MITRE ATT&CK: Exploiting a public-facing application

Introduction

Public/internet-facing applications are the most common applications present on the internet today. In this article, we’ll take a close look at these applications. We not only discuss what these applications are, but also the different types of vulnerabilities (we base these on the OWASP Top 10) and attacks that affect them. We’ll also mention a few tools that hackers use to compromise web applications and see how we can detect and mitigate against them.

Overview of the MITRE ATT&CK

The MITRE ATT&CK is a publicly-accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations. It is used as a foundation for the development of specific threat models and methodologies in the private sector, government and the cybersecurity product and service community.

The aim of the MITRE ATT&CK is to solve problems for a safer world by bringing communities together to develop more effective cybersecurity. ATT&CK is open and available to any person or organization for use at no charge.

What are internet/public-facing applications?

Internet/public-facing applications are programs or systems that are not only accessible from within the internal network but are also accessible from the internet. These applications are responsible for either providing services to the public or allowing access into the internal network. 

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Quite often, these applications are connected to databases (such as MySQL), standard services (such as SMB or SSH) and other applications with internet-accessible open sockets (such as web servers).

What are some examples of vulnerabilities affecting internet/public-facing applications?

Each year, there are some vulnerabilities that are considered the most prevalent and are thus documented in the OWASP Top 10. 

OWASP is the abbreviation for Open Web Application Security Project, an online community that shares information concerning web application security. The community is keen on providing methodologies, articles, documentation, tools and technologies (Read more...)