Hi and welcome to Backup Central's Restore It
W. Curtis Preston:All podcast, I'm your host, W.
W. Curtis Preston:Curtis Preston, AKA Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup.
W. Curtis Preston:And with me, I have my AirPod loss consultant, Prasanna Malaiyandi.
W. Curtis Preston:How's it going, Prasanna?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm good, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm good.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Isn't that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The problem with such small devices?
W. Curtis Preston:It, it, it really is.
W. Curtis Preston:And I haven't even told you the, the end of the saga, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Because you, you remember, I had, I had a, I had a missing AirPod, right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and just to make it worse, it was an AirPod pro, so it's like more expensive
W. Curtis Preston:and I didn't, and no, I didn't pay for the insurance, which, you know, given the
W. Curtis Preston:costs and everything I really should have
W. Curtis Preston:. So.
W. Curtis Preston:I, um, I couldn't find the one, the one AirPod and I, as you may know,
W. Curtis Preston:I recently have my office painted.
W. Curtis Preston:So, you know, viewers that are watching this, you can see this,
W. Curtis Preston:this is agreeable gray behind me is the official color of that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, cuz it was like peach for the longest time, cuz this was originally a nursery.
W. Curtis Preston:And in the midst of cleaning my office, I found the missing AirPod.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Where was it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It
W. Curtis Preston:It was just literally laying on the floor over on the corner.
W. Curtis Preston:So I went to my wife and I said, guess what?
W. Curtis Preston:I found the missing AirPod.
W. Curtis Preston:And she said, guess what?
W. Curtis Preston:I found your AirPod case and your other AirPod.
W. Curtis Preston:Where did you find it?
W. Curtis Preston:In the wash.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Did it actually run through the wash?
W. Curtis Preston:Oh yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Is, is muerto, my friend.
W. Curtis Preston:So guess what I have now?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you just, well, I see that it looks like you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:wearing a new set of air pods.
W. Curtis Preston:But guess what?
W. Curtis Preston:This one has.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:A tile on the back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Wait, so are you gonna put one for of the air pods too?
W. Curtis Preston:No, the thing is the AirPods themselves
W. Curtis Preston:has if the AirPods themselves.
W. Curtis Preston:So first off, I'm gonna be much more like if I can't find my AirPods right
W. Curtis Preston:now, I'm gonna make it my top priority to find the missing AirPod at that moment.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm not gonna go, oh, I find it later.
W. Curtis Preston:Cuz you gotta find it while it has charge.
W. Curtis Preston:But I also would misplace it them in a case.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Because there's no, there's no feature to find the case.
W. Curtis Preston:And uh, so.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So I decided to put a tile and it looks doofy as hell, but
W. Curtis Preston:you know, it is what it is.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I, I'm such a big fan of the tile family, if you will.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I have a tile, I have a wall, the credit card tile in my wallet.
W. Curtis Preston:I have a tile on my, on my keys and, this is a very easy segue into what
W. Curtis Preston:I wanted to talk about this week.
W. Curtis Preston:Which is this concept of warshipping, which is a, not to be confused with
W. Curtis Preston:worshipping, which is very different.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I didn't,
W. Curtis Preston:they, they sound very similar to the non-native English
W. Curtis Preston:speaking ear, uh, war, as in battle and shipping, uh, what, what would you,
W. Curtis Preston:what would you define war shipping as.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's almost like remote hacking, if you will.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Where except.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's taking that plus you're adding in, like, I know we've talked about
Prasanna Malaiyandi:sort of physical penetration testing before in the past where you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:trying to break into a building.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Warshipping is like doing that without having to take as much risk.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You're basically shipping a device to a company.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And letting it sit in the company and using it in remotely accessing and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:try to gather all this information from their networks, etcetera,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:all remotely, without ever having to be anywhere near the company.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And the fact that they don't even know that that device is there potentially.
W. Curtis Preston:That is.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And by the way, we, the first time I saw war shipping demonstrated
W. Curtis Preston:if you will, is in what TV show?
W. Curtis Preston:No.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's
W. Curtis Preston:actually, Mr robot was the one I was thinking of.
W. Curtis Preston:It's quite possible.
W. Curtis Preston:I've see, you know, I watched a lot of alias.
W. Curtis Preston:I was a big fan of alias, but the thing was the tech in alias was
W. Curtis Preston:often so like out there, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Like I remember there was the one that I really think about was that
W. Curtis Preston:they wanted to suck a bunch of data out of a server and they couldn't
W. Curtis Preston:physically break into the server room, but they could physically break into.
W. Curtis Preston:They could hover over the server room, like, you know, like the scene in, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mission impossible.
