In this Chapter After the host is hardened to be protected from attacks the next thing would be to harden applications which can end up being harder to harden. It can be said that an application that is being hardened can be equally difficult to harden as an operating system. An application can be protected from an attack in various ways but all of them are beneficial for protection. Minimizing main applications, minimizing subsidiary applications, install application patches and updates, minimize the permissions of applications, add application-level authentication, authorizations, and auditing are just a few ways that you can harden your application to be better protected against attacks.
Great summary Jon! I would just add that prioritizing hardening efforts based on each application’s risk profile is also key, since it’s usually impractical to completely lock down every app.
That makes sense because if you were to lock down ever app resources could go to places that aren’t really needed as to some apps that need to be locked down like you said.
Great summary! You’re right that hardening applications can be as challenging as hardening an operating system. The steps you mentioned, such as minimizing main and subsidiary applications and keeping applications up-to-date, are essential best practices for application hardening.
yes so keeping applications up to date i think can be the most essential and basic thing you can do to keep your application hardened. It is also like a fundamental thing to do even naturally when an application is acting odd the first thing I check is to see if it is up to date or it won’t even allow me to access the application because an update is needed.
You highlighted the importance and complexity of application hardening in cybersecurity. It’s good to see a variety of strategies mentioned for enhancing protection against threats.
This chapter focuses on the importance of application security, emphasizing that securing applications is crucial as they run on the host and can be gateways for attackers to gain control. A key section, E-mail Security, highlights the risks of malicious code hidden in email attachments or scripts within the email body. Such emails are often marked as spam, but excessive filtering can mistakenly block legitimate emails. The chapter notes that email filtering typically occurs on the client’s computer, where users may disable antivirus and anti-spam tools, leaving their systems vulnerable to spam and malware
Users should improve their security practices to protect their devices and data. While some antivirus software might report false positives and this affects productivity, users can configure the software to quarantine detected files and they can review them afterwards.
One of the essential things in the chapter is in the beginning because it happens too often in practice: developers usually write applications to run with root privileges. Running an application as root provides unnecessary elevated privileges, which can create security risks. If an application is compromised or exploited, an attacker could gain complete control of the system, leading to a security breach.
In this scenario, an attacker does not have to figure out an entry for privilege escalation, as the developer has already done it for the attacker. Applications should never be written to run only as root unless critically necessary for the core functionality of the application, which is even an unlikely scenario. This significantly impacts an organization’s overall security posture, and critical systems running such an application have unnecessary added risks.
Celine, I agree with you on the importance of being cautious when granting applications permissions especially at the root level. It’s crucial to follow the principle of privilege to minimize risks and prevent minor vulnerabilities from turning into major threats. Developers should aim to give applications the permissions they need to function properly. While there may be exceptions where elevated privileges are required it’s essential to assess and restrict them much, as possible.
I completely agree Celine, Granting applications root access essentially hands over the keys to the kingdom, leaving systems vulnerable to exploitation by malicious actors.
Developers need to adopt the principle of least privilege, ensuring that applications only have access to the resources and permissions they require to function. Running applications with elevated privileges should be a last resort, reserved for cases where there is no alternative and where the core functionality of the application necessitates such access.
In this chapter, it mentioned Buffer overflows which are a serious security concern because they can lead to vulnerabilities in software. Programmers need to be careful to implement proper bounds checking and input validation to prevent buffer overflows in their code. Additionally, programming languages and development tools often include features and techniques to mitigate the risk of buffer overflows, such as using safer functions for string manipulation and enabling compiler options that detect buffer overflow vulnerabilities during code compilation.
In addition to input validation as a secure practice for application security, developers can adopt output encoding as well. Output encoding is a technique used to prevent injection attacks by translating special characters into some different but equivalent form that is no longer dangerous in the computer interpreter. Output encoding is best applied just before the content is passed to the target interpreter.
Web browser attacks are also quite significant, they can lead to loss of availability for applications and services that are browser-based. Malicious links that contain an attack script can be embedded into a webpage and emails. Social engineering is a successful means that attackers get users to click on malicious links on websites, some attackers also register popular domain names with some misspellings that users might not observe or identify, this would lead users to sites with malicious scripts.
