1.6 Security Concerns for Vulnerabilities

Vulnerability Types

Zero-day attack = the vulnerability has not been detected or published - there is no patch or way to prevent this attack - very difficulty to mitigate it

Open permission creates an open door for an attacker to exploit the system - commony found in cloud storages - S3 buckets

Unsecured root accounts - disable direct login to the root accounts - protect accounts with root or administrator acces

Errors = don't give too much information in error message - service type, version information, debug data are the errors we should avoid leaking

Weak encryption - length of the encryption matters, hash function for integrity check - some cipher suites are easier to break than others - use TLS which is one of the most common

Insecure protocol - telnet, FTP, SMTP, IMAP are not secure enough because they sent traffic in plaintext - use SSH, SFTP, IMAPS instead

Open ports and services - services will open ports, entry point for an attacker

Improper patch management - keep up-to-date patches, test all your applications then deploy - firmware and operating system patches

Legacy systems - they usually run older systems or services - might be risky to update because they are the core of a service - but they might have vulnerabilities, try to add more security protections or additional firewall rules

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Third Party Risks

Make sure what kind of third parties are accessing your data. Understand how they use your data and how secure their infrastructure is. - lack of vendor support, they are the only ones who can fix their products

Supply chain risk - you can't always control security at a third-party location - hardware or software from a vendor can contain malware, never trust them in the first place

Make sure the data you store ( data storage location ) is stored with strong encryption and have other access controls for security purposes.

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Vulnerability Impacts

Data loss - losing the data - unsecured databases, no password or default password usage

Identity theft = some attackers won't delete the data they compromised but use it for other purposes, like stealing people's identity or opening new credit card on behalf of others

Reputation impacts = getting hacked doesn't look good for a company

Availability loss - outages and downtime, Dos