CS361C Slideset 1: Introduction Terms Quiz

Vulnerabilities and Exploits

• A dangling vulnerability is a weakness in a system that is not currently exploitable.
• A dangling threat is a potential danger that cannot cause harm because there is no vulnerability to exploit.

Attack Types

• An attack is an attempt to gain access, cause damage, or compromise information and/or systems.
• Passive attack: the attacker observes interaction with the system without directly interacting with it.
• Active attack: the attacker directly interacts with the system.
• Unintentional attack: an attack without a deliberate goal of misuse.

Attack Surface

• The attack surface of an organization/entity is the set of ways an adversary can enter the system and potentially cause damage.
• Examples of attack surface include user input fields, protocols, interfaces, and services.
• Reducing the attack surface can be achieved by minimizing user input fields, limiting protocols and interfaces, and implementing secure coding practices.

Attacker and Defender Operations

• Attacker's operations include physical attack and destruction, electromagnetic attack, visual spying, intrusion, scavenging and removal, wiretapping, interference, and eavesdropping.
• Defender's operations include physical security, OPSEC, TEMPEST, encryption and key management, intrusion detection, anti-virus software, auditing, redundancy, firewalls, policies, and standards.

IA Levels

Infrastructure Level

• Focuses on the information structure level, including data structures, processes, and programs, protocols, data content, and databases.
• Desired effects include influencing the effectiveness and performance of information functions supporting perception, decision making, and control of physical processes.
• Attacker's operations include impersonation, piggybacking, spoofing, network attacks, malware, authorization attacks, active misuse, and denial of service attacks.
• Defender's operations include information security technical measures.

Perceptual Level (Social Engineering)

• Focuses on the perceptual level, concerned with managing perceptions of the target, particularly those making security decisions.
• Desired effects include influencing decisions and behaviors.
• Examples include interruption (denial of service attack), interception (compromise of confidential data), modification (hacking to deface a website), and fabrication (spoofing attacks in a network).

Environments and Enclaves

• Hostile environment: an environment with known threats, e.g., locating an asset in a war zone or a flood zone, or placing an unprotected machine on the Internet.
• Benign environment: a non-hostile environment protected from external hostile elements by physical, personnel, and procedural countermeasures.
• Enclave: a collection of computing environments connected by one or more internal networks under the control of a single authority and security policy, including personnel and physical security.
• Example of a local enclave: a university campus network.