From: security at brvenik.com (Jason)
Subject: Avoiding being a good admin - was DCOM RPC
 exploit  (dcom.c)

Thump!! well, I need to start checking my math or my 0s before clicking 
send :-(

+1800 more stupid points to me. Guess I will just drink a big ol cup of 
STFU and nurse my bump from the clue stick.

The math still holds, you need more contractors but still save a ton 
compared to 1/2 day downtime for everyone. Wasn't the downtime more 
likely 1-2 days in this case if you were hit anyway.

37,500 systems need touching

6 * 30 = 180 days ( Yeah, that thump hurts my head )

180 - ( 6*8 + 2 ) = 130

500 sites / 6 sites pp = 83 p

6 sites * 75 systems = 450 systems per person

450 pp / 130 days = 3.5 systems per day per person

130 days at .5 days patching = 65 days of lost productivity

65 days at 8 hrs day = 520 hrs

520 hrs at $30 hr burden = $15,600

$15,600 * 83 = $1.3 million in lost time patching

Compared to the very conservative 4 million lost otherwise?

Add another million to the 1.3 mil to hire contractors and you still 
save almost 2 million.

Jason wrote:

> Lets get real with the numbers here. I think these are on the generous
> side mind you.
> 
> Background statement.
> 
> ** If you have systems worth protecting you hire people capable of
> protecting them **
> 
> I think I will add a new one
> 
> ** If you have 150,000 systems then you most likely have someone with the
> knowledge to make it all work and that someone probably understands
> staffing, budgets, planning, building a business case, presenting it... **
> 
> Paul Schmehl wrote:
> 
>>When you have 150,000 machines worldwide, having 1% of those unpatched
>>(which is a 99% *success* rate) means you have 1500! vulnerable
>>machines.  Most situations that I'm familiar with were in the tens - not
>>even the hundreds - but it only took 10 or 15 machines to take down the
>>entire network due to the nature of that worm.  10 or 15 boxes
>>represents 1/100th of a percent of the total, yet that small number
>>could completely destablize a network and cause untold hours of work for
>>the admins and networking staff.
> 
> 
> ok, when you have 150,000 machines worldwide, having 100% of them running
> some version of SQL that is exposed to the network, any network, is just
> plain _stupid_. I am referring to even a basic understanding of best
> practice, with that you can knock out at least 10% of the vulnerable
> system population... there went 15,000 systems.
> 
> Lets use these numbers anyway. Even if there is a 50% penetration rate of
> systems with situations that require SQL and cannot be mitigated we have
> 75,000 systems.
> 
> Now assuming a 50% automatic patch penetration rate on those 75,000
> systems you have 37,500 systems still exposed after 5 days of the release
> of the patch.
> 
> 6 months * 30 days = 1800 days to patch
> 
> 1800 days - 6 months * 8 weekend days per month = 48 days.
> 
> add 2 days grace for holiday or whatever and you have 1750 days in which
> to manually touch all of these systems and patch them.
> 
> 37,500 systems / ~75 systems per site = 500 sites.
> 
> NOTE: systems per site should be much higher in a global org with 150k
> systems and the ability to patch these without touching every one should
> be fairly high, at least as high as 20%.
> 
> 500 sites / ~6 sites per person =  ~83 people to patch.
> 
> 6 sites * 75 systems = 450 systems per person
> 
> 1750 days / 450 systems = ~4 days per system per person to patch.
> 
> On the generous side there are still 3.5 days per 4 day cycle to do normal
> work.
> 
> 6 months at .5 days every 4 days for 83 people is only 2.7 days
> productivity per person lost. 2.7 days equals ~21.6 manhours per person.
> 
> If we wanted to maintain that productivity we could hire 4 contractors to
> patch for 3 months and get 2688 manhours to apply to the problem. At the
> outrageous rate of $150 an hour that is $403,200 to address the problem in
> the time available. Add in another outrageous $600,000 for misc expenses
> and travel and we are out $1,000,000
> 
> Given a conservative half a day downtime for only 100,000 of the more
> likely 150,000 employees at a very conservative average burden of $10 per
> hour you have spent $4,000,000 in productivity losses alone. This
> completely ignores costs like lost data, lost confidence, work that has to
> be redone...
> 
> 
>>Now anybody who wants to tell me that a 0.01% failure rate in a patching
>>program proves the admins are incompetent is simply ignorant of the