W. Curtis Preston:like that.
W. Curtis Preston:So like hover in that way.
W. Curtis Preston:And what they got was she had a hard drive with a built in wireless modem.
W. Curtis Preston:And all she had to do was like, like hang upside down within
W. Curtis Preston:like two feet of the server.
W. Curtis Preston:And all of the data would transfer wirelessly up to this
W. Curtis Preston:device via the wireless modem.
W. Curtis Preston:And it was like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:cone from 2000
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, it's totally possible.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And the thing was, I don't remember what the number was, but it was something
W. Curtis Preston:like 20 terabytes and it's like, you know, cuz they actually gave the size.
W. Curtis Preston:They're like, oh this is 20 terabytes of data.
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm like, so 20 terabytes of data.
W. Curtis Preston:Wirelessly, nevermind the fact that just, I don't understand how
W. Curtis Preston:it's supposed to connect to the server, but let's just let that go.
W. Curtis Preston:You're gonna transfer 20 terabytes of data wirelessly in 30 seconds.
W. Curtis Preston:I want that box.
W. Curtis Preston:That's what I remember thinking, but no, that's not what I was thinking about.
W. Curtis Preston:I was thinking about, uh, as I recall, didn't he want to hack didn't he want
W. Curtis Preston:to hack into what did they call it?
W. Curtis Preston:Steel mountain.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yes, I think it was called steel mountain.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Clearly an allusion to iron mountain.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:They wanted to hack into the evil Corp and, and so they, they sent
W. Curtis Preston:a device and as I recall, didn't
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it was like a cellular device.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It was a cellular device.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I believe that had like a wifi hotspot and would attack their network and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:allow them to take over like the security controls and other things like
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And because as you know, we often know that physical access is if you can
W. Curtis Preston:gain physical access, all bets are off.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I think warshipping.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I don't, I'm not sure if that would qualify as war shipping because this
W. Curtis Preston:is a specific, you know, and again, I'm not a cybersecurity expert, but
W. Curtis Preston:to me, I think the idea is you're not even gonna do the physical penetration.
W. Curtis Preston:You're gonna do it remotely via something.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I, but I think though the first part of what they did
Prasanna Malaiyandi:in that episode, I know it's a fictional show that we're talking about Mr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Robot, but I think at least the first part could be considered warshipping.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because he is sending a device remotely letting it sit there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think it was sitting in the mail room if I recall.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And it got.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I, yeah, well, if that's the case and I
W. Curtis Preston:withdraw my objection, your honor.
W. Curtis Preston:But what I remember was that he like stuck it, that he actually went in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh, he went in
W. Curtis Preston:on a wall.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That's why I'm saying, but anyway, again, it doesn't matter, but
W. Curtis Preston:that's the thing that matters is that we're shipping a device.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:that is going to somehow remotely, uh, monitor.
W. Curtis Preston:And this article that we found, which, which I'll put it into the, um, into
W. Curtis Preston:the show notes in a, a site called darkreading.com, which is, it's not
W. Curtis Preston:a little light reading, it's dark reading Um, and the idea is that.
W. Curtis Preston:What, what he was saying or, uh, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Will plumber chief security officer at Ray secure the, is that there are
W. Curtis Preston:so many of these many computers and he specifically called out The raspberry pi.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:pie.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and you know, that it comes, it
W. Curtis Preston:comes with everything you need.
W. Curtis Preston:then you just need to give it some storage and some power and, and, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:it says, um, so it's just interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So the idea is that he described how you could easily build a warshipping
W. Curtis Preston:device that could fit in an envelope.
W. Curtis Preston:itself for quite a long time and then get shipped to a company
W. Curtis Preston:and then just sit there, sucking up all the data that it could.
W. Curtis Preston:So my question to you Prasanna is why wouldn't that device get noticed?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, it depends right now, if we're in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the middle of a pandemic where no one's going into an office, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's a perfect opportunity.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You ship something.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:No, one's gonna really be checking the mail that often people aren't going by
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the mail room and pulling a package.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it might go into the mail room.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Someone's like, oh yeah, it's Steve Smith's mail.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They leave it on Steve Smith's desk.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Steve Smith may not show up at the office for like two weeks, three
Prasanna Malaiyandi:weeks, or he may never come in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And that's a lot of time for a device to be sitting there listening to all the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:network connections, not being discovered because who's gonna open your mail.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's just kind creepy.
