🔍 Vulnerability Discovery
Discovering vulnerabilities before adversaries do is the foundation of proactive defense. This involves:
- Zero-day vulnerabilities: Newly discovered flaws without a patch.
- Bug bounty programs: Incentivize ethical hackers to disclose bugs responsibly (e.g., HackerOne).
- Disclosure types: Responsible (private with vendor), Full (public), and Coordinated/ethical.
⚙️ Weak Configurations
- Use of default passwords or keys
- Unnecessary services or ports left open
- Use of outdated or weak encryption (e.g., DES, RC4)
- Overly permissive access rights or shared admin credentials
🎯 Evaluation Scope & Targets
Determine the scope of vulnerability assessments and penetration testing:
- Include applications, OS, firmware, and services
- Check for buffer overflows, privilege escalations, and injection flaws
- Use test environments to avoid disrupting production
🧠 Memory & Code Handling
- Memory leaks: Consumes system resources until crash
- Race conditions: Concurrent access leads to undefined behavior
- Improper exception handling: Crashes apps and exposes sensitive data
- Integer/buffer overflows: Leads to memory corruption or DoS
📱 Mobile Threats: Rooting, Jailbreaking & Sideloading
Modifying mobile devices bypasses built-in security controls:
- Rooting (Android) or jailbreaking (iOS): Removes OS restrictions, exposing devices to malware and unauthorized access. Learn more about rooting and jailbreaking on Kaspersky.
- Sideloading: Installing apps from untrusted sources increases malware risk. Learn more about sideloading risks on Avast.
- Can break MDM (Mobile Device Management) policies and lead to data loss or compromise.
🌐 Threat Intelligence Sources
- Vendor Advisories: Microsoft, Cisco, Red Hat. Check out Microsoft Security Response Center.
- ISACs: Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (e.g., FS-ISAC for financial services). Learn more about ISACs on CISA.
- OSINT: Blogs, forums, Reddit, and tools like Shodan. Learn more about OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) on SANS Institute.
- STIX/TAXII: Structured formats for automated threat feed sharing. Learn more about STIX/TAXII on OASIS.
🚨 Vulnerability Scanning & Remediation
- Tools: Nessus, Qualys, OpenVAS, Nikto (for web). Learn more about vulnerability scanning tools on Tenable.
- DAST: Dynamic Application Security Testing tools test live apps. Learn more about DAST on OWASP.
- CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System): Rates severity (0–10 scale). Learn more about CVSS on FIRST.org.
- Patch types: Critical, security, functional, hotfixes.
- Remediation plans: Include rollback testing and user notification. Learn more about patch management on SANS Institute.