Introduction to Vulnerabilities
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Video Transcription
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>> Hey everyone and welcome back to the course.
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In the last video, we just took a brief introduction
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to myself, your instructor.
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We also talked about the prerequisite,
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which in reality there is non
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since it's very entry-level type, of course,
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however, it is a good idea,
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as I mentioned in the last video,
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to have some basic IT or security knowledge.
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In this video, we're going to take
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a brief introduction to vulnerabilities.
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In specific, we're going to talk
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about what our vulnerabilities as well
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as we'll talk through some different types
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of vulnerability assessments.
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What are vulnerabilities? Well, really,
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it's the easiest way to describe it as a weakness.
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That could be at the application or the code level,
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that could be in our system,
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that could be in the operating system so
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something we're not necessarily controlling,
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that could be in our physical infrastructure,
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that could be the fact that we leave the front door
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unlocked and somebody comes in and takes our stuff.
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Many ways that we can describe a vulnerability but
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the easiest way to remember it
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as some kind of a weakness in a system,
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a process, an application of
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physical thing so it's some kind of a weakness.
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We normally would characterize
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our vulnerabilities based off the severity level.
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Is this something that we deem high vulnerability,
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or high critical type of risk like, my goodness,
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we need to fix this tomorrow or today or right
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now or is it something low where we're like,
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yeah, that is a vulnerability,
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but we've got other things in place
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and that's not really a critical business process,
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so we don't necessarily care about that too much.
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Then the exploit range,
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is this something that can only be internally exploited?
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Somebody needs physical access
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to our systems or application,
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or is this something that can be exploited remotely?
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Can they maybe do something like
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remote code execution where
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they've got administrative type privileges,
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they can escalate privileges.
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We need to think through those things as we're thinking
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through and identifying these
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>> different vulnerabilities.
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>> Let's talk through some classifications
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of vulnerabilities.
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We've got things like misconfigurations,
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buffer overflows, etc.
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We'll talk through each of these real quick.
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Misconfigurations you might've heard in
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the media when there's different data breaches about,
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hey, there's a misconfigured S3 bucket.
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What we're talking about there,
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if you're not IT or cybersecurity person at all,
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what we're talking about there, think of it this way,
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is the S3 bucket holds our data.
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If we think of it as candy,
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let's say we have a bag of candy and
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we don't want anybody to take
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our candy because let's say,
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it's gummy bears and we love gummy bears.
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So we want to protect that data,
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which is our gummies.
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The way we do that is we set
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things up properly security wise.
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In our example with the bag of candy,
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we might put that candy in a safe
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and we might lock it in a safe
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and then maybe we get
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a guard dog to sit on top of the safe so somebody comes,
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a dog will bite them, and if
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that still doesn't stop them,
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at least they can't get into safe.
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We put these different things in
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place to protect our data or
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our gummies in this situation
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because a couple of things,
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we don't want someone to steal our
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gummies because we want to eat them.
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They're really good and
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we don't want somebody to swap them
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out for candy we don't want.
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Like, I don't like Whopper candy at all,
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so if you're like Whoppers out there,
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good for you, but I can't stand that type of candy.
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For me, if someone took
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the candy I liked and swapped it out with Whoppers,
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I'd feel pretty bad.
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Same thing with our data.
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If someone's swaps out our data that we need to
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run our business or intellectual property,
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they swap it out with
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bad data or something corrupt, that's a problem.
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That's where we talk about misconfigurations.
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That's why it's a vulnerability
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and that's why you hear about it in the media
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is because that's misconfiguration
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is something that happens unfortunately quite often,
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especially in Cloud environments.
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Specifically, you hear a lot about AWS, S3 buckets,
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but it happens in Azure or
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Google Cloud, etc. Buffer overflow.
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The easiest way to think of this one
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if you're nontechnical is
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basically when the software engineer or engineers,
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I should say, because it's not just one person, usually.
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When they develop the code and put the code in,
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there are certain parameters they set for certain things.
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Let's say that they didn't set a parameter.
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That said I couldn't pick a number over 10.
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Because they didn't do that,
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that could potentially give me
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an option for buffer overflow.
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Maybe I put 10 million digits
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in there instead of the number 10,
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I put 10 million or something and then overflows
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the amount of space allocated for that variable.
