Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Bicycling & Risk

While everyone else is talking about APT, I want to talk about risk thinking versus outcome thinking. I have a lot of colleagues who I respect who like to think about risk in some fascinating ways. For example, there’s the Risk Hose and SIRA folks. I’m inspired by To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets: […]

 

New paper: "How Bad Is It? — A Branching Activity Model for Breach Impact Estimation"

Adam just posted a question about CEO “willingness to pay” (WTP) to avoid bad publicity regarding a breach event.  As it happens, we just submitted a paper to Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) that proposes a breach impact estimation method that might apply to Adam’s question.  We use the WTP approach in a […]

 

Base Rate & Infosec

At SOURCE Seattle, I had the pleasure of seeing Jeff Lowder and Patrick Florer present on “The Base Rate Fallacy.” The talk was excellent, lining up the idea of the base rate fallacy, how and why it matters to infosec. What really struck me about this talk was that about a week before, I had […]

 

Aitel on Social Engineering

Yesterday, Dave Aitel wrote a fascinating article “Why you shouldn’t train employees for security awareness,” arguing that money spent on training employees about awareness is wasted. While I don’t agree with everything he wrote, I submit that your opinion on this (and mine) are irrelevant. The key question is “Is money spent on security awareness […]

 

Yet More On Threat Modeling: A Mini-Rant

Yesterday Adam responded to Alex’s question on what people thought about IanG’s claim that threat modeling fails in practice and I wanted to reiterate what I said on twitter about it: It’s a tool! No one claimed it was a silver bullet! Threat modeling is yet another input into an over all risk analysis. And […]

 

Aviation Safety

The past 10 years have been the best in the country’s aviation history with 153 fatalities. That’s two deaths for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights, according to an Associated Press analysis of government accident data. The improvement is remarkable. Just a decade earlier, at the time the safest, passengers were 10 times as […]

 

Discussing Norm Marks' GRC Wishlist for 2012

Norm Marks of the famous Marks On Governance blog has posted his 2012 wishlist.  His blog limits the characters you can leave in a reply, so I thought I’d post mine here. 1.  Norm Wishes for “A globally-accepted organizational governance code, encompassing both risk management and internal control” Norm, if you mean encompassing both so […]

 

The One Where David Lacey's Article On Risk Makes Us All Stupider

In possibly the worst article on risk assessment I’ve seen in a while, David Lacey of Computerworld gives us the “Six Myth’s Of Risk Assessment.”  This article is so patently bad, so heinously wrong, that it stuck in my caw enough to write this blog post.  So let’s discuss why Mr. Lacey has no clue […]

 

What is Risk (again)?

The thread “What is Risk?” came up on a linkedin Group. Thought you might enjoy my answer: ———————- Risk != uncertainty (unless you’re a Knightian frequentist, and then you don’t believe in measurement anyway), though if you were to account for risk in an equation, the amount of uncertainty would be a factor. risk != […]

 

Actually It *IS* Too Early For Fukushima Hindsight

OR – RISK ANALYSIS POST-INCIDENT, HOW TO DO IT RIGHT Rob Graham called me out on something I retweeted here (seriously, who calls someone out on a retweet?  Who does that?): http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2011/03/fukushima-too-soon-for-hindsight.html And that’s cool, I’m a big boy, I can take it.  And Twitter doesn’t really give you a means to explain why you […]

 

Fixes to Wysopal’s Application Security Debt Metric

In two recent blog posts (here and here), Chris Wysopal (CTO of Veracode) proposed a metric called “Application Security Debt”.  I like the general idea, but I have found some problems in his method.  In this post, I suggest corrections that will be both more credible and more accurate, at least for half of the […]

 

CRISC – The Bottom Line (oh yeah, Happy New Year!)

No doubt my “Why I Don’t Like CRISC” blog post has created a ton of traffic and comments.  Unfortunately, I’m not a very good writer because the majority of readers miss the point.  Let me try again more succinctly: Just because you can codify a standard or practice doesn’t mean that this practice is sane. […]

 

The Only Trust Models You'll Ever Need

Lately there has been quite a bit of noise about the concept of “trust” in information security.  This has always confused me, because I tend towards @bobblakley when he says: “trust is for suckers.” But security is keen on having trendy new memes, things to sell you, and I thought that I might as well […]

 

Managing WordPress: How to stay informed?

