What is Attack Surface Management?
Introduction:
→ So I’m pretty sure you all are fascinated by all the buzzwords in cyber security. As October is known as Cyber Security Awareness month, I thought it would be a perfect time to articulate on the topic of Attack surface management. Yes, you heard it right, it’s just another alternative way of specifying Reconnaissance. Hold up, there’s more to the content rather than just Recon. Let’s dive in and explore the details.
Scenario —
→ As companies build new products and expand their enterprise business solutions, it’s difficult to maintain and keep accountability for all the assets exposed to the internet, which may or may not be vulnerable. Attack surface management helps in providing the knowledge of keeping all the external and internal facing assets secure and known to the companies.
→ By knowing the assets it’s easier to cut down on the scope and have the flexibility to fix any vulnerabilities if identified by the internal security teams. This makes it difficult when a company acquires new acquisitions, which then indirectly increases the scope of the assets exposed, making it a potential entry point if vulnerable.
The best solution for companies is to first identify the number of domains they own and check each subdomains. This provides insights into the assets and helps keep track of any vulnerabilities, which may be exposed to the internet. Tools like AMASS, SubBrute, DNSRecon, and Sublist3r will help in identifying the web assets exposed online.
Why Attack Surface Management is crucial ??
- Let’s assume a situation where company X has its domain exposed to the internet and an attacker had successfully worked on reconnaissance and identified a few subdomains that are vulnerable and had exploited them.
- This provides a foothold into the enterprise systems which the attacker can later comprise the internal assets as they are not heavily protected compared to Internet-facing applications.
3. This allows the attacker to move laterally into the organization thereby compromising crucial services and systems which can cause financial and asset damage to the company, which is why having good knowledge of all the assets the company owns is crucial in today’s generation.
4. If you’re interested in learning more about ASM then do check out the Nahamsec YouTube channel which I shall link below. He created a series of three episodes on ASM, which is a good resource and helps understand the concepts easily.
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Happy hacking !!!
If you have reached this far, thank you for reading this article. Kindly feel free to point out any mistakes and do let me know where I can improve in writing and explaining in detail. Appreciate it!!. All the best.
