What is vulnerability detection
Vulnerability detection is identifying security gaps or weaknesses within a system, network, or software before attackers can exploit them to gain unauthorized access and perform malicious activities. It involves systematically scanning or probing to discover vulnerabilities such as outdated software, security misconfiguration, and others. Discovering vulnerabilities early and patching them helps keep IT infrastructure running smoothly and securely. Vulnerability detection is important for adhering to regulatory compliance, helping organizations avoid penalties and safeguard their reputations.
Common vulnerabilities classification
Understanding vulnerabilities is important for IT teams and security professionals to implement effective defenses and protect sensitive information from cyber threats. Below are classifications of vulnerabilities:
- Network-based: These are vulnerabilities in a network’s design, protocol, and configurations that threat actors can exploit to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of systems and data connected to the network. They include weak network protocols, open or misconfigured ports, and misconfigured firewalls, access controls, and other network devices.
- Software-based: These are flaws in an application’s design or code. These types of vulnerabilities come from errors made during the software development lifecycle or inadequate maintenance of the application after deployment. Examples of these vulnerabilities are SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), buffer overflow, hard-coded credentials, and others.
- System-based: These are vulnerabilities that arise from the overall configuration and implementation of an operating system. Common examples are misconfigurations, outdated or unpatched software, inadequate access controls, improper logging or monitoring, default credentials, and others.
- Human-based: These types of vulnerabilities are caused by human actions or inactions. A system's security is only as strong as its weakest link, and often, that link is the human factor. Humans are susceptible to social engineering, and negligence and can pose as insider threats. An infrastructure can be mostly secure, but human behavior can still compromise it. It is therefore important to continuously conduct security awareness and enforce processes like the principle of least privilege, strong password policies, multi-factor authentication, and others.
Methods of performing vulnerability detection
The different methods of performing vulnerability detection are outlined below:
Automated vulnerability scanning
Automated vulnerability scanning involves using tools to periodically check systems, applications, or IT infrastructure for vulnerabilities. This involves scanning for outdated or vulnerable software, misconfigurations, weak encryption or communication protocols, and others. Automated vulnerability scans use vulnerability databases to identify vulnerabilities in a system, perform risk evaluation to determine the severity and impact, and then generate reports on the discovered vulnerabilities.
Threat hunting
Threat hunting is a proactive vulnerability detection process of searching for indicators of compromise (IOCs) that may have gone undetected by automated vulnerability detection methods. Threat hunting is important because it helps security engineers discover hidden threats in a system or IT infrastructure before they can cause any harm. Threat hunting uses Cyber Threat Intelligence and other processes like log data analysis, MITRE ATT&CK mapping, and system inventory.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is a Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) process that involves reviewing an application’s source code to find potential vulnerabilities without executing the application. SAST is considered a white-box testing method because of access to the application’s source code, and how it reviews the application’s internal logic and structure. This vulnerability detection method helps to provide early and continuous feedback before an application gets deployed. It focuses on the code and flags insecure coding practices like improper input validation and hard-coded secrets. SAST tools are usually automated and can be integrated into many development environments.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is a Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) process that involves testing an application while it is running. It is considered a black-box testing method because there is no knowledge of the application source code and testing is solely on the behavior of the running application. DAST tools include fuzzers, attack proxies, and dynamic security scanners. DAST typically works by crawling the application to find accessible endpoints, simulating attacks, analyzing responses, and reporting the findings.
Importance of vulnerability detection
- Threat detection: Vulnerabilities can expose sensitive information such as credentials, personally identifiable information, financial records, and others. Conducting vulnerability scans detect weaknesses in systems and networks that malicious actors can exploit to gain unauthorized access or perform harmful actions.
- Improved security posture: Vulnerability detection proactively identifies and addresses weaknesses in systems and networks before attackers can exploit them. It reduces the attack surface, prioritizes critical remediation efforts, and helps prevent breaches, thereby minimizing risks.
- System reliability: Exploiting vulnerabilities could lead to unexpected interruptions in system operations. Detecting these vulnerabilities early is critical for protecting infrastructure from downtimes and performance issues. Reliable systems help businesses boost user confidence and trust.
- Regulatory compliance: Most compliance standards such as PCI DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA require regular scanning of IT infrastructure to detect vulnerabilities and mitigate them. Regularly performing vulnerability detection operations helps to comply with these requirements and avoid hefty legal penalties.
Learn how Wazuh helps with vulnerability detection in our documentation.