We at the New School blog use WordPress with some plugins. Recently, Alex brought up the question of how we manage to stay up to date. It doesn’t seem that WordPress has a security announcements list, nor do any of our plugins. So I asked Twitter “What’s the best way to track security updates for […]

 

"Towards Better Usability, Security and Privacy of Information Technology"

“Towards Better Usability, Security and Privacy of Information Technology” is a great survey of the state of usable security and privacy: Usability has emerged as a significant issue in ensuring the security and privacy of computer systems. More-usable security can help avoid the inadvertent (or even deliberate) undermining of security by users. Indeed, without sufficient […]

 

Flaw Of Averages – Society of Information Risk Analysts Meeting

Another friendly reminder: Alexander Hutton invites you to attend this online meeting. Topic: RISK ANALYST MEETING Date: Thursday, November 11, 2010 Time: 12:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00) Meeting Number: 749 697 377 Meeting Password: riskisswell ——————————————————- To join the online meeting (Now from iPhones and other Smartphones too!) ——————————————————- 1. Go to […]

 

Cloudiots on Parade

UPDATE: Should have known Chris Hoff would have been all over this already. From the Twitter Conversation I missed last night: Chris, I award you an honorary NewSchool diploma for that one. ——————————————————————————- From:  Amazon Says Cloud Beats Data Center Security where Steve Riley says, “in no uncertain terms: it’s more secure there than in […]

 

A Letter from Sid CRISC – ious

In the comments to “Why I Don’t Like CRISC” where I challenge ISACA to show us in valid scale and in publicly available models, the risk reduction of COBIT adoption, reader Sid starts to get it, but then kinda devolves into a defense of COBIT or something.  But it’s a great comment, and I wanted […]

 

Book review: "The Human Contribution"

James Reason’s entire career was full of mistakes. Most of them were other people’s. And while we all feel that way, in his case, it was really true. As a professor of psychology, he made a career of studying human errors and how to prevent them. He has a list of awards that’s a full […]

 

Dear CloudTards: "Securing" The Cloud isn't the problem…

@GeorgeResse pointed out this article http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/five-facts-every-cloud-computing-pro-should-know-174 from @DavidLinthicum today.  And from a Cloud advocate point of view I like four of the assertions.  But his point about Cloud Security is off: “While many are pushing back on cloud computing due to security concerns, cloud computing is, in fact, as safe as or better than most […]

 

The lumbering ogre of Enterprise Governance is no replacement for real Quality Management.

Gideon Rasmussen, CISSP, CISA, CISM, CIPP, writes in his latest blog post (http://www.gideonrasmussen.com/article-22.html) about the BP Oil spill and operational risk, and the damages the spill is causing BP.  Ignoring the hindsight bias of the article here… “This oil spill is a classic example of a black swan (events with the potential for severe impact […]

 

Measurement Theory & Risk Posts You Should Read

These came across the SIRA mailing list. They were so good, I had to share: https://eight2late.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/cox%E2%80%99s-risk-matrix-theorem-and-its-implications-for-project-risk-management/ http://eight2late.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/visualising-content-and-context-using-issue-maps-an-example-based-on-a-discussion-of-coxs-risk-matrix-theorem/ http://eight2late.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/on-the-limitations-of-scoring-methods-for-risk-analysis/ Thanks to Kevin Riggins for finding them and pointing them out.

 

ISACA CRISC – A Faith-Based Initiative? Or, I Didn't Expect The Spanish Inquisition

In comments to my “Why I Don’t Like CRISC” article, Oliver writes: CobIT allows to segregate what is called IT in analysable parts.  Different Risk models apply to those parts. e.g. Information Security, Architecture, Project management. In certain areas the risk models are more mature (Infosec / Project Management) and in certain they are not […]

 

30 vs 150,000

For your consideration, two articles in today’s New York Times. First, “How to Remind a Parent of the Baby in the Car?:” INFANTS or young children left inside a vehicle can die of hyperthermia in a few hours, even when the temperature outside is not especially hot. It is a tragedy that kills about 30 […]

 

Getting the time dimension right

If you are developing or using security metrics, it’s inevitable that you’ll have to deal with the dimension of time. “Data” tells you about the past. “Security” is a judgement about the present. “Risk” is a cost of the future, brought to the present. The way to marry these three is through social learning processes.

 

On Uncertain Security

One of the reasons I like climate studies is because the world of the climate scientist is not dissimilar to ours.  Their data is frought with uncertainty, it has gaps, and it might be kind of important (regardless of your stance of anthropomorphic global warming, I think we can all agree that when the climate […]

 

Why I'm Skeptical of "Due Diligence" Based Security

Some time back, a friend of mine said “Alex, I like the concept of Risk Management, but it’s a little like the United Nations – Good in concept, horrible in execution”. Recently, a couple of folks have been talking about how security should just be a “diligence” function, that is, we should just prove that […]

 

Everybody complains about lack of information security research, but nobody does anything about it

There has been a disconnect between the primary research sectors and a lack of appropriate funding in each is leading to decreased technological progress, exposing a huge gap in security that is happily being exploited by cybercriminals. No one seems to be able to mobilize any signficant research into breakthrough cyber security solutions. It’s been very frustrating to see so much talk and so little action. This post proposes one possible solution: Information Security Pioneers Fellowship Program (ISPFP), similar to Gene Spafford’s proposal for a Information Security and Privacy Extended Grant (ISPEG) for academic researchers.

