Case Study: Catching threats ahead of time with a penetration test from the Cisco Talos Incident Response Red Team
Summary: Cisco Talos Incident Response's Red Team ran a web application penetration test against an arts and entertainment company's primary website, testing a QA instance with some production testing, and found the main application APIs lacked authorization controls: any user with a valid bearer token could act against any other user if the request was properly formatted. The client then activated Talos IR on its retainer for an assumed breach, where limited API logging allowed only anomaly-based analysis, including 'GetUser' requests and excess 'User does not exist' errors consistent with password guessing (T1110).
Bottom line: The flaw let a valid token holder view users' payment methods and steal sensitive information, and the API's token-based logging was too limited for thorough forensic analysis, leaving the client to contain the activity through restricted external API access, revoked user tokens, and takedown of the affected API.
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- Topics
- Detection & Response
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