With the increasing number of cyber attacks and breaches, the need to secure infrastructure, and assets are becoming more important and challenging than ever before.
Even a single misconfiguration can lead an organization into trouble.
In this blog, we will discuss vulnerabilities like security misconfiguration and how components with known vulnerabilities can cause a blunder as attackers always look for low-hanging fruits such as default credentials, and known vulnerabilities.
Security misconfigurations
Mis-configurations are defined as those configuration errors, resulting in inappropriate application behavior that involves the misuse of default passwords, privileges, and disclosure of confidential information.
Security misconfigurations arise when an application is poorly configured without taking care of security measures, this can happen at any level of the application stack.
Many times it becomes dangerous because it is easy to exploit misconfigured servers and applications.
Security misconfiguration is the 5th vulnerability of OWASP’s top 10:2021 most common vulnerabilities.
Impacts of security misconfigurations
- This leads to sensitive data modification
- Data loss
- It affects confidentiality, integrity, availability of the data
- Compromise of full system
- Expensive recovery
Areas where security misconfigurations may happen:-
- Application server
- Databases
- Containers
- Framework
- Unused web pages
- Operating system
Issues with Using Components with known vulnerabilities
Developers often use software dependencies with known issues that are accepted as a risk, or not properly maintained. Dependencies could be anything from a framework to a web server.
In many cases, the developers are not even aware of the version and the components they are using, and many components don’t provide patches for older versions.
Therefore, this makes attacks more sophisticated as vulnerabilities in components can be chained to cause more impact. To identify the known issues, attackers can go with automated tools as well as manual analysis techniques.
Components with known vulnerabilities, known as vulnerable and outdated components in OWASP’s Top 10: 2021 and placed at 6th number.
Components can be:-
- Operating system itself
- Content management system
- It can be a Web server
- Installed plugins
- Third-party resources
A few examples of these attacks
- Leaving the admin panel open to the internet with default credentials.
- When software developers don’t look for updated and patched dependencies for compatibility.
Preventions
- Most importantly, Avoid using default credentials.
- Furthermore, Delete dependencies, redundant functions, modules, files, and documents that have not been used.
- All the components such as public databases, project mailing lists, etc must be up to date.
- Restrict default configurations.
- Regular consideration of new vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
To protect your web server or web application, one should follow IT security best practices, have a good understanding of application security, should also practice good designing principles and defensive coding.
In conclusion, one should always ensure the proper security configuration of the applications and should not be using the components having known vulnerabilities.
If you are looking for a security audit of your e-commerce store, you can use the E-commerce Security Audit Basic Plan – This is a basic security audit service that identifies vulnerabilities like cross-site scripting, guessable credentials, unattended application security flaws, and other misconfigurations.
Also, Check out this Magento 2-based eCommerce store security extension which can also be customized.
For further help or queries, please contact us or raise a ticket.