Vulnerabilities
From MRL Wiki
Vulnerabilities are weakness in the security system, for example, in procedures, design, or implementation, that might be exploited to cause loss or harm. This category includes only general explanation of vulnerabilities. System/Application specific information is available in Attacks category.
Below are some common vulnerabilities:
- Hardware Vulnerabilities
- Because we can see what devices are hooked to the system, it is rather simple to attack by adding devices, changing them, removing them, intercepting the traffic to them, or flooding them with traffic until they can no longer function.
- "involuntary machine slaughter": accidental acts not intended to do serious damage to the hardware involved.
- "voluntary machine slaughter" or "machinicide," usually involves someone who actually wishes to harm the computer hardware or software.
- Software Vulnerabilities
- Deletion. Because of software's high value to a commercial computing center, access to software is usually carefully controlled through a process called configuration management so that software is not deleted, destroyed, or replaced accidentally.
- Modification.
- Logic bomb - changes made so that a program fails when certain conditions are met or when a certain date or time is reached.
- Trojan horse - a program that overtly does one thing while doing another
- Virus - a specific type of Trojan horse that can be used to spread its "infection" from one computer to another
- Trapdoor - a program that has a secret entry point
- Information leaks - code that makes information accessible to unauthorized people or programs
- Theft - unauthorized copying of software.
- Data Vulnerabilities
- Confidentiality. Data can be gathered by many means, such as tapping wires, planting bugs in output devices, sifting through trash receptacles, monitoring electromagnetic radiation, bribing key employees, inferring one data point from other values, or simply requesting the data. Because data are often available in a form people can read, the confidentiality of data is a major concern in computer security.
- Integrity. Data are especially vulnerable to modification. Small and skillfully done modifications may not be detected in ordinary ways.
- Networks. Networks are specialized collections of hardware, software, and data. Each network node is itself a computing system; as such, it experiences all the normal security problems.
- Access. Access to computing equipment leads to three types of vulnerabilities.
- Intruder may steal computer time to do general-purpose computing that does not attack the integrity of the system itself.
- Malicious access to a computing system, whereby an intruding person or system actually destroys software or data.
- unauthorized access may deny service to a legitimate user.
- People. People can be crucial weak points in security. In particular, a disgruntled employee can cause serious damage by using inside knowledge of the system and the data that are manipulated.
Contents |
[edit] Hardware Vulnerabilities
[edit] Software Vulnerabilities
- Nonmalicious Program Errors
- Viruses and Other Malicious Code
[edit] Data Vulnerabilities
[edit] Network Vulnerabilities
- Precursors to attack
- Authentication failures
- Programming flaws
- Buffer overflow
- Addressing errors
- Parameter modification, time-of-check to time-of-use errors
- Server-Side Includes
- Cookie
- Malicious active code: Java, ActiveX
- Malicious code: Virus, Worm, Trojan Horse
- Malicious typed code
- Confidentiality
- Protocol Flaw
- Eavesdropping
- Passive wiretap
- Misdelivery
- Exposure within the network
- Traffic flow analysis
- Cookie
- Integrity
- Protocol flaw
- Active wiretap
- Impersonation
- Falsification of message
- Noise
- Web site defacement
- DNS Attack
- Availability
- Protocol flaw
- Transmission or component failure
- Denial of Service
- DNS Attack
- Traffic redirection
- Distributed Denial of Service