Posts by Rapid7

5 min Automation and Orchestration

AWS Series: Creating a Privoxy, Tor Instance

Synopsis: If you want to increase your privacy or perform security research with Tor [https://www.torproject.org/], Privoxy [http://www.privoxy.org/], etc. a virtual server is an excellent choice. I’m using Amazon EC2 which provides a years worth of a VM with limited resources for free. A few benefits are listed below 1. Low cost 2. Access from just about anywhere 3. Low resource allocation 4. Easy to spin up Creating the Cloud Instance: After logging into your Amazon cloud account select

6 min Automation and Orchestration

AWS Series: OpenSWAN L2TP over IPSEC VPN Configuration

Synopsis: We will look at how to configure an L2TP over IPSEC VPN using OpenSWAN [https://www.openswan.org/] and how to connect to it using Mac OSX. This guide is written for running the VPN software on a CentOS 7 x86_64 EC2 instance (ami-6d1c2007) provided by Amazon Web Services. The VPN will be configured to use local authentication and a pre-shared key. This is a great way to allow access into your AWS VPC. Procedure: The procedure is broken into 3 parts: * AWS – Create an EC2 instance *

5 min Automation and Orchestration

Bro Series: Creating a Bro Cluster

Synopsis: This short article will demonstrate how to setup a minimal Bro cluster [https://www.bro.org/sphinx/cluster/index.html] for testing. Because of its minimal nature, this article will exclude discussion of load balancing traffic across multiple bro workers (processes), security conscious permissions, and other bro related tuning and features such as sending e-mail. Its purpose is to get a Bro cluster up and running as quickly as possible so you can begin familiarizing yourself with cluste

4 min IT Ops

Migrating a web app to Angular

At some point many applications get to a state in which a large refactoring or in some cases a complete rewrite needs to happen. The decision to do so can be driven by many factors. For example, the code base is growing rapidly and the current architecture cannot support the growth, components are becoming too tightly coupled and need to be split, new and better technology becomes available which offers significant improvements or due to other factors the current code base is just not maintain

3 min IT Ops

Webinar Recap: Tableau Server Log Analytics

Our webinar [http://info.logentries.com/tableau-pluralsight-logentries-webinar-2016] was broadcasted & recorded on June 16th 2016. During this broadcast Tableau Zen Master Mike Roberts of Pluralsight discussed how to develop a simple technology stack for next-gen management of Tableau using Logentries [https://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically/?le_trial=tableau_webinar_june16_recap-logentries_blog-post_cta-create_trial&utm_campaign=tableau_webinar_june16_recap&utm_source=logentr

6 min Komand

Defender Spotlight: Ryan Huber of Slack

Welcome to Defender Spotlight! In this weekly blog series, we interview cybersecurity defenders of all varieties about their experience working in security operations. We’ll inquire about their favorite tools, and ask advice on security topics, trends, and other know-how. Today, we're talking with Ryan Huber. Currently at Slack, Ryan has previously held positions at companies such as Orbitz and Risk I/O, doing security, engineering, or a combination of both. He enjoys computers, and can often b

11 min IT Ops

Monitoring SNS Activity Using a Lambda Function and Logentries

Amazon Web Services Lambda functions are very cool. A Lambda function is a feature in Amazon Web Services that allows you to put a discrete piece of computing logic up in The Cloud and then access that logic to meet a particular need. For example, you can create a Lambda function that takes a list of stock symbols and does some analysis on the list using other cloud based services in order to suggest the best stock to buy. Logentries has put the power of Lambda functions [https://docs.rapid7.co

3 min IT Ops

Checking Active Directory (AD) Security and Integrity via Log Monitoring

Because AD literally holds the keys to the kingdom for domain-based networks and runtime environments, it’s usually a good idea to keep a close eye on those keys, how they’re being used and what kinds of attacks might be directed at them. Monitoring AD related event logs provides one great tool in exercising due security and integrity diligence. Alerting on specific high-impact events provides yet another. For over two decades now, Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) has provided a powerful set

1 min Automation and Orchestration

What are Networking Intrusion Prevention/Detection Systems?

NID(P)S, or Networking Intrusion (Prevention)/Detection Systems [https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/intrusion-detection-and-prevention-systems-idps/] are used by a security team for general network security [https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/what-is-network-security/] monitoring. They work by passively monitoring (or actively gating, in the NIPS case) network traffic and applying rules or signatures to trigger alerts. Advantages * Easy to deploy: Unlike endpoint devices, they can be placed

11 min Automation and Orchestration

GDB for Fun (and Profit!)

Who Should Read This? Have you ever wondered why your code doesn’t work? Do you ever find yourself puzzled by the way someone else’s program works? Are you tired of spending night after tearful night poring over the same lines of code again and again, struggling to maintain your sanity as it slips away? If this sounds like you or someone you know, please seek help: use a debugger. What Is a Debugger? For those of you that have never used a debugger: 1. I’m so sorry 2. Please read on A debug

3 min IT Ops

Exploiting Zookeeper for managing processes in a production environment with Lockex

Lock and execute! As an engineer here at Logentries [https://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically/?le_trial=exploiting_zookeeper-logentries_blog-post_cta-create_trial&utm_campaign=exploiting_zookeeper&utm_source=logentries_blog&utm_medium=post_cta&utm_content=create_trial] I need to maintain a complex system that has requirements for being available to our customers. We always build systems with the ability to be resistant to failure. In our environment, we have processes and dae

4 min Komand

How to Create a Culture of Security Ownership Across Your Organization

Company culture is a phrase that means different things to many people. From the company mission statement to the performance of a team, culture is often an amalgamation of leadership values and individual employee contributions. Security, and its many variants (cybersecurity, infosec, et. al), isn’t always a word associated with “culture”. But in today’s digital landscape, it absolutely should be. Building a successful company culture often comes down to three elements: people, processes, and

3 min Komand

SOC Series: How to Structure and Build a Security Operations Center

Building an effective security operations center (SOC) [https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/security-operations-center/] requires organizing internal resources in a way that improves communication and increases efficiencies. Adding to a former post,When to Set Up a Security Operations Center [https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2016/06/01/to-soc-or-not-to-soc-when-to-set-up-a-security-operations-center/] , we're now offering a framework for organizing the three key functions of a SOC: people, proce

3 min Metasploit Weekly Wrapup

Weekly Metasploit Wrapup 16

We have a new module from rastating which exploits an unauthenticated file upload vulnerability in the popular WordPress plugin, Ninja Forms.

14 min Automation and Orchestration

Working with Bro Logs: Queries By Example

Synopsis: Bro [http://bro.org/], a powerful network security monitor, which by default churns out ASCII logs in a easily parseable whitespace separated (column) format from network traffic, live or PCAP. Because this logs are in the aforementioned format it makes them very hackable with the standard unix toolset. If you’re an experienced unix user with ample networking knowledge you probably have all the know-how to immediately pull useful data from Bro logs. If you’re not familiar with the stan