All Posts

5 min Cybersecurity

NCSAM Security Crash Diet, Week 1: Maintenance

One of Rapid7's employees tries a month of different 'security diets' in the spirit of National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Week one highlights the importance of maintenance.

8 min Vulnerability Management

No-Priority, Post-Auth Vulnerabilities

In the course of collecting and disclosing vulnerabilities, I occasionally come across an issue that walks like a vuln, quacks like a vuln, but… it’s not exactly a vuln. As per our usual vulnerability disclosure process , we still report these issues to vendors. The behavior observed is nearly always a bug of some sort, but it’s not immediately exploitable, or the “exploit” is merely exercising the expected level of privilege, but in an unexpected con

6 min Vulnerability Disclosure

Vulnerabilities Affecting Four Rapid7 Products (FIXED)

Today we are announcing four fixed vulnerabilities in four Rapid7 products, summarized in the table below. These issues are low to medium severity (mostly due to the high exploitation requirements), but we want to make sure that our customers have all the information they need to make informed security decisions. This article includes detailed descriptions of the vulnerabilities, as well as how to ensure they are mitigated in your environment. Some of the updates are automatic, but some may requ

3 min Komand

SOC Series: How to Choose the Right Skills for Your SOC

Do you have the right mix of skills in your security operations center (SOC) ? Whether your SOC is brand new or has been around for years, you need to be sure it’s built to meet the demands of today’s complex security landscape. In this post, we’ll define the most important skills any SOC should have today so you can be sure to have the right mix of people to safeguard your business. Effective Team and Communication Skills Regard

3 min Automation and Orchestration

How to Password Protect Apache Directories with mod_authn_dbd and MySQL on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis The mod_authn_dbd is an Apache module that provides the functionality for Apache to authenticate users with MySQL database. This module provides authentication front-ends such as mod_auth_digest and mod_auth_basic to authenticate users by looking up users in MySQL tables. Apache’s mod_authn_dbd supports a wide range of drivers such as, ODBC, MSSQL, SyBase, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQLite. This module allows execution of arbitrary SQL for user / password matching and also support al

3 min Automation and Orchestration

How To Secure Apache with Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis Improving your website security has generally been most complicated and expensive task for every Linux administrator. Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority that provides free X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security encryption via an automated process. It is very complex process to install and add an SSL certificate to a web server. You can make it easier with the help of Let’s Encrypt. You can easily encrypt data

4 min Automation and Orchestration

How to Secure SSH Server using Port Knocking on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis Port Knocking is a method used to secure your port access from unauthorised users. Port Knocking works by opening ports on a firewall by generating a connection attempt on a set of prespecified closed ports. Once a correct sequence of connection attempts is received, the firewall will open the port that was previously closed. The main purpose of port knocking is to defend yourself against port scanners. Changing your default ssh port is not a secure method to protect your server, becaus

3 min Automation and Orchestration

How to Secure MySQL Server on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis Now a day database server is very critical and necessary component for any applications. Databases can be found in everything from web applications, web server to smartphones and other devices. Most of software applications rely on a database to store its data. This is the reason why databases are the number one target of any attackers. Among all the databases MySQL and MariaDB has become the world’s most popular open source database due to its fast performance, high reliability and eas

3 min Rapid7 Perspective

NCSAM: A Personal Security Crash Diet

We're kicking of National Cyber Security Awareness Month by getting a Rapid7 employee to test out the practicality of common security advice. Follow along throughout October.

11 min Research

Building a Backpack Hypervisor

Researcher, engineer, and Metasploit contributor Brendan Watters shares his experience building a backpack-size hypervisor.

2 min Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Rapid7 and NISC work together to help customers with detection and response

Rapid7 and NISC will work together to provide Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services to the NISC member base, powered by the Rapid7 Insight platform and Rapid7 Security Operation Centers (SOCs.)

1 min InsightIDR

Want to Try InsightIDR in Your Environment? Free Trial Now Available

InsightIDR, our SIEM powered by user behavior analytics, is now available to try in your environment. This post shares how it can help your security team.

5 min Exploits

macOS Keychain Security : What You Need To Know

If you follow the infosec twitterverse or have been keeping an eye on macOS news sites, you’ve likely seen a tweet (with accompanying video) from Patrick Wardle (@patrickwardle ) that purports to demonstrate dumping and exfiltration of something called the “keychain” without an associated privilege escalation prompt. Patrick also has a more in-depth Q&A blog post

9 min InsightOps

3 Core Responsibilities for the Modern IT Operations Manager

In the good old days, IT operations managers were responsible for maintaining the infrastructure, meeting service levels agreements, sticking to budget, and keeping employees happy. Life was not easy, but at least it was familiar. You knew your hardware, your software, your employees. You determined services levels based on what you could actually see and touch. You told people what to do and they did it. While IT was perceived to be an expensive

8 min Vulnerability Disclosure

Multiple vulnerabilities in Wink and Insteon smart home systems

Today we are announcing four issues affecting two popular home automation solutions: Wink's Hub 2 and Insteon's Hub. Neither vendor stored sensitive credentials securely on their associated Android apps. In addition, the Wink cloud-based management API does not properly expire and revoke authentication tokens, and the Insteon Hub uses an unencrypted radio transmission protocol for potentially sensitive security controls such as garage door locks. As most of these issues have not yet been addres