Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
82% of Databases Left Unencrypted in Public Cloud
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
sngs7dan
50%
50%
sngs7dan,
 User Rank: Strategist
5/30/2017 | 9:45:46 AM
Lies, Damn lies and Statistics
A shameful article. Inadequate with regards to analysis. Either provide enough information to make the numbers quoted reasonable or critique the methodology of the report for not providing enough information.

"'Average' is a statistical fiction". Under three hours average TTL for a cloud resource? Based on what? People creating something, realizing it's misconfigured, destroying it and then doing it right? Trial and error, experimentation? transient convenience builds? dynamic honeypots? the possibilities are endless and so are the questions left unanswered.

Without any discussion of the distribution curve, a single value is a data point without meaning. Imagine trying to read a graph with unlabeled axes. Pretty picture, but with what meaning?

You can do better.
DCDawg
50%
50%
DCDawg,
 User Rank: Apprentice
5/30/2017 | 12:40:34 AM
But the cloud is supposed to be more secure!
Isn't that what everyone tells us? The cloud is more secure. Why worry? (sarcasm assumed)
Dr.T
50%
50%
Dr.T,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/29/2017 | 2:47:39 PM
plaintext credentials
I was hoping that we would not hear this again, plaintext credential means no credential basically.
Dr.T
50%
50%
Dr.T,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/29/2017 | 2:45:17 PM
devops-oriented world
"devops-oriented world" in which those who write the code are responsible for pushing it to production." I do not have problem with this, therebcna still be enough chekcs to make sure no security vulnerability.
Dr.T
50%
50%
Dr.T,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/29/2017 | 2:41:22 PM
cloud providers failing to secure data centers
This is something we can argue but it is still both cloud provers and consumers to encrypt the databases. Cloud providers could make this a default features on their services.
Dr.T
50%
50%
Dr.T,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/29/2017 | 2:38:40 PM
51% web traffic
51% web traffic being not encrypted is more troubleing than database encryption at rest. So individuals who are registering those sites not having https are competely at risk.
Dr.T
50%
50%
Dr.T,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/29/2017 | 2:36:17 PM
Not surprised
This is not surprising at all. I bet it is the same on on-premises. We tend to think it is important to encrypt data but not doing that when it comes to data at rest.
ChrisB964
50%
50%
ChrisB964,
 User Rank: Apprentice
5/26/2017 | 5:22:41 PM
What exactly is the threat vector of an unencrypted cloud database?
What exactly is the threat vector of an unencrypted cloud database?  Considering this is headline I'm curious if you or anyone could describe a scenario where someone accesses data by attacking an unencrpted database.  Unless I misunderstand something the encryption protects attempts to access the data at the disk level.  For RDS users(the most common case) wouldn't an attacker first have to compromize AWS infrastructure to get at the disk layer of RDS?  There's no public access to the disk of an RDS instance.  Help me understand the risk.

Yes we encrypt our cloud databases and noticed that we have to spend more hourly on many due to the additional size requirements of encrypting them.
DominicP260
50%
50%
DominicP260,
 User Rank: Apprentice
5/25/2017 | 12:36:43 PM
This article and the cited report are misleading
This article, and the cited report, suggest that the 82% of unecrpyted databases in the public cloud would suddenly become safe if they were all encrpyed but that's far from the truth. This will only protect the database from an attack vector where the threat actor attempts to steal the DB in its entirety at the filesystem level. If an attack exploids weak DB credentials via an exposed port they will still have full read access to the encrypted DB unless the DB is utililzing field level encryption, which is not even mentioned in this article. The way in which the cited report collected their data is also not very scienctic; the 82% is probably not an accruate reflection of the real number. This article reads more like sponsered content than anything.


Why Cyber-Risk Is a C-Suite Issue
Marc Wilczek, Digital Strategist & CIO Advisor,  11/12/2019
Black Hat Q&A: Hacking a '90s Sports Car
Black Hat Staff, ,  11/7/2019
The Cold Truth about Cyber Insurance
Chris Kennedy, CISO & VP Customer Success, AttackIQ,  11/7/2019
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon Contest
Write a Caption, Win a Starbucks Card! Click Here
Latest Comment: I think Bob has taken "Roleplay as an attacker", to a all new high...
Current Issue
7 Threats & Disruptive Forces Changing the Face of Cybersecurity
This Dark Reading Tech Digest gives an in-depth look at the biggest emerging threats and disruptive forces that are changing the face of cybersecurity today.
Flash Poll
Rethinking Enterprise Data Defense
Rethinking Enterprise Data Defense
Frustrated with recurring intrusions and breaches, cybersecurity professionals are questioning some of the industry’s conventional wisdom. Here’s a look at what they’re thinking about.
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2019-18954
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-14
Pomelo v2.2.5 allows external control of critical state data. A malicious user input can corrupt arbitrary methods and attributes in template/game-server/app/servers/connector/handler/entryHandler.js because certain internal attributes can be overwritten via a conflicting name. Hence, a malicious at...
CVE-2019-3640
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-14
Unprotected Transport of Credentials in ePO extension in McAfee Data Loss Prevention 11.x prior to 11.4.0 allows remote attackers with access to the network to collect login details to the LDAP server via the ePO extension not using a secure connection when testing LDAP connectivity.
CVE-2019-3661
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-14
Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection') in McAfee Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) prior to 4.8 allows remote authenticated attacker to execute database commands via carefully constructed time based payloads.
CVE-2019-3662
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-14
Path Traversal: '/absolute/pathname/here' vulnerability in McAfee Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) prior to 4.8 allows remote authenticated attacker to gain unintended access to files on the system via carefully constructed HTTP requests.
CVE-2019-3663
PUBLISHED: 2019-11-14
Unprotected Storage of Credentials vulnerability in McAfee Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) prior to 4.8 allows local attacker to gain access to the root password via accessing sensitive files on the system.