W. Curtis Preston:well it's and, you know, and it's a federal crime depending
W. Curtis Preston:on, to whom the mail is addressed.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So, yeah, so that it's . Yet another example.
W. Curtis Preston:And we've talked about this before on the podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:It's yet another example of how the pandemic has created
W. Curtis Preston:another opportunity for hackers.
W. Curtis Preston:So in this case, you know, we've talked about how that.
W. Curtis Preston:So many people have, have moved to work remotely and because they're working
W. Curtis Preston:remotely, they're no longer behind their company's firewall and they're working
W. Curtis Preston:in, you know, Starbucks or whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:And they, uh, they, you know, so they're, they're more open
W. Curtis Preston:perhaps to being attacked directly.
W. Curtis Preston:By ransomware or, or other malware.
W. Curtis Preston:And in this case, this is it's the, the data center it's sort of now the
W. Curtis Preston:data center or the, or the, or the office as it were, has been ignored.
W. Curtis Preston:And so all these people are receiving packages and.
W. Curtis Preston:Those packages could very easily contain one of these war shipping
W. Curtis Preston:devices, which could then sit on the network for a really long time.
W. Curtis Preston:So my question to you, and again, go ahead.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But I think there's a couple things I wanna bring up, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The first is that yes, it could sit there and it doesn't just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:directly get onto your wifi.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There are packages, software packages out there that allow to either passively or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:actively try to attack and break into the wireless network by listening to packets,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:trying to break the, uh, encryption.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Figuring out what the key is to be able to access the network.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So assuming it's done that though.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think actually the fact that there are less people in the office should
Prasanna Malaiyandi:trigger alarms when a unknown device shows up on your network, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's not like you're gonna have hundreds of people who are coming
Prasanna Malaiyandi:into the office now logging in bringing their own device, etcetera.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If this is really a shut down office, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The fact that a new wifi device joined your network should hopefully
Prasanna Malaiyandi:flag or trigger some alert.
W. Curtis Preston:It's funny.
W. Curtis Preston:This is gonna be, this is a total non sequitor, but it's not shut
W. Curtis Preston:down is another one of those words.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a compound word in English where as a, as a noun, it's one word as a verb.
W. Curtis Preston:It's two words, just like backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup is two words when it's a verb
W. Curtis Preston:And it's one
W. Curtis Preston:word when it's a noun.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Gotcha.
W. Curtis Preston:anyway, sorry, you know, for those, you know what, if you
W. Curtis Preston:learn nothing today, you learn that backup is two words when it's a verb
W. Curtis Preston:and it's one word when it's a noun.
W. Curtis Preston:I, if I back up, I create a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:If I back.
W. Curtis Preston:That's two words.
W. Curtis Preston:And why is it two words?
W. Curtis Preston:Because I, I, back up, he backs up, she backs up, he backed up, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So it allows for different tenses.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, sorry.
W. Curtis Preston:I digress.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And today's grammar lesson brought
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to you by the letters a and E
W. Curtis Preston:it's one of my pet peeves, by the way, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:when people spell backup as the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:with two.
W. Curtis Preston:With with, with, with no, as one as one word, uh, or
W. Curtis Preston:vice versa, either way, either way.
W. Curtis Preston:I I'm I'm easily peeved as you know, but, but yeah, so, so we'll talk about
W. Curtis Preston:some preventative stuff in a minute.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, my question, you know, you said, cuz that was gonna be my question.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, I, when I go in, when I go into the Druva corporate network,
W. Curtis Preston:for example, by the way, Prasanna and I work for different companies.
W. Curtis Preston:He works for Zoom.
W. Curtis Preston:I work for Druva.
W. Curtis Preston:This is not a podcast of either company and the opinions that you hear are ours.
W. Curtis Preston:Also be sure to rate us at ratethispodcast.com/restore and, um,
W. Curtis Preston:or, uh, just click, you know, scroll that, especially if you're on apple
W. Curtis Preston:podcast, just scroll to the bottom, hit the stars, give us a comment.
W. Curtis Preston:We love it.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, we also love to hear from you if you know, more stuff, if you know more
W. Curtis Preston:about this warshipping stuff than we do, which by the way, that's pretty possible.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, because we're, we're totally faking it at this point
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or if you have other movies that it happens
W. Curtis Preston:or yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Actually, if you wanna discuss, if you wanna discuss why the technology
W. Curtis Preston:in alias was way better than I think it was, you know, whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, anyway, I'm just saying I've met Jennifer Garner.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm just saying.