Very good point Oore! The ease with which attackers can embed malicious scripts into web pages and emails underscores the importance of vigilance and robust security measures. Malicious links and social engineering tactics further exacerbate this threat by manipulating users into clicking on these links, exploiting human vulnerabilities rather than technical ones. Attackers often capitalize on users’ trust or curiosity to lure them into interacting with malicious content, and humans are the most difficult thing to secure.
You effectively underscores the risks of web browser attacks and the importance of user vigilance against methods like malicious scripts and typo-squatting. Including a note on simple preventive measures, like browser updates and security extensions, could enhance the overview.
One key takeaway from Chapter 8 on Application Security is the importance of programmers being trained in secure coding practices, especially when developing custom applications. The chapter emphasizes that custom applications are rarely constructed with the same level of security care as commercial off-the-shelf software, making training developers on secure programming principles, language-specific security practices, and application-specific threats and countermeasures critical for minimizing vulnerabilities.
I completely agree! Training developers in secure coding practices is crucial to minimizing vulnerabilities in custom applications by educating developers on secure programming principles. This proactive approach can help prevent costly security breaches and reduce the risk of sensitive data exposure.
That is interesting I guess not every application is deemed to be protected to its full potential with the application the company is implementing. It could also be that an application could be weak but custom applications might not be as weak when compared to default applications.
My main takeaway from this chapter is that most applications are not developed with security in mind. It is important to secure the network first as there will be countless different applications downloaded on each machine, which can carry their vulnerabilities. As many developers write these applications to run on the root level it is easy for an attacker to get full access to a host machine and use this to spread their reach throughout your entire network.
Edge, you are very right. Allowing applications to run at the root level can give attackers a foothold to gain full access to a host machine and potentially spread their reach across the network.
The system development lifecycle does not generally include security in its processes however, this has been modified to become the secure development life cycle which includes threat modelling, security design, and security testing to support security assurance and compliance requirements.
In this Chapter After the host is hardened to be protected from attacks the next thing would be to harden applications which can end up being harder to harden. It can be said that an application that is being hardened can be equally difficult to harden as an operating system. An application can be protected from an attack in various ways but all of them are beneficial for protection. Minimizing main applications, minimizing subsidiary applications, install application patches and updates, minimize the permissions of applications, add application-level authentication, authorizations, and auditing are just a few ways that you can harden your application to be better protected against attacks.
Great summary Jon! I would just add that prioritizing hardening efforts based on each application’s risk profile is also key, since it’s usually impractical to completely lock down every app.
That makes sense because if you were to lock down ever app resources could go to places that aren’t really needed as to some apps that need to be locked down like you said.
Great summary! You’re right that hardening applications can be as challenging as hardening an operating system. The steps you mentioned, such as minimizing main and subsidiary applications and keeping applications up-to-date, are essential best practices for application hardening.
yes so keeping applications up to date i think can be the most essential and basic thing you can do to keep your application hardened. It is also like a fundamental thing to do even naturally when an application is acting odd the first thing I check is to see if it is up to date or it won’t even allow me to access the application because an update is needed.
You highlighted the importance and complexity of application hardening in cybersecurity. It’s good to see a variety of strategies mentioned for enhancing protection against threats.
This chapter focuses on the importance of application security, emphasizing that securing applications is crucial as they run on the host and can be gateways for attackers to gain control. A key section, E-mail Security, highlights the risks of malicious code hidden in email attachments or scripts within the email body. Such emails are often marked as spam, but excessive filtering can mistakenly block legitimate emails. The chapter notes that email filtering typically occurs on the client’s computer, where users may disable antivirus and anti-spam tools, leaving their systems vulnerable to spam and malware
Users should improve their security practices to protect their devices and data. While some antivirus software might report false positives and this affects productivity, users can configure the software to quarantine detected files and they can review them afterwards.
One of the essential things in the chapter is in the beginning because it happens too often in practice: developers usually write applications to run with root privileges. Running an application as root provides unnecessary elevated privileges, which can create security risks. If an application is compromised or exploited, an attacker could gain complete control of the system, leading to a security breach.
