In the digital landscape of the modern world, cybersecurity has rightfully, become an ever-growing concern.
As individuals and businesses continue to strive to protect their sensitive information from threats, innovative solutions are constantly emerging.
One tool that has become invaluable in my arsenal is canary tokens. If you aren’t familiar with Canary tokens, you should be. canary tokens are clever and quite deceptive resources, that can provide a leg up on adversaries accessing your data.
What Are Canary tokens?
Picture this: You've set your network up to be an impenetrable fortress. Firewall, EDR, IDS, and data encryption mechanisms are all in place and running like a well-oiled machine. Your IP segmentation game is on point, and you're leveraging zero trust like a boss. But in the back recesses of your mind there's always this lingering and nagging doubt: “What if someone still manages to breach these defenses?”
That type of intrusive thought is exactly where canary tokens come into play.
Canary tokens, are basically decoys, pieces of information or documents strategically placed within your network, website or file systems. The purpose of the "canaries" is to serve as an early warning system, alerting you when an unauthorized user tries to access or interact with them. The idea behind canary tokens is simple yet powerful: fool potential intruders into revealing their presence while keeping your actual sensitive data safe.
Canary tokens come in various forms, offering flexibility and customization to suit different security needs.
Document Tokens
Your sensitive files are prime targets for attack. Document tokens are faux files designed to attract and lure intruders. Document tokens can be carefully crafted documents containing harmless but quite convincing data, such as spreadsheets, financial reports, or even faux company secrets.
For instance, you can create a document token, which for all intents and purposes, appears to be a juicy spreadsheet (this happens to be my personal favorite) containing customer or financial account data. Place the canary in an out the way place on a file server, or workstation. Any access of the file and the canary triggers an alert, alerting you via your selected method. Allowing you to take immediate action.
I’m going to be honest here… This next token type is one that I never use in my production environment. It’s not because I am indifferent to our web presence, or because I’m overconfident…
It’s just that someone else manages all our production web presence, so it’s not in my purview.
HTTP Tokens
Another common attack vector is websites. It’s no secret that websites are, by design, publicly accessible, and often targeted by adversaries seeking to exploit vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access. Using canary tokens you have the option to leverage HTTP tokens that can be integrated into the website's code. These tokens appear as regular URLs or hidden fields within web pages and can be set to generate alerts upon any interaction.
According to my web engineering friends, when you embed an HTTP token on a website, you have “endless options to create tripwires”, potentially stopping an intrusion in its tracks before any real damage occurs.
Honeytokens
One of the most used types of canary tokens is honeytokens. Honeytokens are enticing pieces of information designed to attract and lure adversaries. Honeytokens can take the form of files, documents, credentials, or even email addresses that appear to be valuable targets.
You decide to create a honeytoken email address as a deceptive trap. You create an email address like "confidential@yourcompany.com" and make it look enticing to attackers. The email address can be something that seems like it would contain valuable or sensitive information.
Next, strategically place this honeytoken email address in a hidden or less frequently accessed location within your network. It could be stored in a file, a database, or embedded within a web page that is not typically accessed by regular users.
When an attacker attempts to interact with this honeytoken email address you can take appropriate action, depending on your deployment method.
DNS Tokens
Let’s talk about DNS. We all know the “it’s always DNS” joke when there’s a network communication issue. But DNS does play a crucial role in network communications. canary tokens offer DNS tokens that can be configured to monitor DNS traffic within your network. Deploying these tokens, suspicious or unauthorized DNS requests can be detected, which may indicate a malicious actor attempting to exploit your network.
DNS tokens are invisible observers, silently watching for any unusual network activity and promptly alerting you when something seems amiss.
The Value in Canary tokens
Canary tokens present several key advantages that make them an invaluable addition to any cybersecurity arsenal:
- Early Warning System: Canary tokens act as the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, providing an early alert system when potential threats are detected. Giving you the opportunity to respond promptly and minimize the impact of a cyber incident.
- Deception and Misdirection: By strategically placing canary tokens throughout your system, you create an environment of uncertainty for potential attackers. The presence of decoys increases the likelihood that attackers will interact with them, inadvertently exposing their presence.
- Minimal Impact on Operations: Canary tokens are designed to have no impact on your system's day-to-day operations. They are lightweight, unobtrusive, and highly customizable, ensuring they do not disrupt legitimate activities.
- Cost-Effective Security Enhancement: Compared to other complex cybersecurity measures, Canary tokens offer a cost-effective solution. They require minimal investment in terms of time, effort, and resources, while still providing valuable insights into potential threats.
In the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity, Canary tokens have emerged as a creative and effective means of early detection and defense. By deploying canary decoys throughout your systems, you gain insights into potential intrusions, and help keep your sensitive data, digital assets and sanity a little safer.
Canary tokens are an additional layer of protection to complement your existing security controls. They are a simple, yet powerful solution to network detections.
If you’re not already utilizing canaries, you should be asking yourself "why not?".