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6 Trends Driving Vulnerability Exploits You
Need to Know
Cybercrime continues to grow in
2015, judging on account of headlines during the past few weeks, it looks like
everybody is getting hacked, from Slack and Lufthansa all the way to the
Whitehouse.
In order to make some sense of
this, let's take a step back and walk through the 6 trends that are driving
vulnerabilities and their exploitation to understand the bigger picture - and
what can be done to mitigate it.
Pace of discovery - 4 New
Highly Critical Vulnerabilities a Day
According to Secunia, during
2014 alone over 15,400 new vulnerabilities were found reflecting an increase of
18% compared to 2013. Of these vulnerabilities 11% were categorized as being
highly critical - that makes for over 100 new highly critical vulnerabilities
per month or approximately 4 per day! With the development of new automated
vulnerability discovery tools that check new methods of attack, the number of
new vulnerabilities discovered is expected to further grow considerably,
according to recent research fom IBM.
Widely Shared Components -
Vulnerable
The study quoted above also
found that of the 3,870 applications on which vulnerabilities were found in
2014, especially damaging are those that lie at the heart of Content Management
Systems (CMS), Open Source Libraries and Operating Systems embedded in
literally hundreds of millions of websites. These systems are riddled with
vulnerabilities making them popular targets for cyber criminals and a constant
source of concern for companies using them. A study from Menlo Security
published recently reinforces this with findings that of the 1 Million most
visited websites a whopping 1 in 5 sites run vulnerable software.
Shared Vulnerability Database -
Double Edged Sword
In an interest to consolidate
information about vulnerabilities known in the wild so patches can be developed
and implemented as fast as possible, a number of international organizations
have been established to standardize the way vulnerabilities are characterized
and communicated, the main one being the 'Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures'
(CVE) database.
While this standardization
helps security researchers understand these vulnerabilities faster and, allows
companies deploy patches more efficiently it also makes life easier for
cybercriminals who have an updated online database of vulnerabilities to
exploit for malicious purposes.
Chasing the Corporate Tail
Any IT professional will
confess that system upgrades in general and patch installations in particular
are costly and complex procedures. Companies will therefore typically have set
schedules for undergoing these periodic upgrades. The relentless pace of new
vulnerabilities being discovered in the wild means that most companies are at
any point in time exposed.
Immediate Exploitation Databases
- Publicly Available
Not only do cyber criminals
have immediate access to the CVE database, but the exploits for these
vulnerabilities are also managed in organized databases readily available for
both professional cybercriminals and amateur 'script kiddies' to take advantage
of for their next "victim".
Examples of such databases are:
Open Source Automated
Vulnerability Scanners
One thing is scanning websites
and servers manually with the tools detailed above to find targets for
exploitation, another is being able to do so automatically. With a wide variety
of open source automated vulnerability scanning tools available online
cybercriminals can search for exponentially more targets, further shortening
the time corporations have to respond to new vulnerabilities.
With these trends at play
cybercriminals no longer need years of experience or expensive resources to
exploit vulnerabilities.
Summary - Cyber Criminal Modus
Operandi
Cyber criminals employ hordes
of bots programmed to automatically scan the Internet for vulnerable servers
and websites, when found, the vulnerability is exploited and the server put to
use for malicious purposes. This level of sophistication in automatically scouting for targets andexploiting their vulnerabilities, drastically
improves the speed and reach cyber criminals have to execute malicious
activity.
The Solution
With the industry dynamics
outlined above and cybercriminals' relentless modus operandi, the solutions
expected to help corporations successfully mitigate the threat of
cybercriminals exploiting vulnerabilities on their perimeter need to address
the following:
·
Fast detection of vulnerabilities to keep
one step ahead of
cybercriminals;
·
Prioritization of identified vulnerabilities so critical
bugs can be patched.
Fast.
·
Detailed remediation for immediate and effective
action.
·
Defensive solutions like WAFs (Web Application
Firewalls) are another key component
Regain control of your
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that validates your security posture for the three main attack vectors:
Vulnerabilities on your perimeter, DDoS Mitigation, and Phishing attacks. Visit
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Yair_Melmed