In this scenario, an attacker does not have to figure out an entry for privilege escalation, as the developer has already done it for the attacker. Applications should never be written to run only as root unless critically necessary for the core functionality of the application, which is even an unlikely scenario. This significantly impacts an organization’s overall security posture, and critical systems running such an application have unnecessary added risks.
Celine, I agree with you on the importance of being cautious when granting applications permissions especially at the root level. It’s crucial to follow the principle of privilege to minimize risks and prevent minor vulnerabilities from turning into major threats. Developers should aim to give applications the permissions they need to function properly. While there may be exceptions where elevated privileges are required it’s essential to assess and restrict them much, as possible.
I completely agree Celine, Granting applications root access essentially hands over the keys to the kingdom, leaving systems vulnerable to exploitation by malicious actors.
Developers need to adopt the principle of least privilege, ensuring that applications only have access to the resources and permissions they require to function. Running applications with elevated privileges should be a last resort, reserved for cases where there is no alternative and where the core functionality of the application necessitates such access.
In this chapter, it mentioned Buffer overflows which are a serious security concern because they can lead to vulnerabilities in software. Programmers need to be careful to implement proper bounds checking and input validation to prevent buffer overflows in their code. Additionally, programming languages and development tools often include features and techniques to mitigate the risk of buffer overflows, such as using safer functions for string manipulation and enabling compiler options that detect buffer overflow vulnerabilities during code compilation.
In addition to input validation as a secure practice for application security, developers can adopt output encoding as well. Output encoding is a technique used to prevent injection attacks by translating special characters into some different but equivalent form that is no longer dangerous in the computer interpreter. Output encoding is best applied just before the content is passed to the target interpreter.
Web browser attacks are also quite significant, they can lead to loss of availability for applications and services that are browser-based. Malicious links that contain an attack script can be embedded into a webpage and emails. Social engineering is a successful means that attackers get users to click on malicious links on websites, some attackers also register popular domain names with some misspellings that users might not observe or identify, this would lead users to sites with malicious scripts.
The case mentioned is that a user of Youtbuer created a website similar to the official website and misled consumers to log in to the wrong website.
Very good point Oore! The ease with which attackers can embed malicious scripts into web pages and emails underscores the importance of vigilance and robust security measures. Malicious links and social engineering tactics further exacerbate this threat by manipulating users into clicking on these links, exploiting human vulnerabilities rather than technical ones. Attackers often capitalize on users’ trust or curiosity to lure them into interacting with malicious content, and humans are the most difficult thing to secure.
You effectively underscores the risks of web browser attacks and the importance of user vigilance against methods like malicious scripts and typo-squatting. Including a note on simple preventive measures, like browser updates and security extensions, could enhance the overview.
One key takeaway from Chapter 8 on Application Security is the importance of programmers being trained in secure coding practices, especially when developing custom applications. The chapter emphasizes that custom applications are rarely constructed with the same level of security care as commercial off-the-shelf software, making training developers on secure programming principles, language-specific security practices, and application-specific threats and countermeasures critical for minimizing vulnerabilities.
I completely agree! Training developers in secure coding practices is crucial to minimizing vulnerabilities in custom applications by educating developers on secure programming principles. This proactive approach can help prevent costly security breaches and reduce the risk of sensitive data exposure.
That is interesting I guess not every application is deemed to be protected to its full potential with the application the company is implementing. It could also be that an application could be weak but custom applications might not be as weak when compared to default applications.
My main takeaway from this chapter is that most applications are not developed with security in mind. It is important to secure the network first as there will be countless different applications downloaded on each machine, which can carry their vulnerabilities. As many developers write these applications to run on the root level it is easy for an attacker to get full access to a host machine and use this to spread their reach throughout your entire network.
Edge, you are very right. Allowing applications to run at the root level can give attackers a foothold to gain full access to a host machine and potentially spread their reach across the network.
The system development lifecycle does not generally include security in its processes however, this has been modified to become the secure development life cycle which includes threat modelling, security design, and security testing to support security assurance and compliance requirements.