Security Meets Cost

I was recently asked by a small business how could they secure their IT on a budget this made me stop to think about that tricky subject "security meets cost". It is in these terms that a business must be practical, you need to stand back and identify your actual financial loss were a cyber attack or unforeseen event to occur resulting in the loss of data. And to be quite honest if your spending thousands on perimeter controls and don't have anyone in your business who can properly configure, monitor and maintain these devices then your really just throwing money down the drain.

After going through the business I advised them to put in place a number of steps that would go a long way towards protecting them. It must be noted that the business in question did not deal with any payments card information (PCI), personally identifiable information (PII) or personal health information (PHI) if your business is dealing with the above then you will need to put more controls in place.

My plan for the business was pretty simple and I will lay it out below.

1) Education:
This is one of the fundamental roles that small businesses neglect, there are hundreds of services out there that will do training days on different areas in an easy to understand and education manner. If you can train staff to identify Phising, Smishing and other everyday threats then you are starting to win a war on the front line. Education helps get employees to think before opening an attachment or giving out "harmless" information over the phone. For the more adventures small business there are packages available for you to run harmless attacks that contain educational videos when clicked. PhishMe would be one such company that comes to mind in that regard.

2) Backups:
This one is quite simple but often forgotten, with the rise of ransomware every small business should keep daily or weekly backups. These backups should be occasionally tested to ensure that they can restore systems in the event of an emergency such as a ransomware infection.

3) Business Continuity Plan:
 Every business should have one and should test it, you can work on building this up over a period of time but you need to start somewhere. EG. if the building floods are our desktops on the floor? Maybe we should elevate them to mitigate this problem. During this flood do employee have the ability to work from home? Yes we have remote access to the building over our companies VPN.

The above are just suggestions but you get the drift if you start to disect your company and compare it to potential events you might be surprised what you come up with. Fail to prepare then prepare to fail.

4) Virus and Anti- malware protection:
Again this is simple but neglected in many small businesses, buy a good antivirus and anti-malware package and set the updates to times you know your employees wont shut them down eg lunch time or after working hours. A good antivirus and malware solution is like having a security guard in your network throwing out all the bad guys.


5) Enable Bit-locker or the equivalent:
Bit-locker encrypts your disk so if someone breaks in and robs your physical machine in theory bit-locker will keep that information safe, unless of course the thief is Homeland security or the equivalent in which case your data is the least of your worries.

6) Password Policy:
Put in place a robust password policy that includes the rotation of passwords regularly and password history check to prevent the re-use of passwords.

7) Third party checks:
If you are using a third party to store data or to provide remote support ask them to provide you with a list of controls that are in place to protect you from a security point of view. If they tell you they are super secure and you need to trust them get worried because this means they haven't got anything to give you and your cloud solution is some guy with a laptop and 15 housemates that use it to stream illegal movies.

8) Document everything!
You should document all of your procedures and workflows because if one guy has all this information and gets hit by a bus your knowledge is dead. Good documentation is key to smooth transition and helps aid security through clarity.



If you get all the above in order you will have made a decent move towards securing your business at a minimal cost, of course there is plenty of room to do more but the hardest part is always to make a start.

Recovering "Deleted" snapchat messages

You have just arrived at this post and read the heading "recovering deleted snapchat messages" and now your thinking snapchat deletes my messages after 10 seconds doesn't it? Well the simple answer to that question is no. This isn't any kind of a new revelation the research has been around since 2013 it just doesn't seem to be well known so I have decided to do my part to try and highlight it. The main reason for writing this post is to try and get the message through to teenagers and young adults that the content you are sending may not be secure and could come back to bite you. There is also a massive legal issue with the sending of explicit images if both parties are seen as minors and you could land yourself in a whole lot of trouble with the law. It is important to presume that anything you send or do online can be traced and made public so the safest approach to take is think twice before sending anything out there that may prove harmful to yourself or others.

If you would like to read through the report on how to recover snapchat messages and I suggest that you do the link can be accessed here. After reading this report maybe you might consider sending a snap to your friends just to let them know you have a code red situation and you need to meet up. For anyone who is to lazy to click on the link I have copied in the body of the report below.
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Methodology

We used two android devices to examine artifacts left behind by Snapchat. An account (rhickman1989) was created on a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and pictures and videos were sent to another account (DeciphForensics). The receiving account was logged into on a Samsung Galaxy S3, when some of the images and videos were viewed, while others were not. We then acquired the phone using AccessData’s Mobile Phone Examiner+ version 5.2.1.499. After the acquisition was complete, the image was exported as an .AD1 image file, and then imported to AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit version 4.0.2.33.

After a brief examination of the contents, a different account (decipforensics2) was created on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and more pictures and videos were sent to the account on the Samsung Galaxy S3 (rhickman1989). This was to determine if there are identifiers for the sender account of a “snap.” The same acquisition process was followed again after the second batch of “snaps” were sent.

After another brief examination of the contents, pictures and videos were sent from the Samsung Galaxy S3 with the rhickman1989 account to both the DeciphForensics and DecipForensics2 accounts. The same acquisition process was followed again after sending these “snaps.”

All examination took place using AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit version 4.0.2.33.

Snapchat Structure

The majority of Snapchat data is stored within the data/data/com.snapchat.android folder. There are four folders within this directory, with two folders within the cache folder.

