A government agency considers confidentiality to be of utmost importance and availability issues to be of least importance. Knowing this, which of the following correctly orders various vulnerabilities in the order of MOST important to LEAST important?

A government agency considers confidentiality to be of utmost importance and availability issues to be of least importance. Knowing this, which of the following correctly orders various vulnerabilities in the order of MOST important to LEAST important?
A . Insecure direct object references, CSRF, Smurf
B . Privilege escalation, Application DoS, Buffer overflow
C . SQL injection, Resource exhaustion, Privilege escalation
D . CSRF, Fault injection, Memory leaks

View Answer

Answer: A

Explanation:

Insecure direct object references are used to access data. CSRF attacks the functions of a web site which could access data. A Smurf attack is used to take down a system.

A direct object reference is likely to occur when a developer exposes a reference to an internal implementation object, such as a file, directory, or database key without any validation mechanism which will allow attackers to manipulate these references to access unauthorized data.

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is a type of attack that occurs when a malicious Web site, email, blog, instant message, or program causes a user’s Web browser to perform an unwanted action on a trusted site for which the user is currently authenticated. The impact of a successful cross-site request forgery attack is limited to the capabilities exposed by the vulnerable application. For example, this attack could result in a transfer of funds, changing a password, or purchasing an item in the user’s context. In effect, CSRF attacks are used by an attacker to make a target system perform a function (funds Transfer, form submission etc.) via the target’s browser without knowledge of the target user, at least until the unauthorized function has been committed.

A smurf attack is a type of network security breach in which a network connected to the Internet is swamped with replies to ICMP echo (PING) requests. A smurf attacker sends PING requests to an Internet broadcast address. These are special addresses that broadcast all received messages to the hosts connected to the subnet. Each broadcast address can support up to 255 hosts, so a single PING request can be multiplied 255 times. The return address of the request itself is spoofed to be the address of the attacker’s victim. All the hosts receiving the PING request reply to this victim’s address instead of the real sender’s address. A single attacker sending hundreds or thousands of these PING messages per second can fill the victim’s T-1 (or even T-3) line with ping replies, bring the entire Internet service to its knees.

Smurfing falls under the general category of Denial of Service attacks — security attacks that don’t try to steal information, but instead attempt to disable a computer or network.

Incorrect Answers:

B: Application DoS is an attack designed to affect the availability of an application. Buffer overflow is used to obtain information. Therefore, the order of importance in this answer is incorrect.

C: Resource exhaustion is an attack designed to affect the availability of a system. Privilege escalation is used to obtain information. Therefore, the order of importance in this answer is incorrect.

D: The options in the other answers (Insecure direct object references, privilege escalation, SQL injection) are more of a threat to data confidentiality than the options in this answer.

References:

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/security_testing/insecure_direct_object_reference.htm

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery_(CSRF)_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/smurf.html