An attack surface analysis allows the developers and the security team to get an understanding of how an application could be exploited. This analysis can help identify what functions or areas of a system need to be reviewed for vulnerabilities, identify high risk code that requires layered security protection, and identify when the attack surface has changed and if a threat assessment is needed. Developers can significantly improve an application’s security by creating an attack surface baseline during the planning phase by identifying different points of entry/exit such as UI forms/fields, APIs, Databases, Email, File, and much more. Each of these points can represent an attack point and developing an application with security in mind at the beginning will result in a more secure application.
One thing I found interesting about this reading was the use of application security/vulnerability scanners. I think people rely on vulnerability scanners too much and use that as almost all of their assessment of the threats to their application. The interesting part, to me, was that this attack surface analysis described in the reading use vulnerability scanning as just one part of a step in the process. It’s another source of information. But it doesn’t replace the reading of code, interviewing of developers, and actual human analysis of the attack surface.
This reading describes what an attack surface is, and why an organization should care about it. The definition of the attack surface is the most important component. Your attack surface shows you where the vulnerabilities may be in your application. To define your attack surface, you must first identify the points of entry. This can be things like APIs, UI form fields, etc. Then, you need to determine the valuable points of data and where they lay. This will show which areas of your application should be the most heavily protected. Finally, testers should take time to try and “hack” the application. They should do some of the main functions, such as creating an account or placing an order. When they place an order, for example, they should see what happens if no credit card is put in when checking out. Obviously, if this happens the order should not go through, but it is important to ensure the application can perform the base functions correctly.
This attack surface analysis cheat sheet shows us the definition of attack surface analysis including defining, identifying, mapping, measuring, assessing, and managing the attack surface of an application. Attack surface analysis involves checking and testing system security vulnerabilities. The focus is to understand the risk areas in the application, understand which parts of the application are vulnerable to attacks, and find ways to minimize them. Pay attention to when and how to attack the changes and analyze the risk perspective. Once you understand the attack surface, you can use it to identify and manage the risks you face when making changes to your application.
The OWASP Attach Surface Analysis Cheat Sheet provided a complete list of items for securing applications. According to the cheat sheet, network-facing code, web forms, files from outside of the network, backward compatible interfaces with other systems, APIs, and security codes are all attack surfaces. Multiple versions or leaving the older versions of application or code for the reasons of future utilization also increases the attack surface.
The cheat sheet serves as a resource to application developers to understand and manage the attack surface of their software. There are multiple steps to attack surface analysis as defined by the document. First is to define the attack surface of the application. This involves noting the ways your application can be accessed, by whom, and the attack points available to these users based on your understanding of the application. Next is identifying and mapping the attack surface. Here, the developers should identify and categorize the entry and exit points to their application and also identify and categorize the data in their application and where it can be accessed. Then, they must measure and assess the attack surface, which means determining where the highest risks lie based on the previous steps and understanding the impact levels of breaches to different access points. Finally, they must manage the attack surface, making adjustments to the application to meet the risk appetite set by management.
Mitchell, you make some really good points in your comments about the OWASP cheat sheet. One of the key things you note (which ties to the stated purpose of the cheat sheet) is that the steps outlined in the cheat sheet should be undertaken by developers. Given developers are notorious for not focusing primarily on risks or documentation, I cannot help but wonder how much value this cheat sheet provides. I would think that these cheat sheets would add the most value when organizations incentivize risk management and security and not just production. I also think you make a good point about ongoing management of the application. It’s important that there be an ongoing risk analysis and then adjustments when needed. I like that you called out the need for these adjustments to align with the risk appetite set by management. This is a really good practice and should be the driver in risk decisions made in organizations.
I thought it was interesting to learn about the Relative Attack Surface Quotient (RSQ) that was developed for measuring the Attack Surface of an application and track changes to the surface. It’s so advanced and a great way to calculate the impact an attack could have on a specific area which helps an organization know which areas are essential for protection. The damage potential and effort ratio for these Attack Surface elements help identify high-risk areas. It’s important to have a map of the attack surface, especially focus on remote entry points – connecting to outside systems and the internet where the system allows public access. This way it’s easier to plan out what compensating, operation controls, firewalls, and IDS or IPS systems.
Modern applications are complex, it is often made up of many layers where potential flaws could appear making it hard to secure. The Attack Surface Cheat Sheet is general guideline which intended to aid developers to understand and manage application security risks as they design and change an application, as well as by application security specialists doing a security risk assessment. This cheat sheet won’t fix any problem but instead, it gives organizations an accurate to-do list to guide themselves to a safer and more secure position.
