Basic Security Terminology Flashcards
What does a system contain?
- Assets
What is an asset of a system?
- Functionality users depend on
- Data that is accepted, stored, manipulated or transmitted by the system
What is a weakness?
- Underlying defect that modifies behavior or functionality (resulting in incorrect behavior) or allows unverified or incorrect access to data
If a weakness is vulnerable to external influence what does this mean?
- The weakness is exploitable
If a weakness is exploitable what is it called?
- A vulnerability
What is an actor?
- An individual or process external to the system
If an actor has malicious intent what are the potential consequences?
- They may try to exploit a vulnerability
What causes a threat event?
- An actor with malicious intent tries to exploit a vulnerability by altering conditions to create opportunities to attempt exploitation
What is a threat event?
- When an adversary makes an attempt (successful or not) to exploit a vulnerability with an intended objective or outcome
What creates value in a system
- A combination of data and functionality
What is meant by exploitability?
A measure of how easily an attacker can make use of a weakness to cause harm
What is a vulnerability?
A means for an adversary with malicious intent to cause some sort of damage to a system by exploiting a weakness in the system
What is a zero-day vulnerability?
Vulnerabilities that exist in a system that are previously undiscovered
How are zero-day vulnerabilities different from other vulnerabilities?
They are likely to be unresolved and the potential for exploitation may be elevated.
What is the CWE database?
The common weakness enumeration database is a taxonomy of security weaknesses
What is the CWE database used for?
It’s referenced when investigating system design concerns
What is meant by severity of a weakness?
The amount of damage that can be caused by successful exploitation of a vulnerability
What is Impact?
If a weakness or vulnerability is exploited there will be some impact to the system
How is severity related to impact
When assessing severity the impact is a measure of the potential loss of functionality/data as a result of the successful exploitation of a weakness or vulnerability
What is an actor with malicious intent called?
An adversary
What is an actor with malicious intent called?
An adversary
What is a threat?
A non-zero probability of an attacker taking advantage of a vulnerability to negatively impact the system in a particular way
What does loss occur
Loss occurs when one (or more) impacts affect functionality and/or data as a result of an adversary causing a threat event
What is risk?
A combination of the potentially exploited target’s value, costs to mitigate, and the likelihood a negative impact may be realized
How is risk used?
Used to decide on the priority of an issue and to decide whether to fix the issue
What does CVSS stand for?
Common Vulnerability Scoring System
What is the purpose of CVSS scores?
It identifies severity and it’s components
What is a CVSS score?
It’s a calculation used to determine the severity of an issue.