By Andrew Hay, Co-Founder and CTO, LEO Cyber Security.

I speak at a lot of conferences around the world. As a result, people often ask me how I manage the vast number of abstracts and security call for papers (CFPs) submissions. So I thought I’d create a blog post to explain my process. For lack of a better name, let’s call it the Hay CFP Management Method. It should be noted that this method could be applied to any number of things from blog posts to white papers and scholastic articles to news stories. I have successfully proven this methodology for both myself and my teams at OpenDNS, DataGravity, and LEO Cyber Security. Staying organized helped manage the deluge of events, submitted talks, and important due dates in addition to helping me keep track of where in the world my team was and what they were talking about.

I, like most people, started managing abstracts and submissions by relying on email searches and documents (both local and on Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.). Unfortunately, I didn’t find this scaled very well as I kept losing track of submitted vs. accepted/rejected talks and their corresponding dates. It certainly didn’t scale when it was applied to an entire team as opposed to a single individual.

Enter Trello, a popular (and freemium) web-based project management application that utilizes the Kanban methodology for organizing projects (boards), lists (task lists), and tasks (cards). In late September I start by creating a board for the upcoming year (let’s call this board the 2018 Conference CFP Calendar) and, if not already created, a board to track my abstracts in their development lifecycle (let’s call this board Talk Abstracts).

Within the Talk Abstracts board, I create several lists to act as swim lanes for my conference abstracts and other useful information. These lists are:

* Development: These are talks that are actively being developed and are not yet ready for prime time.
* Completed: These are talks that have finished development and are ready to be delivered at an upcoming event.
* Delivered: These are talks that have been delivered at least once.
* Misc: This list is where I keep my frequently requested form information such as my short bio (less than 50 characters), long bio (less than 1,500 characters), business mailing address (instead of browsing to your corporate website every time), and CISSP number (because who can remember that?).
* Retired: As a personal rule, I only use a particular talk for one calendar year. When I feel as though the talk is stale, boring, or stops being accepted, I move the card to this list. That’s not to say you can’t revive a talk or topic in the future as a “version 2.0”. This is why keeping the card around is valuable.

Within the 2018 Conference CFP Calendar board, I create several lists to act as swim lanes for my various CFPs. These lists are:

* CFP open: This is where I put all of the upcoming conference cards that I know about even if I do not yet know the exact details (such as location, CFP open/close, etc.).
* CFP closes in < 30 days: This is where I put the upcoming conference cards that have a confirmed closing date within the next 30 days. Note, it is very important to record details in the cards such as closing date, conference CFP mechanism (e.g. email vs. web form), and any related URLs for the event.
* Submitted: These are the conferences that I have submitted to and the associated cards. Note, I always provide a link to the abstract I submitted as a way to remind myself what I’m talking about.
* Accepted: These are the accepted talk cards. Note, I always put a copy of the email (or link to) acceptance notification to record any details that might be important down the road. I also make sure to change the date on the card to that of the speaking date and time slot to help keep me organized.
* Attending but not presenting: This is really a generic catch-all for events that I need to be at but may not be speaking at (e.g. booth duty, attending training, etc.). The card and associated dates help keep my dance card organized.
* Accepted but backed out: Sometimes life happens. This list contains cards of conference submissions that I had to back out of for one reason or another. I keep these cards in their own column to show me what was successfully accepted and might be a fit for next year in addition to the reason I had to back out (e.g. conflict, personal issue, alien abduction, etc.).
* Completed: This list is for completed talk cards. Again, I keep these to reference for next year’s board as it provides some ballpark dates for when the CFP opens, closes, as well as the venue and conference date.
* Rejected: They’re not all winners and not everybody gets every talk accepted. In my opinion, keeping track of your rejected talks is as (if not more) important as keeping track of your accepted talks. Not only does it allow you to see what didn’t work for that particular event, but it also allows you to record reviewer feedback on the submission and maybe submit a different style or type of abstract in the future.
* Not doing 2018: This is the list where I put conference cards that I’ve missed the deadline on (hey, it happens), cannot submit to because of a conflict, or simply choose to not submit a talk to.

It should be noted that I keep the above lists in the same order every year to help minimize my development time against the Trello API for my visualization dashboard (which I will explain in a future blog post). This might sound like a lot of work but once you’ve set this board up you can reuse it every year. In fact, it’s much easier to copy last year’s board than starting fresh every year, as it brings the cards and details over. Then all you need to do is update the old cards with the new venue, dates, and URLs.

Now that we have our board structure created we need to start populating the lists with the cards – which I’ll explain in the next blog post. In addition to the card blog post, I’ll explain two other components of the process in subsequent posts. For reference, here are the upcoming blog posts that will build on this one:

* Individual cards and their structure
* Moving cards through the pipeline
* Visualizing your board (and why it helps)

The post The Hay CFP Management Method appeared first on LEO Cyber Security.

