01 - Security Essentials

by TWN
Security Essentials
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Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

TechWorld with Nana is an established name in the DevOps and
Cloud industry, and it stands for the quality trainings helping 1,000s
of engineers acquire the most in-demand skills in this field.
Our mission is enable individual engineers as well as companies to take advantage of the
recent developments in Cloud and DevOps fields, to use technologies and concepts in
order to create efficient, automated, streamlined DevSecOps processes in organisations.

Importance of Security
Targets for hacker attacks
Security is defence against malicious actors
What needs to be secured

Customer data
Company data
Internal Applications
User Applications

Importance of security at many levels
Hacking into an internal system should not give access to all systems

Application security
All application components need to be secured

Types of Security Attacks
Types of attacks
Different hacking methods and tactics to get into different systems

Phishing Attack
A human as a hacking target, instead of a system
How it works
1. Personalised phishing emails

2. Redirects to malicious pages
3. Links to malicious websites
4. Downloading malicious scripts

XSS - Cross Site Scripting
How it works
Execute scripts from malicious sources
An attacker often exploits input fields on a
website (like comment sections) to inject
malicious code
When other users visit the affected page, the
script is served to their browsers, which is
executed
Application allows fetching script from

anywhere and executes malicious code
CSRF - Client Side Request Forgery
Common impact of XSS: Stealing user identity
Attacker forging request = Pretending to be another user
Client-side = Attack happens on user/client side

SSRF - Server Side Request Forgery
Forging server request
Attacker manipulates server to send requests to protected resources

SQL Injection Access to Database
How it works
SQL injection typically occurs when a web application Exploitations include

doesn’t properly validate or sanitize user inputs
before incorporating them into SQL queries Fetch sensitive user data
User inputs include data entered into web forms,
URL parameters or cookies Manipulate DB data
Delete data

Security Issues in Libraries
An application often has many dependencies

(libraries, frameworks), which is a main part of
your software
These libraries can have vulnerabilities, just like
your own code
Many applications don’t know they are using

vulnerable 3rd-party code
Hackers can exploit those 3rd-party security
holes

Weak Password
Weak Passwords
Brute Force Attacks But people also use weak passwords and use
Cybercriminals use trial and error same passwords for multiple systems
to try and break into a network or For companies, it’s essential to enforce strong
website password policies
They typically use hacking tools to Password manager tools can help
automate these loin attempts

DoS - Denial of Service Attack
How it works
DoS makes an application unable to respond to legitimate user requests
Often 1000s of bots sending requests at once

This results in the attacker consuming all available bandwidth, consuming
too many connections or exhausts server’s resources

Security Principle
Easier to hack into systems than to defend them

Security Posture
Refers to organisation’s overall security status and ability to defend against and
respond to security threats and incidents
We need to know how secure the How secure is the

applications are? underlying infrastructure?

OWASP and OWASP Top Ten
What is OWASP
OWASP stands for Open Web Application Security Project
A nonprofit organization dedicated to improving

the security of software
Raises awareness about common web application
security risks
Provides resources, tools and documentation to
help organizations and developers enhance the
security of their web applications
One of OWASP’s most well-known initiatives is the

OWASP Top Ten

OWASP Top Ten
Lists the most critical web application security risks
Companies should adopt this document to minimize these risks

Regularly updated to reflect emerging security trends
1. Broken Access Control

2. Cryptographic Failures
3. Injection
4. Insecure Design
5. Security Misconfiguration
6. Vulnerable and Outdated Components
7. Identification and Authentication Failures
8. Software and Data Integrity Failures
9. Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
10. Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
Broken Access Control
Access control enforces policies so that
users cannot act outside of their intended
permissions
Failure of that leads to unauthorized
access
Common vulnerabilities of this category include
Violation of least privilege principle

Bypassing access control checks by modifying the URL
Fails to detect request forgery
Returning unauthorized data
Phishing attacks, session hijacking

