In our previous post (Are Canaries Secure?) we showed (some of) the steps we’ve taken to harden Canary and limit the blast radius from a potential Canary compromise. Colloquially, that post aimed to answer the question: “are Canaries Secure?” This post aims at another question that pops up periodically: “If I run your Canaries on my network, can you use them to hack me?” This answer is a little more complicated than the first, as there is some nuance. (Because …

Last week team Thinkst downed tools again for our bi-annual HackWeek. The rules of HackWeek are straightforward: Make Stuff; Learn; Have fun. We discussed HackWeek briefly last year: Our HackWeek parameters are simple: We down tools on all but the most essential work (primarily anything customer-facing) and instead scope and build something. The project absolutely does not have to be work-related, and people can work individually or in teams. The key deadline is a 10-minute demo on the Friday afternoon. …

Canaries and Canarytokens are tripwires that can alert you to intrusions. When alerts trigger, we want to make sure you get them where you need them. While our Slack integration is cool, you might prefer to send alerts through your SIEM. Or to a security automation tool. Maybe you want to leverage our API to integrate Canary alerts into a custom SOC tool. Want to turn a smart light bulb red and play the Imperial March? You could do that …

‪If you force people to jump through hoops to handle alerts, they’ll soon stop doing it 🤯‬ ‪Canary optimizes for fewer alerts but we also ensure that you can handle alerts easily without us.‬ ‪So it takes just 4 minutes to setup a Canary but far less to pull our alerts into Slack‬. By default, your console will send you alerts via email or SMS, but there are a few other tricks up its sleeve. It is trivial to also …

…what if someone finds out? Do attackers care if there are canaries in my network? People wonder if they need to hide the defensive tech used on their networks. Like all interesting dilemmas, the answer is nuanced. In defense of obscurity In any discussion about obscurity you will almost certainly have someone shout about “security through obscurity” being bad. As a security strategy, obscurity is a terrible plan. As an opportunity to slow down or confuse attackers, it’s an easy …

We’ve got hundreds of servers and thousands of Canaries deployed in the world. Keeping them healthy is a large part of what we do, and why customers sign up for Canary. Monitoring plays a big role in supporting our flocks and keeping the infrastructure humming along. A pretty common sight in operations are dashboards covered with graphs, charts, widgets, and gizmos, all designed to give you insight into the status of your systems. We are generally against doing things “just …

Thinkst in Santa Clara Last week Haroon and I found ourselves at the 28th USENIX Security Symposium in balmy Santa Clara. We made the trip from Vegas for Haroon’s invited talk at the main event, and I took the opportunity to present at one of the side workshops (HotSec). This is a short recap of our USENEX experience. Neither Haroon nor I have attended USENIX events previously, despite over 20 Black Hat USAs between the two of us. What’s worse, we …