Web security in the finance sector: Analysing the security of financial web applications: A case study

Nowadays, information security is an increasing concern in institutions and organizations. This concern is even greater in the finance sector, not only because the financial amount involved but also clients and organization’s private and sensitive information. As a way to test security in infrastructures, networks, deployed web applications and many other assets, organizations have been performing penetration testing (pentest) which simulates an attacker’s behavior in a controlled environment in order to identify its vulnerabilities. This article focusses on the analysis of the results of security audits conducted on several financial web applications from one institution with aid of automatic tools in order to assess their web applications security level. To help in security matters, many organizations build security frameworks for vulnerability assessment, security assessment, threat modeling, penetration testing, risk management and many more. As for penetration testing, organizations such as OWASP provide vulnerability and security information, a testing methodology, risk analysis and penetration testing tools.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

My Software has a Vulnerability, should I worry?

(U.S) Rule-based policies to mitigate software risk suggest to use the CVSS score to measure the individual vulnerability risk and act accordingly: an HIGH CVSS score according to the NVD (National (U.S.) Vulnerability Database) is therefore translated into a "Yes". A key issue is whether such rule is economically sensible, in particular if reported vulnerabilities have been actually exploited in the wild, and whether the risk score do actually match the risk of actual exploitation. We compare the NVD dataset with two additional datasets, the EDB for the white market of vulnerabilities (such as those present in Metasploit), and the EKITS for the exploits traded in the black market. We benchmark them against Symantec's threat explorer dataset (SYM) of actual exploit in the wild. We analyze the whole spectrum of CVSS submetrics and use these characteristics to perform a case-controlled analysis of CVSS scores (similar to those used to link lung cancer and smoking) to test its reliability as a risk factor for actual exploitation. We conclude that (a) fixing just because a high CVSS score in NVD only yields negligible risk reduction, (b) the additional existence of proof of concepts exploits (e.g. in EDB) may yield some additional but not large risk reduction, (c) fixing in response to presence in black markets yields the equivalent risk reduction of wearing safety belt in cars (you might also die but still..). On the negative side, our study shows that as industry we miss a metric with high specificity (ruling out vulns for which we shouldn't worry). In order to address the feedback from BlackHat 2013's audience, the final revision (V3) provides additional data in Appendix A detailing how the control variables in the study affect the results.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Web applications security and vulnerability analysis financial web applications security audit – a case study

Information security can no longer be neglected in any area. It is a concern to everyone and every organization. This is particularly important in the finance sector, not only because the financial amounts involved but also clients and organization’s private and sensitive information. As a way to test security in infrastructures, networks, deployed web applications and many other assets, organizations have been performing penetration testing which simulates an attacker’s behavior in a controlled environment in order to identify its vulnerabilities. This article focus on the analysis of the results of security audits conducted on several financial web applications from one institution with aid of automatic tools in order to assess their web applications security level. To help in security matters, many organizations build security frameworks for vulnerability assessment, security assessment, threat modeling, penetration testing, risk management and many more. As for penetration testing, organizations such as OWASP provide vulnerability and security information, a testing methodology, risk analysis and penetration testing tools.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Effect of Security Education and Expertise on Security Assessments: the Case of Software Vulnerabilities

In spite of the growing importance of software security and the industry demand for more cyber security expertise in the workforce, the effect of security education and experience on the ability to assess complex software security problems has only been recently investigated. As proxy for the full range of software security skills, we considered the problem of assessing the severity of software vulnerabilities by means of a structured analysis methodology widely used in industry (i.e. the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (\CVSS) v3), and designed a study to compare how accurately individuals with background in information technology but different professional experience and education in cyber security are able to assess the severity of software vulnerabilities. Our results provide some structural insights into the complex relationship between education or experience of assessors and the quality of their assessments. In particular we find that individual characteristics matter more than professional experience or formal education; apparently it is the \emph{combination} of skills that one owns (including the actual knowledge of the system under study), rather than the specialization or the years of experience, to influence more the assessment quality. Similarly, we find that the overall advantage given by professional expertise significantly depends on the composition of the individual security skills as well as on the available information.Comment: Presented at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2018), Innsbruck, Austria, June 201

Economic Factors of Vulnerability Trade and Exploitation

Cybercrime markets support the development and diffusion of new attack technologies, vulnerability exploits, and malware. Whereas the revenue streams of cyber attackers have been studied multiple times in the literature, no quantitative account currently exists on the economics of attack acquisition and deployment. Yet, this understanding is critical to characterize the production of (traded) exploits, the economy that drives it, and its effects on the overall attack scenario. In this paper we provide an empirical investigation of the economics of vulnerability exploitation, and the effects of market factors on likelihood of exploit. Our data is collected first-handedly from a prominent Russian cybercrime market where the trading of the most active attack tools reported by the security industry happens. Our findings reveal that exploits in the underground are priced similarly or above vulnerabilities in legitimate bug-hunting programs, and that the refresh cycle of exploits is slower than currently often assumed. On the other hand, cybercriminals are becoming faster at introducing selected vulnerabilities, and the market is in clear expansion both in terms of players, traded exploits, and exploit pricing. We then evaluate the effects of these market variables on likelihood of attack realization, and find strong evidence of the correlation between market activity and exploit deployment. We discuss implications on vulnerability metrics, economics, and exploit measurement.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, 14 table

