Vulnerability Management - False Positive Analysis

False positive analysis in VM involves identifying and investigating vulnerabilities flagged by scanning tools that are not actual security issues. These can stem from misconfigurations, incorrect detections, or outdated signatures in scanning tools.

Attached is the document with few use cases.
Source - ChatGPT

Happy Learning !!
hashtag#VulnerabilityManagement hashtag#Cybersecurity

Vulnerability Management - High Level Qualys Deployment Plan

Planning a Qualys deployment in a large-scale organization requires a meticulous approach to ensure scalability, efficiency, and alignment with the organization’s security goals. Please find attached document for a comprehensive plan.

Happy Learning !!
hashtag#VulnerabilityManagement hashtag#CyberSecurity hashtag#Qualys

Vulnerability Management - CVSS score versus Qualys assigned score

1. CVSS Score

Purpose: Provides an open standard for assessing the severity of vulnerabilities.

Factors Considered: CVSS evaluates several metrics:

Base Score: Reflects intrinsic characteristics of the vulnerability (e.g., attack vector, complexity, privileges required, user interaction, etc.).

Temporal Score: Accounts for factors that change over time (e.g., exploit maturity or remediation level).

Environmental Score: Adjusts for the impact in a specific user environment (e.g., criticality of assets affected).

Scale: Numeric score between 0.0 (low severity) and 10.0 (critical severity), often mapped to qualitative severity levels (Low, Medium, High, Critical).

Standardized and Transparent: Used across industries, making it a common reference point.

Limitations:
--> Doesn't account for the context or asset-specific impact without environmental adjustments.
--> Static and doesn't reflect the real-time threat landscape.

2. Qualys Assigned Score
Purpose: Prioritizes vulnerabilities based on a combination of technical and business risk, considering the specific threat landscape.

Factors Considered: CVSS base scores as input.

Real-world exploitability: Whether exploits are available in the wild or being actively exploited.

Business Context: Asset criticality (e.g., is the asset internet-facing?).

Risk Intelligence: Insights from Qualys' threat and vulnerability intelligence feeds.

Scale: Qualys may use custom risk levels (e.g., numeric scores or categories like "Critical," "High," etc.).

Dynamic and Contextual: Continuously updated based on new threat data, making it more actionable for prioritization.

Limitations:
--> Proprietary: Can vary between organizations depending on the Qualys configuration.
--> May differ significantly from CVSS due to added contextualization.

Example:
A vulnerability might have a CVSS Base Score of 9.8 (Critical) due to its inherent characteristics, but Qualys could assign a lower score if:
--> No known exploits exist in the wild.
--> The affected system is not mission-critical or accessible.
Conversely, Qualys might increase the score for a vulnerability with a lower CVSS score if:
--> Exploits are actively circulating.
--> The asset is critical or exposed to external threats.

Both scores serve complementary purposes: CVSS provides a standardized baseline, while Qualys offers actionable prioritization tailored to real-world contexts.

Happy Learning !!
hashtag#VulnerabilityManagement hashtag#CyberSecurity

Vulnerability Management - Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Best Practices

Found an article from Rapid7 related to SNMP authentication very informative, hence, thought of sharing it. Following are the key takeaways:

1. Community strings used in SNMP versions 1, 2, and 2c for authentication are communicated in cleartext over the network and can potentially be captured while in transit and used to conduct subsequent attacks against other internal network infrastructure. In most cases, the first thing to consider when remediating this concern is: Enable and configure SNMPv3

2. At a minimum any SNMP community string should meet the following requirements in order to assure it is not a liability to the organization's network security posture.
--> Community strings should be at least 20 characters or greater in length.
--> Community strings should contain characters from all four of the following categories:
a> Uppercase characters (A through Z)
b> Lowercase characters (a through z)
c> Base 10 digits (0 through 9)
d> Special characters (for example, &, $, #, %)
--> Community strings should not be based upon or contain a dictionary word.
--> Community strings should not contain or be based upon corporate culture or associated vernacular.
--> Public and private community strings should not match, nor should any discernible similarities exist between the two community strings.

3. Apply different SNMP community strings to devices having different security levels:
Critical devices such as routers, switches and firewall appliances should not share the same community strings as components of lesser importance such as IP cameras, managed power strips, or any other secondary device in use on the network. Often these devices are prone to a number of security issues, such as using default passwords or being subject to authentication bypass vulnerabilities. A malicious actor may be able to capitalize on these types of exposures to extract the community string name from the device and use it to attack operationally significant infrastructure components.

Please refer the below URL for more details:
https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2016/01/27/simple-network-management-protocol-snmp-best-practices/

Happy Learning !!
hashtag#VulnerabilityManagement hashtag#CyberSecurity hashtag#Rapid7