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
Careers and People
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
Serverless Computing: 'Function' vs. 'Infrastructure' as-a-Service
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
orysegal
orysegal,
 User Rank: Author
2/8/2019 | 4:50:01 AM
Re: Who controls policy?
You make a good point, however, when adopting FaaS/Serverless on public clouds, you have no control over the infrastructure, networking and underlying servers (I will get back to this later). As such, you can't really apply network segmentation or deploy a network firewall. Networking security in those cases is handled by the cloud provider, on a level much lower than what you control. The cloud provider is responsible for making sure that unauthorized traffic to the server/hosting OS is not allowed, and the cloud provider is responsible for only allowing API calls to invoke your functions when relevant.

Your only chance of actually controlling network connectivity is by deploying the function inside a VPC and then running a NAT gateway or a virtual firewall on an EC2 instance, but then, you have to deal with a new set of problems, not to mention that you just "de-serverlessed" (I need to trademark this term) the application.

There are alternatives to VPC, especially around outbound networking - you could use a library like FunctionShield (free), which enables you to regain controls over where/who/what the function can communicate with (proper disclosure - my team developed that library). More information on the github project: https://github.com/puresec/FunctionShield/

To your last point - application/business layer security should always remain the responsibility of the application owner, both because of liability, but also because the owner is the only one who really understands the business logic.

FaaS platforms will evolve to be more intelligent and tailored to specific use cases, and together with serverless-native app security solutions and cloud-native mind-set, I'm certain that the overall security posture is about to get a serious boost. 

 

 
drmikelloyd
drmikelloyd,
 User Rank: Author
2/7/2019 | 6:03:36 PM
Who controls policy?
I agree with your analysis, Ory.  The problem I see is that the FaaS split pushes a couple of items over to the provider that make no sense.  Most of the items are standard, one-size-fits-all - things like keeping up with patches, or hardening.  But anything custom - about the specific needs of one customer - belong under the customer's control and responsibility, not the provider.  Consider your items "network segmentation" and "network firewalls".  Segmentation is custom - as I build my app, I need to control what is kept separate from what.  What goes into a firewall is a statement of business intent - "I want this to talk to that, but not the other".  None of that is generic, one-size-fits-all.  If that is handed over from the customer to the provider, how does the customer specify their particular needs?

 

This, to me, is why we've seen years of evolution of exactly the cutoff you're talking about - who does which parts?  The dream is "customer only deals with customer business logic", but the practice is closer to "customer has to deal with business logic AND business-specific security controls".  This prevents the line moving too far up the stack for workloads that really matter.


Edge-DRsplash-10-edge-articles
I Smell a RAT! New Cybersecurity Threats for the Crypto Industry
David Trepp, Partner, IT Assurance with accounting and advisory firm BPM LLP,  7/9/2021
News
Attacks on Kaseya Servers Led to Ransomware in Less Than 2 Hours
Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer,  7/7/2021
Commentary
It's in the Game (but It Shouldn't Be)
Tal Memran, Cybersecurity Expert, CYE,  7/9/2021
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon
Current Issue
The 10 Most Impactful Types of Vulnerabilities for Enterprises Today
Managing system vulnerabilities is one of the old est - and most frustrating - security challenges that enterprise defenders face. Every software application and hardware device ships with intrinsic flaws - flaws that, if critical enough, attackers can exploit from anywhere in the world. It's crucial that defenders take stock of what areas of the tech stack have the most emerging, and critical, vulnerabilities they must manage. It's not just zero day vulnerabilities. Consider that CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog lists vulnerabilitlies in widely used applications that are "actively exploited," and most of them are flaws that were discovered several years ago and have been fixed. There are also emerging vulnerabilities in 5G networks, cloud infrastructure, Edge applications, and firmwares to consider.
Flash Poll
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2023-1172
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
The Bookly plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the full name value in versions up to, and including, 21.5 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that w...
CVE-2023-1469
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
The WP Express Checkout plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the ‘pec_coupon[code]’ parameter in versions up to, and including, 2.2.8 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenti...
CVE-2023-1466
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
A vulnerability was found in SourceCodester Student Study Center Desk Management System 1.0. It has been rated as critical. This issue affects the function view_student of the file admin/?page=students/view_student. The manipulation of the argument id with the input 3' AND (SELECT 2100 FROM (SELECT(...
CVE-2023-1467
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in SourceCodester Student Study Center Desk Management System 1.0. Affected is an unknown function of the file Master.php?f=delete_img of the component POST Parameter Handler. The manipulation of the argument path with the input C%3A%2Ffoo.txt le...
CVE-2023-1468
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
A vulnerability classified as critical was found in SourceCodester Student Study Center Desk Management System 1.0. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the file admin/?page=reports&date_from=2023-02-17&date_to=2023-03-17 of the component Report Handler. The manipula...