Examination of the Samsung Galaxy S3 revealed that within the shared_prefs folder are several XML files: CameraPreviewActivity.xml, com.google.android.gcm.xml, com.snapchat.android_preferences.xml, and SnapPreviewActivity.xml.

The com.snapchat.android_preferences.xml File

This file is where the majority of information stored by Snapchat is located. Within this file is a listing of all the contacts stored on the device. This is done with the permission allowed by the user for the application to read the contacts on the device.

Below the list of contacts is a listing of Snapchat messages. It appears that there is a set of fields stored for each message in Snapchat. The following are the fields stored in this section of the XML file: type, mSender, mWasViewed, mCaptionPosition, mCaptionOrientation, mIsLoading, mIsTimerRunning, mIsBeingViewed, MWasOpened, mWasScreenshotted, mDisplayTime, mId, mTimestamp, mStatus, mIcon, and mMediaType.

We sent only two pictures from the DecipForensics2 account, and one was viewed and expired. Within this XML file are two records that show the mSender field set to “decipforensics2.” Of those two records, one has the mWasOpened set to “true.” The author kept documentation as to which images were opened and allowed to expire and which are not, so it is known which image is tied to this record.

The mTimestamp field is stored in Epoch format. Upon conversion of this value, it showed the time that the image was either taken or viewed. Further research will need to be done to determine which it is, however, the time is within the timeframe of both being sent and viewed. Unfortunately, the author did this within a few minutes of each other and did not record the exact time sent.

The mId field for the picture shown to the left is “270518365528484358r.” The mTimestamp field in the same record is “1365528484358.” After converting the Epoch time format to readable format, the time stamp is for April 9, 2013 11:28:04 MDT. The similarities here will be address further in a later section of this paper

The received_image_snaps Folder

Within this folder were located every image sent to the DeciphForensics account on the Samsung Galaxy S3, including the images that had been viewed and were expired. There were some duplicate images with different names as well, the reason for this is unknown.

Android developers created a way for media files such as graphics to be stored on the phone for application use and function without being put into the Gallery application as an image to be viewed. The way that they did this was with .nomedia files. “If a directory has a file named .nomedia, then the media store will not scan and record the metadata of files in that directory” (Hoog, 2011).

Each of the images within the received_image_snaps folder had a .nomedia extension appended to the end of the file name. For example, the name of the file figure 3 is “h1a81hurcs00h1365528700423.jpg.nomedia”. This was likely done to prevent the images stored within this directory from being placed in the gallery or from being scanned by the media store. AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit recognized the .nomedia extension that was appended to the end of the file name and ignored it, displaying the images.

Correlations between the XML Records and the Image Names

There is a small correlation between records within the com.snapchat.android_preferences.xml file and the name of the image file stored in the received_image_snaps folder.

As shown above, there are three correlations between the name of the image, the mTimestamp value, and the mId value. While this is consistent with this image, it is not always consistent with all images. The section in blue is present in several of the other images, only with different numbers following to separate the image.

Conclusion

The author began this research in an attempt to answer several vital questions about the Snapchat application as it is stored and used on Android devices. The author has concluded that metadata is stored for Snapchat images, as shown by the com.snapchat.android_preferences.xml file, and that it contains metadata about expired “snaps” as well as unexpired “snaps,” and that images that are sent via Snapchat are indeed recoverable, and do not “disappear forever.”

Securing your android (the basics)

I have been asked a bit lately about securing android devices as I tend to focus on the apple side of things as I myself use the iPhone. There is a myth out there that android is inherently insecure and this really isn't true, android out of the box is pretty good its the user that make the device insecure. The real issue with android is anyone can make an app and upload it to their store they don't check first to see if you are a potential cyber criminal. I think from memory that at one stage in the past few years the top 5 apps in the android store were in fact trojan horses this might be wrong but I am pretty sure their is some truth their I need to go back and double check this. So to minimize the waffle you ask "what do I need to do to secure my android?" Well I have put together a number of steps that if followed will definitely help you get to a place where you can feel "secure".

1) Do not save all of your passwords in your device! I don't know why I need to say this but people naturally tend to save their passwords for easy access of whatever the reason on their devices. This is a very bad practice and you should avoid this, think of memorizing your passwords of a way to delaying Alzheimer's and not getting ripped off by cyber criminals.

2) Use your devices inbuilt security features, If you are running on Jelly Bean, you can have a screen lock and encryption enabled to further enhance your security. Use these features they will help you keep your device safe.

3) Androids allow you to lock your apps you should use this feature especially for apps that hold sensitive information. Their is a free app that you can download to enable this feature called App Lock.

4) If you are installing an app read what permissions the app want's!!! If you are downloading some recipe app it doesn't need access to your camera, microphone and contacts. This should be common sense but for some reason people download apps and click ok to everything.

5)  Download a mobile security app, androids are very much open to virus's and malware in comparison to their i0S counterparts. An app I think is pretty good is avast!mobile security.

6) One of the most important things you can do to secure your android is secure your network. I know you wont listen but try to avoid using public networks. You can protect your information by using apps like Hideninja VPN so that your outgoing connection is always encrypted, making it harder for anyone to sabotage your data. If you suspect that your device is being attacked, WiFi Protector can help fend off these attackers. To further enhance your network security you can apply settings from SecDroid but note that this app is only for rooted phones.