Vulnerabilities#

A vulnerability is a flaw, bug, or weakness in hardware, software, or system procedures that a threat actor can exploit to compromise data security.
A program written to take advantage of a known vulnerability is referred to as an exploit.
A cybercriminal can use an exploit against a vulnerability to carry out an attack, the goal of which is to gain access to a system, the data it hosts or a specific resource.

Vulnerability Management#

The process of finding and patching vulnerabilities.

1. Identify vulns
2. Consider potential exploits
3. Prepare defences against threats
4. Evaluate those defenses

Hardware Vulnerability#

Software Vulnerability#

Software vulnerabilities are usually introduced by errors in the operating system or application code.

Input Validation and Injection Vulnerabilities#

Programs often require data input, but this incoming data could have malicious content, designed to force the program to behave in an unintended way.

• Injection Based vulnerabilities
  • SQLi
  • XSS - Cross-Site Scripting
  • CSRF
  • XXE
• File uploads

Access control problems#

Access control is the process of controlling who does what and ranges from managing physical access to equipment to dictating who has access to a resource, such as a file, and what they can do with it, such as read or change the file. Many security vulnerabilities are created by the improper use of access controls.

• Authentication Based Vulnerabilities
• Autherization Based Vulnerabilities
  • Vulns & Attacks/IDOR

Buffer overflow#

Buffers are memory areas allocated to an application. A vulnerability occurs when data is written beyond the limits of a buffer. By changing data beyond the boundaries of a buffer, the application can access memory allocated to other processes. This can lead to a system crash or data compromise, or provide escalation of privileges.

Race conditions#

This vulnerability describes a situation where the output of an event depends on ordered or timed outputs. A race condition becomes a source of vulnerability when the required ordered or timed events do not occur in the correct order or at the proper time.

Cryptographic & Security Practice Flaws#

Attacks#

In cybersecurity, an attack is any intentional action taken by a threat actor to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability (CIA triad) of a system, network, application, or data.

An attack is a deliberate attempt to exploit a vulnerability in order to gain unauthorized access, cause disruption, or steal/damage information.

Common Attack types#

Physical attacks#

A physical attack is a security incident that affects not only digital but also physical environments where the incident is deployed. Some forms of physical attacks are:

• Malicious USB cable
• Malicious flash drive
• Card cloning and skimming
  Physical attacks fall under the asset security domain.

Malware#

A computer virus is malicious code written to interfere with computer operations and cause damage to data and software.
Today, viruses are more commonly referred to as Malware, which is software designed to harm devices or networks.

• In 1986, the Alvi brothers created the Brain virus, although the intention of the virus was to track illegal copies of medical software and prevent pirated licenses
• In 1988, Robert Morris developed a program to assess the size of the internet. The program crawled the web and installed itself onto other computers to tally the number of computers that were connected to the internet.The program, however, failed to keep track of the computers it had already compromised and continued to re-install itself until the computers ran out of memory and crashed. About 6,000 computers were affected, representing 10% of the internet at the time. This attack cost millions of dollars in damages due to business disruptions and the efforts required to remove the worm.
  After the Morris worm, Computer Emergency Response Teams, known as CERTs®, were established to respond to computer security incidents. CERTs still exist today, but their place in the security industry has expanded to include more responsibilities.

Social Engineering#

Social engineering is a manipulation technique that exploits human error to gain private information, access, or valuables.

• eg: Loveletter attack.in year 2000, Onel De Guzman created the LoveLetter malware to steal internet login credentials.

Phishing is the use of digital communications to trick people into revealing sensitive data or deploying malicious software.

• the Equifax breach. In 2017, attackers successfully infiltrated the credit reporting agency, Equifax. This resulted in one of the largest known data breaches of sensitive information. Over 143 million customer records were stolen, and the breach affected approximately 40% of all Americans.

Web Attacks#

Network Attacks#

Network-based vulnerabilities and exploits can be catastrophic because of the types of damage and impact they can cause in an organization. The following are some examples of network-based attacks and exploits:

• Windows name resolution-based attacks and exploits
• Attacks and exploits against Server Message Block implementations
• DNS cache poisoning attacks
• Simple Network Management Protocol vulnerabilities and exploits
• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol SMTP vulnerabilities and exploits
• File Transfer Protocol FTP - vulnerabilities and exploits
• Pass-the-Hash Attacks
• Kerberos and LDAP-Based Attacks
• MITM or On-Path Attacks
• SSL stripping attacks
• DoS and DDoS Attacks
• NAC bypass
• Virtual local area network - VLAN Hopping attacks
• DHCP Attacks
• Wireless Vulnerabilities and Attacks

Adversarial artificial intelligence#

Adversarial artificial intelligence is a technique that manipulates artificial intelligence and machine learning ↗ technology to conduct attacks more efficiently. Adversarial artificial intelligence falls under both the communication and network security and the identity and access management domains.

Supply chain attack#

Cryptographic attack#

A cryptographic attack affects secure forms of communication between a sender and intended recipient. Some forms of cryptographic attacks are: 

• Birthday
• Collision
• Downgrade
  Cryptographic attacks fall under the communication and network security domain.

Password Attacks#

SEO Poisoning#

You’ve probably heard of search engine optimization or SEO which, in simple terms, is about improving an organization’s website so that it gains greater visibility in search engine results.
Search engines such as Google work by presenting a list of web pages to users based on their search query. These web pages are ranked according to the relevancy of their content.
While many legitimate companies specialize in optimizing websites to better position them, attackers take advantage of popular search terms and use SEO to push malicious sites higher up the ranks of search results. This technique is called SEO poisoning.
The most common goal of SEO poisoning is to increase traffic to malicious sites that may host malware or attempt social engineering.