 

Why I Don't Like CRISC, Day Two

Yesterday, I offered up a little challenge to suggest that we aren’t ready for a certification around understanding information risk.  Today I want to mention why I think this CRISCy stuff is dangerous. What if how we’re approaching the subject is wrong?  What if it’s mostly wrong and horribly expensive? I’m going to offer that […]

 

Doing threat intelligence right

To improve threat intelligence, it’s most important to address the flaws in how we interpret and use the intelligence that we already gather. Intelligence analysts are human beings, and many of their failures follow from intuitive ways of thinking that, while allowing the human mind to cut through reams of confusing information, often end up misleading us.

 

For Blog/Twitter Conversation: Can You Defend "GRC"?

Longtime readers know that I’m not the biggest fan of GRC as it is “practiced” today.  I believe G & C are subservient to risk management. So let me offer you this statement to chew on: “A metric for Governance is only useful inasmuch as it describes an ability to manage risk” True or False, […]

 
 

Miscommunicating risks to teenagers

A lesson in miscommunication of risk from “abstinence only” sex education aimed at teenagers. The educators emphasize the failure rate of condoms, but never mention the failure rate of abstinence-only policies when implemented by teenagers.

 

For Those Not In The US (or even if you are)

I’d like to wish US readers a happy Thanksgiving. For those outside of the US, I thought this would be a nice little post for today: A pointer to an article in the Financial Times, “Baseball’s love of statistics is taking over football“ Those who indulge my passion for analysis and for sport know that […]

 
 

Rich Mogull's Divine Assumptions

Our friend Rich Mogull has an interesting post up on his blog called “Always Assume“.  In it, he offers that “assumption” is part of a normal scenario building process, something that is fairly inescapable when making business decisions.  And he offers a simple, pragmatic process for assumptions which is mainly scenario development, justification, and action.    […]

 

How to Value Digital Assets (Web Sites, etc.)

If you need to do financial justification or economic analysis for information security, especially risk analysis, then you need to value digital assets to some degree of precision and accuracy. There is no unversally applicable and acceptable method. This article presents a method that will assist line-of-business managers to make economically rational decisions consistent with overall enterprise goals and values.

 

The Cost of a Near-Miss Data Breach

Near misses are very valuable signals regarding future losses. If we ignore them in our cost metrics, we might make some very poor decisions. This example shows that there is a qualitative difference between “ground truth data” (in this case, historical cash flow for data breach events) and overall security metrics, which need to reflect our estimates about the future, a.k.a. risk.

 

Is risk management too complicated and subtle for InfoSec?

Luther Martin, blogger with Voltage Security, has advised caution about using of risk risk management methods for information security, saying it’s “too complicated and subtle” and may lead decision-makers astray. To backup his point, he uses the example of the Two Envelopes Problem in Bayesian (subjectivist) probability, which can lead to paradoxes. Then he posed an analogous problem in information security, with the claim that probabilistic analysis would show that new security investments are unjustified. However, Luther made some mistakes in formulating the InfoSec problem and thus the lessons from Two Envelopes Problem don’t apply. Either way, a reframing into a “possible worlds” analysis resolves the paradoxes and accurately evaluates the decision alternatives for both problems. Conclusion: risk management for InfoSec is complicated and subtle, but that only means it should be done with care and with the appropriate tools, methods, and frameworks. Unsolved research problems remain, but the Two Envelopes Problem and similar are not among them.

 

Mike Dahn Wants to NewSchool PCI

And I couldn’t agree more. Capability and Maturity Model Creation in Information Security — PS – sorry for using “NewSchool” as a verb.

 

A Black Hat Sneak Preview (Part 2 of ?)

Following up on my previous post, here’s Part 2, “The Factors that Drive Probable Use”. This is the meat of our model. Follow up posts will dig deeper into Parts 1 and 2. At Black Hat we’ll be applying this model to the vulnerabilities that are going to be released at the show. But before […]

 

An Example of Our Previous Graph In Action

I wanted to throw it out here as an example of how you would the model from my earlier post in real life. So let’s take the recently released Internet Explorer security vulnerability and see how it fits. Now this is a pretty brain-dead example and hardly requires a special tool, but I think it […]

 

A Black Hat Sneak Preview (Part 1 of ?)

Alex and I will be on a panel, A Black Hat Vulnerability Risk Assessment, at this year’s Black Hat. We’ll be discussing the need to perform a risk assessment of vulnerabilities as you become aware of them in a deeper context then just looking at the CVSS scores. Things to consider are what compensating controls […]