Securely Deleting Data Before Donating or Recycling Your Devices

Katherine Boehret has a good article over on All Things D about recycling your technology. But it overlooks one crucial point - you need to make sure your information is deleted before you hand it over. If you don't, your information, including financial data, could wind up in someone else's hands. A recent case-in-point was made when many refurbished Motorola Xoom devices were sold with their old owners' data still on them. When that happens it can lead to embarrassment (think private photos, videos), identity theft, financial fraud or other unpleasant things.

To avoid any of these calamities, you'll want to take steps to wipe out your data. You should do this regardless of what the company or person you're giving it to tells you. But don't worry, securely erasing your information has never been easier! Many devices have mechanisms built in to do just that. And there are some good tools out there for your desktops and laptops.

Securely Erasing your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad

Apple's website has simple instructions on how to securely erase an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Here are the steps from Apple's support site:

You can remove all settings and information from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch using "Erase All Content and Settings" in Settings > General > Reset.

For even more security, plug your device into your laptop and use iTunes to restore the device to its factory settings (but do not restore from a previous backup) before using the Erase All Content and Settings feature. Here are the steps from Apple's support site:

1. Verify that you are using the latest version of iTunes before attempting to update.
2. Connect your device to your computer.
3. Select your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch when it appears in iTunes under Devices.
4. Select the Summary tab.
5. Select the Restore option.
6. When prompted to back up your settings before restoring, select the Back Up option (see in the image below). If you have just backed up the device, it is not necessary to create another.
   
7. Select the Restore option when iTunes prompts you (as long as you've backed up, you should not have to worry about restoring your iOS device).
   
8. When the restore process has completed, the device restarts and displays the Apple logo while starting up:
   
   After a restore, the iOS device displays the "Connect to iTunes" screen. For updating to iOS 5 or later, follow the steps in the iOS Setup Assistant. For earlier versions of iOS, keep your device connected until the "Connect to iTunes" screen goes away or you see "iPhone is activated."
   

Securely Erasing your Android Device

If you have an Android phone or tablet, you also have an easy option to securely erase the data. Though it's not quite as simple as with Apple devices, since Android has many versions and many devices that it supports. On Android, within the Privacy Settings dialog there is an option to delete all the data. The Google online manual for Android describes the option this way:

Opens a dialog where you can erase all of your personal data from internal tablet storage, including information about your Google Account, any other accounts, your system and application settings, any downloaded applications, as well as your music, photos, videos, and other files.

You should make sure that you have selected the options to delete internal memory and any memory on a SD card. If you don't have that option, the easiest thing to do would be to simply remove the SD card before donating, recycling, selling or giving it away.

Securely Erasing your Blackberry Device

Research In Motion's Blackberry devices differ in the steps to wipe them. Instead of trying to mention all versions and models, I'll suggest you look through Settings, Options or Device Settings to find something that mentions Security. In there, you should find something that says Security Wipe or Wipe Handheld. For specific directions you may be able to search the web and find help.

The same advice for SD cards applies to the Blackberry as to the Android phones. If it doesn't offer you the option, you should probably just the card.

Securely Erasing your Windows Mobile Device

Microsoft Windows Mobile also has multiple versions with different ways to securely erase your data. And again, my advice is to explore on your own. Look through Settings or Options until you find something called System Tab, Security, or About. In there you should see Reset, Reset your Phone or Clear Storage. Again, for specific directions you may be able to search the web and find help.

And for SD cards on Windows Mobile devices, you should likely just keep it.

Securely Erasing your Desktop or Laptop

There is some great free software called DBAN that will securely erase data from your desktop or laptop. I've personally used it for years and highly recommend it. Simply download the ISO file and burn it to CD or DVD. The method to do this varies across operating systems. If you need help, search the Internet and you'll find lots of information.

Off Topic: Traveling with Technology

There was a Twitter conversation with Martin McKeay and Jerry Gamblin today talking about how geeks handle traveling with all our technology. Jerry suggested that Martin write a blog post, but I decided to beat him to the punch. ;) This is part of an upcoming series of posts to my travel blog under the heading of Traveling Skills: The Art of Packing. In this post I describe how and what I pack as a geek who travels with technology, as well as why. Even though it's a bit off topic, I'm mentioning it here since so many of the folks who read this blog travel a lot.

I hope you enjoy it! Tips for Traveling with Technology

Detecting DNS Changer Infection with CloudFlare and OpenDNS

If you're using CloudFlare to enhance speed and security (it's a great, free service, by the way!), you'll want to check out one of their latest apps, created in conjunction with OpenDNS. The app will notify your website visitors if they are infected with the DNS Changer malware.

