Josh More – Starmind Blog

There is a Persian creation story that goes much the same way as the usual creation myth. First, there was nothing, then there was a god (Ohrmazd). The god made stuff and then people. Then the people screwed up.

People screwing up is really a common theme in myth, when you think about it.  Maybe that says something about life?

In this case, though, the type of the screwup is a bit different. There's nothing here about wanting to the equal of the gods, disobeying orders or even just desiring to be more than they are.  Instead, the people wind up having children (a popular activity). Then since they can't bear to be separated from their kids, they eat them.

Ohrmazd the creator god is understandably surprised at this turn of events. What's interesting is the solution. Knowing that the people just love too greatly, he reduced their love by 99%.

(As an aside, it's worth noting that the Persians did a lot of interesting mathematical exploration and that this is the only myth I know of that uses numbers like this instead of something like "reduced their love as if love were water in the cap of an acorn, and when emptied, the moisture that remained was as the love that remained within the man the woman". Are the two related? I don't know, but it's interesting.)

With the amount of love they could feel, reduced, the people were able to have children and let them live long enough to have children of their own. Thus, did humanity prosper.

Now, in the original, this was but a small piece of the story of creation (which also involved a devil and a bull, much conflict and blood and all the fun stuff you find in creation myths). However, for our purposes, it is enough.

There is a lot of talk in the business community these days about the power of love. I have no doubt that there is something there. If you love what you do, you can do it without feeling the burden. You can more easily justify risks and you can share the load by letting your love inspire others. However, there is a dark side.

The same love that makes it easy to get started on a project is what makes it hard to stop. Love can get you through the boring 20% of the work that takes 80% of the time. However, it's not so good at allowing you to stop when you get to 100% complete. I've seen projects that fail because the quest for perfection goes too far. I've seen businesses falter and fail because the founder loves it too much to allow it to change.

That form of love is stifling, and while it's becoming more acceptable to recognize the harms of excessive love within personal relationships, it's still not well considered within the business world.

This is the sort of emotion that makes security practitioners secure things for the sake of their being secure... they've fallen in love with the idea of "security" instead of "protection". There are many ways to protect an asset. Keeping out the bad guys is but one.

It's a tough balance, I know. We have to love enough to keep us going in the face of incredibly difficult odds and constantly changing threats, but then, once a project is complete, reduce our love by 99% and allow our project to continue on without meddling with it and destroying it in the process.

While learning to let go is difficult and messy, if we're lucky, we can do it without the massive quantities of blood and death that the Persians seem to have required.

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There's often something lacking when I read Native American mythology. Perhaps it's that that form of mythology uses a different form of logic, perhaps they are fragmentary, or perhaps it's because the original tellings were oral and participatory and it just doesn't carry over to the written word. However, once in a while, you get a myth like this:

Why the sun rolls along

Sun was warned by a messenger, "Someone is coming to kill you."

Soon a person came along and seized the Sun. He threw him toward the East, but Sun came back. He threw him toward the South, but Sun came back. The evil one came toward Sun again, but Sun began to roll along. Sun rolled and rolled and rolled along. He rolls along to this very day.

(From Shasta Indian Tales by Rosemary Holsinger.)

Clearly, there is something missing here. Such myths raise more questions than they answer... but lucky for us, this isn't a mythology blog, so we can leave the questions alone. The point here is that the sun just keeps on rolling, no matter how the evil person tries to kill him. As with many things, it's all about persistence.

I've had numerous projects in the works for years, and at some point, they just stopped moving forward. Due to a lack of energy on my part and other pressing concerns, progress just ceased. There's only so much time a day (mostly because Sun keeps on moving), and it's sometimes not possible to keep everything progressing and something has to stop in order for other things to continue.  Last week, my blog stopped.  I had taken a week of vacation to make some progress on another project.  I had worked up a buffer of blog posts to cover the time I wouldn't be paying attention to the blog... but I forgot about the post-push resting period.

Ooops.

The nice thing about being a mythic character such as Sun, is that you only have one thing on which to focus.  (Well, two if you count "rolling along" and "being glowy".)  Here in the real world, we often have too many things going on to "keep on rolling" on more than one.  For me, the one thing that is always 100% consistent is monitoring security posture.  Things change every day.  In fact, just over the weekend, we got reports of an iPhone attack, a discussion on legacy systems, and a revival of an old attack.  Last month, there was a huge amount of malware to keep on top of as well as numerous patches from major vendors.  The threats never stop, so those of us in security have to keep on rolling.

