Research Article
Detection of Configuration Vulnerabilities in Distributed (Web) Environments
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-36883-7_9, author={Matteo Casalino and Michele Mangili and Henrik Plate and Serena Ponta}, title={Detection of Configuration Vulnerabilities in Distributed (Web) Environments}, proceedings={Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 8th International ICST Conference, SecureComm 2012, Padua, Italy, September 3-5, 2012. Revised Selected Papers}, proceedings_a={SECURECOMM}, year={2013}, month={2}, keywords={configuration validation detection of misconfiguration web security distributed environments}, doi={10.1007/978-3-642-36883-7_9} }- Matteo Casalino
Michele Mangili
Henrik Plate
Serena Ponta
Year: 2013
Detection of Configuration Vulnerabilities in Distributed (Web) Environments
SECURECOMM
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-36883-7_9
Abstract
Many tools and libraries are readily available to build and operate distributed Web applications. While the setup of operational environments is comparatively easy, practice shows that their continuous secure operation is more difficult to achieve, many times resulting in vulnerable systems exposed to the Internet. Authenticated vulnerability scanners and validation tools represent a means to detect security vulnerabilities caused by missing patches or misconfiguration, but current approaches center much around the concepts of hosts and operating systems. This paper presents a language and an approach for the declarative specification and execution of machine-readable security checks for sets of more fine-granular system components depending on each other in a distributed environment. Such a language, building on existing standards, fosters the creation and sharing of security content among security stakeholders. Our approach is exemplified by vulnerabilities of and corresponding checks for Open Source Software commonly used in today’s Internet applications.