Security basics

Security is a subjective matter and designing security controls can often be challenging. A particular asset may demand more protection for keeping data confidential while another asset may demand to ensure utmost integrity. While designing the security controls, it is also equally important to create a balance between the effectiveness of the control and the ease of use for an end user. This section introduces some of the essential security basics before moving on to more complex concepts further in the book.

The CIA triad

Confidentiality, integrity, and availability (often referred as CIA), are the three critical tenets of information security. While there are many factors that help determine the security posture of a system, confidentiality, integrity, and availability are most prominent among them. From an information security perspective, any given asset can be classified based on the confidentiality, integrity, and availability values it carries. This section conceptually highlights the importance of CIA along with practical examples and common attacks against each of the factors.

Confidentiality

The dictionary meaning of the word confidentiality states: the state of keeping or being kept secret or private. Confidentiality, in the context of information security, implies keeping the information secret or private from any unauthorized access, which is one of the primary needs of information security. The following are some examples of information that we often wish to keep confidential:

• Passwords
• PIN numbers
• Credit card number, expiry date, and CVV
• Business plans and blueprints
• Financial information
• Social security numbers
• Health records

Common attacks on confidentiality include:

• Packet sniffing: This involves interception of network packets in order to gain unauthorized access to information flowing in the network
• Password attacks: This includes password guessing, cracking using brute force or dictionary attack, and so on
• Port scanning and ping sweeps: Port scans and ping sweeps are used to identify live hosts in a given network and then perform some basic fingerprinting on the live hosts
• Dumpster driving: This involves searching and mining the dustbins of the target organization in an attempt to possibly get sensitive information
• Shoulder surfing: This is a simple act wherein any person standing behind you may peek in to see what password you are typing
• Social engineering: Social engineering is an act of manipulating human behavior in order to extract sensitive information
• Phishing and pharming: This involves sending false and deceptive emails to a victim, spoofing the identity, and tricking the victim to give out sensitive information
• Wiretapping: This is similar to packet sniffing though more related to monitoring of telephonic conversations
• Keylogging: This involves installing a secret program onto the victim's system which would record and send back all the keys the victim types in

Integrity

Integrity in the context of information security refers to the quality of the information, meaning the information, once generated, should not be tampered with by any unauthorized entities. For example, if a person sends X amount of money to his friend using online banking, and his friend receives exactly X amount in his account, then the integrity of the transaction is said to be intact. If the transaction gets tampered at all in between, and the friend either receives X + (n) or X - (n) amount, then the integrity is assumed to have been tampered with during the transaction.

Common attacks on integrity include:

• Salami attacks: When a single attack is divided or broken into multiple small attacks in order to avoid detection, it is known as a salami attack
• Data diddling attacks: This involves unauthorized modification of data before or during its input into the system
• Trust relationship attacks: The attacker takes benefit of the trust relationship between the entities to gain unauthorized access
• Man-in-the-middle attacks: The attacker hooks himself to the communication channel, intercepts the traffic, and tampers with the data
• Session hijacking: Using the man-in-the-middle attack, the attacker can hijack a legitimate active session which is already established between the entities

Availability

The availability principle states that if an authorized individual makes a request for a resource or information, it should be available without any disruption. For example, a person wants to download his bank account statement using an online banking facility. For some reason, the bank's website is down and the person is unable to access it. In this case, the availability is affected as the person is unable to make a transaction on the bank's website. From an information security perspective, availability is as important as confidentiality and integrity. For any reason, if the requested data isn't available within time, it could cause severe tangible or intangible impact.

Common attacks on availability include the following:

• Denial of service attacks: In a denial of service attack, the attacker sends a large number of requests to the target system. The requests are so large in number that the target system does not have the capacity to respond to them. This causes the failure of the target system and requests coming from all other legitimate users get denied.

• SYN flood attacks: This is a type of denial of service attack wherein the attacker sends a large number of SYN requests to the target with the intention of making it unresponsive.
• Distributed denial of service attacks: This is quite similar to the denial of service attack, the difference being the number of systems used to attack. In this type of attack, hundreds and thousands of systems are used by the attacker in order to flood the target system.
• Electrical power attacks: This type of attack involves deliberate modification in the electrical power unit with an intention to cause a power outage and thereby bring down the target systems.
• Server room environment attacks: Server rooms are temperature controlled. Any intentional act to disturb the server room environment can bring down the critical server systems.
• Natural calamities and accidents: These involve earthquakes, volcano eruptions, floods, and so on, or any unintentional human errors.

