Why we kept LulzSec safe

On June 2nd, 2011, the antisec hacker group known as LulzSec launched a web site. Although they had been an active hacking group for several weeks, the creation of Lulzsecurity.com was their first official web presence other than the Twitter account they had been using.

Shortly after launching LulzSecurity.com, the group experienced a denial-of-service attack and the site was taken down. But within 45 minutes, they were back up and running again — and they had created an account with CloudFlare, a cloud-based security and performance service for web sites. CloudFlare offers both free and commercial services, and LulzSec had signed up for a free account.

For the next 22 days, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince and his colleagues were part of what he described as an intense experience that was at times alarming, but ultimately quite educational, as his company provided security protection for the group everyone wanted to take down.

"Every type of hacker was trying to find out where LulzSec was posted and how they can knock them offline," Prince explained in a RSA Conference talk on Tuesday in which he detailed the story.

During the time CloudFlare provided services to LulzSec, they saw a myriad of attacks from all over the globe that ranged from Layer Seven attacks that Prince described as "harmless," to one he termed as "clever" — an IP scan and attack on CloudFlare's router interfaces. None were successful in taking down LulzSec.

The peak day, according to Prince, was on June 16th when they saw 21 gigabytes of attack traffic. It was shortly after LulzSec had taken down several popular gaming sites, including Minecraft.

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"You can't pay for pen testing like this. Once we realized we were going to survive, it was actually kind of a fun experience for us," said Prince.

During the three weeks LulzSec was using CloudFlare, the group took down several sites, including the CIA's web site. They also managed to obtain and then leak sensitive information from Sony Pictures, The Arizona Department of Public Safety and a Brazilian government web site, among others. Because of the model CloudFlare is based on, Prince was quick to point out none of LulzSec's hacking activity took place within CloudFlare services. All hacking took place elsewhere. The group also switched web site hosts seven times, said Prince; moving all over the world, from the U.S to Germany.

On June 26th, LulzSec issued a statement and said the group was done with its public hacking. They took down their site and CloudFlare's experience with the hacker group ended. Prince soon started to field requests for talks on the experience. Not wanting to violate his company's privacy agreement, he wrote to LulzSec using the email they had used to sign up and asked permission to discuss what they had been through.

Several days later he received a response. It simply read:

"You have my permission. — Jack Sparrow"

Prince said while CloudFlare had been contacted by government law enforcement officials about LulzSec, they had very little information to provide. All that is needed to sign up for free CloudFlare services is an email address, a username and a password.

At no time did law enforcement ask CloudFlare to discontinue providing services to LulzSec.

"It would have been an interesting question if they had," said Prince.

Prince and colleagues suffered what he called an existential crisis many times during the experience.

"We thought: Is this who we want to have on our network?" said Prince. But, ultimately, the company felt they were not in a position to play censor.

CloudFlare will not allow sites that distribute malware, conduct phishing or host child pornography to use their services. But beyond that, Prince said he feels just about any site deserves to be served.

"I'm not sure it's my role to decide what should be on the internet."

Tags: rsa, CloudFlare, security

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Security Awareness Tip
Clearswift tips: Guidelines for introducing and policing an effective IT Policy

1. Make it clear that the policy is not about playing ‘Big Brother’ but to ensure the security of employees, company information and data and to safeguard the company’s reputation.
2. Invest time to get buy-in from managers and their teams.
3. Convey the message of flexibility – with regard to social media, it is not about blocking staff usage but working in everyone’s interests to ensure that threats are contained.
4. Introduce a regular company-wide training programme that everyone attends at regular intervals throughout the year, not merely as part of an induction programme.
5. Within the training programme make sure that there are specific examples to demonstrate each rule or regulation, and that there is a clear explanation of the dangers of casual or careless talk on social networking sites. Again use examples, employees need to understand the consequences of raising a throwaway comment that has negative connotations for the business, as much as they need to be aware of dangers of making a more direct but ill-considered attack on a competitor, regulator or even a fellow colleague. They need to be clearly advised on any impact on the company and/or legal action or inquires that may be raised as a result.
6. Alert employees to any changes in policy through regular clear communication.
7. Reinforce the operational policy guidelines regularly, cover everything from blogging to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
8. Ensure that the rules are fair and that they apply throughout the business.
9. Enforce the rules – if there is a deliberate or malicious contravening, disciplinary action needs to be taken. A policy isn’t worth having if it is seen to be lax and unenforced.
10. Review the policy regularly to ensure you keep up to date with new systems and technology.

Phil Vasic is Regional Director, APAC, at Clearswift, the software security company www.clearswift.com
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