W. Curtis Preston:I met her and I'm pretty sure she, it was as memorable of an
W. Curtis Preston:experience for her as it was for me.
W. Curtis Preston:So
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and.
W. Curtis Preston:So here's my question.
W. Curtis Preston:So you, so that was what I remember asking you.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, just because when I go into the Druva office and, and if I have
W. Curtis Preston:a new device getting onto the Druva corporate network is not easy peasy,
W. Curtis Preston:I've got to have the right S S I D I've gotta have the right, uh, password.
W. Curtis Preston:How, how does that happen if you've just got a random device that
W. Curtis Preston:doesn't have that information,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So
W. Curtis Preston:how does it get onto the
W. Curtis Preston:network?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:sure it's not as secure as you think.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The fact that people go and say hide network from broadcasting SS, I D
Prasanna Malaiyandi:doesn't actually prevent anything.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's kind of, uh, it's hidden, but there are tons of tools that are still
Prasanna Malaiyandi:able to figure out what the SS I D is based on what's being broadcast.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So that's not a good way to protect the network.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:In fact, a lot of people.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Don't even bother hiding it because it just makes things more complicated
Prasanna Malaiyandi:for guests and other people to find your network right now, once you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:know what the SS I D is, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There are tools.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That'll sit there, suck up all the packets.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then eventually things have gotten smarter that they're able to break the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:encryption key and figure out what's the passcode to get into your network.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's not bulletproof.
W. Curtis Preston:that sounds bad.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And especially if you have a war shipping device
Prasanna Malaiyandi:sitting there for a day a week, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Just sucking up all this information.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It can just sit there and passively listen.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because airwaves are airwaves.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So anyone can listen in on those airwaves of the fact it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:going back and forth, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Especially in networks where maybe they're using WPA two or even
Prasanna Malaiyandi:WPA, the older standards, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Not WPA three, which is the latest and greatest, or they, or they're using.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:TKIP rather than AES for the encryption.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Don't ask me what it stands for.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I just know that T I P is less secure than AEs.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But there are all these things,
W. Curtis Preston:It's it's it stands for the keys.
W. Curtis Preston:I prefer.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Is it really?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I don't think
W. Curtis Preston:have no idea.
W. Curtis Preston:No, I don't think so.
W. Curtis Preston:I have no idea what T K I P stands for.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But there, there are all these issues.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:there are ways to break into networks or say you have a vulnerability,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:or you don't have the latest patches on your access points.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That could also be another way.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's not unknown.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:a matter of time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And like you said, if you have a warshipping device that's sitting in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:your, at your corporate office, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It can sit there for weeks without being recognized and just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:keep sucking up all this data.
W. Curtis Preston:why wouldn't I, why would I go through that trouble?
W. Curtis Preston:Why wouldn't I just like drop one of these things, like right outside your building,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Someone might
W. Curtis Preston:and remotely access your yeah, no, that's a good
Prasanna Malaiyandi:someone might see.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It depends also on how the wifi is configured.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Some people might not have full coverage really outside, or they might have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:sort of different networks sitting on the outside versus the inside.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Depending on
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I mean, I mean, yeah, it might just be
W. Curtis Preston:a weak signal outside, but yeah, but this is a super easy way.
W. Curtis Preston:Send it to a person that's a remote employee and, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:or just send a bunch of them.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:You only have to get right with one of them.
W. Curtis Preston:The, um, So, so you're saying that over time, given enough time, you could, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, theoretically, and again, this is one of those things where you don't
W. Curtis Preston:have to be successful with everybody.
W. Curtis Preston:You just have to be successful with one company.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And the
W. Curtis Preston:yet another method
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the other thing also is computers have gotten blazingly
Prasanna Malaiyandi:fast processing and computing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That what used to take a while to try to break like an encryption
Prasanna Malaiyandi:algorithm right now, it doesn't take as long as it used to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And like you see right with the raspberry pi and other things like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's conceivable that it won't take you that long to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:actually break that encryption.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, he talked about, um, he said he
W. Curtis Preston:talked about a raspberry pi.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then he said, he'd use a wifi dongle.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so he can connect to the internet.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and then
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think actually the wi the wifi dons, actually to connect
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to the wifi network of the company.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, so basically he's talking about two different connections.
