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Overview
Security Misconfiguration is simply defined as failing to implement all the security controls for a server or
web application, or implementing the security controls, but doing so with errors. What a company thought of as
a safe environment actually has dangerous gaps or mistakes that leave the organization open to risk.
Description
The application might be vulnerable if the application is:
- Missing appropriate security hardening across any part of the application stack or improperly configured
permissions on cloud services.
- Unnecessary features are enabled or installed (e.g., unnecessary ports, services, pages, accounts, or
privileges).
- Default accounts and their passwords are still enabled and unchanged.
- Error handling reveals stack traces or other overly informative error messages to users.
- For upgraded systems, the latest security features are disabled or not configured securely.
- The security settings in the application servers, application frameworks (e.g., Struts, Spring, ASP.NET),
libraries, databases, etc., are not set to secure values.
- The server does not send security headers or directives, or they are not set to secure values.
- The software is out of date or vulnerable (see A06:2021-Vulnerable and Outdated Components).
Without a concerted, repeatable application security configuration process, systems are at a higher risk.
How to prevent?
Secure installation processes should be implemented, including:
- A repeatable hardening process makes it fast and easy to deploy another environment that is appropriately
locked down. Development, QA, and production environments should all be configured identically, with
different credentials used in each environment. This process should be automated to minimize the effort
required to set up a new secure environment.
- A minimal platform without any unnecessary features, components, documentation, and samples. Remove or do
not install unused features and frameworks.
- A task to review and update the configurations appropriate to all security notes, updates, and patches as
part of the patch management process (see A06:2021-Vulnerable and Outdated Components). Review cloud storage
permissions (e.g., S3 bucket permissions).
- A segmented application architecture provides effective and secure separation between components or
tenants, with segmentation, containerization, or cloud security groups (ACLs).
- Sending security directives to clients, e.g., Security Headers.
- An automated process to verify the effectiveness of the configurations and settings in all environments.
Example Attack Scenarios
Scenario: The application server comes with sample applications not
removed from the production server. These sample applications have known security flaws attackers use to
compromise the server. Suppose one of these applications is the admin console, and default accounts weren't
changed. In that case, the attacker logs in with default passwords and takes over.