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What that does is it basically takes
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that data usually and put it in that next space.
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With a buffer overflow,
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I'm trying to put so much data in
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there that it allows me to get into a part.
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Think of it as
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maybe a cooler where you've got your picnic,
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your lunch or whatever and you've
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got it's sectioned off, right.
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You've got tomatoes over
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here and you've got, I don't know,
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if you eat meat, you've got meat and you've
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got bread and you got lettuce and whatever else.
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Each of those is in a separate compartment.
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With buffer overflow, what we're trying to
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do is put so much data in that we
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overflow those other compartments and we
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hopefully find the compartment that
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allows us to execute code that
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maybe allows us to get better privileges
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or allows us to put malware on the system or something.
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That's a buffer overflow.
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We put so much data in
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because it wasn't programmed properly.
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It allows us to take control
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or potentially take control of the system.
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Unpatched systems are pretty self-explanatory,
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that's where we're not updating the software properly.
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You hear a lot of security people.
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If you're not security, you hear a lot of
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security people talking about patch your systems,
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keep your software update and
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that's what we're talking about there.
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A lot of the attacks that I've seen personally out in
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the field are related to software that's not updated.
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There are some targeted
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like with the companies I've worked with,
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but many of them over the years
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were related to unpatched software.
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OS flaws, sometimes you can't control that.
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Like Microsoft Windows has a bunch
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of flaws that have been around for a long time.
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There's bunch of CVs out
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there and not all of those are patchable.
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Not all of those things are things,
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at least that Microsoft has released a patch for it.
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That's where we need to talk
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about adding additional layers of security in there.
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Default credentials is basically, let's say,
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you get a home route if you aren't in the industry,
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you get home router or
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you get something from your cable company,
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they set up your home network.
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It's great because you can watch
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Netflix and everything's great.
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However, whatever router they've given you,
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normally has default credentials,
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that means a maybe a username of
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admin and a password of password,
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write the word password, which
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by the way is a terrible password.
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If we use default credentials, if we keep those,
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it allows the bad hackers
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to easily get into our stuff and take our stuff or
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corrupt our stuff or maybe right in the midst of
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our binge-watching of that show insecure or something,
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our network goes out and we can't watch it.
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That's what we're talking about, the default credentials,
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that's why we want to keep them change,
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because it's an easy method for someone to get in.
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If we change them,
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we make it a little more
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challenging for someone to get in.
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Design flaws and then we also want to look at
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open services so what ports are we running?
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Our various systems when services are running on
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our host as well as our network systems,
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just keeping all those things in mind.
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Let's talk about what is a vulnerability assessment?
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Really, the way to think about this
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is can our systems or applications,
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can they actually withstand an attack?
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That's why we do a vulnerability assessment.
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We want to figure out, yes,
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maybe there is a vulnerability,
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but what can actually be exploited?
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Can this actually be used against me?
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If the answer is yes, and even if it's no,
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we need to also think through additional security.
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Like what else can we do?
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Can we put additional layers in place?
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For example, if you identify something as
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maybe a medium risk vulnerability,
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can we add additional things in place
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that make it a little more challenging
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for someone to come in and take over systems or do
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something nefarious and if yes,
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what are those things, what else can we add in there?
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What additional layers of security?
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Just a quick quiz question
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for you to test your knowledge.
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Buffer overflow is not a classification of vulnerability.
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Is that true or false?
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If you're paying attention, you know that's false.
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Buffer overflow was one of the things we
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listed as a classification of a vulnerability.
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We'll talk through the different types of
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vulnerability assessments real quick.
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We've got active, we've got passive internal, external.
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Active assessments are where we're using
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a network scanner and we're going to use
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that to find various hosts services.
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Passive is where we're sniffing
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the network internal, external,
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basically inside our threat versus an external attacker.
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The network seamless systems, we have host-based,
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so your actual computer or the system,
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and then wireless as well.
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We can see how's
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our wireless network standing
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up and then application which we
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talked about a little bit with like buffer overflows
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in the code and everything like that.
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In this video, we've talked about what
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our vulnerability has got a basic understanding of them.
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We also talked through
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some vulnerability assessment information.
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We talked about the different types
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of vulnerability assessments.
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In the next video, we're going to jump in and talk
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about the vulnerability management life cycle.
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