Security Flashcards
What is a DDoS Attack?
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack is an attack that attempts to make your website or application unavailable to your end users.
This can be achieved through multiple mechanisms, such as large packet floods, but using a combination of reflection and amplification techniques, or by using large botnets.
What is a Layer 4 DDoS Attack?
A Layer 4 DDoS Attack is often referred to as a “SYN flood”. It works at the transport layer (TCP).
To establish a TCP connection a 3-way handshake takes place. The client sends a SYN packet to a server, the server replies with a SYN-ACK, and the client then responds to that with an ACK.
After the “3-way handshake” is complete, the TCP connection is established. After this, applications begin sending data using Layer 7 (application layer protocol), such as HTTP, etc.
A SYN Flood uses the built-in patience of the TCP stack to overwhelm a server by sending a large number of SYN packets and then ignoring the SYN-ACKs returned by the server. This causes the server to use up resources waiting for a set amount of time for the anticipated ACK that should come from a legitimate client.
What happens to the server when it is under a SYN Attack?
There are only so many concurrent TCP connections that a web server or application server can have open, so if an attacker sends enough SYN packets to a server, it can easily eat through the allowed number of TCP connections.
This then prevents legitimate requests from being answered by the server.
What is an Amplification Attack?
Amplification/reflection attacks can include things such as NTP, SSDP, DNS, CharGEN, SNMP attacks, etc.
This is where an attacker may send a third-party server (such as an NTP, or Network Time Protocols, server) a request using a spoofed IP address.
That server then responds to that request with a greater payload than the initial request (usually within the region of 28-54 times larger than the request) to the spoofed IP address.
This means the attacker sends a packet with a spoofed IP address of 64 bytes, the NTP server would respond with up to 3,456 bytes of traffic.
Attackers can coordinate this and use multiple NTP servers as second to send legitimate NTP traffic to the target.
What is a Layer 7 Attack?
A Layer 7 attack occurs where a web server receives a flood of GET or POST requests, usually from a botnet or a large number of compromised computers.
What is AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail increases visibility into your user and resource activity by recording AWS Management Console actions and API calls and storing the logs in S3.
You can identify which users and accounts called AWS, the source IP address from which the calls were made, and when the calls occurred.
This of CloudTrail as CCTV monitoring for your AWS account.
What is an example of activity that is not recorded in AWS CloudTrail?
RDP or SSH traffic
What information is logged in AWS CloudTrail?
- Metadata around API calls
- The identity of the API caller
- The time of the API call
- The source IP address of the caller
- The request parameters
- The response elements returned by the service
What are the benefits of AWS CloudTrail?
- After-the-fact incident investigation
- Near real-time intrusion detection (by integrating CloudTrail with Lambda)
- Industry and regulatory compliance
What is AWS Shield?
It is free DDoS protection
- Protects all customers on Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon CloudFront and Route 53.
- It protects against SYN/UDP floods, reflection attacks, and other Layer 3 and 4 attacks
What is AWS Shield Advanced?
It provides enhanced protections for your applications running on Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon CloudFront and Route 53 against larger and more sophisticated DDoS attacks.
- Offers always-on, flow-based monitoring of network traffic and active application monitoring to provide near-real-time notifications of DDoS attacks
- Gives you 24/7 access to the DDoS Response Team (DRT) to help manage and mitigate application-layer DDoS attacks.
- Protects your AWS bill against higher fees due to Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon CloudFront and Route 53 usage spikes during a DDoS attack.
What are the costs related to AWS Shield Advanced?
Shield Advanced costs $3,000 USD per month
What layers does AWS Shield protect against?
Layer 3 and Layer 4 attacks
What is AWS WAF?
AWS WAF is a web application firewall that lets you monitor the HTTP and HTTPS requests that are forwarded to Amazon CloudFront or an Application Load Balancer.
AWS WAF also lets you control access to your content.
You can configure conditions such as what IP addresses are allowed to make this request or what query string parameters need to be passed for the request to be allowed.
The Application Load Balancer or CloudFront will either allow this content to be received or give an HTTP 403 status code.
What layer does AWS WAF operate at?
Layer 7
If you are given a scenario that talks about Layer 4 attacks, what service would you recommend?
AWS Shield
If you are given a scenario that talks about Layer 7 attacks, what service would you recommend?
AWS WAF
What are the behaviors of AWS WAF?
