Secure design considerations refer to the threats and risks associated with failing to protect the system under cyber-attacks adequately. To ensure that the system is defended against any potential attacks, the software must be designed keeping in mind every conceivable method through which a malicious user could access the system. Known as security by design, this approach aims to resolve issues such as security vulnerabilities being added at late stages in developmental processes.
Secure Design Vulnerability: A Key Pillar of Web Application Security
The secure design establishes precautions before construction begins and integrates security into each stage of the software development lifecycle. Its purpose is to identify and address potential weaknesses during the design phase, which can lead to more resilient systems. Secure design shifts the focus towards a more proactive approach, strengthening a system more than simply adding features after the fact.
Why is Secure Design Important
Secure design in web application security shifts the focus from reactive security measures to creating resilient systems from the ground up. Integrating security from the start ensures it’s a core function of the software, not an afterthought. This proactive approach is crucial for several reasons:
- Safeguarding Sensitive Data: Protecting sensitive user data from unauthorized access.
- Preventing Unauthorized Access: Only authorized users can access specific features and data.
- Maintaining System Integrity: Protecting the application from threats and vulnerabilities that could compromise its functionality.
Addressing Insecure Design in OWASP Top 10 for Web Application Security
An attacker can exploit these design flaws in the software to obtain unauthorized access to the system, manipulate sensitive data, or even disrupt the entire system’s functions. The Open Web Application Security Project is a well-known non-profit organization creating community-driven software security awareness materials. The OWASP Top 10 list highlights the most critical web application security faults. Unsecure web applications have been on this list for several years.
- Poorly Designed Authentication Mechanisms: Weak authentication methods, such as no multi-factor authentication, poor credential safeguarding techniques, including weak passwords, and storing sensitive information as plain text, tend to put the system’s security at risk.
- Insufficient Authorization Controls: One more basic example of weak authorization control is the lack of control over what the user can do after logging into an application. Most users can perform many functions which they are not expected to.
- Improper Error Handling: In the application design phase, inadequate error handling can result in potential problems. Too much information from error messages can give attackers sufficient details to carry out an attack.
Integrating Security from the Start of Development
At the final phase of the ‘attack and defend’ software development model, a program is constructed, and security protocols are added. Such security practices are reactive instead of proactive and are now widely known to be ineffective.
Another advantage supporting the case for secure design adoption is productivity: identifying weaknesses during the designing stage is more streamlined, effective and economical than tackling them later when the system is already deployed. If breaches are not tolerated, no other option is more effective than static defences during a system’s early designing phase.
What is Insecure Design
Insecure design is used to identify the shortcomings and weaknesses of structure, software, or system architecture that an evil person can exploit. Such weaknesses can bring different security threats and risks that can violate your information’s integrity, confidentiality, and availability.
Poor decision-making while planning and implementing design is the root cause of insecure design. It may entail insufficient knowledge about the risk factors put in place, lack of proper and thorough security review, proper security not ensuring crucial aspects of a system, or security protocols being ignored.
Insecure Design: A Software Flaw That Creates Vulnerabilities to Attacks
Secure design practices minimize potential weaknesses that attackers can target. One element of secure design is ensuring that potential errors or flaws do not exist within the application. In software development, safe design is pivotal for an application’s core functionality and business logic to be as secure as possible against any attempts from adversaries to manipulate or exploit it.
Insecure design refers to a particular vulnerability that can be exploited due to modern-day application architecture design. At times, these flaws can be structural and superficial throughout an application’s level of architecture in design. Level. An insecure design does not consider potential threats towards an application from malicious users, leading to compromised security by the developer’s design.
Cause of Insecure Design: Failure to Follow Security Best Practices in the Design Process
Building a comprehensive application or software system is crucial for safeguarding sensitive information. It establishes a foundation for securing digital infrastructure and its components. Unfortunately, news about new breaches and hacks is too frequent, highlighting that security measures and technology are still lagging in some sectors because they do get exploited.