Selecting Countermeasures for ICT systems Before They are Attacked

A countermeasure is any change to a system to reduce the probability it is successfully attacked. We propose a model based approach that selects countermeasures through multiple simulations of the behaviors of an ICT system and of intelligent attackers that implement sequences of attacks. The simulations return information on the attacker sequences and the goals they reach we use to compute the statistics that drive the selection. Since attackers change their sequences as countermeasures are deployed, we have defined an iterative strategy where each iteration selects some countermeasures, updates the system models and runs the simulations to discover any new attacker sequence. The discovery of new sequences starts a new iteration. The Haruspex suite automates the proposed approach. Some of its tools acquire information on the target system and on the attackers and build the corresponding models. Another tool simulates the attacks through the models of the system and of the attackers. The tool to select countermeasures invokes the other ones to discover how countermeasures influence the attackers. We apply the whole suite to three systems and discuss how the connection topology influences the countermeasures to adop

A Software Vulnerability Rating Approach Based on the Vulnerability Database

CVSS is a specification for measuring the relative severity of software vulnerabilities. The performance values of the CVSS given by CVSS-SIG cannot describe the reasons for the software vulnerabilities. This approach fails to distinguish between software vulnerabilities that have the same score but different levels of severity. In this paper, a software vulnerability rating approach (SVRA) is proposed. The vulnerability database is used by SVRA to analyze the frequencies of CVSS’s metrics at different times. Then, the equations for both exploitability and impact subscores are given in terms of these frequencies. SVRA performs a weighted average of these two subscores to create an SVRA score. The score of a vulnerability is dynamically calculated at different times using the vulnerability database. Experiments were performed to validate the efficiency of the SVRA

Design of methodology for vulnerability assesment

Práce se zabývá problematikou hodnocení bezpečnostních zranitelností. Cílem práce je vytvořit novou metodu hodnocení zranitelností, která bude lépe prioritizovat kritické zranitelnosti a reflektovat parametry, které v aktuálně využívaných metodách nejsou použity. Nejdříve popisuje současné metody, které se pro hodnocení zranitelností používají, a parametry, které jsou v jednotlivých metodách použity. První popsanou metodou je Common Vulnerability Scoring System, u které jsou popsané i všechny tři typy skóre, které tato metoda používá. Druhou analyzovanou metodou je OWASP Risk Rating Methodology. Druhá část je věnována návrhu vlastní metody, která má za cíl hodnotit zranitelnosti tak, aby bylo snadnější určit ty s vysokou prioritou. Metoda vychází ze třech skupin parametrů. První skupina popisuje technické hodnocení zranitelnosti, druhá vychází z požadavků na zajištění důvěrnosti, integrity a dostupnosti aktiva a třetí skupina parametrů hodnotí implementovaná protiopatření. Všechny tyto tři skupiny parametrů jsou pro prioritizaci důležité. Parametry popisující zranitelnost jsou rozděleny na stálé a aktuální, kdy mezi aktuální patří především informace ze služeb Threat Intelligence a náročnost exploitace. Parametry dopadu na důvěrnost, integritu a dostupnost jsou provázány s požadavky na zajištění těchto parametrů, neboli s prioritou aktiva, a dále s hodnocením protiopatření, která naopak zvyšují ochranu důvěrnosti, integrity a dostupnosti. Priorita aktiva a kvalita protiopatření se hodnotí na základě dotazníků, které jsou předloženy vlastníkům zkoumaných aktiv v rámci hodnocení zranitelností. V třetí části práce je navržená metoda srovnána s v současnosti velmi používanou metodou Common Vulnerability Scoring System. Na několika příkladech jsou ukázány silné stránky navržené metody, kdy je vidět efektivita prioritizace při zohlednění požadavků na zajištění důvěrnosti, integrity a dostupnosti a zvýšená ochrana těchto parametrů díky implementovaným protiopatřením. Metoda byla prakticky testována v laboratorním prostředí, kde byly na několika různých aktivech nasimulovány zranitelnosti. Tyto zranitelnosti byly ohodnoceny navrženou metodou, byla zohledněna priorita aktiva a kvalita protiopatření a vše bylo zahrnuto do výsledné priority zranitelností. V rámci tohoto testování bylo potvrzeno, že navržená metoda efektivněji prioritizuje zranitelnosti, které jsou jednoduše exploitovatelné, v poslední době často zneužívané a jsou přítomny na aktivech s minimální ochranou a vyšší prioritou.The thesis deals with the assessment of security vulnerabilities. The aim of this work is to create a new method of vulnerability assessment, which will better prioritize critical vulnerabilities and reflect parameters that are not used in currently used methods. Firstly, it describes the common methods used to assess vulnerabilities and the parameters used in each method. The first described method is the Common Vulnerability Scoring System for which are described all three types of scores. The second analysed method is OWASP Risk Rating Methodology. The second part is devoted to the design of the own method, which aims to assess vulnerabilities that it is easier to identify those with high priority. The method is based on three groups of parameters. The first group describes the technical assessment of the vulnerability, the second is based on the requirements to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the asset and the third group of parameters evaluates the implemented security measures. All three groups of parameters are important for prioritization. Parameters describing the vulnerability are divided into permanent and up-to-date, where the most important up-to-date parameter are Threat Intelligence and easy of exploitation. The parameters of the impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability are linked to the priority of the asset, and to the evaluation of security measures, which increase the protection of confidentiality, integrity and availability. The priority of the asset and the quality of the countermeasures are assessed based on questionnaires, which are submitted to the owners of the examined assets as part of the vulnerability assessment. In the third part of the thesis, the method is compared with the currently widely used the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. The strengths of the proposed method are shown in several examples. The effectiveness of prioritization is based primarily on the priority of the asset and the security measures in place. The method was practically tested in a laboratory environment, where vulnerabilities were made on several different assets. These vulnerabilities were assessed using the proposed method, the priority of the asset and the quality of the measures were considered, and everything was included in the priority of vulnerability. This testing confirmed that the method more effectively prioritizes vulnerabilities that are easily exploitable, recently exploited by an attacker, and found on assets with minimal protection and higher priority.