See section 1. This is the current state of perceived and known limits for channels, operations, and controls as verified within the audit. Limitation types are classified by how they interact with security and safety on an operational level. Therefore, opinions as to impact, availability in the wild, difficulty to perform, and complexity are not used to classify them.
For example, an old rusted lock used to secure the gates of the store at closing time has an imposed security limitation providing a fraction of the protection strength Limitations necessary to delay or withstand an attack. Determining that the lock is old and weak through visual verification is referred to as an identified limitation.
Determining it is old and weak by breaking it using kg of force when a successful deterrent requires kg of force shows a verified limitation. One of its limitations is then classified based on the consequence of the operational action, which in this case is Access. Operations are the lack of security one must have to be interactive, useful, public, open, or available. For example, limiting how a person buys goods Operations or services from a store over a particular channel, such as one door for going in and out, is a method of security within the stores operations.
The exact balance of security and controls with operations and limitations. Perfect Security All interactive points, operations, which are categorized as a Visibility, Porosity Access, or Trust. A form of protection where the threat or its effects are controlled. In order to be safe, the controls must be in place to assure the threat itself or the effects of the threat are minimized to an acceptable level by the asset Safety owner or manager.
This manual covers safety as controls which are the means to mitigate attacks in an operational or live environment. A form of protection where a separation is created between the assets and the threat. This includes but is not limited to the elimination of either the asset or the threat. In order to be secure, the asset is removed from the Security threat or the threat is removed from the asset. This manual covers security from an operational perspective, verifying security measures in an operating or live environment.
The rav is a scale measurement of an attack surface, the amount of uncontrolled interactions with a target, which is calculated by the quantitative balance between porosity, limitations, and controls. More than rav shows more controls than are necessary which itself may be a problem as controls often add interactions within a scope as well as complexity and maintenance issues.
That within the scope that you are attacking, which is comprised of the Target asset and any protections the asset may have. The direction of an interaction. Vector One classification of Limitation where a person or process can access, deny access to others, or hide itself or assets within the scope.
More details Vulnerability and examples are available in the Limitations table in 4. Either the separation between an asset and any threats exists or it does not. There are 3 logical and proactive ways to create this separation:. Move the asset to create a physical or logical barrier between it and the threats. Change the threat to a harmless state. Destroy the threat.
When analyzing the state of security we can see where there is the possibility for interaction and where there is not. We know some, all, or even none of these interactions may be required for operations.
Like doors into a building, some of the doors are needed for customers and others for workers. However, each door is an interactive point which can increase both necessary operations and unwanted ones, like theft. Since the security tester may not know at this point the business justification for all these interactive points, we refer to this as the porosity. The porosity reduces the separation between a threat and an access.
It is further categorized as one of 3 elements, visibility, access, or trust which describes its function in operations which further allows the proper controls to be added during the remediation phase of improving protection. For every hole in the mountain, every means for lightning to cause harm to that man, the porosity increases as an Access. Therefore, the increase in porosity is the decrease in security and each pore is either a Visibility, Access, or Trust.
Police science places opportunity as one of the three elements which encourage theft, along with benefit, and diminished risk. Visibility is a means of calculating opportunity. It is each targets asset known to exist Visibility within the scope. Unknown assets are only in danger of being discovered as opposed to being in danger of being targeted.
Since security is the separation of a threat and an asset then the ability to interact with the asset directly is to access it. Access is calculated by the number of different places where the interaction can occur. Removing Access direct interaction with an asset will halve the number of ways it can be taken away. We measure trust as part of OpSec as each relationship that exists where the target accepts interaction freely from another target within the scope.
While a trust may be a security hole, it is a common replacement for authentication and a means for evaluating relationships in a rational and Trust repeatable manner. Therefore, the use of trust metrics is encouraged which will allow for one to measure how valid a trust is by calculating the amount of reliability in the trust.
Controls are a means to influence the impact of threats and their effects when interaction is required. Just because you cant directly control it doesnt mean it cant be controlled. Control the environment and you control everything in it. While there are many different names and types of operation controls, there are only 12 main categories which contain all possible controls.
Two of the categories however, Identification, the verification of an existing identity, and Authorization, the granting of permissions from the rightful authority, cannot stand alone in an operational environment and instead, in operations, combine and are added to the Authentication control. This leaves OpSec with ten possible controls an Analyst will need to identify and understand. The reason why Identification and Authorization cannot be expressed operationally is because neither can be transferred.
Identity exists as is and while the means of identification, as a process, is an operational aspect, the actual process is to verify a previously provided identity from another source or from the latest in a chain of sources. Even under circumstances where a government agency officially changes the identity of a person, they are still the same person from identifying marks to their DNA and only their documentation changes. Therefore, a security process can attempt to identify someone by verifying their identity but nothing in this case is granted or provided.