Unfortunately, this means that other things have to be dropped sometimes. But hey, even Sun sometimes takes a day off, so I don't feel that bad. I'll just try to pick things back up and get to posting again. Hopefully I won't miss to many days as I get things running again.

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This isn't one of Aesop's more commonly known fables. Like most of them, it quite simple. Essentially, a dog and rooster are friends (we ignore the improbability of that bit), and taking a bit of a holiday. As they came do the end of the day, they decide to go to sleep. As is their nature, the rooster perches atop a hollow tree and the dog curls up to sleep inside the tree.

When morning comes, the rooster crows, and attracts the attention of a fox. The fox invites the rooster home for breakfast. The rooster, being wise (demonstrating again, that this is a fable and not reality), tells the fox the he is regrettably unable to accept such a generous offer, but instead invites the fox to join him inside the tree. The fox (seemingly unable to smell the dog within) enters the tree and is promptly devoured.

Clearly, the lesson that Aesop wished us to learn was to beware the rooster. However, it is also quite possible that Aesop was covering for the known illegal leanings of roosters and dogs. This dastardly duo was singlehandedly responsible for the massive reduction of the fox population in ancient Greece. This is much as how modern phishers work.

Security attacks have gotten sufficiently complex that different people are better at different aspects. Some attackers are best at writing malware and others are best at sending the emails that distribute the malware. So, just like the dog and rooster, they have gotten good at working together. By each relying upon their their best skills, they can take over (attract and eat) various targeted computers (foxes).

Of course, this only works on foxes that aren't paying attention.  If the fox in the story had simply stopped to realize that:

1. Roosters tend not to live in hollow trees.
2. Dogs have a noticeable odor. . .  especially for foxes.

The same applies to phishing emails.

1. Organizations such as the FBI and IRS are generally not in the habit of emailing people.
2. Phishing spam also has a noticeable odor (spear phishing is a bit different).

At the core, email is not 100% deliverable.  If anything is extremely important (as someting from the FBI or IRS would be), it would come in a manner that is more reliable.  Registered letter and phone calls tend to be popular.  Similarly, if someone has your email address, wouldn't it make sense that they already have your name, phone number and other personal information?  If an email asks you to "verify" your information, it's good to be suspicious.

Above all, unlike the fox in the story (and just like foxes in real life) it pays to be wary.

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A bit of poetry to start your week:

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Ozymandias (who we now know as Ramesses the Great) was an Egyptian king who many consider to be the most important one ever.

( probably translates as "World's Greatest Pharaoh" and was found on a mug^*, probably given by Prince Ramesses-Meriamen-Nebweben in a desperate plea for attention.)

^*Not really.

As tempting as it is to go off on the typical history geek listing of great accomplishments, I'll just point you to the Wikipedia Link instead.  Besides, it's more fun to look at Shelley's poem.  The point, fairly obviously, is that Ozymandias was one impressive guy in his day.  He was the Grand Poobah of all of Egypt, did a lot of impressive stuff and was well neigh irreplaceable.  Today, little remains of what he did, we get his name wrong in history and make fun of him in blog posts.  He was vital in his day and was utterly erased by the sands of time.

(Granted, due to advances in archeology, we know that this isn't historically true... but we're talking about a poem from from 1818 (and this blog is ostensibly about IT security anyway, so we're going to ignore the truth in favor of the lesson.))

We all know people like Ozymandias. Many of them, for some reason, seem to find jobs as IT administrators or developers. They may protect their knowledge within a little silo whilst claiming "job security". They may build large and complex systems and brag about how they are so complex that no one can ever figure out how to support them. They may resist applying updates or integrating their systems in with everything else, because it's their legacy. They may also be laid off in the next round.

The problem is that actually, Ozymandias was pretty impressive. He was the most important person in his sphere (being Egypt between 1279 BC to 1213 BC). However, he was clearly not the most important person ever (Bing says that was Juanita Gooden's mother, Google is less certain) and his works have clearly not survived. The same applies to those special isolated IT systems.

The sad fact is that people don't last forever, and whether they retire or move on, the systems they leave behind won't last forever either. In fact, if there is a system that others were never allowed to maintain, it will often age even more quickly than other legacy solutions. No one will be able to troubleshoot it or update it for changing business conditions. It will begin to fail and then the business owners will likely look at purchasing a system to replace it.

Sadly, when this occurs, it serves to commoditize the business just a little bit more. Over time, that which makes a business unique will be eroded by the sands of time and when the business fails, nothing will be left but ruins. Then, three thousand years later, some historico-business-poet^* will write something about the former technology and how greatness doesn't last.

