👋 Good morning, Cyber Pros!

This week’s issue brings you:

• Cyber’s Secret Sauce: PoLP!

• Cloud Detection & Response Explained (recap)

• Lateral Movement Breakdown (recap)

• Interview Question Hack

Let’s dive in!

Read time: ~6 mins

Cyber’s Secret Sauce: PoLP!

The principle of least privilege (PoLP) is a cybersecurity concept that advocates granting only the minimum access necessary for users, processes, and devices to carry out their tasks.

Some say PoLP is like having a bouncer at the cyber security club. A bouncer that’s super stingy with access. But the bouncer is way more anal than that. In this club, you can only go to the dance floor if you’re wearing the right footwear. If you want to go to the VIP section, you not only need to ask for permission, you’re probably time bound for how long you can be there. And you’re monitored closely the whole time to make sure you’re not doing anything weird…

Taking this back to real-world context, excessive privileges, such as unguarded access to sensitive data, can heighten the risk of data breaches. For example, if an employee with unrestricted access falls victim to a phishing attack, the data and the employee are toast. However, implementing PoLP limits the potential damage, confining the impact to the employee's specific tasks they are authorised to do.

PoLP emphasises the importance of privilege management, particularly for privileged accounts which have elevated access levels. Privileged Access Management (PAM) is crucial in safeguarding these accounts and reducing associated risks.

In practical terms, PoLP ensures that each user, service, or device only has access to what they need, reducing the likelihood of theft or errors that could compromise security. Regular access reviews help prevent privilege creep, where users accumulate unnecessary privileges over time, further enhancing security and compliance with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA.

Implementing PoLP offers several benefits, including:

• Reduced attack surface

• Improved regulatory compliance

• Enhanced data security

• Increased productivity.

Here are six key practices for implementing least privilege effectively:

1. Utilise role-based access control (RBAC) to assign privileges based on predefined roles and update them as needed.

2. Follow a "default deny" approach to access control, starting with minimal privileges and granting additional permissions only when necessary.

3. Restrict administrative privileges to trusted employees, implement just-in-time privilege elevation, and monitor privileged account activities.

4. Separate sensitive duties among different individuals to prevent unauthorised actions and lateral movement in case of a cyberattack.

5. Leverage automation, monitoring, and enforcement tools to manage privileges, reduce errors, and swiftly detect suspicious activities.

6. Educate employees about least privilege and other security best practices through regular training sessions to mitigate risks effectively.

Cloud Detection & Response Explained

Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) is the new standard for rapidly identifying and responding to potential threats in cloud security. Tailored specifically for cloud environments, CDR provides deep visibility into complex cloud setups, including services, APIs, and various workloads like VMs, containers, and serverless functions.

Why is it needed?

Wiz Research found that enterprises have, on average, 200 critical cloud issues that could cause a breach if exploited. This is often due to a lack of visibility across complex environments and/or misconfigurations that go unaddressed.

Google Cloud security advisor Anton Chuvankin said: “Public cloud has enough special deployment and collection differences from on-prem that there has to be a CDR function.”

CDR conducts a thorough analysis of configurations, services, and assets for optimal threat response.

These solutions come in two types:

1. Agent-based: installed on workloads

2. Agentless: using snapshot-scanning for data collection from block storage and retrieval of cloud configuration metadata via APIs

A good CDR solution should:

• Identify complex exposure chains and lateral movement paths leading to primary assets (like administrator identities or intellectual property/personal identifiable information).

• Simulate potential network exposures found in the updated cross-cloud database to validate risks further.

• Detect cloud events through monitoring and detection rules informed by the cross-cloud threat database, supporting malware scans with custom threat-intelligence feeds.

• Respond by identifying and containing cloud threats through auto-remediation or alerting security teams.

Lateral Movement Breakdown

Every Security Professional should be able to explain what Lateral Movement is and how to defend against it.

After reading this, if your boss or an interviewer asks you about this technique, you’ll be able to:

• Explain what is it

• Breakdown the stages of the attack

• List 5 lateral movement methods in the cloud

• Explain 5 ways to mitigate them

Sound good?

Lateral movement is a technique to navigate a network or environment in search of more valuable info after gaining initial access.

It also serves as a persistence technique, meaning attackers can access the breached network over extended periods (see above).

Stages of the attack:

Stage 1 - Reconnaissance:

This is where threat actors gather intel on targets and vulnerabilities for planning. They use:

• Network scanners (like Nmap or Nessus) map network topology, identify active hosts, and uncover open ports/services, revealing weak points.

• Social-engineering (phishing) gathers valuable intel.

• Web crawlers/spiders collect data from public sites and social media.

Stage 2 - Credential Dumping / Privilege escalation:

• Attackers seek to acquire higher-level privileges. This is often done by stealing credentials or exploiting system vulnerabilities.

• This can be achieved through a phishing campaign, or exploiting a known software vulnerability, like a buffer overflow, to gain elevated privileges.

Stage 3 - Gaining Access:

• Attackers use privileges to access targeted systems and extract data. Or they might install malware, like a backdoor, that allows them to maintain a presence within the network and keep control of certain systems.

5 methods of lateral movement in the cloud:

1. Exploiting remote services

2. Abusing valid accounts

3. Exploiting VPC peering

4. Exploiting IaaS/PaaS databases

5. Exploiting vulnerabilities and misconfigurations

Mitigations:

1. Implement strict firewalls

2. Remove cleartext cloud and private keys

3. Adopt a private link

4. Isolate each environment where possible

5. Remediate critical vulnerabilities

Interview Question Hack

When applying for a job at a new company, there is one guaranteed question you’ll be asked:

"Why do you want to work here?"

When preparing your answer for this question, swap your target company for one of their competitors in your answer.

If your answer still makes sense, it's not specific enough. Companies want to see that you understand their specific challenges and goals.

Here’s some ideas on how to do that:

Approach 1 - LinkedIn

1. Find the company on LinkedIn

2. Find the names of the business leaders / security team

3. Review their posts/comments on LinkedIn - try to find where they have mentioned challenges / opportunities

4. Reference how your skill set will help with challenges like X, Y and Z.

Approach 2 - Company Reports

1. Search the company’s website and social media for end of year reports and financial performance.

2. Evaluate specific priorities and challenges.

3. Weave them into your answer.

Approach 3 - Networking Events

1. Check if the company is hosting any events for customers / public.

2. Attend, listen, network - see if you can uncover their challenges.

3. Apply for a role and reference your conversation with X employee.

You don’t have to do all or any of these. But you do need to make sure you understand what the company does, why they are recruiting for this role and why you’re interested in being their solution. Is it the people, the reputation, the brand, the complexity of their work?

Decide, then craft a compelling reason that will make them eager to work with you.

That’s a wrap!

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