Hi Wei Liu. Great point that you bring up regarding OWASP Cheat Sheet. As you noted the OWASP cheat sheet will not fix any issues that an organization may have. However, I also wanted to add to your comment that the OWASP cheat sheet is not adequate to diagnose any type of issue. The sheet should be used just as a guideline on what process they should implement in order to safeguard an application or software. The OWASP cheat sheet outlines the following purposes:
1. Identify what function and what sections of the system need to be reviewed and tested.
2. Identify the high-risk areas of code that require better protections
3. Identify when you have changed the attack surface and need to do a threat reassessment.
An interesting takeaway from this reading is managing the attack surface. The attack surface is ever changing with risks increasing simply by: adding new users/privilege levels; password management; adding another field to a web page, etc. Consequently, the attack surface should be reviewed periodically during design phase of the SDLC waterfall approach and continuously under the Agile methodologies. This enables an organization to identify and manage attack surface risks as changes are made to the application.
Important takeaways that I learned from the OWASP Attack Surface Analysis Cheat Sheet is that attack surface analysis is about mapping out what parts of a system required to be analyzed and re-examined for security vulnerabilities. The focus of an Attack Surface Analysis is to better understand the risk areas in an application, to make developers and security specialists aware of what sections of the application are vulnerable to attacks. The attack surface analysis is supposed to also find ways of minimizing these vulnerabilities and to recognize when and how the attack surface changes during the attack. According to the article, there are three main goals of an attack surface analysis.
1. Identify what function and what sections of the system need to be reviewed and tested.
2. Identify the high-risk areas of code that require better protections
3. Identify when you have changed the attack surface and need to do a threat reassessment.
The key take away is below. I think that knowing where the data is coming from is a helpful in preventing attacks. The below statements gave me a good understanding of what to look for in particular
“Once you have a map of the Attack Surface, identify the high risk areas. Focus on remote entry points – interfaces with outside systems and to the Internet – and especially where the system allows anonymous, public access.
Network-facing, especially internet-facing code
Web forms
Files from outside of the network
Backward compatible interfaces with other systems – old protocols, sometimes old code and libraries, hard to maintain and test multiple versions
Custom APIs – protocols etc – likely to have mistakes in design and implementation
Security code: anything to do with cryptography, authentication, authorization (access control) and session management
These are often where you are most exposed to attack. Then understand what compensating controls you have in place, operational controls like network firewalls and application firewalls, and intrusion detection or prevention systems to help protect your application.”
An attack surface analysis maps out what parts of a system need to be reviewed and tested for security vulnerabilities. The goal is to understand the risk areas in an application, to identify what parts of the application are open to attack, to find ways of minimizing this, and to notice when and how the attack surface changes and what this means from a risk perspective. While this analysis is usually done by security architects and pen testers, the reading also noted developers should understand and monitor the attack surface as they design and build and change a system.
Protecting an application from external attacks is the main focus of attack surface analysis, and to find out what part of the system needs to be evaluated and tested for security exposures. The attack surface explains all of the different points where attackers can get into a system, and how they may be able to get the data out. Understanding the risk areas in an application is needed in order to make security specialists aware of what parts of the application are open to attack, and find ways to reduce the attempts.
This reading introduced an approach for analyzing the attack surface of an application developed by OWASP. It explained that the purpose was for developers to use and manage application security risks when designing and changing an application and for security specialists in doing an application security risk assessment. The reading explained that the attack surface includes all of the different points where an attacker could get into a system and get data out. One of the things that stood out to me was that the analysis of the attack surface should be considered not just for initial development but also for changes. The Cheat Sheet explained that some changes, such as adding a new field to a page or another similar webpage, might fit into an existing bucket of risk and not cause a significant or meaningful increase in risk profile/attack surface. However, changes to authentication or authorization or to code or underlying architecture could present vastly different risks and should be reviewed. To me the take away was that not only should there be a process to identify changes that could impact the attack surface but to analyze the extent of changes on the attack surface, based on the type of change and risk implications.
The attack surface analysis is vitally important to any system. This is a very proactive way of testing your systems and allowing the leadership to make business and risk-based decisions on how to protect their systems. Once the vulnerabilities have been identified, they can either be patched, hardened, or even not touched at all depending on the department’s risk appetite and overall risk rating. This analysis is where it becomes more cybersecurity instead of IT Auditing. This is the domain where penetration testers get involved. Penetration testing can be the most proactive and effective way to test your security.
The Attack Surface Cheat Sheet article was very straighforward and appears to be a good risk anlysis/threat assessmebt walkthrough. When I first started reading it struck me as a similiar methodology to a SWAT analysis. In the Measuring and Assessing the Attack Surface section, I thought the two reminders were extermely benficial. The first one noted that features should not be left in if they are not going to be used and backups of code and data should also be secured. Both of these issues are noted as often bein overlooked as part of the Attack Surface. While it can be tedious or a liitle more work to ensure to remove unused features and/or secure backups, the organization will be better protected in the long run and in the instance of not securing backups, the security measures taken before, will be rendered useless.
