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What is application security (AppSec)?
Application security refers to the process of identifying and repairing vulnerabilities in application software—from development to deployment—to prevent unauthorized access, modification, or misuse.
Application security (AppSec) is an integral part of software engineering and application management. It addresses not only minor bugs but also prevents serious application vulnerabilities from being exploited. An ongoing process rather than a single technology, application security (AppSec) is a crucial component of cybersecurity, encompassing practices that prevent unauthorized access, data breaches and code manipulation of application software. As applications have become more complex, AppSec has become increasingly important and challenging. This evolution necessitates new approaches in secure software development. DevOps and security practices must take place in tandem, supported by professionals with a deep understanding of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
At its core, application security aims to safeguard sensitive data and application code from theft or manipulation. This involves implementing security measures during application development and design phases and maintaining protection during and post-deployment.
Ranging from hardware safeguards like routers to software-based defenses such as application firewalls, these measures are supplemented by procedures including regular security testing routines. Additional methods, like thorough code reviews and analysis tools, identify and mitigate vulnerabilities within the codebase. Defensive measures such as strong authentication mechanisms and encryption techniques protect against unauthorized access and cyberattacks. Regular security assessments and penetration testing further ensure proactive vulnerability management.
Organizations use various strategies for managing application security depending on their needs. Factors such as cost, expertise, and the specific challenges posed by different environments (e.g., cloud security, mobile app security, and web application security for apps accessed through a browser interface) influence their methods. Some organizations choose to manage application security internally, which enables direct control over processes and tailored security measures by in-house teams.
When not managed on-premises, organizations outsource application security—a part of managed security services (MSS)—to a managed security service provider (MSSP). An MSSP can provide a sophisticated security operations center (SOC), security information and event management (SIEM) solutions and access to specialized skills and application security tools. These can benefit organizations that lack internal resources and expertise. Whether managed internally or outsourced, strong security measures are essential to safeguard applications against evolving cyber threats and vulnerabilities
Why is application security important?
Application security is important for any organization handling customer data, as data breaches pose significant risks. Implementing a strong application security program is crucial to mitigating these application security risks and reducing the attack surface. Developers strive to minimize software vulnerabilities to deter attackers targeting valuable data—whether it's customer information, proprietary secrets or confidential employee data—for nefarious purposes.
In today's cloud-based landscape, data spans various networks and connects to remote servers. Network monitoring and security is vital, but safeguarding individual applications is equally important. Hackers increasingly target applications, making application security testing and proactive measures indispensable for protection. A proactive approach to application security offers an edge by enabling organizations to address vulnerabilities before they impact operations or customers.
Neglecting application security can have serious consequences. Security breaches are prevalent and can lead to temporary or permanent business shutdowns. Customers entrust organizations with their sensitive information, expecting it to be kept safe and private. Failure to secure applications can result in identity theft, financial loss, and other privacy violations. These failures undermine customer trust and damage the organization’s reputation. Investing in the right application security solutions is essential to protect both organizations and their customers from potential harm.
Types of application security
Application security encompasses various features aimed at protecting applications from potential threats and vulnerabilities. These include:
Authentication: Implemented by developers to verify the identity of users accessing the application. Authentication ensures that only authorized individuals gain entry, sometimes requiring multifactor authentication, a combination of factors like passwords, biometrics or physical tokens.
Authorization: Following authentication, users are granted permission to access specific functionalities based on their validated identity (identity access management). Authorization verifies user privileges against a predefined list of authorized users, ensuring access control.
Encryption: Applied to safeguard sensitive data during transmission or storage within the application. Particularly crucial in cloud-based environments, encryption obscures data, preventing unauthorized access or interception.
Logging: Vital for tracking application activity and identifying security breaches, application log files chronicle user interactions. Logging provides a timestamped record of accessed features and user identities, which is helpful for post-incident analysis.
Testing: Essential to validate the effectiveness of security measures. Through various testing methods such as static code analysis and dynamic scanning, vulnerabilities are identified and addressed to ensure strong security controls.
Application security benefits
Application security offers numerous benefits to organizations, including:
Decreased disruption: Business operations can be disrupted by security issues. Ensuring application security minimizes the risk of service interruptions that lead to costly downtime.
Early awareness of issues: Strong application security identifies common attack vectors and risks during the app development phase, enabling resolution before the app is launched. After deployment, the application security solution can identify vulnerabilities and alert administrators to potential issues.
Enhanced customer confidence: Applications with a reputation for security and trustworthiness help increase customer confidence in the brand, which can improve brand loyalty.