Identification

Authentication is often considered the first step of interaction with a system. However, authentication is preceded by identification. A subject can claim an identity by process of identification, thereby initiating accountability. For initiating the process of authentication, authorization, and accountability (AAA), a subject must provide an identity to a system. Typing in a password, swiping an RFID access card, or giving a finger impression, are some of the most common and simple ways of providing individual identity. In the absence of an identity, a system has no way to correlate an authentication factor with the subject. Upon establishing the identity of a subject, thereafter all actions performed would be accounted against the subject, including information-system tracks activity based on identity, and not by the individuals. A computer isn't capable of differentiating between humans. However, a computer can well distinguish between user accounts. It clearly understands that one user account is different from all other user accounts. However, simply claiming an identity does not implicitly imply access or authority. The subject must first prove its identity in order to get access to controlled resources. This process is known as identification.

Authentication

Verifying and testing that the claimed identity is correct and valid is known as the process of authentication. In order to authenticate, the subject must present additional information that should be exactly the same as the identity established earlier. A password is one of the most common types of mechanism used for authentication.

The following are some of the factors that are often used for authentication:

• Something you know: The something you know factor is the most common factor used for authentication. For example, a password or a simple personal identification number (PIN). However, it is also the easiest to compromise.
• Something you have: The something you have factor refers to items such as smart cards or physical security tokens.
• Something you are: The something you are factor refers to using your biometric properties for the process of authentication. For example, using fingerprint or retina scans for authentication.

Identification and authentication are always used together as a single two-step process.

Providing an identity is the first step, and providing the authentication factor(s) is the second step. Without both, a subject cannot gain access to a system. Neither element alone is useful in terms of security.

Common attacks on authentication include:

• Brute force: A brute force attack involves trying all possible permutations and combinations of a particular character set in order to get the correct password
• Insufficient authentication: Single-factor authentication with a weak password policy makes applications and systems vulnerable to password attacks
• Weak password recovery validation: This includes insufficient validation of password recovery mechanisms, such as security questions, OTP, and so on

Authorization

Once a subject has successfully authenticated, the next logical step is to get an authorized access to the resources assigned.

Upon successful authorization, an authenticated identity can request access to an object provided it has the necessary rights and privileges.

An access control matrix is one of the most common techniques used to evaluate and compare the subject, the object, and the intended activity. If the subject is authorized, then a specific action is allowed, and denied if the subject is unauthorized.

It is important to note that a subject who is identified and authenticated may not necessarily be granted rights and privileges to access anything and everything. The access privileges are granted based on the role of the subject and on a need-to-know basis. Identification and authentication are all-or-nothing aspects of access control.

The following table shows a sample access control matrix:

	Resource
User	File 1	File 2
User 1	Read	Write
User 2	-	Read
User 3	Write	Write

From the preceding sample access control matrix, we can conclude the following:

• User 1 cannot modify file 1
• User 2 can only read file 2 but not file 1
• User 3 can read/write both file 1 and file 2

Common attacks on authorization include the following:

• Authorization creep: Authorization creep is a term used to describe that a user has intentionally or unintentionally been given more privileges than he actually requires
• Horizontal privilege escalation: Horizontal privilege escalation occurs when a user is able to bypass the authorization controls and is able to get the privileges of a user who is at the same level in the hierarchy
• Vertical privilege escalation: Vertical privilege escalation occurs when a user is able to bypass the authorization controls and is able to get the privileges of a user higher in the hierarchy

Auditing

Auditing, or monitoring, is the process through which a subject's actions could be tracked and/or recorded for the purpose of holding the subject accountable for their actions once authenticated on a system. Auditing can also help monitor and detect unauthorized or abnormal activities on a system. Auditing includes capturing and preserving activities and/or events of a subject and its objects as well as recording the activities and/or events of core system functions that maintain the operating environment and the security mechanisms.

The minimum events that need to be captured in an audit log are as follows:

• User ID
• Username
• Timestamp
• Event type (such as debug, access, security)
• Event details
• Source identifier (such as IP address)

The audit trails created by capturing system events to logs can be used to assess the health and performance of a system. In case of a system failure, the root cause can be traced back using the event logs. Log files can also provide an audit trail for recreating the history of an event, backtracking an intrusion, or system failure. Most of the operating systems, applications, and services have some kind of native or default auditing function for at least providing bare-minimum events.