An attack surface analysis allows the developers and the security team to get an understanding of how an application could be exploited. This analysis can help identify what functions or areas of a system need to be reviewed for vulnerabilities, identify high risk code that requires layered security protection, and identify when the attack surface has changed and if a threat assessment is needed. Developers can significantly improve an application’s security by creating an attack surface baseline during the planning phase by identifying different points of entry/exit such as UI forms/fields, APIs, Databases, Email, File, and much more. Each of these points can represent an attack point and developing an application with security in mind at the beginning will result in a more secure application.
One thing I found interesting about this reading was the use of application security/vulnerability scanners. I think people rely on vulnerability scanners too much and use that as almost all of their assessment of the threats to their application. The interesting part, to me, was that this attack surface analysis described in the reading use vulnerability scanning as just one part of a step in the process. It’s another source of information. But it doesn’t replace the reading of code, interviewing of developers, and actual human analysis of the attack surface.
This reading describes what an attack surface is, and why an organization should care about it. The definition of the attack surface is the most important component. Your attack surface shows you where the vulnerabilities may be in your application. To define your attack surface, you must first identify the points of entry. This can be things like APIs, UI form fields, etc. Then, you need to determine the valuable points of data and where they lay. This will show which areas of your application should be the most heavily protected. Finally, testers should take time to try and “hack” the application. They should do some of the main functions, such as creating an account or placing an order. When they place an order, for example, they should see what happens if no credit card is put in when checking out. Obviously, if this happens the order should not go through, but it is important to ensure the application can perform the base functions correctly.
This attack surface analysis cheat sheet shows us the definition of attack surface analysis including defining, identifying, mapping, measuring, assessing, and managing the attack surface of an application. Attack surface analysis involves checking and testing system security vulnerabilities. The focus is to understand the risk areas in the application, understand which parts of the application are vulnerable to attacks, and find ways to minimize them. Pay attention to when and how to attack the changes and analyze the risk perspective. Once you understand the attack surface, you can use it to identify and manage the risks you face when making changes to your application.
The OWASP Attach Surface Analysis Cheat Sheet provided a complete list of items for securing applications. According to the cheat sheet, network-facing code, web forms, files from outside of the network, backward compatible interfaces with other systems, APIs, and security codes are all attack surfaces. Multiple versions or leaving the older versions of application or code for the reasons of future utilization also increases the attack surface.
The cheat sheet serves as a resource to application developers to understand and manage the attack surface of their software. There are multiple steps to attack surface analysis as defined by the document. First is to define the attack surface of the application. This involves noting the ways your application can be accessed, by whom, and the attack points available to these users based on your understanding of the application. Next is identifying and mapping the attack surface. Here, the developers should identify and categorize the entry and exit points to their application and also identify and categorize the data in their application and where it can be accessed. Then, they must measure and assess the attack surface, which means determining where the highest risks lie based on the previous steps and understanding the impact levels of breaches to different access points. Finally, they must manage the attack surface, making adjustments to the application to meet the risk appetite set by management.
Mitchell, you make some really good points in your comments about the OWASP cheat sheet. One of the key things you note (which ties to the stated purpose of the cheat sheet) is that the steps outlined in the cheat sheet should be undertaken by developers. Given developers are notorious for not focusing primarily on risks or documentation, I cannot help but wonder how much value this cheat sheet provides. I would think that these cheat sheets would add the most value when organizations incentivize risk management and security and not just production. I also think you make a good point about ongoing management of the application. It’s important that there be an ongoing risk analysis and then adjustments when needed. I like that you called out the need for these adjustments to align with the risk appetite set by management. This is a really good practice and should be the driver in risk decisions made in organizations.
I thought it was interesting to learn about the Relative Attack Surface Quotient (RSQ) that was developed for measuring the Attack Surface of an application and track changes to the surface. It’s so advanced and a great way to calculate the impact an attack could have on a specific area which helps an organization know which areas are essential for protection. The damage potential and effort ratio for these Attack Surface elements help identify high-risk areas. It’s important to have a map of the attack surface, especially focus on remote entry points – connecting to outside systems and the internet where the system allows public access. This way it’s easier to plan out what compensating, operation controls, firewalls, and IDS or IPS systems.
Modern applications are complex, it is often made up of many layers where potential flaws could appear making it hard to secure. The Attack Surface Cheat Sheet is general guideline which intended to aid developers to understand and manage application security risks as they design and change an application, as well as by application security specialists doing a security risk assessment. This cheat sheet won’t fix any problem but instead, it gives organizations an accurate to-do list to guide themselves to a safer and more secure position.
