Attackers Vs. Defenders: Restoring the Equilibrium

Attackers Vs. Defenders: Restoring the Equilibrium Ron Meyran Director of Security Marketing January 2013

AGENDA Cyber security Statistics About 2012 Global Security Report Key Findings ERT Case Studies 2013 Recommendations

Cyber Security Study A research study by Ponemon & Radware Surveyed 700 IT & IT Security Practitioners Non Radware customers Release date: November 12th 2012

Cyber Security Business Priorities Ranking of cyber security objectives in terms of a business priority objective 5 = Highest Priority to 1 = Lowest Priority

DDoS Attacks Frequency How many DDoS attacks experienced in the past 12 months? 65% of organizations had an average of 3 DDoS attacks in the past 12 months

Average downtime during one DDoS attack 54 Minutes average downtime during one DDoS attack

Cost of Downtime Cost per minute of downtime $22,000 Average cost per minute of downtime $3,000,000 Average annual Cost of DDoS Attacks

Information Resources • Radware Security Survey • External survey • 179 participant • 95.5% are not using Radware DoS mitigation solution • ERT Survey • Internal survey • Unique visibility into attacks behaviour • 95 selected cases • Customer identity remains undisclosed ERT gets to see attacks in real-time on daily basis

Organizations Bring a Knife to a Gunfight • ”Someone who brings a knife to a gun fight” • Is someone who does prepare himself for the fight, but does not understand its true nature • Organizations today are like that • They do invest before the attack starts, and conduct excellent forensics after it is over, • however, they have one critical blind-spot – they don't have the capabilities or resources to sustain a long, complicated attack campaign. • Attackers target this blind spot!

Attacked in 2012 They had the budget They made the investment And yet they went offline

Organizations Deploy Two-phase Security Approach Industry Security SurveyHow much did your organization invest in each of the following security aspects in the last year? Only 21% of company efforts are invested during the attack itself, while 79% is spent during the pre-attack and post-attack phase.

But attacks today have 3 phases

Attacks last longer 21% 23% 21% 12% 11% 12% Attacks last longer: The number of DoS attacks lasting over a week had doubled in 2012

And become more complex ERT Cases – Attack Vectors Attacks are more complex: 2012 DoS/DDoS attacks have become more sophisticated, using morecomplex attack vectors. Note the number of attacks using a complexity level of 7-10.

Content Delivery Network (CDN) Do you consider Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)a solution for a DoS/DDoS attack? 70% 30% 70% of the companies who use CDN believe the CDN is a solution for DoS\DDoS attacks.

Legitimate requests are refused Legitimate users Internet Attacks Evade CDN service GET www.exmaple.com Backend Webserver GET www.exmaple.com/?[Random] Botnet CDN service • In recent cyber attacks the CDN was easily bypassed • By changing the page request in every Web transaction • These random request techniques force CDNs to “raise the curtain” • All the attacks traffic is disembarked directly to the customer premise • More complex to mitigate attacks masked by CDN

Attackers are well prepared By definition the defenders loose the battle Equilibrium has been disrupted

The good news (1) Industry Security SurveyHow likely is it that your organization will be attacked by cyber warfare? Organizations start understanding the risk of DDoS Over half of the organizations believe their organization is likely to be attacked by cyber warfare.

The good news (2) Industry Security SurveyWhich solutions do you use against DoS attacks? Organizations start understanding Firewall and IPS cannot fight DDoS attacks

Conclusions • Today’s attacks are different • Carefully planned • Last days or weeks • Switching between attack vectors • Organizations are ready to fight yesterdays’ attacks • Deploy security solutions that can absorb the first strike • But when attacks prolong - they have very limited gunfire • By the time they succeed blocking the first two attack vectors, attackers switch to a third, more powerful one

A different approach is needed • A team of security experts • Acquire capabilities to sustain long attacks • Train a team that is ready to respond to persistent attacks • Deploy the most up-to-date methodologies and tools • 24 x 7 availability to respond to attacks • Deploy counterattack techniques to cripple an attack

US Banks Under Attack: from the news

US Banks Under Attack: Operation Ababil Publication of the ‘Innocence of Muslim’ film on YouTube invokes demonstrations throughout the Muslim world September 18th- ‘Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-din Al Qassam’ announced an upcoming cyber attack campaign against ‘American and Zionist’ targets.

Attack Summary • Attack targets • Bank of America • New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) • Chase • Wells Fargo • Attacks lasted Sep 18-21, 2012 • Multiple attacks’ waves on each target, each wave lasted 4 to 9 hours • Victims suffered from temporary outages and network slowness • ERT was actively involved in protecting the attacked organizations

Why it was so challenging? UDP Garbage flood on ports 80 and 443 • Multi-vulnerability attack campaign • Mitigation nearly impossible • Attackers look for the blind spot Large volume SYN flood Business SSL Client Hello flood HTTP flood attack SHUT DOWN

Recent updates • HTTP flood was carried from compromised hosting servers • Highly distributed attacks

ERT recommendations for 2013 Restore the equilibrium • Acquire capabilities to sustain a long sophisticated cyber attack • Attack tools are known. Test yourself • Carefully plan the position of DoS/DDoS mitigation within network architecture • On premise capabilities • In the cloud capabilities

Thank You Ron Meyran ronm@radware.com

Attackers Vs. Defenders: Restoring the Equilibrium