracking Malware in Criminal Internet Neighbourhoods at Infosecurity Europe. The talk focused on recent and original research on tracking malware domains and infrastructures at large scale and methods to track, detect, and mitigate malware domains and IPs in order to protect one’s network and assets or those of customers.
(Thanks to @edouardng for letting us use this photo from his tweet)
I presented the results of our 2015 Internet of Things in the Enterprise Report in a talk entitled The Researcher’s Guide to the loT Galaxy. The talk was presented at Infosecurity Intelligent Defence, a new two-day, technical security conference, focusing on the latest research including insight into new vulnerabilities and exploits how to defend against them, and was well attended. I had numerous questions after the session and was interviewed by Infosecurity Europe immediately after (as seen below).
Though we were unable to get to BSides London, we both heard fantastic feedback from friends and colleagues who were able to get tickets. Maybe next year.
Our trip to London was great. Dhia and I were able to visit with a number of customers and prospects during our week in London to provide insight into OpenDNS’ capabilities and OpenDNS Security Labs’ current and future research projects.
Dhia also seized the opportunity to visit with our EMEA team a few more prospects in Paris and to attend in the Vatican city a conference on June 9th about “Ethics and Security in the Digital Age”, where our own Paolo Passeri also gave a talk. These meetings and conference were a great opportunity to emphasize the value of our research and innovation in OpenDNS’ product offerings. I can’t count how many times I heard “that’s amazing” or “wow” from customers and prospects. That feedback alone made the trip worth it.
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Internet of Things Security?
Reports show that as little as 10 percent of businesses have formally adopted Internet of Things (IoT) devices in their IT environments. But if the security community has learned one thing from the history of shadow IT, it’s that informal adoption of IoT devices in the enterprise is already much higher. OpenDNS Security Labs invites its readers to participate in this quick and anonymous survey regarding IoT use on business networks.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
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