Improved compliance: Application security measures help organizations comply with regulatory and compliance requirements related to data security, such as GDPR, HIPAA and PCI DSS. This helps the organization avoid compliance-related penalties, fines and legal issues.
Increased cost savings: Investing in application security in the development process can lead to long-term cost savings. Fixing security issues early in this phase is usually more cost-effective than addressing them after deployment. In addition, strong app security helps avoid the financial costs associated with data breaches, including investigations, legal fees and regulatory fines.
Prevention of cyberattacks: Applications are frequent targets for cyberattacks including malware and ransomware, SQL injections and cross-site scripting attacks. Application security measures help organizations prevent these attacks or minimize their impact.
Protection of sensitive data: Robust security measures help organizations maintain confidentiality and integrity by safeguarding sensitive data such as customer information, financial records and intellectual property from unauthorized access, modification, or theft.
Reduced risks: Eliminating vulnerabilities increases the potential to ward off attacks. Proactive application security measures such as code reviews, security testing, and patch management reduce the likelihood of security incidents and minimize the impact of potential breaches.
Support of brand image: A security breach can erode customer trust in an organization. By prioritizing application security, organizations demonstrate their commitment to maintaining trust and protecting customer data, which helps retain customers and attract new ones.
The application security process
The application security process involves a series of essential steps aimed at identifying, mitigating and preventing security vulnerabilities.
Risk assessment and planning
This initial phase involves identifying potential security risks specific to the application through thorough threat modeling. It includes assessing the application's functionality, data handling processes and potential attack vectors. Based on this assessment, a security plan is developed to outline measures needed to mitigate identified risks.
Secure design and development
During the design and development phase, security considerations are integrated into the application architecture and coding practices. Development teams follow secure coding guidelines and application security best practices to minimize the introduction of vulnerabilities into the codebase. This includes implementing input validation, authentication mechanisms, proper error handling and establishing secure deployment pipelines.
Code review and testing
Comprehensive code reviews and testing are conducted to identify and address security vulnerabilities in the application code. This involves both static code analysis to identify potential flaws in the source code and dynamic testing to simulate real-world attack scenarios and assess the application's resilience to exploitation.
Security testing and evaluation
Security testing is performed to assess the effectiveness of implemented security controls and identify any remaining vulnerabilities. This happens primarily through red teaming, with capabilities like penetration testing , vulnerability scanning, and security risk assessments. This testing identifies weaknesses in the application's defenses and ensures compliance with security standards and regulations.
Deployment and monitoring
Once the application is ready for deployment, ongoing monitoring and maintenance are necessary to ensure continued security. This includes implementing logging and monitoring mechanisms to quickly detect and respond to security incidents. Regular security updates and patches are also applied to address newly discovered vulnerabilities and mitigate emerging threats.
Application security testing (AST) and tools
Developers perform application security testing (AST) as part of the software development process to ensure there are no vulnerabilities in a new or updated version of a software application. Some of the tests and tools related to application security are:
Static application security testing (SAST): This AST uses solutions that analyze application source code without executing the program. SAST can identify potential security vulnerabilities, coding errors and weaknesses in the application's codebase early in the development lifecycle. Developers can then fix these issues before deployment.
Dynamic application security testing (DAST): Unlike SAST, DAST tools evaluate applications while they are running. They provide insights into the security posture of applications in production environments, simulating real-world attack scenarios to identify vulnerabilities such as input validation errors, authentication flaws and configuration weaknesses that attackers could exploit.
Interactive application security testing (IAST): IAST combines SAST and DAST and improves them by focusing on dynamic and interactive testing, inspecting the application using actual user inputs and actions in a controlled and supervised environment. Vulnerabilities are reported in real time.
OWASP top ten: The OWASP top ten is a list of the top ten most critical security risks facing web applications. Compiled by the Open Web Applications Security Project (OWASP), an international nonprofit organization focused on improving software security, the list provides periodically updated guidance to developers, security professionals and organizations on the most prevalent and impactful vulnerabilities that can lead to security breaches.
Runtime application self-protection (RASP): RASP solutions protect applications at runtime by monitoring and observing behavior for signs of suspicious or malicious activity. They can detect and respond to attacks in real time, and some forms of RASP can block malicious actions when they are detected.
Software composition analysis (SCA): SCA tools identify and manage open-source components and third-party libraries used in an application. They analyze dependencies and assess their security posture, including known vulnerabilities and licensing and compliance issues.
