Podcast on MEITSEC and Honeypots |  | Aug 19, 2010
[Archived press releases dated December 19, 2008] The Middle East IT Security Conference (MEITSEC) is one of the Gulf's most prestigious information security events. In November, three Q-CERT staff members went to MEITSEC 2008 in Dubai. They attended a tutorial on developing information security awareness presentations, as well as a variety of presentations, including"The Five Habits of Highly Secure Organizations," "Ubiquitous Information Security," and "Building a Case for Security Through Metrics and Measurement." Particularly interesting were two seminars of local interest, one on information security awareness in the UAE, and the other on the unique security challenges facing the GCC.
The Q-CERT team also met with Lance Spitzner, a long-time honeynet expert, and recorded a podcast with him. In the podcast, Lance talks about the recent evolution of honeypots from server-side to client-side, and he discusses the role that honeypots might play in assessing the information security posture of Qatar.
| | Q-CERT Presents National Cybersecurity Strategy at ITU Meeting... | | Aug 19, 2010
[Archived press releases dated August 12, 2008] The International Telecommunications Union Development (ITU-D) program recently conducted a series of meetings on cybersecurity and the economics of computer malware in Brisbane, Australia. The meetings represent the latest event of the ongoing "Doha Agenda" and Question 22/1 "Best Practices for National Cybersecurity" initiative that was launched at the 2006 World Telecommunications Development Conference (WTDC), which ictQATAR hosted in Doha. The work received further local support when ictQATAR and Q-CERT hosted the MENA-regional technical meetings on Question 22/1 in February 2008.
The ITU invited Q-CERT to give presentations in two key subject areas: national cybersecurity strategy, and the Qatari national program for incident management. During the conference, the Australian government announced the formation of the Pacific Islands regional CSIRT program to improve information security and to address the unique challenges of the widely distributed Pacific island nations. Q-CERT was asked to share its experience building cooperation among other national information security teams in the GCC region, based on the role that Q-CERT has played in the development of GCC-CERT over the past two years.
The ITU-D has described Q-CERT as an exemplar model of a national computer security incident response team (CSIRT) for its mandate, scope-of-service, and program initiatives such as the national Cyber Security Network, the National Information Assurance Framework, and its program in cyber forensics.
There are about forty authorized national CSIRTs around the world, and as more countries form similar organizations, they are interested in the experience of emerging organizations such as ictQATAR and Q-CERT. Q-CERT's program was designed on the collective "best-practice" advice of the CERT® Program at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, and it is aligned with the latest initiatives of leading international information security organizations such as the Forum of Incident Response Teams (FIRST). Because Q-CERT was able to use the collected knowledge and advice of the best programs, it is now sharing its experiences about starting and operating a national team. | | Full House at First OWASP Meeting of the Year | | Aug 19, 2010
[Archived press releases dated January 27, 2009] Despite a last-minute change of venue due to preparations for a political summit, the Safeer room at the Diplomatic club was packed for the January meeting of OWASP. The event drew a large crowd from a broad spectrum of stakeholders—academia as well as government and industry.
Omar Sherin opened the festivities with a demonstration of how to use the OWASP Live CD. This CD, which was distributed free of charge to the attendees, contains a wealth of open source tools for learning about web security. Mr. Sherin illustrated the use of WebGoat, a web server that is deliberately insecure for pedagogical purposes. He showed how WebGoat can be used to create spoofed cookies that break web authentication methods.
Anton Delsink, from Microsoft's office in Dubai, then presented on the Secure Development Lifecycle as instantiated in Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System. For some years now, security researchers have been making the point that security must be incorporated into all phases of the software development lifecycle, and VSTS attempts to incorporate that wisdom into its workflow. Mr. Delsink says that the company now has convincing evidence that this approach works, citing lower numbers of vulnerabilities reported in the first six months of Vista as an example.
Osama Kamal followed up with an overview of web-based malware, an important topic considering that three of the four most common vulnerabilities right now are web-based. Mr. Kamal cited statistics to the effect that 87% of trusted websites have vulnerabilities that could lead to the installation of malware on them. To illustrate the problem, he walked through an analysis of an actual piece of malware that Q-CERT uncovered in the course of one of its incident handling investigations.
Ahmed Al-Ashmawy, Manager of Outreach and Training for Q-CERT, closed the meeting by asking the attendees to join OWASP-Qatar and to go home and think about what presentations they would like to give at the next OWASP meeting, to be held in March. | | QTel Seminar Briefs Clients on 'Information Security Threats'... | | Aug 19, 2010
[Archived press releases dated May 12, 2009] Q-CERT has been working very closely with QTel to increase awareness of information security threats among the critical information infrastructure constituents in Qatar, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, RasGas, Qatargas, Qatar Petroleum, QNB, and Qatar Airways. A jointly hosted seminar highlighted the threats posed by malware and botnets and raised a number of issues to assist clients with mitigation strategies. | | Cyber Security in the Finance Sector | | Aug 19, 2010
[Archived press releases dated May 18, 2009] On Thursday, May 14, Q-CERT hosted a Cyber Incident Response Seminar in coordination with Qatar Central Bank. The seminar was supported by the Institute for Administrative Development (IAD), which provided the location and facilities. The event was well attended by information security representatives from all the major banks in Qatar. Attendees learned about the threats posed by malicious software and botnets, as well as some of the countermeasures that are available to reduce the risk of compromise of confidential information. A whole session was devoted to the threats posed to Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and methods for improving their security. Q-CERT plans to work with the regulators to set up future technical working groups in the sector.
Q-CERT also runs the Cyber Security Network (CSN)—an information and discussion group for incident management within critical information infrastructure organizations in Qatar. To join the CSN, email csn@qcert.org. |
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