Cryptographic Failures
Common vulnerabilities of this category include Leads to

Sensitive data exposure
Lack of or weak cryptography Access to unauthorized resources
Hard-coded sensitive data
Use of broken or risky crypto algorithms
Using insecure protocols
Protect data in transit and at rest

Injection
Application allows hackers to inject malicicious code
That code can be JavaScript, SQL, NoSQL, OS command
templates
How to avoid
Validate and sanitize user input

Avoid creating templates from user input
Always expect malicious user input by default
Template Injection

Insecure Design
Insecure design vs insecure implementation
Focuses on risks related to design and architectural flaws

Pre-implementation phase
A call for more

Missing or ineffective control design
Threat modelling
What are possible threats for a specific Bad credential management
application, or specific systems Bad permission handling
Insecure infrastructure configuration
Secure design patterns
Reference architectures
Security Misconfiguration
Some examples
Improper access configuration

Unnecessary open ports
SSH port allowing access from any source
Debugging features enabled
Can be on any level
Using default accounts & passwords
More chances of
misconfigurations

Vulnerable and Outdated Components
No difference between your own code and library code, for security threats
Vulnerability in third-party library affects your whole system
You are likely vulnerable if:
you don’t know the versions of all components you use
you do not scan for vulnerabilities regularly
developers do not test the compatibility of updated, upgraded or patched libraries
Identification and Authentication Failures
Relates to failure to properly identify and

authenticate user
Common vulnerabilities of this category include
Weak confirmation of user identity

Allow weak passwords
Missing or ineffective multi-factor
authentication
Weak credential password recovery process
Plain-text or weakly hashed passwords
User sessions not properly invalidated

Software and Data Integrity Failures
Relate to code and infrastructure that does not protect against
integrity violations
Some examples
Using libraries & plugins from

unverified sources
Auto-update downloading without
integrity verification
Weak digital signature

Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
Category is to help detect, escalate and

respond to active breaches
Without logging and monitoring, breaches
cannot be detected
Monitoring and Alerting

Notify on attack attempts
Without monitoring, you are blind and deaf
Logging and Tracing
to attacks
Without it, we have no insights on
Enough time for attackers to probe around
system behavior
in systems
Recording events, actions, errors
Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
SSRF flaws occur whenever a web application is

fetching a remote resource without validating
the user-supplied URL
Allows attacker to coerce the application to
send a crafted request to an unexpected
destination (accessing a protected resource)
SSRF attacks circumvent firewall, VPN or
network access control lists Attack scenarios
Port scan internal servers

Sensitive data exposure
Access metadata storage

Security in Layers
Layered Security
It includes:
Access management
Network security
Application security
Logging
Monitoring
If attackers gain access to some part of our

We must secure our system on multiple layers
system, they should not get access to our
whole system

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by TWN

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Security is defence against malicious actors

What needs to be secured

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

All application components need to be secured

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Different hacking methods and tactics to get into different systems

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

A human as a hacking target, instead of a system

1. Personalised phishing emails

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Application allows fetching script from

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Attacker manipulates server to send requests to protected resources

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

SQL injection typically occurs when a web application Exploitations include

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

An application often has many dependencies

Many applications don’t know they are using

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

DoS makes an application unable to respond to legitimate user requests

Often 1000s of bots sending requests at once

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Easier to hack into systems than to defend them

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

We need to know how secure the How secure is the

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

OWASP stands for Open Web Application Security Project

A nonprofit organization dedicated to improving

One of OWASP’s most well-known initiatives is the

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Lists the most critical web application security risks

Companies should adopt this document to minimize these risks

1. Broken Access Control

Common vulnerabilities of this category include

Violation of least privilege principle

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Common vulnerabilities of this category include Leads to

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Validate and sanitize user input

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Focuses on risks related to design and architectural flaws

A call for more

Improper access configuration

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Relates to failure to properly identify and

Common vulnerabilities of this category include

Weak confirmation of user identity

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Using libraries & plugins from

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.

Category is to help detect, escalate and

Monitoring and Alerting

SSRF flaws occur whenever a web application is

Port scan internal servers

Copyright 2023 nnSoftware GmbH. All rights reserved.