Emerging Web Infrastructure Threats
A secure cloud relies on some weak Internet infrastructure with some new BGP vulnerabilities that will be disclosed at Black Hat USA.
The cloud services industry is beginning to sort out some of the concerns that have kept security-conscious organizations away (for example, by creating new technology like bring-your-own-key encryption schemes). Unfortunately, these improvements still don't do anything to repair some of the very worst threats to cloud security -- vulnerabilties buried in the very underpinnings of the Internet.
At the
Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas next month, researchers will bring to light even more threats lurking in Web infrastructure. Here's a glimpse at what's to come.
Leaks in the Router Plumbing
Attacks on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) -- the fabric that all routing on the Internet is based on -- have become so popular that Dan Hubbard, CTO at OpenDNS says
"BGP is the new black."
CDN Takeover
The details of the vulnerability that BishopFox security researchers Matthew Bryant and Mike Brooks will reveal at Black Hat are still cloaked in mystery, but the scenario they propose is certainly horrifying:
"Imagine - a Facebook worm giving an attacker full access to your bank account completely unbeknownst to you, until seven Bentleys, plane tickets for a herd of llamas, a mink coat once owned by P. Diddy, and a single monster cable all show up on your next statement."
BGP Hijacking And Broken Trust
SSL, the mechanism on which so much online trust is based on, is untrustworthy itself. As if that wasn't bad enough, SSL trusts BGP Internet routing traffic and BGP is becoming a more attractive attack target all the time.
In his session,
"Breaking HTTPS With BGP Hijacking, Artyom Gavrichenkov, developer at the Qrator Labs DDoS mitigation network will show how to exploit this trust to do some real mischief.