ProCircular founder and Chief Executive Officer, Aaron Warner is slated to speak at the first annual Awareness Con, an information security conference hosted by Black Hills Information Security (BHIS). The event will be hosted on Wednesday, November 20th in Adel, Iowa at the Adel Public Library. The purpose of Awareness Con is to draw attention to the profession of ethical hacking, commonly referred to as Penetration Testing, and the benefits this practice can have for organizations of all types. Penetration Testing is a simulated attack on an organization's computer and physical security systems to ensure that existing security measures in place are effective.

There has been a recent development regarding a potent vulnerability. To help you stay ahead of the situation, please read the following to learn what the exploit is capable of and what can be done to protect against the it.

Let’s just say there’s a lot to learn from history without quoting Sun Tzu… again. Especially in information and cybersecurity. While much of the birth of cyber realm revolves around the military - many of the members of our community are current or former members of various armed forces - many of us still refer to the military influence of old when working through our business planning and various actions revolving around cybersecurity. A great example is the common use or reference to Boyd’s OODA (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act) loop flow chart in both attack and defensive security applications. In sticking to a military theme, I want to touch on a story from World War II and its applicability in today’s modern cybersecurity world.

If you’re reading this, it’s very likely that you know how to use the internet. It’s also likely you’ve made an account on the internet somewhere. When you created your last account, what kind of requirements were you forced to use? For a number of web services, these requirements still follow the 2003 NIST SP 800-63 Appendix A standards that recommend an 8-character minimum, containing one uppercase, one lowercase, one digit, and one special character (Ex: Procircular1!).

During a penetration test, we’ve found that a common (and easy) way to gather credentials and gain an initial foothold on the client’s network is to perform a Man-in-the-Middle poisoning attack abusing LLMNR & NBT-NS. Depending on how active users are on the network, this attack can give an adversary valuable information almost immediately. Fortunately, with a little knowledge, this attack can be easily remediated.

What is LLMNR & NBT-NS?