Secure development lifecycle (SDL) tools: SDL tools integrate security into the development process. They provide developers with guidelines and automated checks to ensure security considerations are addressed throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
Web application firewalls (WAFs): WAFs are designed to protect web applications and their APIs by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the internet at the application layer. They can detect and block common web-based attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (CSRF). This enables risk mitigation of data breaches and unauthorized access.
These tools and technologies, along with others such as encryption, authentication mechanisms and security testing frameworks, are important for protecting applications from a wide range of security threats and vulnerabilities. Organizations often employ a combination of these tests and tools as part of their application security strategy.
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What is social engineering
Social engineering is the term used for a broad range of malicious activities accomplished through human interactions. It uses psychological manipulation to trick users into making security mistakes or giving away sensitive information.
Social engineering attacks happen in one or more steps. A perpetrator first investigates the intended victim to gather necessary background information, such as potential points of entry and weak security protocols, needed to proceed with the attack. Then, the attacker moves to gain the victim’s trust and provide stimuli for subsequent actions that break security practices, such as revealing sensitive information or granting access to critical resources.
Social Engineering Attack Lifecycle
What makes social engineering especially dangerous is that it relies on human error, rather than vulnerabilities in software and operating systems. Mistakes made by legitimate users are much less predictable, making them harder to identify and thwart than a malware-based intrusion.
Social engineering attack techniques
Social engineering attacks come in many different forms and can be performed anywhere where human interaction is involved. The following are the five most common forms of digital social engineering assaults.
Baiting
As its name implies, baiting attacks use a false promise to pique a victim’s greed or curiosity. They lure users into a trap that steals their personal information or inflicts their systems with malware.
The most reviled form of baiting uses physical media to disperse malware. For example, attackers leave the bait—typically malware-infected flash drives—in conspicuous areas where potential victims are certain to see them (e.g., bathrooms, elevators, the parking lot of a targeted company). The bait has an authentic look to it, such as a label presenting it as the company’s payroll list.
Victims pick up the bait out of curiosity and insert it into a work or home computer, resulting in automatic malware installation on the system.
Baiting scams don’t necessarily have to be carried out in the physical world. Online forms of baiting consist of enticing ads that lead to malicious sites or that encourage users to download a malware-infected application.
Scareware
Scareware involves victims being bombarded with false alarms and fictitious threats. Users are deceived to think their system is infected with malware, prompting them to install software that has no real benefit (other than for the perpetrator) or is malware itself. Scareware is also referred to as deception software, rogue scanner software and fraudware.
A common scareware example is the legitimate-looking popup banners appearing in your browser while surfing the web, displaying such text such as, “Your computer may be infected with harmful spyware programs.” It either offers to install the tool (often malware-infected) for you, or will direct you to a malicious site where your computer becomes infected.
Scareware is also distributed via spam email that doles out bogus warnings, or makes offers for users to buy worthless/harmful services.
Pretexting
Here an attacker obtains information through a series of cleverly crafted lies. The scam is often initiated by a perpetrator pretending to need sensitive information from a victim so as to perform a critical task.
The attacker usually starts by establishing trust with their victim by impersonating co-workers, police, bank and tax officials, or other persons who have right-to-know authority. The pretexter asks questions that are ostensibly required to confirm the victim’s identity, through which they gather important personal data.
All sorts of pertinent information and records is gathered using this scam, such as social security numbers, personal addresses and phone numbers, phone records, staff vacation dates, bank records and even security information related to a physical plant.
Phishing
As one of the most popular social engineering attack types, phishing scams are email and text message campaigns aimed at creating a sense of urgency, curiosity or fear in victims. It then prods them into revealing sensitive information, clicking on links to malicious websites, or opening attachments that contain malware.
An example is an email sent to users of an online service that alerts them of a policy violation requiring immediate action on their part, such as a required password change. It includes a link to an illegitimate website—nearly identical in appearance to its legitimate version—prompting the unsuspecting user to enter their current credentials and new password. Upon form submittal the information is sent to the attacker.
Given that identical, or near-identical, messages are sent to all users in phishing campaigns, detecting and blocking them are much easier for mail servers having access to threat sharing platforms.
Spear phishing
This is a more targeted version of the phishing scam whereby an attacker chooses specific individuals or enterprises. They then tailor their messages based on characteristics, job positions, and contacts belonging to their victims to make their attack less conspicuous. Spear phishing requires much more effort on behalf of the perpetrator and may take weeks and months to pull off. They’re much harder to detect and have better success rates if done skillfully.
