Author Archives: LF Research

Cybersecurity is not a strategy that can be implemented in the agency’s IT departments. While technology and cybersecurity analysts continue to play a leading role in protecting government information. Cybersecurity today depends on everyone at the security agency. The escalation of cyberattacks, both in size and complexity, requires that all agents pay attention to security. 

Frontline workers must protect their devices, follow cyber hygiene protocols and identify potential insider threats in real-time. Purchasing specialists must ensure that everyone has the right technology and that it can be easily obtained from a distribution point. 

Agency managers must create and implement strong cyber policies that address threats in a holistic and coordinated manner through technical, organizational, and cultural aspects. 

When we connect, we leave a record of our information. We do not want our information to fall into the wrong hands. The organizations that collect our data consider it a legal and customer-centric requirement. As a result, a lot of time and money is spent taking proactive steps to improve cybersecurity. 

While information about data breaches regularly makes headlines, companies are now investing a large chunk of their capital to protect their assets from hackers. Companies are falling behind when it comes to finding the right way to contain this growing problem. By creating a security policy and governance model, companies can restrict access to data only to employees connected to the project.  

However, companies must also take advantage of one or more of these technologies to keep cybersecurity at an optimal level. 

Here we have three technologies that play an important role in improving cybersecurity. So let us get started. 

1. Big Data Analysis  

By using data, companies achieve revenue they never imagined. However, we have also seen how this data creates cyber threats around the world. What happens if we tell you that the information we collect can alleviate this risk? Big data analytics can find and analyze different types of data (historical or real-time) and provide insights into cyber resilience. 

1. Blockchain 

The information we use to carry out monetary transactions online is stored somewhere in the Financial Services database. The storage infrastructure used by these financial services is generally centralized. Now the case is not the same. The incredible features of blockchain help protect data from cyber threats. Blockchain allows organizations to store data in a decentralized ledger in a blockchain network. All access, exchange, or addition of data on a blockchain ledger must be validated first.  

Participants interested in the blockchain network must enter the key (combination of private and public keys) before registering, accessing, or modifying new data. In practice, it is not so easy for hackers to crack the keys. Therefore, blockchain offers companies a secure way to store their digital assets and thus guarantee cybersecurity. 

1. Artificial Intelligence 

Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting companies to steal their digital assets. To counter this, artificial intelligence can play a leading role in ensuring cybersecurity. By training an AI algorithm with relevant historical threat data, the model can provide accurate information about hackers’ proactivity.  

Effective solutions can then be created after receiving useful information about the intrusion. We know that today’s modern technology has helped us in many ways. However, it is amazing how these technologies reduce computer activity! Therefore, besides the above-mentioned facts & figures, you can learn more about our cybersecurity and network engineering services by clicking the link below. 

https://www.logicfinder.net 

In the cybersecurity infrastructure, the growth of cloud services has been one of the most disruptive phenomena of the Internet age. Even the most popular cloud services (including Yahoo, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook 365, and Dropbox) are vulnerable to attack because their servers run on unencrypted data. 

The move to cloud services offers enormous advantages over the internal management of these services. The cloud is scalable, affordable, easy to manage, and accessible to a wide variety of devices from anywhere. 

However, since cloud services are a central information database, they are attractive targets for attackers. In addition, even a single misconfiguration of a cloud server can make it vulnerable. If an attacker succeeds in hacking an individual user’s computer or phone, the user’s information is compromised. However, if a targeted attack on a server is successful, information about all users of that server can be lost. For example, Yahoo recently announced that over a billion user accounts had been compromised. 

As a result, the security agency has invested heavily in technology and processes to protect servers in the cloud. Many of these, like firewalls, threat detection and analysis, and management processes, is about building “higher walls” around the server. Despite great efforts and investments, the attackers continue to win. However, do not worry about this because Logic Finder will help you to prevent potentially vulnerable attacks.   

Let us assume the server is damaged 

What if the problem is solved? Instead of figuring out how to secure the server, what if the goal is to keep the data safe, whether or not the server has been compromised? This can be achieved with end-to-end encryption. This means that user data is only decrypted on their PC, smartphone, or IoT architecture never on the server. In the event of a server breach, an attacker can only access encrypted data, which is incomprehensible. Unfortunately, end-to-end encryption is rarely used. 

Many cloud service providers promote the use of encryption for security reasons, but the term “encryption” can have several meanings. Most services use what is known as in-transit encryption. Let us look at a general cloud-based email service to show how this works. 

As shown in the image illustration, encryption in transit uses encryption to protect a message as it is transmitted from a phone or computer to a server. Technologies such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) are often used. This prevents an attacker from successfully launching a man-in-the-middle attack by observing Internet traffic and observing the content of the communication. With transport encryption, the decrypted message is available on both the device and the server. This makes the server vulnerable to attacks because a successful server failure gives the attacker access to all decrypted messages. 

Inactive data encryption means that data on the cloud server’s storage medium is encrypted when not in use. Inactive data encryption can prevent an attacker from accessing information about physical volumes that have been stolen from a data center, even if such physical attacks are extremely rare. Inactive data encryption still cannot prevent a server attack from revealing valuable user data because the server can still “see” the decrypted information. If the server can access raw data, an attacker could do the same. 

In this regard, Logic Finder will help overcome the potential vulnerabilities in Cloud Deployments. Our core team will train you to securely use your cloud services and guide you regarding encryption terms. You can register yourself on our website for consistency and get training including network intrusion monitoring and training in this regard. 

https://www.logicfinder.net/ 

Contributor:  Khoa D. Tran

IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol (IP) standard intended to eventually replace IPv4, the protocol many Internet services still use today.

