Lacoon Releases MobileFortress Product Update for Heartbleed
– Providing customers with the first solution able to detect and protect their mobile devices from Heartbleed so they can confidently continue to do business
In our previous post, we talked about the OpenSSL vulnerability discovered last week, aptly named Heartbleed because, among other things, it allows the exploit of SSL heartbeats. Documented as CVE-2014-0160, Heartbleed could impact more than 65% of the Internet, as well as many mobile devices and apps. We also developed an easy to use application for testing if a mobile device is vulnerable. Check out that post to learn more.
To get ahead of the threat, Lacoon has developed a product update for Mobile Fortress to detect and protect mobile devices from Heartbleed.
The Risk of Heartbleed for Mobile Users
Heartbleed allows attackers to use the heartbeat messages of an SSL session, which keep the session alive, without needing to authenticate to the server, to steal 64KB of memory at a time. The memory could contain anything – passwords, sensitive information, etc.
For mobile users, the device could be vulnerable and expose an application or browser, or the application, itself, could be vulnerable (if it contains OpenSSL versions 1.0.1a through 1.0), which means both the connection and the data of the app could be exposed. Regardless, this vulnerability has significant implications for mobile users.
The First Solution for Protecting and Detecting Heartbleed Exploits on Mobile
Lacoon’s R&D team moved quickly to deliver protection against Heartbleed. After ensuring the Lacoon MobileFortress Client was not vulnerable to Heartbleed (which it wasn’t because it did not use the affected OpenSSL versions), the team enhanced Lacoon MobileFortress with the ability to detect the vulnerability in other devices and applications. Lacoon is the the first, and currently only, solution capable of detecting and protecting mobile devices from Heartbleed exploits. Lacoon customers can confidently enable their users to continue to do business with their mobile devices.
Lacoon’s Architecture is the Difference
Our R&D team was able to provide new detection capabilities in record time, due to the unique architecture of the Lacoon MobileFortress solution that combines:
- A cloud-based risk engine, which performs advanced attack analysis,
- On-device detection and remediation, and
- Network protectionto enable the effective mitigation of emerging and zero-day exploits
This architecture gives Lacoon the flexibility to quickly add and implement functionality to stay on top of the ever-evolving mobile threat landscape.
How Lacoon MobileFotress Protects Against Heartbleed
To help our customers protect their environment, which likely contains applications at risk, and ensure the security of their sensitive information, the Heartbleed Product Update provides two key enhancements:
- Automatic Detection
The unique detection and mitigation architecture of MobileFortress will automatically detect if a device or an application contains the library vulnerable to this exploit. Once detected, an alert will display on the Dashboard. (Note: Our research shows that many enterprise applications still contain the vulnerable library, so if you are using one of these applications you should advise your vendor ASAP). - Policy Choice
The customer can make a policy choice to determine how any vulnerable devices will be protected. For example, they can immediately activate the MobileFortress Active Protection (VPN) to prevent any attempt to attack a device or expose data. If such an attempt is made, an alert will display on the Dashboard.
In addition, customers who use our partners’ mobile device management (MDM) solutions will be able to leverage our assessments and protect vulnerable devices that cannot be patched, issuing instructions to users to update or remove vulnerable apps.
More Details
We have put together a slide deck and screenshots that provide additional information on this Heartbleed protection.
This Product Update provides vital protection to our customer’s devices to allow users the time they need to update their device operating system version or vulnerable application.