@MalwareUtkonos

Robert Simmons is an independent malware researcher. With an expertise in building automated malware analysis systems based on open source tools, he has been tracking malware and phishing attacks and picking them apart for years. Robert has spoken on malware analysis at many of the top security conferences including DEFCON, HOPE, botconf, and DerbyCon among others. Robert also is a maintainer of plyara, a YARA rule parser written in pure python.
Robert, also known as Utkonos, has a background in biology, linguistics, and Russian area studies. He has lived extensively in Russia and Ukraine and has been known to swear profusely and constantly in Russian.

Comparing Malicious Files

A critical step taken during the malware analysis process is to attempt to determine the malware family a sample may belong to. Even if one cannot link a file to a family, one must at least try to find files that are similar and extrapolate information about the sample from comparison with these similar files. This talk reviews a variety of methods for comparing files from simple to complex.

Come see Robert at RVAsec! Register now.

www.infoblox.com

Jeff Cummings, Senior Systems Engineer and Security Subject Matter Expert, Infoblox
Jeff has held this position at Infoblox for over five years supporting customers in the Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC geography. He previously was a Security Engineer at CACI for almost 20 years. While at CACI, Jeff built and managed their Cyber Security Solutions lab in Chantilly, Virginia where he helped create and test security solutions, leveraging relationships with various security technologies. Prior, Jeff was on CACI’s Cyber team where his responsibilities included assessing security posture of numerous customers’ infrastructures and security stacks, as well as proposing/deploying remediation and improved security protections. Jeff graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from West Virginia Institute of Technology and is a current CISSP (#40254).

Preventing the Attack – DHCP and DNS for the Win!

When is the best time to prevent something? BEFORE it happens of course! This talk will describe the unique abilities of DNS and DHCP to protect your network by preventing potential malicious activity BEFORE it occurs. Both of these protocols can literally block malicious activity BEFORE it occurs! As the Internet of Things explodes on all of our networks, and complexity of networks increases, knowing what it on your network is critical. The increased number of devices, many of which are not in your control, can lead to an increased number of threats to your network. A simple, centrally controlled mechanism that can control access to ALL devices exists in your network already. Attend this session to find out how it works.

Come and see Jeff at RVAsec! Register now.

@IAmKMittal

www.linkedin.com/in/kashishmittalcmu/

Kashish Mittal is a Security Researcher and Engineer. He currently is the Head of Security at MileIQ, a Microsoft startup. He has worked for companies such as Elevate Security, Duo Security, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank etc. By choice, he is an ethical hacker and an addicted CTF player. He is a member of PPP (CMU’s elite CTF group). Prior to joining Duo, he did Security Research at Cylab, Pittsburgh. He has a BS and a MS from Carnegie Mellon University with a focus on Security. He is passionate about delivering Security awareness and training for employees, college students and high schoolers etc. He has been invited to presented his research and work at various national and International Security conferences.

One Man Army – Playbook on how to be the first Security Engineer at a company

How often have you heard that ‘Early stage startups don’t care much about Security because if there is no product, there is nothing to secure?’ Although there is merit in the argument that startups need to build product so as to sustain and grow, it often puts the person in charge of securing them in a tricky position. For most startups, this person is the first Security Engineer who can be somewhere between the 10th to 300th employee. By the time the first Security Engineer is on-boarded the attack surface has usually become quite large and he or she faces an uphill battle to go about securing the organization. In such cases, the Security Engineer needs to perform as a ‘one-man army’ keeping the attackers at bay. In this talk, i will present a playbook on how to perform as one.

Come see Kashish at RVAsec! Register now.

Danny McCaslin is a systems administrator with the Frederick County Virginia Sanitation Authority. He recently finished work on a Masters degree in Information Technology with a concentration in Information Assurance and Security with American public University. Current projects and interests include Industrial Systems Security and Security Automation.

Automating Information Security

While the complexity of modern security breaches continues to increase security professionals have to find a way to handle the increasing number and complexity of attacks. Security automation is key to maintaining network security but has not been heavily adopted. This presentation will use NIST-defined security controls to provide insight into how automation can be leveraged for information security.

Come see Danny at RVAsec. Register now!

www.crowdstrike.com/blog

Harlan has spent over 2 decades in the info/cyber security field, most of which has been spent in DFIR. He is a prolific author and public speaker.