Developed in 1981, IPv4 was the first type of IP addresses known as “Internet Protocol Version 4”. In this case, there are a possible 4.3 billion unique IP addresses. However, as the Internet of Things expand to greater sizes, the creation of IPv6 has to be developed.

Every IPv4 address is 32 bits longs. An example:

128.24.425.2

Now the difference here for IPv6, the IP address is 128 bits long. An example:

Significance of IPv6 Addresses

Besides allowing for the expansion of unique IP address to 340 trillion trillion trillion IP addresses or 3.4 * 1038, IPv6 can be created automatically by your host, allowing for elimination of both Network Address Translation (NAT), and Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP). Another important aspect of IPv6 is through its tight security as it allows for a greater line of defense against hackers. IPv6 can run end-to-end encryption, as the encryption and integrity-checking currently used in virtual private networks (VPNs) are a standard component in IPv6, available for all connections and compatible with all devices and systems. Lastly the ability to connect between IoT devices allowing networked connected devices to speak to each other allows for greater inventions and connectivity of a network system.

The Transition Mechanism from IPv4 to IPv6

Steps for the transition between IPv4 to IPv6 with dual stack (IPv4 and IPv6 coexist in the same device):

1. Replace all IPv4-only devices with dual stack devices
2. Once all devices support both protocols, then introduce IPv6-only devices but a dual stack device still requires an IPv4 address

Tunneling

Configured or automatic tunnels—Ipv6 as IPv4 packet payload and vice versa

To minimize any dependencies during the transition, all the routers in the path between two IPv6 nodes do not need to support IPv6. This mechanism is called tunneling. Basically, IPv6 packets are placed inside IPv4 packets, which are routed through the IPv4 routers. The following figure illustrates the tunneling mechanism through IPv4 routers.

The different uses of tunneling in the transition follow:

1. Configured tunnels between two routers, as in the previous figure
2. Automatic tunnels that terminate at the dual hosts

There are different kinds of tunneling techniques that can be used:

• Configured Tunneling.In router-to-router and host-to-router tunneling method, the IPv6 packet is tunneled to a router. The tunnel endpoint is an intermediary router. The intermediary router at the end of the tunnel de-encapsulates the IPv6 packet and forwards it to the final destination. The IPv6 packet does not provide any information about the tunnel endpoint IPv4 address. The node creating the tunnel provides configuration information that determines the tunnel endpoint IPv4 address.
• Automatic Tunneling. In the host-to-host and router-to-host tunneling methods, the IPv6 packet is tunneled until its final destination. The tunnel endpoint is the IPv6 packet’s final destination, the IPv6 packet’s destination determines the tunnel endpoint. There is no need to configure the tunnel endpoint address.
• ISATAP Tunnels. Intra-site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol is another method of tunneling where the tunnels are automatically defined and not statically defined. These tunnels are primarily used between hosts and routers, manually configured tunnels are used between routers. It is automatic in the sense that is it created only when it is needed.
• 6 to 4 Tunneling.It is defined by IETF, and it is similar to a manual tunneling, except that the tunnel is set up automatically. IPv6 addresses are a concatenation of a special IPv6 prefix with the 32-bit IPv4 address of the router where the tunnel terminates.

Stateless IP/ICMP translation (SIIT):

Translates IP header fields, NAT Protocol Translation (NAT-PT) maps IPv6 to IPV4 addresses. The Request for Comment (RFC) however does not specify how to perform address assignment or how to route to and from IPv6 hosts when communicating with IPv4 hosts.

• Application-Level Gateway (ALG)intercepts traffic and converts between IPv6 and IPv4 protocols. It is an IP device running dual-stack and can have native access to both IPv6 and IPv4 services. ALGs are used as proxies to perform protocol translation with one proxy server per application (HTTP, FTP, SMTP.). The advantage is to have only IPv4 addresses for these proxy servers. Where firewalls and proxies are already utilized (many LAN implementations) this will not imply a high price to be paid. Unfortunately, ALGs are not able to handle all services, in particular those with end-to-end requirements.
• Bump-In-the-Stack (BIS) and Bump-In-the-API (BIA)are NAT-PT implementations within a host. It is used where organizations cannot upgrade their applications running on hosts and servers to use IPv6. BIS/BIA intercept system calls to IPv4 functions and dynamically respond with IPv6 information. BIS enable the communication of IPv4 applications on an IPv4 host to communicate with an IPv6 host. It is not designed for the initial stage in the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, but it will be most probably used for the interoperability of legacy IPv4 applications with IPv6 applications.

Challenges of Migrating to an IPv6 Network

• Incompatibility between IPv6 and IPv4. IPv6
• has been designed as an alternative to IPv4, and not as its extension. This limits the feasibility of a straightforward transition plan.
• Incoherence with not creating a transition plan from IPv4 to IPv6.
• Not enabling IPv6 addressees to “communicate” with IPv4 addressees. The entire Internet infrastructure cannot switch overnight from IPv4 to IPv6.
• Stepwise transition due the fact that the transition will take years and it is quite impossible to synchronize the processes at different sites. IPv4 and IPv6 network equipment will be required to coexist and offer interoperability.
• No feasible mapping scheme to map IPv4 to IPv6 addresses (IPv6 hosts can have more than one IPv6 address)
• IPv6 is still an evolving standard