There are attackers out there that go about disrupting people’s lives by exploiting some of the cyber security vulnerabilities that allows them access into the user’s system and thereby giving them access to a user’s data. The first step in preventing yourself against these kinds of attacks is to be aware of how these attacks work.
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However, knowing their method of attack and preventing it are two completely different things. In this article, we try to bridge the gap between the two by telling you how to fix the top 5 cyber security vulnerabilities.
Buffer Overflow
Attack:
In a buffer overflow attack, an application is made to run a piece of code that makes it use up more buffer memory than it has been allocated. When the malicious code is run by the application, it returns the pointer of the new buffer location due to taking up more than its prescribed buffer space. The attacker can exploit this returned pointer to the location by damaging or manipulating adjacent buffer addresses.
Remedy: Prevention can be done by:
- Performing Bounds Checking helps a user know that a variable is within some predefined bounds before its usage.
- Static code analysis tools automatically run tests to detect buffer overflow bugs in a system, so they can be used here
- A canary value system can be used where a function’s return pointer with a keyed hash can be stored in a stack before its usage. If the values of the returned pointer after usage match with the stored values then no buffer overflow bugs are present in the system.
Sensitive Data Exposure
Attack:
Any attacker can look to damage, steal or modify a user’s sensitive data by breaking into his system or by intercepting the data via a Man-in-the-Middle attack.
Remedy: Prevention methods are:
- Encrypt the sensitive data on your system
- Use strong algorithms while using sensitive data online
- Disable auto complete forms as they can expose passwords easily
Injection Vulnerability
Attack:
Sending untrusted data to an interpreter can result in injection vulnerability, with most of them affecting SQL, XPath, and XML parsers.
Remedy: Some methods are:
- One should look to adopt safe APIs that provide parameterized interfaces and validate the input data with the utmost care.
- Users should make it a practice to refer to parameterized queries and SQL injection mitigation in order to prevent the construction of fake SQL queries.
- ‘Least Privilege Principle’ can be more widely used. In this, a user is granted only those privileges that are absolutely required for his purpose.
Broken Session and Authentication
Attack:
Attackers can take advantage of weak spots in the authentication and session management procedures, thereby impersonating other users and interacting with users to access their data.
Remedy:
Since XSS flaws are central to this vulnerability, providing strong authentication and session management procedures to users is the best remedy to fix this cyber security vulnerability.
Security Misconfiguration
Attack:
This is the simplest and yet an appalling cyber security vulnerability. If the security system of your device or application is not properly configured then it is open to all sorts of attacks.
Remedy:
- Don’t run outdated software on any device
- Do not run unnecessary applications on your system or device
- Don’t use default settings for anything as it is easy to find those settings online and exploit them
Conclusion
We address the issue of how to fix the top 5 cyber security vulnerabilities in this article by informing the users about how these attacks work as well as what they can do to protect themselves from them. There are still more cyber security vulnerabilities that expose your system to attacks, so we advise you to keep yourself informed.