There is no true granting of identity just as there can be no true theft of identity. Furthermore, identity is a collection of thoughts, emotions, experiences, relationships, and intentions, as well as physical shape or marks.
You are who you are because you exist not because someone granted that to you. A perfect duplicate or clone of you is still not you because from origin your experiences will differ. While this may sound more like philosophy than security, it is very important that Analysts understand this. Identification processes only verify against a former identification process. If that process has been corrupted or can be circumvented, then the entire security foundation that requires proper identification is flawed.
Authorization, like Identification, is another operations control which cannot be transferred. It is the control to grant permissions. An employee authorized to enter a room may hold the door open for another person to enter. This does not authorize the new person. Authorization did not get transferred. This new person is trespassing in a restricted area and the employee who held open the door actually was part of a limitation in the Authentication process to grant Access.
Another property of Authorization is that it requires identification to work. Without identification, authorization is a blanket permit all without even knowing what all is. However in operations this is itself a paradox because to authorize all without scrutiny means that there is no authorization. Therefore to not authorize you do not use authorization. The Authentication control combines both identification and authorization to map Access.
The process is simply knowing who or what it is and what, where, when, and how they can access before they are granted access. Because authentication is a control for interactivity, it is one of the five Class A controls, also known as the Interactive Controls. These controls directly influence visibility, access, or trust interactions. Authentication is a control through the challenge of credentials based on identification and authorization. Indemnification is a control through a contract between the asset owner and the interacting party.
This contract may be in the form of a visible warning as a precursor to legal action if posted rules are not followed, specific, public legislative protection, or with a third-party assurance provider in case of damages like an insurance company. Resilience is a control over all interactions to maintain the protection of assets in the event of corruption or failure.
Subjugation is a control assuring that interactions occur only according to defined processes. The asset owner defines how the interaction occurs which removes the freedom of choice but also the liability of loss from the interacting party.
Continuity is a control over all interactions to maintain interactivity with assets in the event of corruption or failure. Process Controls The other half of operation controls are the Class B controls which are used to create defensive processes.
These controls do not directly influence interactions rather they protect the assets once the threat is present. Non-repudiation is a control which prevents the interacting party from denying its role in any interactivity. Confidentiality is a control for assuring an asset displayed or exchanged between interacting parties cannot be known outside of those parties.
Privacy is a control for assuring the means of how an asset is accessed, displayed, or exchanged between parties cannot be known outside of those parties. Integrity is a control to assure that interacting parties know when assets and processes have changed. Alarm is a control to notify that an interaction is occurring or has occurred. While controls are a positive influence in OpSec, minimizing the attack surface, they can themselves add to the attack surface if they themselves have limitations.
Often times this effect is not noticed and if the protection mechanisms arent tested thoroughly as to how they work under all conditions, this may not become apparent. Therefore the use of controls must assure that they do not insinuate new attack vectors into the target.
Therefore, sometimes no controls are better than bad controls. The Bad Lock Example Is a bad lock on a door better than no lock at all? An Analyst must use critical security thinking, a form of logic skills to overcome the innate sense of security we carry to understand why bad controls can increase the attack surface to greater than no control at all. Common thought is that adding controls with limitations are better than having none at all.
Is it not better to have a poor lock than to have no lock at all? After all, as conventional wisdom suggests, a wisdom borne of emotion rather than verification, some security is better than none.
This is why the analogy of the lock is such a good example and actually does better to answer the question then any other because it shows so well how we misunderstand controls that are so common around us. Ask anyone who has had to break open a locked door where they kick or hit the door to open it? That answer differs whether it is a key lock opened from the outside as opposed to a bolt lock on the inside.
Theres a reason for this. When a lock which is considered the authentication control is added to a door, the heavy, solid door needs to have a space hollowed out and the lock inserted. That creates a limitation, a weak spot in the door. So does adding a handle. Doors with no handles or internal locks do not have this limitation. However they require the door to be opened from the inside in another means.
So to open a door with that kind of lock, you kick or hit the door at the handle or lock mechanism. If there is a bolt lock, that limitation does not exist because the door remains solid. Those doors often require a force to open that will sooner break the door than the lock. Doors made to withstand high pressures have the bolts on the outside and the opening mechanism in the center of the door as a small hole, like doors on a boat or submarine, to avoid the weaknesses of hollowing out part of the door.
Now to more directly answer the question: if it is better to have a weak lock than no lock. This question refers to a door with the minimum, a cheap or simple key lock authentication that can be bypassed by someone who wants to enter. So if we know the authentication is weak, then we know somebody can get in and even worse, they can do it without damaging the lock or the door which means we may have no knowledge of the intrusion. If you think, well, thats okay because our problem isnt the real crooks, its the opportunists looking for the low- hanging fruit then youre making a risk decision and that does not affect your attack surface which is made from what you have and not what you want.