W. Curtis Preston:One to be able to, to do a, a, to get a SIM card and a sell, click
W. Curtis Preston:connection, an optional GPS device.
W. Curtis Preston:That's.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but all these are little things that you can easily plug
W. Curtis Preston:to a raspberry pi without very much cost and, and send it in.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And again, I, I don't want the, I don't want this to be,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, blaming the tool.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Raspberry pi is a pretty cool device.
W. Curtis Preston:This isn't raspberry pi's fault.
W. Curtis Preston:It's just what, what, I think what the true culprit, if you will here
W. Curtis Preston:is that you have this ability.
W. Curtis Preston:Where you have all these offices that are, that are, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:relatively unnocupied, right.
W. Curtis Preston:And you, you just send a device and it can just sit there all this time.
W. Curtis Preston:So let's talk about, um, you know, you've talked about it already, but let's talk
W. Curtis Preston:about ways that you can prevent this.
W. Curtis Preston:So, um, the, the first, you know, you, you're saying that.
W. Curtis Preston:We're going back to sort of monitoring.
W. Curtis Preston:You should be monitoring your network traffic for all kinds of things.
W. Curtis Preston:And before we even talk about this one, let's talk about some of the things
W. Curtis Preston:that we've mentioned on other episodes, things that you should be looking
W. Curtis Preston:for first off, I, I agree a lot with.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, we've had snorkel 42 from Reddit on here, and he talks a lot
W. Curtis Preston:about preventing lateral movement.
W. Curtis Preston:And I think that that's a really important thing that you should
W. Curtis Preston:be, you should be blocking.
W. Curtis Preston:You should also, I think, be looking for things that are
W. Curtis Preston:trying to do lateral movement.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and you should be.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and I think, and again, I understand that this is harder and you know, which
W. Curtis Preston:therefore means it's gonna come with more cost, but the idea of using some
W. Curtis Preston:sort of machine learning to monitor what is normal network traffic for,
W. Curtis Preston:for every device on your network.
W. Curtis Preston:And then when you see a new device or you see a significant change in.
W. Curtis Preston:The the, the bandwidth utilization, especially upload, you know, cause
W. Curtis Preston:somebody's doing exfiltration.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, he, he, then, then, then you, you shut that down, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You shut that down, contact that person and go, Hey, what what's going on?
W. Curtis Preston:They're like, oh, you know, I suddenly, I started producing videos for the company.
W. Curtis Preston:Oh crap.
W. Curtis Preston:Sure.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, no problem.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:No big deal.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Sorry, Alex.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but so, but the, uh, but then you're like, oh, I, I wasn't doing anything.
W. Curtis Preston:And you find out while the guys got ransomware and it's
W. Curtis Preston:uploading all this data.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then the other thing that I remember, um, snorkel talking about
W. Curtis Preston:was the idea of blocking access to.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, new domains, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Newly registered domains or newly activated domains.
W. Curtis Preston:That's a that, I think that's an important one.
W. Curtis Preston:And we've had the, the DDI folks on here, the, the idea of blocking
W. Curtis Preston:access to weirdly named domains.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:You remember that, that, that command and control servers have these really long
W. Curtis Preston:domains and that no one would ever type.
W. Curtis Preston:The only reason they're so long is because that each part of that domain.
W. Curtis Preston:Name is a, is an instruction, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Or a request.
W. Curtis Preston:And then it responds with the appropriate instruction.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, there are a bunch of things that you can do like that to prevent
W. Curtis Preston:malware from executing once it gets in.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and this would be an example of a way that malware would get in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Just going back to sort of the monitoring
Prasanna Malaiyandi:aspects and the flagging.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I like the anomaly detection that you talked about looking at basic patterns.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, I think what becomes challenging is as companies, and this was even pre pandemic.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right where people would bring their own devices.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because I everyone's like, Hey, I'm more efficient.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so you now have a lot of random devices that aren't corporate
Prasanna Malaiyandi:controlled showing up on your network.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think that becomes a challenge.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's in terms of how do you ensure employees are productive, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And have easy access to devices they want versus, um, locking
Prasanna Malaiyandi:everything down and securing it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:This is kind of what snorkel also talked about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's kind of the trade off between.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Ease of use versus security.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And there's always gonna be that tension that
W. Curtis Preston:Well, he, he, he, he seemed to be okay with
W. Curtis Preston:what I was suggesting though, of the, sort of the stomp on
W. Curtis Preston:somebody's foot and say, oh, sorry.
W. Curtis Preston:I, you know, and then lift it up for that one person who has a legitimate reason.
W. Curtis Preston:And by the way, I think, and again, I'm not an expert in those
W. Curtis Preston:particular types of product, but I would think that that particular,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, challenge would be easy to.