During the design phase, best practices regarding security protocols should transcend essential minimalistic integrations like firewalls and encryption measures. Identifying possible risks is a key approach to lessening the impact of such threats on a system, and this should be done from the designing stage onwards.
Understanding How This Vulnerability Differs in the Initial Phase of Application Development
The initial phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is crucial for proactively addressing potential security vulnerabilities. Integrating security measures helps organizations save time and money while protecting their systems and users from possible threats.
Vulnerabilities in the Initial Phase
- Secure SDLC Importance: When developing an application, focusing on security aspects starts with the very first step and rounds up with and does not exclude goal setting. Every developer and stakeholder must first establish security needs, undertake threat modelling, and set security goals.
- Planning: The planning phase must take into account input from the security personnel, who should say whether the approach suggested tackles the problem in a resourceful and secure way.
- Design: At this stage of the project, assisting the user with controlling access to sensitive data, protecting the data itself, and mitigating all possible threats becomes the main focus of the project’s design stage.
Vulnerabilities in Other Phases
- Development Phase: Coding makes this phase susceptible to security breaches. This phase is vulnerable to securing weaknesses due to coding. Linters can be deployed to review the code for “code smells” and other security vulnerabilities. Bandit for Python or GoSec for Golang are tools of choice for more advanced security hygiene.
- Code Tampering: Code tampering can occur anywhere along the CI/CD pipeline since it includes modifying or injecting dubious code. Abuse of Code Tampering can be resolved by adequately implementing monitoring systems throughout the SDLC.
- DevOps Tools and Infrastructure: Tools like SCMs, build systems and package repositories are often configured for efficiency rather than security, leading to tool compromise and exposure of sensitive data.
Impact of Poor Initial Decisions on Functionality and Security
Incompetence shown at the beginning of a project can lead to numerous compromises and functional failures that can derail the entire endeavour. Abandoning proper strategic steps at the start of execution is usually the source of these failures, and it’s rooted in a lack of proper stakeholder involvement, vague goals, and insufficient risk assessments.
Examples of how poor decisions in the initial phase lead to functional failures:
- Scope Creep: A poorly defined project scope can lead to scope creep, where additional requirements are added without proper control. A financial services app that suffered from unchecked scope expansion due to evolving stakeholder requests led to missed deadlines and budget overruns.
- Lack of Planning: Launching a project without a comprehensive roadmap can lead to uncertainty, ambiguous goals, and miscommunication. A product revamp faltered due to the absence of planning, causing missed deadlines and mismanaged resources.
- Unrealistic Budgeting: Setting an unrealistic budget without considering all potential costs can lead to financial strain and project overruns.
- Inadequate Stakeholder Engagement: Failing to engage key stakeholders early can result in missed requirements and a lack of support.
Examples of common design vulnerabilities
Maintaining security is essential in software development. Specific design gaps could expose an application’s security and safety. We will look at three common design gaps: input validation controls, sensitive data disclosure, and the lack of secure communication layers.
Lack of input validation controls
Application security begins with proper input data validation. A developer’s failure to do so may result in manipulations such as SQL injections or Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).
Imagine a scenario where a user can comment on a web application’s post. Not validating the comment field can allow an attacker to post a script instead of a comment, which could be executed on the browser of every user who can view it and steal critical information or hijack sessions.
Sensitive information disclosure
Disclosure of sensitive data is the action of publicizing confidential information without the consent of the target audience. Inappropriate exposure of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Financial information, or even classified company information falls under this category.
One of the instances was noted in Cash App, where an enraged employee abused his authority and leaked sensitive client information to other parties. The aftermath of the breach impacted over 8.2 million clients, leading to severe lawsuits against the company.
Missing secure communication layers
Secure communication layers guarantee data protection while in transit. The absence of encryption, HTTPS, or TLS means that hackers can acquire crucial information while it is being transferred.
Take the case of a healthcare app that sends sensitive patient information over an unsecured connection. An attacker who intercepts this information can access confidential medical files and records, severely violating the patient’s privacy and causing the healthcare provider much legal trouble.
