New processes are created in Linux with a fork-and-exec mechanism. When a process makes a fork call, a new process with a new PID is created. The process that made the fork call is the parent process and the new process is the child process. The child process starts as a duplicate of the parent process, with some significant status changes. Both processes receive a value from the fork call. The parent process receives the PID of the child process…
Compliance regulations are a major driver for security in organizations of all kinds. They define not only the scope and parameters for the risk and security architectures of an organization, but also the liability for those organizations that fail to comply. Current trends in regulatory compliance include the following: Strengthened enforcement Global spread of data breach notification laws More prescriptive regulations Growing requirements regarding third parties (business partners) Risk-based compliance on the rise Compliance process streamlined and automated The following…
Access control includes control over access to the network resources, information system resources, and information. It is crucial for an organization to implement the proper access controls to protect the organization’s resources and information. A security analyst should understand the different basic models for implementing access controls in order to better understand how attackers can break the access controls. Mandatory Access Control Secures information by assigning sensitivity (security level) labels on information and comparing it to the level of sensitivity…
The cyber kill chain is a model that describes the structure of an attack. One of an analyst’s key jobs is to understand exactly what the attackers did. The steps of the kill chain enhance visibility into an attack and enrich an analyst’s understanding of an adversary’s tactics, techniques, and procedures. The following lists the seven stages of the cyber kill chain: Reconnaissance: Research, identification and selection of targets, often represented as crawling Internet websites such as conference proceedings and…
Traffic Fragmentation One of the early network IPS evasion techniques used fragmentation of traffic to attempt to bypass the network IPS sensor. Fragmentation-based evasion refers to any evasion attempts where the attacker fragments the malicious traffic, hoping to avoid detection or filtering in the following ways: Bypassing the network IPS sensor if the IPS sensor does not perform any fragment reassembly Reordering the fragments, hoping the network IPS sensor does not correctly reorder the fragments Classic examples of fragmentation-based evasion…
Risk is a function of the likelihood of a given threat source’s exercising a particular potential vulnerability, and the resulting impact of that adverse event on the organization. Managing risk is a complex, multifaceted activity that requires the involvement of the entire organization. The NIST Special Publication 800-39: Risk Management Guide for Information Technology Systems defines some common risk terminology that is appropriate for security analysts, as follows: Risk= Threats x Vulnerabilities x Impact A threat source is an intent…