Hi Wei Liu. Great point that you bring up regarding OWASP Cheat Sheet. As you noted the OWASP cheat sheet will not fix any issues that an organization may have. However, I also wanted to add to your comment that the OWASP cheat sheet is not adequate to diagnose any type of issue. The sheet should be used just as a guideline on what process they should implement in order to safeguard an application or software. The OWASP cheat sheet outlines the following purposes:
1. Identify what function and what sections of the system need to be reviewed and tested.
2. Identify the high-risk areas of code that require better protections
3. Identify when you have changed the attack surface and need to do a threat reassessment.
An interesting takeaway from this reading is managing the attack surface. The attack surface is ever changing with risks increasing simply by: adding new users/privilege levels; password management; adding another field to a web page, etc. Consequently, the attack surface should be reviewed periodically during design phase of the SDLC waterfall approach and continuously under the Agile methodologies. This enables an organization to identify and manage attack surface risks as changes are made to the application.
Important takeaways that I learned from the OWASP Attack Surface Analysis Cheat Sheet is that attack surface analysis is about mapping out what parts of a system required to be analyzed and re-examined for security vulnerabilities. The focus of an Attack Surface Analysis is to better understand the risk areas in an application, to make developers and security specialists aware of what sections of the application are vulnerable to attacks. The attack surface analysis is supposed to also find ways of minimizing these vulnerabilities and to recognize when and how the attack surface changes during the attack. According to the article, there are three main goals of an attack surface analysis.
1. Identify what function and what sections of the system need to be reviewed and tested.
2. Identify the high-risk areas of code that require better protections
3. Identify when you have changed the attack surface and need to do a threat reassessment.
The key take away is below. I think that knowing where the data is coming from is a helpful in preventing attacks. The below statements gave me a good understanding of what to look for in particular
“Once you have a map of the Attack Surface, identify the high risk areas. Focus on remote entry points – interfaces with outside systems and to the Internet – and especially where the system allows anonymous, public access.
Network-facing, especially internet-facing code
Web forms
Files from outside of the network
Backward compatible interfaces with other systems – old protocols, sometimes old code and libraries, hard to maintain and test multiple versions
Custom APIs – protocols etc – likely to have mistakes in design and implementation
Security code: anything to do with cryptography, authentication, authorization (access control) and session management
These are often where you are most exposed to attack. Then understand what compensating controls you have in place, operational controls like network firewalls and application firewalls, and intrusion detection or prevention systems to help protect your application.”
An attack surface analysis maps out what parts of a system need to be reviewed and tested for security vulnerabilities. The goal is to understand the risk areas in an application, to identify what parts of the application are open to attack, to find ways of minimizing this, and to notice when and how the attack surface changes and what this means from a risk perspective. While this analysis is usually done by security architects and pen testers, the reading also noted developers should understand and monitor the attack surface as they design and build and change a system.
Protecting an application from external attacks is the main focus of attack surface analysis, and to find out what part of the system needs to be evaluated and tested for security exposures. The attack surface explains all of the different points where attackers can get into a system, and how they may be able to get the data out. Understanding the risk areas in an application is needed in order to make security specialists aware of what parts of the application are open to attack, and find ways to reduce the attempts.
This reading introduced an approach for analyzing the attack surface of an application developed by OWASP. It explained that the purpose was for developers to use and manage application security risks when designing and changing an application and for security specialists in doing an application security risk assessment. The reading explained that the attack surface includes all of the different points where an attacker could get into a system and get data out. One of the things that stood out to me was that the analysis of the attack surface should be considered not just for initial development but also for changes. The Cheat Sheet explained that some changes, such as adding a new field to a page or another similar webpage, might fit into an existing bucket of risk and not cause a significant or meaningful increase in risk profile/attack surface. However, changes to authentication or authorization or to code or underlying architecture could present vastly different risks and should be reviewed. To me the take away was that not only should there be a process to identify changes that could impact the attack surface but to analyze the extent of changes on the attack surface, based on the type of change and risk implications.
The attack surface analysis is vitally important to any system. This is a very proactive way of testing your systems and allowing the leadership to make business and risk-based decisions on how to protect their systems. Once the vulnerabilities have been identified, they can either be patched, hardened, or even not touched at all depending on the department’s risk appetite and overall risk rating. This analysis is where it becomes more cybersecurity instead of IT Auditing. This is the domain where penetration testers get involved. Penetration testing can be the most proactive and effective way to test your security.
The Attack Surface Cheat Sheet article was very straighforward and appears to be a good risk anlysis/threat assessmebt walkthrough. When I first started reading it struck me as a similiar methodology to a SWAT analysis. In the Measuring and Assessing the Attack Surface section, I thought the two reminders were extermely benficial. The first one noted that features should not be left in if they are not going to be used and backups of code and data should also be secured. Both of these issues are noted as often bein overlooked as part of the Attack Surface. While it can be tedious or a liitle more work to ensure to remove unused features and/or secure backups, the organization will be better protected in the long run and in the instance of not securing backups, the security measures taken before, will be rendered useless.