By: Andrew Hay

Unless you’ve been away from the Internet earlier this week, you’ve no doubt heard by now about the global ransomware outbreak that started in Ukraine and subsequently spread West across Western Europe, North America, and Australia yesterday. With similarities reminiscent to its predecessor WannaCry, this ransomware attack shut down organizations ranging from the Danish shipping conglomerate Maersk Line to a Tasmanian-based Cadbury chocolate factory.

I was asked throughout the course of yesterday and today to help clarify exactly what transpired. The biggest challenge with any surprise malware outbreak is the flurry of hearsay, conjecture, speculation, and just plain guessing by researchers, analysts, and the media.

At a very high level, here is what we know thus far:

• The spread of this campaign appears to have originated in Ukraine but has migrated west to impact a number of other countries, including the United States where pharmaceutical giant Merck and global law firm DLA Piper were hit
• The initial infection appears to involve a software supply-chain threat involving the Ukrainian company M.E.Doc, which develops tax accounting software, MeDoc
• This appears to be a piece of malware utilizing the EternalBlue exploit disclosed by the Shadow Brokers back in April 2017 when the group released several hacking tools obtained from the NSA
• Microsoft released a patch in March 2017 to mitigate the discovered remote code execution vulnerabilities that existed in the way that the Microsoft Server Message Block 1.0 (SMBv1) server handled certain requests
• The malware implements several lateral movement techniques:
  • Stealing credentials or re-using existing active sessions
  • Using file-shares to transfer the malicious file across machines on the same network
  • Using existing legitimate functionalities to execute the payload or abusing SMB vulnerabilities for unpatched machines
• Experts continue to debate whether or not this is a known malware variant called Petya but several researchers and firms claim that this is a never before seen variant that they are calling GoldenEye, NotPetya, Petna, or some other random name such as Nyetya
• The jury is still out on whether or not the malware is new or simply a known variant

Who is responsible?

The million dollar question on everyone’s mind is “was this a nation-state backed campaign designed to specifically target Ukraine”? We at LEO believe that to be highly unlikely for a number of reasons. The likelihood that this is an opportunistic ransomware campaign with some initial software package targets is far more likely scenario than a state-sponsored actor looking to destabilize a country.

Always remember the old adage from Dr. Theodore Woodward: When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras.

If you immediately start looking for Russian, Chinese, or North Korean state-sponsored actors around every corner, you’ll inevitably construct some attribution and analysis bias. Look for the facts, not the speculation.

What does LEO recommend you do?

We recommend customers that have not yet installed security update MS17-010 to do so as soon as possible. Until you can apply the patch, LEO also recommends the following steps to help reduce the attack surface:

• Disable SMBv1 with the steps documented at Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 2696547
• Block incoming SMB traffic from the public Internet on port 445 and 139, adding a rule on your border routers, perimeter firewalls, and any intersecting traffic points between a higher security network zone to a lower security network zone
• Disable remote WMI and file sharing, where possible, in favor of more secure file sharing protocols
• Ensure that your logging is properly configured for all network-connected systems including workstations, servers, virtualized guests, and network infrastructure such as routers, switches, and firewalls
• Ensure that your antimalware signatures are up-to-date on all systems (not just the critical ones)
• Review your patch management program to ensure that emergency patches to mitigate critical vulnerabilities and easily weaponized attacks can be applied in an expedited fashion
• Finally, consider stockpiling some cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, to reduce any possible transaction downtime should you find that your organization is forced to pay the ransom. Attempting to acquire Bitcoin during an incident may be time-prohibitive

Should your organization need help or clarification on any of the above recommendations, please don’t hesitate to reach out to LEO Cyber Security for immediate assistance.

Further reading

• vulnersCom’s GitHubGist
• ‘Petya’ Ransomware Outbreak Goes Global – Krebs On Security
• Schroedinger’s Pet(ya) – Kaspersky Lab
• Petya Ransomware Spreading Via EternalBlue Exploit – FireEye
• Checking out the new Petya variant – SANS ISC InfoSec Forums
• Complex Petya-like Ransomware Outbreak Worse Than Wannacry – Threatpost
• Petya Weren’t Expecting This: Ransomware Takes Systems Hostage Across the Globe – IBM X-Force Research
• New Variant of Petya Ransomware Spreading Like Wildfire – McAfee
• Vaccine, not Killswitch, Found for Petya (NotPetya) Ransomware Outbreak – Bleeping Computer
• WannaCry Déjà Vu: Petya Ransomware Outbreak Wreaking Havoc Across the Globe – Bleeping Computer
• Petya Ransomware Attack – What’s Known – MalwareTechBlog
• Threat Brief: Petya Ransomware – Palo Alto Networks
• Petya Ransomware Fast Spreading Attack – AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX)
• New ransomware, old techniques: Petya adds worm capabilities – Microsoft MMPC
• Tuesday’s massive ransomware outbreak was, in fact, something much worse – Ars Technica
• FAQ about PETYA/GOLDENEYE/PETR outbreak – FOX IT
• New Petya Distribution Vectors Bubbling to Surface – Kaspersky Lab

The post Petya Ransomware: What You Need to Know and Do appeared first on LEO Cyber Security.