If you're not familiar with the DNS Changer malware, it modifies settings of the victim computers, rerouting traffic to banks and other sites of interests through the hands of the bot masters. This means sensitive information could be compromised.

Last year the FBI was able to legally take over the DNS Changer rerouting systems, protecting the victims to some degree. However, the FBI has to relinquish control in July, meaning victim systems which have not been fixed will be unable to access websites as normal. The FBI has an in-depth writeup on the DNS Changer malware (PDF link), along with information on how to find out if you're infected and how to fix the problem.

Enter the CloudFlare application. If you enable this application, CloudFlare will notify DNS Changer infected visitors to your website that are compromised. They also provide a link with instructions on how to fix the problem. Here's what the notification looks like:

Firewalls and Anti-Virus Aren't Dead - Should They Be?

Over the last several years, firewalls and anti-virus have been losing effectiveness. Many in the information security community have recognized this. Unfortunately many of the business and operations people haven't. The threats that these technologies (tools to assist in a solution, not the solution themselves) were designed to solve have changed. That's not to say that they do nothing - they can still be useful - but your organization needs to know what they're meant to counter and how to use them properly.

I was inspired to finally write this down by a story Wendy Nather contributed to Infosec Island, entitled Why We Still Need Firewalls and AV. While I agree with her general premise, I think the article doesn't get to the real heart of the issue. When firewalls and anti-virus were all we had and effectively countered the threats we faced, they tended to be used more as they were designed. But now, firewalls and anti-virus don't counter the majority of the threats and aren't used very well.

Firewalls were invented a couple of decades ago to keep Internet-borne threats out. The firewall has its roots in the early 1990s, a time when commerce was prohibited on the Internet and most companies didn't have any presence there. As computer networking grew in popularity, connecting to the Internet was a way to share information across organizations, as well as internally. However, within a decade, Internet attacks were prevalent and organizations needed a way to protect the devices on their network. The firewall was popularized as a way to enforce a hard separation between the outside and the inside. The major advantage to this approach was that it was much cheaper than securing every single device. And at the time just as effective, since most devices had no need to communicate over the Internet and so a small set of connections were allowed to pass through the firewall.

The Internet landscape has changed drastically since then. And with it, the Internet threats. Modern business processes are highly dependent upon and thoroughly integrated with the Internet. Organizations invite masses of Internet devices into their network to deliver web pages, email content, support mobile devices and dozens of other reasons. At the same time, devices within the network routinely initiate communications to the Internet and pass data back and forth. Firewalls have gotten better, but they simply can't handle the new ways in which organizations work on the Internet, nor the more sophisticated threats. They still have a use as a tool to protect networks, but more tools are needed.

Similarly, anti-virus was first developed to detect, prevent and remove individual viruses. These software packages were simplistic, identifying malicious programs and files by looking for indicators or "signatures" that were unique to each virus. This was, again, before the Internet was widely used and most virus transmission was very slow. The anti-virus industry was easily able to keep up with new viruses and forms of existing viruses. This was a time when the number of specimens was very small and they didn't change very often. Updating the signatures was a task done once a year or so, and in fact when the subscription-based licensing model for anti-virus was initially launched it was widely viewed as somewhat of a betrayal of trust - paying continually for the same software. It was a different time.

But today's situation is vastly different from what anti-virus was designed to deal with. Because of the proliferation of Internet connectivity, malicious software spreads very quickly. Instead of taking months to spread to thousands of systems, it takes seconds to spread to millions. And the malware itself has become much better at avoiding detection, taking steps to hide its signature. Most viruses today are obfuscated a number of times and checked to make sure no anti-virus software can detect it - all in a matter of seconds, and all before it's sent out to its victim. And viruses are often created and distributed in such a way that anti-virus vendors don't get a copy before the malicious software finds its victim. And when it does infect a device, it frequently disables any anti-virus software and hides in such a way that it can't be detected except by sophisticated, usually manual techniques. Anti-virus software largely still relies on signature based detection, which is increasingly growing ineffective and often slows down system performance.

Further decreasing the effectiveness of firewalls and anti-virus in organizations is the way they're used. Because of the massive number of connections in and out of a network, definitions of what is and is not allowed and exactly how to allow or deny network connections have become a sprawling mess. And underneath all this complexity, many organizations don't even do the basics right - properly configuring and managing these tools. And administering anti-virus often means running daily reports of issues and sending a technician onsite to manually investigate what's gone wrong. Firewalls and anti-virus cost many organizations millions of dollars a year and are failing to do what they should.