From The Trenches: Observations of and Tracking Actor Activity

EDR and threat hunting capabilities provide an unprecedented level of visibility into an infrastructure, and by extension, into malicious actor’s behaviors and TTPs. This capability extends well beyond what is available from OSINT collection and processing, as well as traditional IR, and provides the foundation for a strategic tracking process to truly take full advantage of what’s available. Not only can you track behaviors over time, but mapping the observed TTPs to the MITRE ATT&CK framework can provide valuable insights, and inform defensive measures.

Come and see Harlan at RVAsec!

@kesseret

Christine is  the CAD Administrator for Bedford County, VA department of E-911 communications. Prior to this position, she was the Public Safety LAN Administrator for Bedford County, VA Sheriff’s Office, Fire & Rescue, and E-911 communications for 10 years. Bedford County is a rural joint E-911 center supporting both the Town of Bedford and the County of Bedford with a service area of approximately 762 square miles with a population of 84,000 people.

Secure 9-1-1 and Protecting Our First Responders

In the past 9-1-1 networks were mostly closed networks with no access to the outside world, there has been a lack of need to think about information security because why should you? With technology advancing software vendors are now utilizing cloud services and there are outside public safety applications that now need to communicate to 9-1-1. This has led to many centers in last decade to opening up their networks. The next several years will also be a large change for 9-1-1, as they will be switching from the analog Enhanced 911 (E911) to the digital NextGen 911 (NG 911) system. For large metropolitan PSAPs, this will be a blip on the radar as they have the resources and personnel to handle the changeover but smaller and rural PSAPs will have the same information security concerns but they will not have the resources or personnel available to them to address these concerns. There are a large list of security concerns for 9-1-1 centers to acknowledge and start addressing before the switchover to NG-911. I will go over telephony denial of service attacks on both the analog E911, the VoIP NG-911, and the non-emergency lines, prank/hoax calls to 9-1-1 (what I universally call “swatting”) and in what ways that can be accomplished using technology past and present, various attack vectors to the Computer Aided Dispatch, or CAD, network why that data needs to be protected both currently and in the future with NG-911, and physical/internal threats to the 9-1-1 center for both the data and the security of the dispatchers. This is just an informational talk about these concerns to help bring awareness to what we face in the public safety industry and how we handle it with the limited resources we have available to us.

Come and see Christine at RVAsec! Register now.

Jeff’s Information Security career started in 1998 as a technician in the NOC at an ISP. Later he attended Virginia Commonwealth University and earned his BS in IS and MS in Computer and Information Systems Security. While at VCU, Jeff worked as a Network Technician and Senior Information Security Analyst. Jeff joined Virtustream (formerly EMC’s Cloud Services) in 2015, where he now leads the Network IDS/IPS team, as well as the Enterprise Encryption team. Jeff recently earned his post-graduate certificate in Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking from the SANS Technology Institute. Jeff’s background in programming, networking, and system administration is advantageous to his Ethical Hacking interests. Jeff has written papers and conducted research on Ethical Hacking topics such as Malware Command & Control, Security Enhanced Linux, Information Security in the UAE, etc. He currently holds an array of Certifications including CISSP, GCIH, GPEN, GWAPT, GXPN, and VMware NSX: Micro-Segmentation.

Network Security Monitoring: Experience and Lessons

Network Security Monitoring is an integral part of security defense. Setting up Network IDS/IPS properly is critical to ensuring an organization’s NSM is efficient and effective. I have learned quite a few lessons from my experience in the NSM realm: from properly sizing and architecting solutions to automating deployment and operations in a variety of environments. I will also share lessons on working with Network teams to configure network components for NSM, setting up and operating NSM systems, and scaling NSM solutions to handle customer demands. I will also compare Open Source Solutions to Vendor Solutions. My goal for this presentation is for attendees to learn from my experiences in order to make informed decisions in their own environments.

Come see Jeff at RVAsec! Register now.

@URSpider

Conrad Layne is a senior cyber intelligence analyst with General Electric since 2013. In this role, Conrad tracks more than 50 Nation-state actors, their attacks, and TTPs with efforts focused on cyber-attacks affecting industrial control systems. Conrad holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Digital Forensic Science from Defiance College and a Master’s Degree in Cyber Security Intelligence from Utica College.

Operationalizing the ATT&CK™ Framework

Use of atomic indicators of compromise for cyber security, quickly become stale, and are often defeated by malicious actors. Behavioral-based detection strategies focus on series of actions, during an intrusion, and are more dynamic in defending against intrusions. In this talk, GE-CIRT discusses strategies to track, and respond to threat actors, by using frameworks like the Lockheed Martin Kill Chain and the MITRE ATT&CK framework with TIAMAT, GE’s in-house developed end-to-end operational ATT&CK tool.

Come see Conrad at RVAsec! Register now.