Real-World Examples of Insecure Design
The Equifax data breach serves as a stark reminder of the potential consequences of insecure design in software systems. In 2017, Equifax, one of the largest consumer credit reporting agencies in the United States, suffered a massive data breach that compromised the personal information of over 147 million individuals.
The Equifax Data Breach: A Case Study in Insecure Design
The 2017 Equifax data breach is one of the most infamous examples of how insecure design can lead to catastrophic consequences. The breach exposed the personal and financial information of over 147 million individuals, making it one of the largest and most damaging security incidents in history.
How the Exploit Happened
The attackers leveraged a known vulnerability in Apache Struts, a widely used open-source web application framework. Here’s how the breach unfolded:
- Injection of Malicious Code: The attackers exploited an unpatched security flaw (CVE-2017-5638) in Apache Struts, which allowed them to execute remote commands on Equifax’s servers. They injected malicious code into the website’s search bar, taking advantage of improper input validation and inadequate security controls.
- Unauthorized Access to Sensitive Data: Once inside, the attackers were able to exfiltrate data from Equifax’s internal databases. This included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and driver’s license numbers – highly sensitive information that could be used for identity theft and financial fraud. The attackers remained undetected for 76 days, allowing them to siphon off massive amounts of data before Equifax noticed the breach.
- Failure to Patch the Vulnerability: The Apache Struts vulnerability had been publicly disclosed two months before the attack. Equifax failed to apply the necessary security patch, leaving their systems exposed to a well-known exploit.
How to Protect Against Insecure Design
Insecure design is a significant security risk that can lead to financial losses, reputational damage, and potential threats to individuals. It involves flaws in the design and architecture of software that can be exploited if security measures are not integrated from the beginning of the development process. Insecure design is a broad category that encompasses various weaknesses related to missing or ineffective security controls.
Prioritizing Security from the Design Phase
The initial design phase is where the foundations of a system or software are laid out. During this stage, decisions are made on what technologies, architectures, and frameworks will be used. At this point, incorporating security measures may seem like an extra burden, but it is much easier to prevent vulnerabilities at this stage rather than trying to fix them after the product has been released.
- Risk Assessment: Conduct thorough risk assessments to identify potential vulnerabilities and threats.
- Secure Coding Practices: Use secure coding practices, including input validation, output encoding, and proper error handling.
- Authentication and Authorization: Implement strong authentication and authorization mechanisms to ensure only authorized users can access sensitive data and functionality.
- Data Encryption: Use encryption to protect sensitive data in transit and at rest.
- Penetration Testing: Regularly conduct penetration testing to identify vulnerabilities that may have been missed during development.
Key Principles of Secure Design
Secure design is the foundation of any robust and resilient application. It involves integrating security considerations from the beginning of the development process, ensuring potential vulnerabilities are identified and mitigated before they can be exploited. A well-designed application functions as intended and protects against unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security threats.
Adhering to key principles that guide the development process is essential to achieving secure design. These principles provide a framework for building secure, reliable, and user-friendly applications. Let’s explore some of these fundamental principles.
Principle of Least Privilege: Restricting Access to Essential Functions
The Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) dictates that users and application components should have the minimum level of access necessary to perform their tasks. This means that access rights should be restricted to only what is required, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data or functionality.
Benefits of PoLP:
- Reduced Attack Surface: Limiting access reduces the potential impact of a successful attack. If a user account or component is compromised, the attacker’s access will be limited to the specific privileges assigned to that account or component.
- Improved Accountability: Granular access controls make it easier to track and monitor user activity, improving accountability and facilitating incident response.
- Prevention of Insider Threats: PoLP can help prevent insider threats by limiting the ability of malicious or negligent employees to access sensitive data or perform unauthorized actions.
Principle of Defense in Depth: Multiple layers of security
The Principle of Defense in Depth involves implementing multiple layers of security controls to protect against various attacks. This approach recognizes that no single security measure is foolproof and that a layered defence provides redundancy and resilience.
