In this lesson, we're going to discuss
hardware vulnerabilities.
Now, hardware vulnerabilities are security flaws
or weaknesses that are inherent
in a device's physical components or design
that can be exploited
to compromise the integrity, confidentiality
or availability of the system and its data.
There are numerous different hardware vulnerabilities
for us to consider,
including the device's firmware,
end of life hardware,
legacy hardware, unsupported systems
and applications, unpatched systems
and hardware misconfigurations.
It's also important to note that these kind of issues
can be present in all kinds of different hardware devices,
including servers, workstations, laptops,
switches, routers, network appliances,
mobile devices, and IOT
or Internet of Things devices.
Now first, let's talk about device firmware.
Firmware is a specialized form of software
that's stored on a hardware device like a router
or a smart thermostat that's going to provide low level control
for the devices specific hardware.
Firmware vulnerabilities can be especially dangerous
because they often provide the attacker with full control
of the device so that they can manipulate
or control the hardware's behavior, which in turn can lead
to unauthorized access, data leaks,
or even a complete takeover of the affected device.
Firmware can be vulnerable for several reasons.
The firmware could have been developed without security
in mind, or it could have used
outdated security practices during its development.
Firmware updates are also overlooked in many organizations
when they're performing their routine maintenance
for their devices, and this, again can lead
to persistent vulnerabilities inside of your systems.
Also, firmware often has privilege access to your system,
which makes firmware exploitation even more dangerous
for defenders, and a great target for malicious attackers.
To help mitigate firmware vulnerabilities,
you should perform regular updates, security auditing
and device hardening to ensure your device
remains up to date and secure
from potential attacks and exploitation.
Second, we need to discuss end of life, legacy
and unsupported systems.
Now, end of life systems refer to hardware
or software products that have reached the end
of their lifecycle so that their manufacturer
or developer is no longer providing updates,
support, or enhancements for them.
Legacy systems are outdated computing software, hardware,
or technologies that while they're still in use,
have been largely superseded by newer
or more efficient alternatives
and unsupported systems are hardware
or software products that no longer receive
official technical support, security updates
or patches from their respective vendors or developers.
These three concepts are very similar to each other,
and often you're going to see people
use these terms interchangeably
when they're discussing end of life, legacy
and unsupported systems and applications.
These kinds of systems and applications
are particularly vulnerable
because any existing security flaws
will not be addressed with patches or updates,
and this leaves that system exposed
to those known vulnerabilities.
Third, we have unpatched systems.
Now, an unpatched system is a device, application
or piece of software that has not been updated
with the latest security patches,
so it now remains vulnerable to known exploits and attacks.
This usually happens because of an oversight, negligence
or challenges in deploying updates
in a timely manner to all of your devices
across your enterprise network.
If you do not patch your systems in a timely manner though,
your organization is going to be exposed to a wide range
of security risks because an attacker
can easily exploit these known vulnerabilities
to gain unauthorized access into your systems,
compromise your data, or to disrupt your services.
To help mitigate the risk of unpatched systems,
it's going to be essential to establish
a patch management process
that involves regularly monitoring for updates,
assessing the relevance and impact of the patches,
and deploying your patches in a timely manner
to ensure the security and integrity
of all of your systems remains intact.
Fourth, we have hardware misconfigurations.
Now, a hardware misconfiguration
occurs when a device's settings, parameters
or options are not optimally set up,
and this can cause vulnerabilities to exist,
a decrease in performance
or unintended behavior of your devices or systems.
These misconfigurations can happen due to oversight,
a lack of understanding of your industry best practices
or errors that occurred during this setup
and deployment process.
These misconfigurations can inadvertently open up
security holes that would make your system susceptible
to unauthorized access and data breaches.
To mitigate the risks
associated with hardware misconfigurations,
it's also recommended that you conduct regular audits,
enforce good configuration management practices,
and implement automated tools
for detecting and rectifying misconfigurations,
as well as providing training to your personnel
so that they're aware of the correct configuration protocols
and security best practices
that should be implemented across your devices.
Now, when it comes to hardware vulnerabilities,
including those that exist in the devices, firmware,
end of life hardware, legacy hardware,
unsupported systems and applications,
unpatched systems
and hardware misconfigurations, you need to be conducting
hardening, patching,
configuration enforcement, decommissioning, isolation
and segmentation to mitigate any known vulnerabilities
in your devices and systems.
Now, hardening involves tightening the security
of your system by closing unnecessary ports,
disabling unnecessary services,
and setting up proper permissions.
Hardening can be applied
to firmware, applications and various hardware
to make them more resistant to attacks as well.
Patching involves the regular updating of your software,
firmware and applications with the latest security patches
to ensure that known vulnerabilities
are being fixed in order to prevent exploitation.
Configuration enforcement is going to be used
to ensure that all devices and systems
adhere to a standard secure configuration
to help prevent any misconfiguration
and vulnerabilities from occurring.
If you're dealing with end of life,
legacy or unsupported systems,
then you might want to use decommissioning.
Decommissioning might be your best course of action
because this means that the system is going to be retired
and removed from your network, and this is usually done
because an older end of life
or legacy system would pose too great
of a security risk if we leave it connected
to our enterprise network.
Now, if decommissioning is not immediately possible,
you may instead isolate your legacy or vulnerable systems
from your enterprise network
to limit the potential damage
that could occur from a potential security breach.
Finally, we can also use segmentation
to divide our network into segments,
to ensure that even if one section
of our network is compromised,
that breach will not necessarily
compromise the entire enterprise network on our behalf.
So remember, hardware vulnerabilities are security flaws
or weaknesses that are inherent
in a device's physical components
or design that can be exploited
to compromise the integrity, confidentiality
or availability of the system and its data.
There are numerous different hardware vulnerabilities
for us to consider, including the device's firmware,
end of life hardware, legacy hardware, unsupported systems
and applications, unpatched systems
and hardware misconfigurations.
To mitigate these types of hardware vulnerabilities
you should conduct hardening, patching,
configuration enforcement, decommissioning, isolation,
and segmentation to mitigate any known vulnerabilities
in your devices and systems.