Distributed Blackbox Vulnerability Assessment via Ephemeral Worker Nodes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current security measures are inadequate in detecting and mitigating intrusion attempts and reconnaissance efforts by motivated antagonistic third parties, as industry-standard tests lag behind state-of-the-art techniques employed by adversaries, leading to a false sense of security among organizations relying on third-party vendors.
Innovation Solution
A distributed system that performs blackbox analysis using ephemeral nodes to evaluate the vulnerability of computing resources by generating a reconnaissance plan, identifying software instances, and assigning computational tasks to worker nodes to assess and rank potential vulnerabilities, thereby providing an appeal score indicating attractiveness to exploitation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If industry-standard tests are used to evaluate security controls, then security controls can pass standardized tests, but they lag behind state-of-the-art techniques used by antagonistic third parties
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary reconnaissance and vulnerability assessment actions before actual attacks occur. By proactively identifying and ranking vulnerabilities using appeal scores, organizations can address security weaknesses before antagonistic third parties exploit them, maintaining security effectiveness without constantly updating to match new attack techniques
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts security evaluation by continuously calculating appeal scores based on current vulnerability data and threat landscape. This dynamic approach allows security controls to adapt to changing conditions and prioritize remediation efforts on the most attractive targets to attackers, rather than relying on static industry-standard tests
2Ease of operation
If organizations rely on third-party vendors for security testing, then periodic analysis can be provided, but a false sense of security is created
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables organizations to perform self-service security assessments by automatically generating appeal scores and vulnerability rankings for their own computing resources. This eliminates reliance on external vendors while providing precise, actionable security intelligence that directly reflects the organization's specific threat exposure
3Loss of information
If comprehensive vulnerability assessment is performed, then all security weaknesses can be identified, but the complexity of analyzing and prioritizing vulnerabilities increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system transforms complex vulnerability data into a simplified parameter called the appeal score, which ranks vulnerabilities by their attractiveness to antagonistic third parties. This parameter transformation maintains complete vulnerability identification while dramatically reducing analysis complexity by providing a single prioritization metric for security teams
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for performing autonomous analysis of computing resources of a particular entity across the open internet. In particular, a modularized system that is configured to distribute work to ephemeral worker nodes in order perform a blackbox analysis of a target entity and various computing resources under the control or administration of that entity. The blackbox analysis includes an evaluation of discovered resources and services based on appeal or threat actor temptation heuristic.