>>issues.  I guess it's just impossible for people who don't actually run
>>a large network to grasp the nature of the issues.
> 
> 
> I think that failure rate in patching when you reasonably have 4 days per
> system that needs to be touched proves incompetence.
> 
> It proves an inability to manage a network of that size.
> It proves that project management is lacking.
> It proves a lack of defined and accepted response plans.
> 
> It proves there is no one place that things break down and when several of
> these places take the same attitude that the problem is insurmountable we
> end up with slammer causing major problems.
> 
> ** Oh my gawd, I think I need a bigger clue stick. **
> 
> Sorry to mix mails together, it is the same concept...
> 
> John Airey wrote:
> 
> 
>>Imagine a company where a user is told by the IT department that such and
>>such a computer can't be used. He then goes and buys it on his own credit
>>card and claims it back on expenses (this happens more than you realise).
>>Said IT department now has to support the machine that he was told he
>>couldn't have, probably because someone higher up in the organisation says
>>that it has to. This computer will probably consume a disproportionate
>>amount of support time. The irony is that the purchaser will probably then
>>tell you it was a bargain (yeah, right!).
>>
> 
> 
> Imagine the same company where the user has requirements, these
> requirements are fed into the defined and accepted policy, the management
> understands this policy, and the IT group understands that the world has
> needs.
> 
> Now IT needs to take into account these needs and present a viable
> solution in a timely manner. The problem here is that IT thinks that they
> can hide behind security because they "do not have the time" to make these
> needs a reality. The reality is they do not have time because they do not
> want to solve the problem, this end up costing them more time and forcing
> them to do things they do not want to do.
> 
> 
>>The bottom line is that these days, the IT departments do not have enough
>>power to enforce any radical suggestions. I'd be surprised if any
>>organisation exists (outside of the military) that insists on knowing the
>>MAC addresses of machines before they get connected to the network. (In our
>>case we monitor MAC addresses instead as we can then spot network
> 
> problems).
> 
> :-)
> 
> I know of several, the largest one has 13,000 _client_ systems, nearly
> 5000 of them laptops.
> 
> Yes there are times when the fire drill has to be run to meet the needs of
> some business critical project however these are the exception not the
> rule.
> 
> Then you say, what happens when these laptops are roaming on the company
> network or at a different office? This is pretty easy to handle actually,
> roaming gets handled by designating conference rooms and temporary office
> space as hostile networks and forcing having these connections use a VPN
> to get to _anything_ they need, otherwise it is just like connecting to
> your home cable modem only with better security for the clients and
> tighter auditing. You hop onto a wireless segment you need to
> 
> * auth to the AP
> * auth to the firewall
> * VPN to use corp services
> 
> Failure to VPN only gets you authenticated web browsing.
> 
> 
>>The truth is that all sysadmins are all involved in damage limitation,
> 
> which
> 
>>is why we subscribe to this list. We do our utmost to prevent damage, but
>>recent history shows us just one user clicking on a dodgy email attachment
>>can bring down major networks. In other cases not knowing what a firewall
>>should and shouldn't do has caused other outages (even affecting
> 
> Microsoft).
> 
> Only because best practices were not implemented. Had that been done our
> damage would have been significantly reduced and exposure nearly
> completely eliminated.
> 
> Not knowing what a firewall should do... Sorry, no sympathy here.
> 
> 
>>After all, if what has been suggested is true and has been implemented, why
>>bother to subscribe to this list?
>>
> 
> 
> * new vulns can be evaluated against our environment and a
> mitigation/resolution can be implemented
> * things change, we need to stay up to date
> * Someone can say I had that problem once, here is how it is mitigated
> * we learn these things we did not know about that can be implemented today
> 
> 
> 
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