W. Curtis Preston:Would be easily dealt with, by for example, we have a standard
W. Curtis Preston:profile for a new device.
W. Curtis Preston:That's on the network.
W. Curtis Preston:A new device does a lot of lookups does a lot of browsing.
W. Curtis Preston:Doesn't send a lot of data,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But I, I
W. Curtis Preston:And then when you know what I mean, I'm just saying on again,
W. Curtis Preston:you could have, you could have a, a usage of a machine learning pattern for,
W. Curtis Preston:this is what a new device looks like.
W. Curtis Preston:And then that device, that device that just came on, it's sending
W. Curtis Preston:a whole bunch of data up, shut it down and then go figure out why.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But I'm wondering.
W. Curtis Preston:it's impossible.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's not impossible, but I'm just wondering,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:given limited it budgets, given limited resources and skill sets, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Are most companies really going to be able to invest and manage a tool like this?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or is it one of those things where people are like, yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:warshipping or these random devices coming on the network?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know it's an issue, but it's not the.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Immediate thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And like you said, going back to what you were talking about, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How do you prevent lateral movement instead of trying to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:prevent them from coming in?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How do you prevent the damage if they get it?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I, I, I do think, and you, you may recall that that.
W. Curtis Preston:That his advice was he had a longer list before we, before you
W. Curtis Preston:got to what I'm talking about.
W. Curtis Preston:He didn't have any problem with what I was saying, but he, but he wanted to
W. Curtis Preston:like block access to, to weird domains.
W. Curtis Preston:He wanted to, uh, limit lateral movement.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, he wanted to do MFA everywhere.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, do least privilege everywhere.
W. Curtis Preston:These are all basic concepts of computing that everyone should
W. Curtis Preston:be doing everywhere they can.
W. Curtis Preston:And the, uh, and no one should be administering a server
W. Curtis Preston:via root anymore, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Or administrator, it should, that should just never be happening.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, the.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and the only place you should be able to log in as root should be at the console
W. Curtis Preston:and you know, all these different things.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, and I think it should be a, like a breaking glass situation, right?
W. Curtis Preston:If someone needs the root password, the root password is somewhere available,
W. Curtis Preston:but you gotta go through all these different levels of change to get the
W. Curtis Preston:access, you know, all of those things.
W. Curtis Preston:I think those are all great.
W. Curtis Preston:I guess the reason why I focus so much on.
W. Curtis Preston:This concept of monitoring the network for even if again,
W. Curtis Preston:something is better than nothing.
W. Curtis Preston:That, that, that's another concept that he talked about a lot about
W. Curtis Preston:something is better than nothing.
W. Curtis Preston:If you could get, you know, a basic tool that just did you know that just
W. Curtis Preston:even if you, if, if you didn't do the automated shutdown, but you got
W. Curtis Preston:a basic tool that just monitored for the upload patterns of every device.
W. Curtis Preston:And then you, you found a device that suddenly was, you know, this
W. Curtis Preston:really high and you could, you know, find out who the device is, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Flag it.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, again, with the, with the B Y O D situation.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know how you figure out who that device is.
W. Curtis Preston:Other end to shut it off, honestly, other than to shut it off it's you probably
W. Curtis Preston:won't be able to do it automatically with a less expensive tool, but you shut it
W. Curtis Preston:off and then what's gonna happen is Fred's gonna come to the it department and go,
W. Curtis Preston:Hey man, I got good on the Yeah, well that's because you were uploading stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, and then he's like, I know what you're talking about.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, you found, you found your culprit, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That, oh, by the way, I, I just want the reason why I'm so hot on.
