IT. SECURITY. OPEN SOURCE.

Month: May 2019

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The California Consumer Privacy Act And The .US Domain

As I start this off I would be remiss to state that yes, I have a .us domain, however so do many Americans. You see, the .us top level domain (TLD) is only available to those who reside within the United States. There are other requirements too such as keeping your WHOIS records up to date. Ensuring that WHOIS records show that those who register a .us domain reside within the US. The major downfall to that is the fact that you cannot purchase privacy protections for your domain. So all of you who have purchased .com, .net, .org and so on have those privacy protections available. But not for .us domains. In fact, .at, .be, .ca, .cn, .cx, .de, .eu, .pl, .pro, and .tw TLD’s do not have those protections either – but that is different story for a different day. What makes the .us TLD so important?

The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, soon to go into affect on January 1, 2020 provides protections of personal information. You see, in order to maintain a .us domain one must accurately state their personal, or business, information in the WHOIS directory. Under the CCPA, personal information is defined as real name, signature, address, telephone number, insurance policy number, education, employment, employment history, bank account information, credit card number, debit card number, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier such as an IP address, email address, account name, social security number, drivers license number, password number, or other similarities. Whew!

If you have never seen a WHOIS lookup on a domain before, it tends to look like:

Domain Name: JASONBROWN.US
Registry Domain ID: D20196051-US
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Updated Date: 2018-05-31T13:04:07Z
Creation Date: 2009-05-31T22:47:12Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2019-05-30T23:59:59Z
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLCRegistrar IANA ID: 146
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@godaddy.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.4806242505
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited
Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited
Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited
Registry Registrant ID: CR17632448
Registrant Name: Jason Brown
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street:
Registrant City:
Registrant State/Province:
Registrant Postal Code:
Registrant Country:
Registrant Phone:
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: jason@jasonbrown.us
Registry Admin ID: CR17632450
Admin Name: Jason Brown
Admin Organization:
Admin Street:
Admin City:
Admin State/Province:
Admin Postal Code:
Admin Country:
Admin Phone:
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email:
Registry Tech ID: CR17632449
Tech Name:
Tech Organization:
Tech Street:
Tech City:
Tech State/Province:
Tech Postal Code:
Tech Country: US
Tech Phone:
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax:
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email: jason@jasonbrown.us
Name Server: ATHENA.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
Name Server: LOGAN.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
DNSSEC: signedDelegation
URL of the ICANN WHOIS Data Problem Reporting System: http://wdprs.internic.net/

I obviously deleted a bunch of stuff but a simple Google search would show you the real results.

Do not get me wrong, California’s Consumer Privacy Act has provided guidelines that the rest of the country should follow. However, law makers continuously make decisions and place deadlines on mandates without fully understanding the impact. How long will it take for law makers to understand the nuances of how the internet works? I myself think its bullshit that one cannot purchase privacy protection for a particular TLD, but I see its reasons.

The amount of data mining, and the cost of providing that information to marketers is astronomical. CSO Online ran an article in 2018 which stated that records on an individual would cost around $141. Take someone 2 minutes to enumerate the entire .us TLD, compile that information and provide it to a marketing company; the amount of data retrieved is priceless.

As you can see, the CCPA has brought to light privacy implications that no one has thought of before. The collection of personal information, the sale of personal information to other companies, and even the disclosure of sale of information. However no one is looking at the information that we have to give up freely in order to do business. It is my hope that we shed a little California sunshine on this situation.

Password Rotation And The Problem Of Not Doing It

Since the release of NIST SP 800-63-3 I have been asked, “Why does our company still perform password rotation?” This question is easier said than done. It is one that requires user awareness training, implementation of auditing and alerting software, and most importantly – multifactor authentication. All of which are necessary, though it can take months to years to implement depending on a companies resources and regulatory requirements.

User Awareness

We still seem to be failing at user awareness training. Our parents, grandparents, kids, co-workers, and yes even us still use easily guessable passwords. Studies have shown that for the past 5+ years the top passwords being used on the internet are, “123456”, “password”, “qwerty”, and “111111.” Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and his television crew have shown how easy it is to social engineer someone to give up their password. These episodes also show the simplicity of the password with some saying their password is a pets name and a birth date.
Companies such as Microsoft have developed ways to prevent its users from picking simplistic passwords. With its new, “Password Protection for Azure AD” service, it prevents users from creating easily guessable passwords. This is performed by Microsoft’s massive database of commonly used passwords. If a user were to pick a password that was found in the database, the service presents an error message and the user must pick another one.

Auditing and Alerting Software

People often make mistakes, that is a given. Companies make similar mistakes as well. Facebook recently announced that the company was storing user passwords in clear text. What can be worse than that you ask? That database had been queried over 9 million times by Facebook staff. Facebook has been on the defensive stating that this was not a breach. While technically no it was not a breach, it shows how lacking they are in their security and privacy.

There are similar cases where companies lax in their security policies. It certainly opens the question of how we can protect ourselves online. With users picking easily guessable passwords, and the reuse of those passwords, auditing and alerting tools are a necessity. Organizations need tools in place to be able to send alerts when an account is being brute forced. They also need to alert when someone is logging in from a country where there is no organizational presence. These are key indicators of account takeovers. Without this in place, a security operations team will never know if an account has been compromised.

What Is Multifactor Authentication

Multifactor (also known as 2 factor) is defined as:

  • Something you have
  • Something you know
  • Something you are

To suffice this definition, one must utilize two of the three listed. Something you have and something you are is the most common. How does this protect against account take overs? If one were to use a semi-guessable password and configured multifactor authentication, account take over would be extremely difficult to pull off. The reason is that even if someone were to have your password, that person could still not log into the account as the second factor has not been met. The second factor in most instances is something that you have. Examples of this are a smart app on your mobile device, a hardware device such as a YubiKey, or a text message. Though using text messages as a form of second factor is now highly discouraged. Without having physical access to any of these devices, it can be nearly impossible to log into an account. There is a website dedicated to help in configuring multifactor authentication by heading on over to Two Factor Auth List. This website will show you which popular online services allow for multifactor authentication, and if they do not, you are able to send a message to the service asking them to enable it.

Final Thoughts

Password rotation is an evil necessity without properly thinking things through. Yes it does not prevent an account take over, however rotation will eventually keep an attacker from logging in. The use of multifactor authentication, auditing and alerting, coupled with user awareness training are essential to good password hygiene. Without these in place, the organization will be stuck on rotation – like a broken record.

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