A spear phishing scenario might involve an attacker who, in impersonating an organization’s IT consultant, sends an email to one or more employees. It’s worded and signed exactly as the consultant normally does, thereby deceiving recipients into thinking it’s an authentic message. The message prompts recipients to change their password and provides them with a link that redirects them to a malicious page where the attacker now captures their credentials.
Social engineering prevention
Social engineers manipulate human feelings, such as curiosity or fear, to carry out schemes and draw victims into their traps. Therefore, be wary whenever you feel alarmed by an email, attracted to an offer displayed on a website, or when you come across stray digital media lying about. Being alert can help you protect yourself against most social engineering attacks taking place in the digital realm.
Moreover, the following tips can help improve your vigilance in relation to social engineering hacks.
- Don’t open emails and attachments from suspicious sources – If you don’t know the sender in question, you don’t need to answer an email. Even if you do know them and are suspicious about their message, cross-check and confirm the news from other sources, such as via telephone or directly from a service provider’s site. Remember that email addresses are spoofed all of the time; even an email purportedly coming from a trusted source may have actually been initiated by an attacker.
- Use multifactor authentication – One of the most valuable pieces of information attackers seek are user credentials. Using multifactor authentication helps ensure your account’s protection in the event of system compromise.
- Be wary of tempting offers – If an offer sounds too enticing, think twice before accepting it as fact. Googling the topic can help you quickly determine whether you’re dealing with a legitimate offer or a trap.
- Keep your antivirus/antimalware software updated – Make sure automatic updates are engaged, or make it a habit to download the latest signatures first thing each day. Periodically check to make sure that the updates have been applied, and scan your system for possible infections.
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What is open source intelligence (OSINT)?
Open source intelligence (OSINT) is the process of gathering and analyzing publicly available information to assess threats, make decisions or answer specific questions.
Many organizations use OSINT as a cybersecurity tool to help gauge security risks and identify vulnerabilities in their IT systems. Cybercriminals and hackers also use OSINT techniques for social engineering, phishing and exposing targets for cyberattacks.
Beyond cybersecurity, other disciplines such as law enforcement, national security, marketing, journalism and academic research can also use open source intelligence.
How OSINT works
As far back as World War II, highly trained agents in the intelligence community have monitored open source information such as radio broadcasts, newspapers and market fluctuations. Today, given the number and variety of easily accessible data sources, nearly anyone can participate in open source intelligence gathering.
Some of the public sources from which OSINT researchers collect data points include:
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Internet search engines such as Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex.
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Print and online news media including newspapers, magazines and news sites.
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Social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram and LinkedIn.
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Online forums, blogs and Internet Relay Chats (IRC).
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The dark web, an encrypted area of the internet that is not indexed by search engines.
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Online directories of phone numbers, email addresses and physical addresses.
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Public records including births, deaths, court documents and business filings.
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Government records such as meeting transcripts, budgets, speeches and press releases issued by local, state and federal and national governments.
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Academic research including papers, theses and journals.
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Technical data such as IP addresses, APIs, open ports and web page metadata.
However, before data collection from OSINT sources begin, a clear objective should be established. For example, security professionals who use OSINT first determine which insights they seek to uncover, and which public data will yield the wanted results.
After the public information is collected, it must then be processed to filter out unnecessary or redundant data. Security teams can then analyze the refined data and create an actionable intelligence report.
How hackers use OSINT
Threat actors often use OSINT to uncover sensitive information they can leverage to exploit vulnerabilities in computer networks.
These information can include personal details about an organization’s employees, partners and vendors that are easily accessible on social media and company websites. Or technical information such as credentials, security gaps or encryption keys that might appear in the source code of web pages or cloud applications. There are also public websites that publish compromising information such as stolen logins and passwords from data breaches.
Cybercriminals are able to use this public data for various nefarious purposes.
For example, they might use personal information from social networks to create tailored phishing emails that convince readers to click on a malicious link. Or conduct a Google search with specific commands that reveal security weaknesses in a web application, a practice called “Google dorking.” They can also evade detection during a hacking attempt after reviewing a company’s public assets that describe their cybersecurity defense strategies.
OSINT for cybersecurity
For these reasons, many organizations conduct OSINT assessments of the public sources of information related to their systems, applications and human resources.
The findings can be used to locate unauthorized leaks of proprietary or sensitive data, evaluate information security, and identify vulnerabilities such as unpatched software, misconfigurations or open ports. Organizations can also conduct penetration testing of their systems and networks by using the same OSINT data that are publicly accessible by cybercriminals and hackers.