W. Curtis Preston:And maybe even more so, and again, it's because of my backup background
W. Curtis Preston:and that is that a good air gap.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup is the best defense against traditional ransomware.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mm-hmm
W. Curtis Preston:There is no defense against exfiltration once it has happened.
W. Curtis Preston:None.
W. Curtis Preston:And that's why I, I perhaps focus on that a little bit more.
W. Curtis Preston:I think all the other stuff is, is good.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I just like this idea of somehow using something, you know, um, and, and
W. Curtis Preston:another, I think maybe easier one on the built-in devices is, is whitelisting
W. Curtis Preston:right on the company.
W. Curtis Preston:Devices is whitelist, you know, application white listing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:everything I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, applica, well, I think both right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, application and, um, the other thing it's like, you can,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, there's just ways, I think you could, you could somehow limit an
W. Curtis Preston:individual devices, ability to start downloading or uploading the entire
W. Curtis Preston:company's intellectual property.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:So enough about that, let's talk about , let's talk about
W. Curtis Preston:what this episode's actually
Prasanna Malaiyandi:so, so going back to, this is an actual device.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think we kind of went down the, okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How do you do it once it's in your network?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But I think there's a whole bunch of basics, even before we get to that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Curtis,
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:this is a physical device, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's landing on someone's desk.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:What can you do before?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It just like sits there.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, I think one of the things, well, the question,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, in no particular order, this is just what's coming to my mind.
W. Curtis Preston:One is, you know, physical security.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you, you know, this is, this is a physical security problem
W. Curtis Preston:before it's anything else?
W. Curtis Preston:They're talking about Physically processing packages.
W. Curtis Preston:And there also, there are mail scanning technologies.
W. Curtis Preston:There's a box.
W. Curtis Preston:You can run all the mail through and go, Hey, this thing is, this
W. Curtis Preston:thing is broadcasting a signal.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, this is a problem, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You can do that.
W. Curtis Preston:You can scan the thing before it comes in.
W. Curtis Preston:The other thing is what,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:put it in a faraday day cage,
W. Curtis Preston:what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:put it in a faraday cage
W. Curtis Preston:put all, can you buy a big faraday cage?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They did an enemy of the state.
W. Curtis Preston:I just mean a big enough one, you know, can you
W. Curtis Preston:make the mail room a faraday cage,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I bet you could.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So that, that, that could be another way to do it.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, poor guys in the mail room, they don't get any wifi.
W. Curtis Preston:The, um, the, the other is the, the device white listing that you talked about.
W. Curtis Preston:Everybody needs to have a conversation with it before their
W. Curtis Preston:device is allowed on the network.
W. Curtis Preston:Is that.
W. Curtis Preston:So is that, is that unreasonable?
W. Curtis Preston:What do you think?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:So it it's reasonable.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:I think the challenge is, or that they get segmented off into a separate wifi
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:network where they get almost zero access.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:they get, they basically, this is guest versus
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Now,
W. Curtis Preston:Doesn't see anything in the corporate network.
W. Curtis Preston:All it gets is ability to Google stuff.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Now the only challenge is how you end up doing that white listing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, there are issues, depending on what sort of method you use.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If for instance, you're just using Mac address, filtering Mac
Prasanna Malaiyandi:addresses can be spoofed, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's not a great mechanism to
W. Curtis Preston:But you would,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:device
W. Curtis Preston:I mean for this device, sorry to interrupt there, but
W. Curtis Preston:for this device, you know, you're, we're assuming that this device is
W. Curtis Preston:just a dumb device that wouldn't know what Mac address to spoof.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:oh, it could.
W. Curtis Preston:You know?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It could, if it's sniffing all the wireless
Prasanna Malaiyandi:packets, it would be able
W. Curtis Preston:Oh, you're saying, you're saying it's oh, geez, man.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:And, and especially if
W. Curtis Preston:stuff, man.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and especially if it's a passive device, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's just sitting there listening to everything coming across the airway.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So
W. Curtis Preston:so, alright, so you, you clearly know
W. Curtis Preston:more about wifi than I do.
W. Curtis Preston:Can we monitor for this device that is sniffing packets?
W. Curtis Preston:Can
Prasanna Malaiyandi:if it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:passive, if it's passive, you can't tell at all, because it's just airwaves right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Wifi is just a signal.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So what,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So the, which is why I said from a, the best thing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:is, like you said, go back to the physical security aspects, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Try to prevent the wifi device from sitting or the warshipping device from
Prasanna Malaiyandi:sitting in your corporate mail room or in your location for long periods of time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Have a process to take the packages, scan it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If you can, if you don't have a scanning ability.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Contact the recipient say you have this package, come pick it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:up with a certain amount of time, forward it off to the person.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If you have to right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Ask them if they're expecting a package or even if you can open the package.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If they're not expecting something, ask can I open it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There are so many different options,
W. Curtis Preston:So number one, you've got to have someone actively
W. Curtis Preston:managing all of the mail from all of these people that are getting
W. Curtis Preston:mail during the pandemic, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:this is gonna be at, at a minimum.