So why should we keep these things around? In the case of firewalls, they do exactly what they are supposed to do and do it quite well. Organizations just need to get smarter about using them. That means limiting firewalls' purpose to what they do well and handing off other duties to other tools. In addition, organizations need to make sure they have a good firewall management program - even small organizations. And anti-virus should be re-understood as a broader concept of endpoint protection. This includes securing configurations and access, restricting software to that which is known to be safe and putting tools in place to detect anomalous behavior. Anti-virus software packages can help fulfill the last piece - telling systems administrators that a known threat has been detected or that suspicious activity has been happening.

But one thing I think we as security professionals should be advocating is reducing the amount of money and resources spent on these technologies. Instead, shift to more effective ways to secure an organization. For example, by providing better training to IT staff for using with the existing tools and technologies. Or improving security awareness programs so that viruses (not to mention many other types of attacks) are less likely to be effective. In the end, this will allow an organization to maintain the same level of security at a lower cost or to increase security at the same cost.

What Infosec Can Learn from Enron

Enron's financial auditors and management conspired against their investors. The system that was supposed to protect against this kind of fraud, instead worked against the people it was supposed to protect. And there was hell to pay when the organizations collapsed and when the fraud was exposed. The Harvard Business Review today makes the point that just because an auditor approves something, that doesn't always mean its right.

Information security professionals, take a lesson from Enron: auditors aren't the sole authoritative voice, and they can be fooled or coerced just like anyone else. Too often internal and external auditors are trusted as the arbiters of what's right and wrong. But this can fail an organization if the executives don't understand what role the auditors should be playing.

Auditors serve as an important check on the system by assessing against a known framework. But there is always room for interpretation in any standard. That's especially true in areas where standards are evolving quickly or where a new field is opening up. That was the case for Enron with the "mark to market" strategy, and that is true today in Infosec.

How do auditors fail the organizations they serve?
Let's use the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) as an example. The PCI-DSS has done a lot of good over the years it has been around. But as IT, payment systems and threats have changed, it has had a hard time keeping up. As an instructor famously said in a class I attended, the DSS only changes once every two years; but the Security Standards Council (SSC) can change the meaning of the words they use at any time.

The PCI-DSS has also heavily misinterpreted. The standard is meant to be flexible so organizations can find the right security controls, rather than blindly following what's written. However, many auditors stick staunchly to the standard, verbatim. That means the company either has to jump through hoops to get their official compliance stamp, or can game the system to fit within the narrow definitions. Other auditors are so easily influenced or coerced by their client that virtually any control is deemed adequate.

And there's room for abuse of the standards, as well. Some audit companies are well-known for providing "clean" or "green" reports to their clients (sometimes those who spend above a certain dollar level), regardless of what the actual security looks like. Breaches have left several organizations wondering why they paid high fees to auditors who didn't find the security flaws.

So it's important to know how much to trust your auditors and what role they serve. You can't give them authority to make your decisions for you, but you can use them as advisers. In the Enron case, their auditors had huge amounts of business in other areas, meaning there was a conflict. In your organization the auditor may be trying to get a big contract, unseat a competitor, make a name for himself or whatever. In these cases the bad advice is almost always unintentional, but still present.

Probably once every month or two I speak with a high-level executive looking to hire someone to check behind their auditor. It's usually because the executive suspects of one of the failures above. In reviewing the work done by the auditor I usually find that the executive's instinct is right.

How can you help your audit succeed?
Choose your auditors carefully and use the right process. I helped write the SANS whitepaper How to Choose a Qualified Security Assessor (PDF link) and there's other good questions to ask for choosing an auditor elsewhere. But it goes beyond just choosing the right auditor, you have to have the right audit process in place. Here are some tips to avoid the pitfalls that got Enron into trouble.

• Evaluate Reputation. Not just whether they've done a lot of audits before, or whether all their clients pass, but whether they are perceived to have high integrity, technical capabilities and security knowledge. Don't get this from the auditor or their hand-picked references, ask around. Reputations follow companies and people and are spread quickly.
• Evaluate Skillset. Auditors falling too far toward leniency or rigidity often do so because they are not well-versed in IT and security. That means they don't understand the intent of the standards they're auditing against, which means they can't possible give you good advice that's outside of the letter of the standard.
• Oversight. Make sure there is good oversight of the auditors that are performing the work. This could be done by an internal audit group, a CISO or even a CIO. The point is that someone needs to make sure the work is not just done, but done right - thorough, accurate and independent.
• Use Auditors as Checks. Don't forget that auditors should be checks on what you're doing, they shouldn't be telling you exactly how to do it. They've often got a lot of good advice, but you have to weigh that advice carefully within the context of your business and your ethics.

But even going through a thorough diligence process can get you stuck with a bad auditor. That happens. But when it does, you've always got the option to get a second opinion. And I'll leave you with a great video on some signs you've got a bad auditor.