Often, the information collected during an OSINT assessment is combined with nonpublic data to create a more comprehensive threat intelligence report. Frequent updates to OSINT cybersecurity assessments can help organizations mitigate the risk of data breaches, ransomware, malware and other cyberattacks.
OSINT tools
Because of the vast amount of public information available, it is often impractical to manually collect, sort and analyze OSINT data. Specialized open source intelligence tools can help manage and automate data tasks for various OSINT use cases.
Some OSINT analysis tools use artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect which information is valuable and relevant, and which is insignificant or unrelated. Among the more popular OSINT tools are:
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Osintframework.com: An extensive directory of free, online OSINT tools and resources hosted on the developer platform GitHub. Both hackers and cybersecurity professionals can use this directory as a starting point to drill down into the specific functionality they seek in an OSINT tool.
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Maltego: A real-time data mining solution for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms that provides graphic representations of data patterns and connections. With its ability to profile and track the online activities of individuals, this tool can be useful to both cybersecurity professionals and threat actors.
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Spiderfoot: A data source integration tool for information such as email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, subdomains and more. Ethical hackers can use this resource to investigate publicly available information that could pose a threat to an organization or an individual.
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Shodan: A search engine for internet-connected devices that can also provide information on metadata and open ports. Because this tool can identify security vulnerabilities for millions of devices, it can be useful to both cybersecurity professionals and cybercriminals.
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Babel X: A multilingual, AI-enabled search tool capable of searching the World Wide Web and dark web in more than 200 languages. Security teams within an organization can use this tool to search for sensitive or proprietary information that might be posted on the dark web or in a foreign country.
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Metasploit: A penetration testing tool that can identify security vulnerabilities in networks, systems and applications. Both cybersecurity professionals and hackers find value in this tool because it can expose the specific weaknesses that can enable a successful cyberattack.
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- Header: A series of bits that contains information about the packet, such as the source and destination IP addresses, the packet's size, and how long it should be forwarded
- Payload: The actual content of the packet, such as an image, video, or text
- How are IP packets used?
- IP packets are used to send and receive data for activities like email, web browsing, and video games. IP packets are a type of datagram, which is a unit of data sent over a packet-switched network
- IP packets can be lost due to network congestion, DDoS attacks, software vulnerabilities, or other factors IP packets can be delivered out of order due to dynamic routing
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The Basics of IP Whitelisting and How It Works
Maintaining a secure network requires monitoring Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. If you discover any malicious traffic, you can blacklist the problematic IP addresses. Most firewalls support IP blacklisting. Blacklisting an IP address will prevent all traffic from that IP address from accessing your business’s network. In addition to blacklisting, though, you may want to whitelist certain IP addresses.
Whitelisting Explained
Whitelisting is the practice of allowing an IP address to access your business’s network without undergoing the normal screening process. It’s supported by most firewalls. Firewalls work by scanning traffic against a set of rules. if the traffic passes the rules, the firewall will allow it to access your business’s network. If the traffic fails the rules, the firewall will reject it. Whitelisted IP addresses are able to bypass this process.
Instead of being screened, whitelisted IP addresses will connect directly to your business’s network. The firewall won’t screen or otherwise check them. If the firewall discovers traffic originating from a whitelisted IP address, the firewall will allow it automatically.
If you use the Windows Firewall, you can whitelist IP addresses in just a few simple steps. First, search for firewall and launch the “Firewall and Network Protection” app. You should see an “Advanced settings” option near the bottom. Clicking this option will allow you to whitelist, as well as blacklist, IP addresses.
Whitelisting vs Blacklisting
Whitelisting is essentially the opposite of blacklisting. When you whitelist an IP address, all traffic from that IP address will be able to access your business’s network. If you blacklist an IP address, all traffic from that IP address will be blocked. Blacklisted IP addresses won’t be able to access your business’s network. The firewall will automatically reject all connection requests originating from blacklisted IP addresses.
Reasons to Whitelist IP Addresses
Why should you whitelist IP addresses exactly? If you discover that your firewall is constantly blocking or otherwise preventing you from accessing your business’s network, you may want to whitelist your IP address. Firewalls are designed to keep malicious traffic out of networks. But legitimate traffic can get caught in the crossfire.
The firewall may wrongfully identify your IP address as a potential hacker, in which case it may block you from accessing your business’s network. Whitelisting is a quick fix. After whitelisting your IP address, you’ll be able to access your business’s network. You can whitelist any workers’ IP addresses who are struggling to access the network.
Authors: T. C. OkennaRegister for this course: Enrol Now