Benefits of Defense in Depth:
- Increased Resilience: If one security layer fails, other layers are in place to prevent or mitigate the attack.
- Reduced Impact of Vulnerabilities: Even if a vulnerability is discovered in one component, other security measures can prevent it from being exploited.
- Enhanced Detection Capabilities: Multiple layers of security can provide more opportunities to detect and respond to attacks.
Fail Securely Principle: Design the application to handle incidents securely
The Fail Securely Principle emphasizes designing applications to handle incidents securely and minimize the consequences of security breaches. When a failure occurs, the application should default to a secure state, preventing unauthorized access or data leakage.
Benefits of Failing Securely:
- In the event of a failure, the application should prevent unauthorized access or data leakage, minimizing the potential damage.
- The application should ensure that data remains consistent and accurate even during failures.
- The application should gracefully degrade its functionality rather than crashing or becoming unusable.
User-Centric Security: Mitigating Risks from User Actions
User-centric design involves considering how user actions could lead to adverse outcomes. By understanding user behaviour and potential misuse scenarios, developers can design applications that are more secure and resistant to attacks.
Benefits of User-Centric Design:
- By anticipating potential misuse scenarios, developers can design applications that prevent users from unintentionally or intentionally causing harm.
- Security measures should be integrated seamlessly into the user experience, making it easy for users to adopt secure behaviours.
- Organizations can build trust with their customers by demonstrating a commitment to user safety and security.
Zero Trust Architecture
Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) enhances security by verifying every user and device, ensuring trusted access in evolving IT environments. It operates on the principle of “never trust, always verify,” assuming that everything on the network is hostile or compromised. Access is granted only after verifying user identity, device posture, and business context and enforcing policy checks.
Enforcing Strict Access Controls and Least Privilege
Enforcing strict access controls and adopting the principle of least privilege (PoLP) are fundamental security practices that minimize the risk of unauthorized access, insider threats, and data breaches. These strategies ensure that users, applications, and systems only have the access necessary to perform the tasks.
- Least Privilege Access: Restrict user and device access to only the resources necessary for their role and responsibility when they need it. Implement Just-in-Time access to all resources and reach Zero Standing Privileges in your most sensitive environments.
- Micro-segmentation: Divide your network into smaller, isolated environments for different applications and data. This restricts lateral movement within the network, limiting the potential damage of an attack.
- Policy Enforcement: The policy enforcement point handles enabling, monitoring, and eventually terminating connections between a subject and an enterprise resource.
Implement Multi-Factor Authentication and Continuous Verification
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Continuous Verification have become essential security measures to protect systems from unauthorized access. These strategies enhance security by ensuring that only legitimate users can access sensitive systems, applications, and data.
- Continuous Monitoring: Implement a robust monitoring system that can detect suspicious activities or anomalies on your network in real-time. Use intrusion detection and prevention systems, log analysis tools, and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions to promptly identify and respond to potential security incidents.
- Verify Identity and Context: The zero-trust architecture first terminates the connection and verifies identity and context by understanding the request’s “who, what, and where.”
- Control Risk: Evaluate the risk associated with the connection request and inspect the traffic for cyber threats and sensitive data. A risk score is computed for the user, workload, or device to determine whether it’s allowed or restricted.
Secure Coding Practices
Secure coding practices are guidelines and best practices that developers follow to minimize vulnerabilities and create secure software. These practices address common coding mistakes and weaknesses that attackers can exploit, making the code more resilient. Secure coding guidelines and regular code reviews are essential for developing secure applications.
Adhere to Secure Coding Standards (OWASP, CERT)
- Establish Standards: Adhere to secure coding standards from organizations like OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) and CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team). OWASP provides guidelines focusing on input validation, authentication, session management, encryption, and error handling.
- Input Validation: Validate data range and length. If any potentially hazardous input must be allowed, implement additional controls. If the standard validation routine cannot address some inputs, use extra discrete checks.
