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Will IE6 be the next NT4?

1st October 2009 All penetration testers will remember the long tail of Windows NT 4.0, and how this operating system continued to be used long past the point when security updates stopped at the end of 2004. For many years the presence of an unpatchable NT4 server was a common issue in a penetration test report, and it is only now, almost five years after security support ended, that finding an NT4 system on a network is becoming a rare event. Read More

One in four web applications susceptible to high risk security flaws

7th September 2009 NTA Monitor has reported a 10% increase in the total number of web applications found to have at least one high-risk security issue... Read More

Organisations facing a changing threat landscape

20th July 2009 According to NTA Monitor's 2009 Annual Security Report, the average number of Internet security vulnerabilities is on the rise... Read More

The Return of the Insider Threat

1st July 2009 When NTA started security testing twelve years ago, the main focus was on the insider threat. There were many reports with statistics showing that most security breaches were due to insiders. By contrast there was very little focus on the external threat via Internet and third-party network links. Back then many companies did not even have a firewall. Read More

Demilitarised Zone most secure option for BlackBerry device

Recent BlackBerry testing by IT security consultancy, NTA Monitor, has revealed that organisations are still not configuring these mobile devices correctly .

The BlackBerry architecture can be insecure if no firewalls are used to separate the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) router component from the central BES server on the internal network. If the BES is compromised and there is no separation of the BES router, this can lead to the whole network becoming insecure.

Roy Hills, Technical Director at NTA Monitor comments: "A hacker could potentially use this back channel to move around inside an organisation undetected, removing confidential information or installing malware on to the network."

Hills continues: "The way to ensure optimum security is to create a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) and separate the router component from the BES. If the BES router gets compromised, the DMZ will ensure that there is no direct access to the Local Area Network."

NTA recommends the following security checklist for BlackBerry users and organisations:

Enable content protection - This encrypts the hand held data. The device should be set at 0 (which is a 16-bit elliptic curve key).
Password policy - The forbidden password option should be set, disallowing users to choose a simple key pattern. The minimum password length setting should be used to enforce a key of nine characters and a maximum password attempt should be set at a recommended five times.
Application control - disallows third party application downloads and should only allow approved software.
Other messaging services - functions other than those necessary should be disabled which prevents the use of peer-to-peer messaging such as ICQ and Google Talk.
Do not use Bluetooth - this function should be disabled due to its inherent security vulnerabilities.

The following diagrams listed below illustrate examples of secure and insecure BlackBerry architectures.

This article was first released on: 28th February 2008