Furthermore, by having a lock at all implies, most of all to the opportunists, that there is something of value inside. If you add a control, any control, you increase the attack surface of anything. If that new thing you add brings a new attack vector then you were probably better off without. In some cases, the new attack vector is smaller than the actual amount of safety the new control gives you.
However, a good control will have no limitations and can shrink the attack surface. A lock in a door should not be easily subverted or add to the attack surface in a significant way.
Such a lock requires force to open and that adds another control then which the lock provides, alarm. A broken lock is also a good notification of a break-in.
These objectives are used across the information security industry although due in part to their over-simplification, they are more for the benefit of managing it rather than creating it or testing it.
The mapping is not a perfect however it is sufficient to demonstrate operation controls according to the basic CIA Triad. Because the definitions used for CIA are very broad the mappings appear to be as such:. Confidentiality Privacy Confidentiality Authentication Resilience. Integrity Non-repudiation Integrity Subjugation. Continuity Indemnification Availability Alarm.
Therefore the state of security in regard to known flaws and restrictions within the operations scope is called Limitation.
It is the holes, vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and problems in keeping that separation between an asset and a threat or in assuring controls continue working correctly. Limitations have been classified into five categories and these categories define the type of vulnerability, mistake, misconfiguration, or deficiency by operation.
This is different from how limitations are classified under most security management frameworks and best practices which is why we use the term Limitation rather than more common terms to avoid confusion. Those other terms refer to vulnerabilities or deficiencies because they are categorized by the type of attack or often the threat itself. There is a focus on the risk from the attack.
However, to remove bias from security metrics and provide a more fair assessment we removed the use of risk. Risk itself is heavily biased and often highly variable depending on the environment, assets, threats, and many more factors.
Therefore, under OpSec, we use the term Limitations to express the difference of categorizing how OpSec fails rather than by the type of threat. Since the number and type of threats cannot be known it makes more sense to understand a security or safety mechanism based on when it will fail. This allows the Analyst to test for the conditions in which it will no longer sustain the necessary level of protection.
Only once we have this knowledge can we begin to play the what-if game of threats and risks. Then we can also invest in the appropriate type of separation or controls required and create precise plans for disasters and contingencies. Although the Limitations are categorized here as 1 through 5 this does not mean they are in a hierarchical format of severity. Rather they are numbered only to differentiate them both for operational planning and metrics.
This also means it is possible that more than one type of Limitation can be applied to a single problem. Furthermore, the weight value of a particular Limitation is based on the other available and corresponding controls and interactive areas to the scope, there can be no specific hierarchy since the value of each is specific to the protective measures in the scope being audited.
Vulnerability is the flaw or error that: a denies access to assets for authorized people or processes, b allows for privileged access to assets to unauthorized people or processes, or c allows unauthorized people or processes to hide assets or themselves within the scope.
Weakness is the flaw or error that disrupts, reduces, abuses, or nullifies specifically the effects of the five interactivity controls: authentication, indemnification, resilience, subjugation, and continuity. Concern is the flaw or error that disrupts, reduces, abuses, or nullifies the effects of the flow or execution of the five process controls: non-repudiation, confidentiality, privacy, integrity, and alarm.
Exposure is an unjustifiable action, flaw, or error that provides direct or indirect visibility of targets or assets within the chosen scope channel.
Anomaly is any unidentifiable or unknown element which has not been controlled and cannot be accounted for in normal operations. Limitations Mapping To better understand how Limitations fit into the OpSec framework, it can be seen mapping back to security and safety:. Category OpSec Limitations. A vulnerability is the flaw or error that: a denies access to assets for authorized people or processes b allows for privileged access to assets to unauthorized people or processes, or c allows unauthorized people or processes to hide assets or themselves within the scope.
This means that Vulnerability must be mapped to all points of interaction or OpSec and because Vulnerability can circumnavigate or nullify the Controls, these must also be considered in the weighting of Vulnerability. A weakness is a flaw in Class A Controls however can impact OpSec therefore it is mapped to all OpSec parameters as well as being mapped to this interactive class of controls.
A concern can only be found in Class B Controls however can impact OpSec therefore it is mapped to all OpSec parameters as well as being mapped to this process class of controls. An exposure gives us intelligence about the interaction with a target and thus maps directly to Visibility and Access. This intelligence can also help an attacker navigate around some or all controls and so Exposure is also mapped to both Control classes. Finally, Exposure has no value itself unless there is a way to use this intelligence to exploit the asset or a Control and so Vulnerabilities, Weaknesses and Concerns also play a role in the weighting of Exposures value.
An anomaly is any unidentifiable or unknown element which has not been controlled and cannot be accounted for in normal operations.
The fact that it has not been controlled and cannot be accounted for signifies a direct link with Trust. This Limitation can also cause anomalies in the way Controls function and so they are also included in the weighting. Finally, as with an Exposure, an Anomaly alone does not affect OpSec without the existence of either a Vulnerability, Weakness or Concern which can exploit this unusual behavior.