- Output Encoding: Conduct all output encoding on a trusted system (server side, not client side). Utilize a standard, tested routine for each type of outbound encoding. Specify character sets, such as UTF-8, for all outputs. Contextually, output encodes all data returned to the client from untrusted sources. Ensure the output encoding is safe for all target systems.
Conduct Regular Code Reviews and Static Analysis for Security
- Code Reviews: Regularly review code to identify and fix security flaws.
- Static Analysis: Automated tools scan code for potential vulnerabilities. Codacy can help prevent OWASP’s Top 10 vulnerabilities by providing automated code analysis, quality, and security tools that scan over 40 programming languages, such as JavaScript, Python, Java, C#, and PHP.
- Vulnerability Prioritization: Use a risk-based approach to prioritize the remediation of vulnerabilities based on impact, exploitability, and exposure.
Mitigation Strategies
Mitigation strategies are proactive measures that aim to prevent or minimize the impact of security vulnerabilities in software design. They can be implemented at various stages of the development process and involve both technical and non-technical aspects.
Regularly review and update configurations
Frequent assessments enable the organization to discover gaps in the system settings from the initial design phase that could have gone unnoticed. This approach enables the organization to take relevant measures before the situation worsens, avoiding serious data leaks or system breakdowns that would be hugely expensive. Attackers are always on the lookout for new ways to breach a system, and as technology evolves, so should the designs. Without meeting updates, systems can be unduly put in harm’s way.
Minimize unnecessary features and services
The final stage of secure design entails reducing all features and services that could possibly be abused. While having a wide array of features on the initial blueprint can be beneficial, it immediately opens up a wide range of avenues that can be misused by cybercriminals.
One primary reason is that cutting down the features shrinks the attack surface that a system has to deal with. The term ‘attack surface’, as it is commonly defined, denotes the sum of all system features that can be infiltrated by an attacker seeking to steal confidential data or even alter the system’s functionality. The broader the feature set of the system, the greater the attack surface. Non-essential features that do not need to be included have to be eliminated as they help solve the problem we are combating with cybercriminals’ easier access.
Implement proper error handling
The single most important thing to do while designing an error is to handle it. This means recognizing, reporting, and resolving the failures that occur within a given system. An error could stem from user input, environmental changes within the system, or even coding errors.
Recognition of where these errors stem from is significant and is one approach for developing strategies that tackle the problem of handling errors. This approach encompasses a detailed examination of every part or module in the functioning system, which may involve incorrect input by the user.
Update and patch all components regularly
- Implement a patch management plan to assist the IT security team keep ahead of attackers. Organizations must know the average patch release timetable among their service or software suppliers to build an efficient patch management plan.
- Timely updates close security gaps and enhance an organization’s resilience against cyber threats. Regular updates help to patch known vulnerabilities.
Remove unused dependencies and unnecessary files
- Regularly review and remove unused dependencies and unnecessary files to minimize potential vulnerabilities.
- Conduct a thorough cybersecurity risk assessment to help uncover any potential gaps in an organization’s security controls. A risk assessment will offer insight into the assets that must be protected and how well-existing security controls work.
Conclusion
Understanding secure design vulnerabilities is crucial for building robust systems that protect sensitive data and maintain user trust. Weaknesses in authentication, access control, session management, and data storage can expose businesses to severe security threats, leading to financial losses, reputational damage, and regulatory penalties.
Organizations must adopt a security-first mindset by integrating security into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and following best practices such as threat modeling, secure coding, regular security testing, and proactive monitoring. Addressing security at the design phase significantly reduces the risk of breaches and enhances the overall resilience of applications and systems.
By implementing strong authentication mechanisms, enforcing least privilege access, securing data at rest and in transit, and continuously monitoring for threats, businesses can mitigate the risks associated with insecure design. The lessons from real-world breaches like Equifax highlight the consequences of overlooking security, reinforcing the importance of timely updates, vulnerability patching, and rigorous security assessments.
Don’t wait for a security breach – fortify your defenses today. Contact SecureLayer7 for a comprehensive security assessment and stay one step ahead of cyber threats.