W. Curtis Preston:This is gonna be a bulky envelope, right?
W. Curtis Preston:One of those puff.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Envelopes and possibly a box.
W. Curtis Preston:And you have rules specifically for those you contact, you need
W. Curtis Preston:to contact a person and ask what should be done with this thing.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and if they're not expecting a package, perhaps yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:You could create a policy.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I don't think you should be randomly opening mail from people that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Without their permission
W. Curtis Preston:to do it.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you should yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or forward it off to them or whatever else is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I think that basic based on what I'm hearing from
W. Curtis Preston:you, this is really the only choice,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I,
W. Curtis Preston:right.
W. Curtis Preston:Because the white listing, the, the device white listing wouldn't stop the
W. Curtis Preston:person, you know, the, the box that his SPO has, you know, sniffed packets
W. Curtis Preston:has spoofed the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:well, And this is where I was saying that it depends on what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:methodology you're using for whitelisting.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There's other things like radius authentication and other certificate
Prasanna Malaiyandi:based authentication and other things, which you could also use for whitelist.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so that's why I said, if you're just doing basic Mac address
Prasanna Malaiyandi:filtering, it's not strong enough.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:So, so, so then we, we do have this additional, this is, this is all
W. Curtis Preston:in the line of like four more money
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:stop this completely by a more robust
W. Curtis Preston:whitelisting system than Mac addressed
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That makes sense.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but I, I think it, I think like a lot of it, you don't, you don't
W. Curtis Preston:leave your data center open, wide open, and so you shouldn't do this.
W. Curtis Preston:This is essentially an intrusion into your data center, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Or into your corporate network.
W. Curtis Preston:And so you shouldn't leave that wide open.
W. Curtis Preston:I guess there are many people like me that just never thought of war shipping
W. Curtis Preston:as a way to get into a corporate network.
W. Curtis Preston:And so they're not thinking about these incoming packages as a potential.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:And so you need to think about those packages as an
W. Curtis Preston:internal, as a, as a potential risk.
W. Curtis Preston:And they need to be handled physically before they can do any damage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The other thing to consider is I know we've
Prasanna Malaiyandi:been talking a lot about corporate environments and warshipping, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:also if you get a random device in your mail, right from someone and it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:looks like a camera or something else.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And you're like, oh, that's kind of cool.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Let me plug it in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Don't plug it in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Be very careful at home also of putting random things on
W. Curtis Preston:your network.
W. Curtis Preston:I read this article and I was like, dang, that is just something
W. Curtis Preston:I never thought about in my life.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:so it's interesting because there was actually
Prasanna Malaiyandi:an uptick in these articles about warshipping back in 2019 as well.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:When I did some Googling.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh huh.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So this isn't the first time it's come out.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But I think specifically with the pandemic and everything else, it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:kind of coming back to the forefront.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:In fact, warshipping here's something.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was just looking it up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I don't know how accurate this is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Warshipping is a term coined by IBM in 2019.
W. Curtis Preston:All right.
W. Curtis Preston:That's kind of cool.
W. Curtis Preston:Good old, IBM still, still setting the bar, raising the
W. Curtis Preston:bar, whatever you wanna call it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that's probably why all those articles started in 2019
W. Curtis Preston:You could put it in a place in your
W. Curtis Preston:building that doesn't have wifi.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:There are places in your building that you know, where
W. Curtis Preston:they are because you tried to use the wifi there and it doesn't work.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or you just have all packages delivered to an offsite facility.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Don't have it delivered to your
Prasanna Malaiyandi:corporate network.
W. Curtis Preston:you know what you could have, you could have your, you
W. Curtis Preston:could have packages, like I'm sure that that could be managed for you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That wouldn't be free, but it could be managed for you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:All right.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, once again, we have solved world peace.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so thanks for, thanks for helping me keep people safe.
W. Curtis Preston:Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Anytime.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And thanks for sharing that article, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's now we'll have to go back and watch Mr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Robot and figure out what exactly he did if it was warshipping or something else.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:My memory is like he was a janitor.
W. Curtis Preston:Like he pretended to be a janitor and then stuck the thing.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks to the listeners.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, for those of you that stuck out this long and remember to subscribe