- Allows all requests except the ones you specify
- Blocks all requests except the ones you specify
- Count the requests that match the properties you specify
What characteristics of web requests can you use to define conditions in AWS WAF?
- IP addresses that requests originate from
- Country that requests originate from
- Values in request headers
- Presence of SQL code that is likely to be malicious (called SQL injection)
- Presence of a script that is likely to be malicious (known as cross-site scripting)
- Strings that appear in requests - either specific strings or strings that match regular expression (regex) patterns
What type of attacks can AWS WAF protect against?
- Layer 7 DDoS attacks
- SQL injection
- Cross-site scripting
What is Amazon GuardDuty?
GuardDuty is a threat detection service that uses machine learning to continuously monitor for malicious behavior, like:
- Unusual API calls, or calls from known malicious IP addresses
- Attempts to disable CloudTrail logging
- Unauthorized deployments
- Reconnaissance by would-be attackers
- Port scanning, failed logins
What are the features of Amazon GuardDuty?
- Alerts appear in the GuardDuty Console and CloudWatch Events
- Receives feeds from third parties like ProofPoint and CloudStrike, as well as AWS Security, about known malicious domains and IP addresses, etc.
- Monitors CloudTrail logs, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs
- Centralize threat detection across multiple AWS accounts
- Automated response using CloudWatch Events and Lambda
- Machine learning and anomaly detection
How does the threat detection using AI work in Amazon GuardDuty?
It takes 7-14 days to set a baseline - what is normal behavior in your account?
Once active, you will see findings in GuardDuty console and in CloudWatch Events only if GuardDuty detects behavior is considered a threat.
What are the fees related to using AWS GuardDuty?
The first 30 days are free!
And then your charges are based on:
- Quantity of CloudTrail events
- Volume of DNS and VPC Flow Logs
If you are given a scenario that is talking about using AI and automation to protect your whole AWS account, and to monitor things like CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs and DNS logs, what service would you recommend?
AWS GuardDuty
What is AWS Firewall Manager?
AWS Firewall Manager is a security management service in a single pane of glass. This allows you to centrally set up and manage firewall rules across multiple AWS accounts and applications in AWS Organizations.
You can create new AWS WAF rules for your Application Load Balancers, API Gateways, and Amazon CloudFront Distributions.
You can also mitigate DDoS attacks using AWS Shield Advanced for your Application Load Balancers, Elastic IP Addresses, CloudFront Distributions, and more.
What are the benefits of using AWS Firewall Manager?
- Simplify management of firewall rules across your accounts - one single pane of glass allows you to manage security across multiple AWS services and accounts
- Ensure compliance of existing and new applications - Firewall Manager automatically enforces security policies that you create across existing and newly created resources, across multiple accounts
If you are given a scenario where it talks about needing to manage the resources that need to be secured across multiple accounts, what service would you recommend?
AWS Firewall Manager
What is PII?
Personally Identifiable Information
- Personal data used to establish a person’s identity
- This data could be exploited by criminals, used in identity theft, and financial fraud
- Home address, email address, Social Security Number, Passport Number, drivers license number, date of birth, phone number, bank account number, credit card number, etc.
What is Amazon Macie?
Macie uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover sensitive data stored in S3.
- Uses AI to recognized if your S3 objects contain sensitive data, such as PII, PHI and financial data
- Alerts you to unencrypted buckets
- Alerts you about public buckets
- Can also alert you about buckets shared with AWS accounts outside of those defined in your AWS Organization
- Great for frameworks such as HIPAA (governs the way healthcare information is stored in the US) and GDPR (governs the way PII is stored in the UK)
How can you use alerts from Amazon Macie?
- You can filter and search Macie alerts on the console.
- Alerts sent to Amazon EventBridge can be integrated with your security incident and event management or CM systems
- Can be integrated with AWS Security Hub for a broader analysis of your organization’s security posture
- Can also be integrated with other AWS services, such as Step Functions, to automatically take remediation actions
If you are given a scenario where it is talking about PII and how you can prevent this from being leaked accidentally in S3, what service would you recommend?
Amazon Macie
What is Amazon Inspector?
Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS.
Amazon Inspector automatically assesses applications for vulnerabilities or deviations from best practices.
It is used to perform vulnerability scans on both EC2 instances and VPCs.
How are assessment findings handled in Amazon Inspector?
After an assessment, Amazon Inspector produces a detailed list of security findings prioritized by level of severity.
These findings can be reviewed directly or as part of detailed assessment reports that are available via the Amazon Inspector console or API.