Common attacks on auditing include the following:

• Log tampering: This includes unauthorized modification of audit logs
• Unauthorized access to logs: An attacker can have unauthorized access to logs with an intent to extract sensitive information
• Denial of service through audit logs: An attacker can send a large number of garbage requests just with the intention to fill the logs and subsequently the disk space resulting in a denial of service attack

Accounting

Any organization can have a successful implementation of its security policy only if accountability is well maintained. Maintaining accountability can help in holding subjects accountable for all their actions. Any given system can be said to be effective in accountability based on its ability to track and prove a subject's identity.

Various mechanisms, such as auditing, authentication, authorization, and identification, help associate humans with the activities they perform.

Using a password as the only form of authentication creates a significant room for doubt and compromise. There are numerous easy ways of compromising passwords and that is why they are considered the least secure form of authentication. When multiple factors of authentication, such as a password, smart card, and fingerprint scan, are used in conjunction with one another, the possibility of identity theft or compromise reduces drastically.

Non–repudiation

Non-repudiation is an assurance that the subject of an activity or event cannot later deny that the event occurred. Non-repudiation prevents a subject from claiming not to have sent a message, not to have performed an action, or not to have been the cause of an event.

Various controls that can help achieve non-repudiation are as follows:

• Digital certificates
• Session identifiers
• Transaction logs

For example, a person could send a threatening email to his colleague and later simply deny the fact that he sent the email. This is a case of repudiation. However, had the email been digitally signed, the person wouldn't have had the chance to deny his act.

Vulnerability

In very simple terms, vulnerability is nothing but a weakness in a system or a weakness in the safeguard/countermeasure. If a vulnerability is successfully exploited, it could result in loss or damage to the target asset. Some common examples of vulnerability are as follows:

• Weak password set on a system
• An unpatched application running on a system
• Lack of input validation causing XSS
• Lack of database validation causing SQL injection
• Antivirus signatures not updated

Vulnerabilities could exist at both the hardware and software level. A malware-infected BIOS is an example of hardware vulnerability while SQL injection is one of the most common software vulnerabilities.

Threats

Any activity or event that has the potential to cause an unwanted outcome can be considered a threat. A threat is any action that may intentionally or unintentionally cause damage, disruption, or complete loss of assets.

The severity of a threat could be determined based on its impact. A threat can be intentional or accidental as well (due to human error). It can be induced by people, organizations, hardware, software, or nature. Some of the common threat events are as follows:

• A possibility of a virus outbreak
• A power surge or failure
• Fire
• Earthquake
• Floods
• Typo errors in critical financial transactions

Exposure

A threat agent may exploit the vulnerability and cause an asset loss. Being susceptible to such an asset loss is known as an exposure.

Exposure does not always imply that a threat is indeed occurring. It simply means that if a given system is vulnerable and a threat could exploit it, then there's a possibility that a potential exposure may occur.

Risk

A risk is the possibility or likelihood that a threat will exploit a vulnerability to cause harm to an asset.

Risk can be calculated with the following formula:

Risk = Likelihood * Impact

With this formula, it is evident that risk can be reduced either by reducing the threat agent or by reducing the vulnerability.

When a risk is realized, a threat agent or a threat event has taken advantage of a vulnerability and caused harm to or disclosure of one or more assets. The whole purpose of security is to prevent risks from becoming realized by removing vulnerabilities and blocking threat agents and threat events from exposing assets. It's not possible to make any system completely risk free. However, by putting countermeasures in place, risk can be brought down to an acceptable level as per the organization's risk appetite.

Safeguards

A safeguard, or countermeasure, is anything that mitigates or reduces vulnerability. Safeguards are the only means by which risk is mitigated or removed. It is important to remember that a safeguard, security control, or countermeasure may not always involve procuring a new product; effectively utilizing existing resources could also help produce safeguards.

The following are some examples of safeguards:

• Installing antivirus on all the systems
• Installing a network firewall
• Installing CCTVs and monitoring the premises
• Deploying security guards
• Installing temperature control systems and fire alarms

Attack vectors

An attack vector is nothing but a path or means by which an attacker can gain access to the target system. For compromising a system, there could be multiple attack vectors possible. The following are some of the examples of attack vectors:

• Attackers gained access to sensitive data in a database by exploiting SQL injection vulnerability in the application
• Attackers gained access to sensitive data by gaining physical access to the database system
• Attackers deployed malware on the target systems by exploiting the SMB vulnerability
• Attackers gained administrator-level access by performing a brute force attack on the system credentials

To sum up the terms we have learned, we can say that assets are endangered by threats that exploit vulnerabilities resulting in exposure, which is a risk that could be mitigated using safeguards.