^*OK, you tell me when they'll call industry analysts in three thousand years.

The thing is, this could have been avoided. An empire does not exist solely for one man... nor does a business. If the business can identify those protectionist silos and work towards integrating them with the rest of the operations, not only can technological similarities be leveraged but it would be possible to add developers or maintainers and accelerate the adaptability of the business. This would drive the business away from becoming a commodity... then they just have to wait for the other businesses to slowly crumble into dust and they emerge victorious.

(Image by Hajor.)

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Yesterday (as I write this), I was privileged to attend the Iowa State University Cyber Defense Competition. The basic idea is that you have students build a handful of servers that must withstand attack from the "red team" while simultaneously providing services.

Though I generally specialize in Linux defense, I did manage some successful attacks against both operating systems. There was one team that watched the network and blocked some of the IP addresses that were attacking them. There was another that was hiding behind a firewall appliance.  However, what was most interesting was the level of awareness that different teams had about what I was doing. Generally, once I connected via an encrypted session, the admins let me do whatever I wanted to do. I could try exploit after exploit with no interference at all. Odds are, if they were watching me at all, they were looking at network traffic. As such, I was hidden from their view due to encapsulation.

TechTarget defines encapsulation as: "In general, encapsulation is the inclusion of one thing within another thing so that the included thing is not apparent. Decapsulation is the removal or the making apparent a thing previously encapsulated." . . . but this is boring. I could go on at length about how TCPIP has layers like an onion (or an ogre), or I could just point you over to the The TCPIP Guide. However, since TCPIP is also boring, I'll let you go read about it yourself.

Instead, I want to talk about the Mayans. After the competition, I was relaxing at home by reading a book of Mesoamerican Myth, and I got to a part that told how Xbalanque and Hunahpu (let's call them Xbally and Huna for short) were contacted by their grandmother. Apparently, the spread of the Internet had not reached the Yucatán Peninsula by 250AD, so when their grandmother wished to send them a message, she didn't send them an instant message. Instead, she told a louse.

Now, it is clearly ridiculous to think of a louse able to carry to a message all the way to the Eastern end of the Earth (likely Tulum), which is why it was most fortunate that the louse was swallowed by a toad. The toad, of course, was eaten by a snake, which was gobbled up by a hawk. The hawk then flew to Xbally and Huna. Of course, the hawk could not give them the message directly. He had to first disgorge the snake, which spit up the toad which vomited up the louse (you can't keep a good louse down), which delivered the message. At which point, our pals Xbally and Huna went off to the underworld to work for some strangely-named underworld gods, avenge their father and otherwise exit the interesting part of our story.

See, the message couldn't get there on it's own. No matter how loud someone shouts, there's a limited distance along which the message may be understood. Thus, it helps to encapsulate the message inside a louse (SSH). If anyone looks at the louse, they just think "eew, louse!" and not "hey, maybe that louse contains a secret message". Even if the louse were cut open, it wouldn't reveal anything other than louse guts. The message is well concealed.

However, even though a louse is a good way to hide in plain sight, it's not so good at crossing distances. Particularly if the terrain is somewhat marshy. That's why, if you don't want the message to drown, you'd better put it in a toad (UDP). This way, the delivery is more robust.

(As an aside, I chose UDP over TCP for this analogy, because otherwise at the end of the story, Xbally and Huna would have to find another louse, give it a message that says that they got the message, shove it in the toad, feed the toad to the snake, let the hawk eat the snake and send the snake back to their grandmother... and that would just be silly.)

A toad, however, doesn't do so well in all environments. It may be able to hop over a desert, but it would take a while and it could get lost. That's why toads are more comfortable inside of snakes (IP). The snake has a more complex brain and can remember more of the environment than a toad can. Thus, instead of just hopping from puddle to puddle in the hope that it's going the right way, the snake can take a more direct route... within it's own little area. Snakes are, alas, not so good at crossing barriers like mountains and chasms. For that, you want a hawk (Link Layer). The hawk is used to flying and tends to have a good solid understanding of it's environment. When it flies, even if snake-laden, the hawk can get where it needs to go quite quickly by flying through the air (Layer 1).

Thus, by combining all four animals (or Link, IP, UDP and SSH), you can get a message securely to where it needs to go. True, these days we use somewhat obscure mechanisms to do so, but hey, these days lice are relatively rare.

It's a good tradeoff.

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