Additionally, more than one category can apply to a limitation when the flaw breaks OpSec in more than. For example, an Authentication control which allows a person to hijack another persons credentials has a Weakness and should the credentials allow Access then it also has a Vulnerability.
In another example, an Authentication control uses a common list of names corresponding to e-mail addresses. Every address which can be found or guessed and used as a log-in is an Exposure while the control itself has a Weakness for its inability to identify the correct user of the Authentication mechanism of the log-in. If any of those credentials allow Access then we include this as a Vulnerability as well.
Justification for Limitations The concept that limitations are only limitations if they have no business justification is false. A limitation is a limitation if it behaves in one of the limiting factors as described here.
A justification for a limitation is a risk decision that is met with either a control of some kind or merely acceptance of the limitation. Risk decisions that accept the limitations as they are often come down to: the damage a limitation can cause does not justify the cost to fix or control the limitation, the limitation must remain according to legislation, contracts, or policy, or a conclusion that the threat does not exist or is unlikely for this particular limitation.
Since risk justifications are not a part of calculating an attack surface, all limitations discovered must still be counted within the attack surface regardless if best practice, common practice, or legal practice denotes it as not a risk. If it is not then the audit will not show a true representation of the operational security of the scope. Managing Limitations Another concept that must be taken into consideration is one of managing flaws and errors in an audit.
The three most straightforward ways to manage limitations is to remove the problem area providing the interactive point altogether, fix them, or accept them as part of doing business known as the business justification. An audit will often uncover more than one problem per target.
The Analyst is to report the limitations per target and not just which are the weak targets. These limitations may be in the protection measures and controls themselves, thus diminishing OpSec. Each limitation is to be rated as to what occurs when the problem is invoked, even if that invocation is theoretical or the verification is of limited execution to restrict actual damages. Theoretical categorization, where no verification could be made, is a slippery slope and should be limited to cases where verification would reduce the quality of operations.
Then, when categorizing the problems, each limitation should be examined and calculated in specific terms of operation at its most basic components. However, the Analyst should be sure never to report a flaw within a flaw where the flaws share the same component and same operational effect. An example of this would be a door broken open with a broken window. The door opening is an Access even if the broken window is also but both are for the same component, the door way, and same operational effect, an opening.
This interaction is not counted for all such ports since the Access comes from the same component, the kernel, and has the same operational effect, sending a T03C03 packet per port queried. Its like having ten ways of controlling threats that come through a hole in a wall. Limitations then reduce the effectiveness of OpSec and Controls. The result of an audit which discovers and shows the Security, Controls, and Limitations is effectively demonstrating Actual Security.
Actual Security is a term for a snapshot of an attack surface in an operational environment. It is a logarithmic representation of the Controls, Limitations, and OpSec at a particular moment in time.
It is logarithmic because it represents the reality of size where a larger scope will have a larger attack surface even if mathematically the Controls will balance the OpSec. Using this as building blocks to better understand how security works, the visualization that we create from this is the effective balance created between where an attack can occur, where the Controls are in place to manage an attack, and the limitations of the protective measures.
Another benefit of mathematical representation of an attack surface as Actual Security is that besides just showing where protection measures are lacking it can also show the opposite. Whether a risk assessment may make this point seem impossible, the mathematical representation is useful for showing waste. It can be used to prove when money is being overspent on the wrong types of controls or redundant controls. It is possible to be compliant yet not secure and it is possible to be relatively secure but non-compliant and therefore of low trustworthiness.
Compliance projects are not the time to redefine operational security requirements as a result of an OSSTMM test, they may however be the time to specify the use of OSSTMM testing, on a periodic basis, to fulfill a control requirement drafted as a result of a trust assessment that has scoped the minimum number of controls required to achieve a compliant but not necessarily secure state.
The big problem with compliance is it requires a lot of documentation that has to be versioned and updated. This documentation can be of business processes, narratives, trust assessments, risk assessments, signed off design tests, operational audits, attestations, and so on and on. Primary Developers. Primary Contributors. The following people are listed alphabetically by Easy integration. Most requirements of the customers can be fulfilled with the Herzog system.
The modular design guarantees step-by-step retrofitting and numerous possible combinations with other machines. It is possible to combine, e. Name and postal address for the invoice. I need an user name maximum 40 characters which appears in the program and on the lists. Type of payment: - Money transfer to my account in Austria. Heymann are designed in permanent cooperation with customers, who are working for the pharmaceutical industry.
Their highest demands are our standards. Systems are logically and clearly arranged. They are characterised by: modern electronic. Feb 26, Security Testing Methodology. Created by Pete Herzog current version: osstmm. This version focuses on security testing from the outside to the inside.
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