DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
  1. DZone
  2. Software Design and Architecture
  3. Security
  4. Can You Patch Faster Than a Hacker Can Attack You?

Can You Patch Faster Than a Hacker Can Attack You?

Can you patch faster than a hacker can attack? Click here for more about the scale of cyber-attacks and what the Equifax breach means for the future of cybersecurity.

James Lee user avatar by
James Lee
·
Oct. 11, 18 · Analysis
Like (2)
Save
Tweet
Share
3.96K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

Two Days vs. Two Months

It's been a little more than a year since the world learned of the security breach at US-based credit reporting agency, Equifax. Hackers had free reign within dozens of the company's databases for months before being caught. It was months longer before the 145 million consumers in multiple countries learned that their personal information had been compromised.

The US Congress asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study how Equifax and government agencies performed before and after the attack was discovered. It is a fascinating study of what appeared at the time to be a comedy of errors, but in hindsight, it looks to be more of a lesson on inevitability.

The most startling fact that has emerged from the GAO report describes the Herculean task that all AppSec teams face:

Equifax has stated that, on March 10, 2017, unidentified individuals scanned the company's systems to determine if the systems were susceptible to a specific vulnerability that the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team had publicly identified just 2 days earlier.

Source: GAO, based on information provided by Equifax. | GAO-18-559

Two days. Equifax was already under attack within 48 hours of the announcement of a flaw in the Struts 2 framework. By comparison, the average time to patch a known vulnerability is measured in months (if not years).

For organizations that rely exclusively on physically patching their web applications, the conclusion from this report is obvious: you can't fix your code fast enough to stay ahead of professional or nation-state hackers. Your fingers on keyboards are no match for their automated scanners.

What does close the patching gap is virtual patching — not pattern matching-based virtual shields or the so-called virtual patching of WAFs, but real virtual patching that fixes flaws in the compilation pipeline as the application runs. That is the fastest and most effective way to address known vulnerabilities without any downtime or source code changes.

Reading the GAO report makes it clear that someone was destined to become the poster child for failed/failing cybersecurity practices that have been SOP for decades. It just happened to be Equifax.

Hacker Patch (computing)

Published at DZone with permission of James Lee, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • How to Create a Real-Time Scalable Streaming App Using Apache NiFi, Apache Pulsar, and Apache Flink SQL
  • How To Check Docker Images for Vulnerabilities
  • Differences Between Site Reliability Engineer vs. Software Engineer vs. Cloud Engineer vs. DevOps Engineer
  • Better Performance and Security by Monitoring Logs, Metrics, and More

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: