© 2016, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.

Aaron Newman, CloudCheckr

July 13, 2016

Hack-proof Your Cloud:Responding to 2016 Threats

Changing Your PerspectiveMoving to the Cloud = rethinking your perimeter security

How do I secure my business applications on AWS?

Rethink how you perform most security tasks:

• Network-based IPS/IDS

• Network scanning

• Penetration tests

• Vulnerability assessments

Focus on securing Cloud workloads, not on

securing the Cloud.

In the Data Center

Setting up perimeter security:• Setting up your infrastructure

• Setting up access points to the internet

• Configuring firewall, IDS, IPS, etc., at the access points

Auditing your perimeter security:• Gather set of IP address blocks to poke at

• Do a port scan (using tools such as Nmap)

• Determine which ports are open on the target

• Try various exploits on the open ports

• Sniff lots of packets

• Dig around to make sure there are no back doors into the network

• Wireless access points, secondary T1 lines, DSL connections

• VPN access from some other network

AWS: What’s Different?

The idea of physical security morphs as

infrastructure becomes virtualized by AWS APIs.

In a new world of ephemeral, autoscaling infrastructure,

you need to adapt your security architecture to meet

both compliance and security threats.

~ Physical assets secured at the AWS Availability Zone ~

~ Must guard the AWS API ~

~ AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) access is your new physical

security ~

AWS Foundation Services

Compute Storage Database Networking

AWS Global InfrastructureRegions

Availability Zones

Edge Locations

Network

Security

Inventory

& Config

Customer Applications & Content

You get to define

your controls IN

the Cloud

AWS takes care

of the security

OF the Cloud

You

AWS and You Share Responsibility for Security

Data

Security

Access

Control

AWS

Minimizing Attack Vectors

Principles don’t change:

• Reduce your surface area!

• Defense in depth

Some attack vectors don’t change:

• Application level

• User-privilege escalation, web app vulns, XSS

• Operating system vulnerabilities

• Database vulnerabilities

Some attack vectors change:

• Homogeneous environment

• Polymorphic targets/mapping

• Reduced network sniffing

Security Hardening

Configure and manage user

privileges

Remove unused user

accounts

Close unused open network

ports

Enforce password

complexity & policies

Remove unwanted services

Patch all known

vulnerabilities

Give me your network block:

• Nmap

• Port scans

• Ping sweeps

• Etc., …

Perimeter Assessments in the CloudHow do I assess the perimeter of my Cloud?

Let me see your configuration:

• List of publicly accessible

resources

• Security groups (EC2-Classic,

EC2-VPC, Amazon Redshift,

Amazon RDS, etc., …)

• Routing tables, network ACL

• VPC, subnets

• Amazon S3 buckets and

permissions

• IAM policies

OLDWORLD

NEWWORLD

Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs)

Default VPC is created in every region:

• VPCs are wide open by default

VPC is composed of:

• Internet and VPN gateways–connect to the rest of the world

• 1+ subnet(s)

• Routing table–how to move traffic around the VPC

• Network ACLs–a firewall, but stateless

• Security groups–host-based firewall, stateful

• Resources – Amazon EC2, RDS, Amazon Redshift, Amazon

ElastiCache

Network Security in a VPC

Network ACLs:

• Virtual firewalls assigned to VPC/subnets

• Network ACLs are stateless; responses to allowed inbound

traffic are subject to the rules for outbound traffic (and vice versa)

• Rules evaluated numerical ascending–DENY can be overridden by ALLOW

• Watch for INEFFECTIVE rules

Security groups:

• Host-based firewalls assigned to instances

• Stateful–responses to allowed inbound traffic are not subjected

to the rules for outbound traffic

• Rules are cumulative–DENY always overrides ALLOW

• Assigning wrong security group to an instance exposes the entire VPC

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_ACLs.html

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-network-security.html

Complex Connections to Amazon EC2

EC2 instance can be run inside VPCs

•Legacy capability to run outside VPCs

• Instance ID: i-001bac39

•Friendly name (implemented as a tag): ISS-V2-API1

EC2 instance can be given one or more private IP

addresses

•For example: 172.12.6.186

•This generates a DNS name ip-172-12-6-186.us-west-2.compute.internal

EC2 instance can be given one or more public IP

addresses

•For example: 52.24.201.167

•This generates a DNS name ec2-52-24-201-167.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com

EC2 instance can be attached to an Elastic IP address (EIP)

•For example: 107.20.135.132

Running VA in Cloud EnvironmentsHow do I run vulnerability assessments?

Gather the list of public

IPs and EIPs of all

resources.

Do I need to scan the

private IP addresses and

instances?

Scanning an AMI

Spin up a new instance,

run a scan on the new

instance.

Mark everything based

on this AMI as

“scanned.”

What about when an

instance “drifts” from the

original AMI?

Someone can

reconfigure settings,

install new software.

In an elastic, ephemeral, autoscaling environment, clouds

can have tens of thousands of instances.

Patching Strategies for AWS

“No patch” strategy:

• Stay away from patching live systems

• Focus on patching templates/AMIs

• Deliver patches by redeploying workloads

• Dependent on adopting pure cloud architectures

Look at AWS OS templates:

• Patched by Amazon

Systematic workload reprovisioning

• Based on high-assurance repositories

• Effective battling advanced persistent threats

What Are We Missing?

Don’t assume attacks only happen against Amazon EC2

AWS has many moving parts and dimensions

Over 30 different AWS services

• Many have unique access control systems

You will have 100s of AWS accounts

We need a complete inventory

• All publicly accessible endpoints and resources

Security breaches can happen with a single weak link.

RDS (Amazon Relational Database Service)

Location:• Within a VPC or not, Multi-AZ or not

Security options:• DB security groups (if not in a VPC) or Amazon EC2-VPC security groups

• Select a non-default database port

RDS listens on only the database port: • Shut down on all other ports (publicly, I’m sure AWS team can access the OS)

Publicly accessible option:• Not a good idea, but if you do this:

• Make sure you use security groups to restrict source IP address

• Make sure you have latest patches applied

Secure your database snapshots:• Keys to the kingdom if someone can get a copy

• Brute-force passwords, restore to their own account

S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service)

Up to 1,000 buckets in an account:

• Unlimited number of objects (billions is not uncommon)

Location:

• Within a region, across Multi-AZs, not housed in a VPC

• Can’t sit between client and storage

Security:

• Access control through IAM policies, bucket policies, ACLs, and query string authentication

• Server-side encryption, HTTPS support

• Server access logs (does not integrate with AWS CloudTrail)

Don’t grant FULL_CONTROL, WRITE_ACP, WRITE bucket permissions to Everyone EVER!!!

Create an inventory of your sensitive data.

Amazon SQS (Amazon Simple Queuing Service)

Where does SQS live?

• Within a region, not within a VPC

• Uses a URL such as:

https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/123456789012/MySQS

Security based on policy documents:{

"Version": "2008-10-17",

"Id": "arn:aws:sqs:us-east-1:123456789012:MySQS/SQSDefaultPolicy",

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "Sid1415217272568",

"Effect": "Allow", "Principal": { "AWS": "*" },

"Action": [

"SQS:ReceiveMessage", "SQS:SendMessage"

],

"Resource": "arn:aws:sqs:us-east-1:123456789012:MySQS"

},

Amazon SNS (Amazon Simple Notification Service)

SNS does not live inside your VPC.

Permissions based on topic policies:

Using AWS CloudTrail

An AWS service that records each time the AWS API is called:

• Currently supports most AWS services

• http://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/latest/userguide/dochistory.html

Conveniently, everything in AWS goes through the API:

• Even actions in the Management Console go through the API

CloudTrail writes files into an S3 bucket:

• Near real time (every five minutes)

• Files are in JSON format

Get started at: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudtrail/ .

Using Amazon CloudWatch Logs

Simple method of monitoring operating system logs:• Ship Windows event logs and syslogs to Amazon CloudWatch

Types of use cases:• Account Login Failure, Account Login Success, New local account creation,

Excessive Login Failure (Configurable)

• Unauthorized Windows Admin Logon, Windows Account Lockout Attempt,

Windows Computer Account Changes

• Windows Audit Policy Changes, Windows Event Log Cleared

• Non-Windows - Account Locked Out, Non-Windows - Account Unlocked,

Changes to System or Audit log

Get started at: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/DeveloperGuide/WhatIsCloudWatchLogs.html

Using Amazon VPC Flow Logs

An AWS service that records every time packets enter or leave a VPC:

• http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/flow-logs.html

Security team comes to you and says:

• We need logs going to instance 1-0123456 from

IP address ranges 52.205.16.0 - 52.205.31.255

Monitor for DENY connections:

• Gives you both security group and network ACL

denies

Announcement:

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2015/06/aws-launches-amazon-vpc-flow-logs/

Tools for Configuring AWS Securely & Cost

EffectivelyGeneric tools fall short.

Purpose-built, not Cloud washed:

• Make sure tools don’t fall over in the Cloud.

• Tools have to understand dynamic, ephemeral IPs.

Need a deep understanding of AWS:

• What does this mean?

• Context is important.

• Actionable intelligence.

Leveraging AWS data – CloudTrail, AWS Config, Amazon

VPC Flow Logs, CloudWatch Logs, DBR, and more

metrics

Providing complete transparency–into 1 or across 1,000s

of AWS accounts

Automating security, configuration, and activity monitoring

and alerting

Continuous monitoring of configurations, resources, and

permissions

Active optimization, sophisticated allocation, and simplified

invoicing for enterprise Cloud cost management

Monitoring, Reporting & Optimization Enterprise Security & Cost Management from CloudCheckr

Questions?

© 2016, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.

Aaron Newman, Founder of CloudCheckraaron.newman@cloudcheckr.com

www.cloudcheckr.com

Thank You!