Top Ten Database Threats

The Most Significant Risks and

How to Mitigate Them

Database Threats

Top Ten Database Threats

Table of Contents
Section 1: Introduction to Database Security Threats

Section 2: Top Ten Database Security Threats

Section 3: Multi-layered Database Security Defense Strategy

Section 4: Database Security Solutions Defined

Section 5: Summary

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Section 6: Case Study - Data Theft Prevention

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Top Ten Database Threats

Database Threats

Introduction to Database Security Threats

Databases have the highest rate of breaches among all business assets, according to the 2012 Verizon Data Breach Report. Verizon
reported that 96% of records breached are from databases, and the Open Security Foundation revealed that 242.6 million records
were potentially compromised in 2012.
The reason databases are targeted is quite simple; databases are at the heart of any organization,
storing customer records and other confidential business data. But why are databases so vulnerable
to breaches? One reason is that organizations are not protecting these assets well enough. According
to IDC, less than 5% of the $27 billion spent in 2011 on security products directly addressed data
center security1.

Red Flag
Less than 5% of the $27
billion spent in 2011
on security products
directly addressed data
center security.

When hackers and malicious insiders gain access to sensitive data, they can quickly extract value,
inflict damage, or impact business operations. In addition to financial loss or reputation damage,
breaches can result in regulatory violations, fines, and legal fees. However, the good news is that
the vast majority of incidents more than 97% according to the Online Trust Alliance (OTA) in 2013
could have been prevented by implementing simple steps and following best practices and internal controls.

Top Ten Database Security Threats: 2010 vs. 2013

This whitepaper highlights the ten most critical database threats as identified by the Imperva Application Defense Center.
Compared to our 2010 whitepaper on the same subject, the threats in this paper are largely the same, but their rankings have
changed to reflect the dynamic landscape. Weve also added two new threats based on customer and market trends. New to this
report are malware related attacks. Malware often attempts to exploit many of the top ten threats, and we expect to see malware
related incidents increase. Although not a technical threat, we also added the threat of under-investment in IT security expertise
and workforce training. Organizations are increasingly deploying database security across the infrastructure, and these human
capital investments help defend against security breaches by increasing capability and building a more security-conscious culture.

Ranking 2013 Top Threats

2010 Top Threats

Excessive and Unused Privileges

Excessive Privilege Abuse

Privilege Abuse

Legitimate Privilege Abuse

SQL Injection

Malware

Weak Audit Trail

SQL Injection

Storage Media Exposure

Weak Audit Trail

Exploitation of Vulnerabilities and

Misconfigured Databases

Denial of Service

Unmanaged Sensitive Data

Database Communication Protocol Vulnerabilities

Denial of Service

Unauthorized Copies of Sensitive Data

10

Limited Security Expertise and Education

NEW

NEW

Privilege Elevation
Exploitation of Vulnerable, Miconfigured Databases

Backup Data Exposure

By addressing these top ten threats, organizations can meet global compliance requirements and industry best practices related
to data protection and risk mitigation. The first nine can be addressed using an automated Database Auditing and Protection
(DAP) platform, an approach which improves security, simplifies compliance, and increases operational efficiency.

Top Ten Database Threats

Database Threats

Top Ten Database Security Threats

1 Excessive and Unused Privileges
When someone is granted database privileges that exceed the requirements of their job function, these privileges can be abused.
For example, a bank employee whose job requires the ability to change only accountholder contact information may take
advantage of excessive database privileges and increase the account balance of a colleagues savings account. Further, when
someone leaves an organization, often his or her access rights to sensitive data do not change. And, if these workers depart on
bad terms, they can use their old privileges to steal high value data or inflict damage.
How do users end up with excessive privileges? Usually, its because privilege control mechanisms for job roles have not been
well defined or maintained. As a result, users may be granted generic or default access privileges that far exceed their specific job
requirements. This creates unnecessary risk.

2 Privilege Abuse
Users will abuse legitimate database privileges for unauthorized purposes. Consider an internal healthcare application used to
view individual patient records via a custom Web interface. The Web application normally limits users to viewing an individual
patients healthcare history multiple patient records cannot be viewed simultaneously and electronic copies are not allowed.
However, a rogue user might be able to circumvent these restrictions by connecting to the database using an alternative client
such as MS-Excel. Using Excel and their legitimate login credentials, the user could retrieve and save all patient records to their
laptop. Once patient records reach a client machine, the data then becomes susceptible to a wide variety of possible breach
scenarios.

3 SQL Injection
A successful SQL injection attack can give someone unrestricted access to an entire database. SQL injection involves inserting (or
injecting) unauthorized or malicious database statements into a vulnerable SQL data channel such as a Web application or stored
procedure. If these injected statements are executed by the database, critical data stores can be viewed, copied, and altered.

4 Malware
Cybercriminals, state-sponsored hackers, and spies use advanced attacks that blend multiple tactics such as spear phishing
emails and malware to penetrate organizations and steal sensitive data. Unaware that malware has infected their device,
legitimate users become a conduit for these groups to access your networks and sensitive data.

5 Weak Audit Trail

Automated recording of database transactions involving sensitive data should be part of any database deployment. Failure to
collect detailed audit records of database activity represents a serious organizational risk on many levels.
Organizations with weak (or sometimes non-existent) database audit mechanisms will increasingly find that they are at odds with
industry and government regulatory requirements. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which protects against accounting errors
and fraudulent practices, and the Healthcare Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the healthcare sector, are
just two examples of regulations with clear database audit requirements.
Many enterprises will turn to native audit tools provided by their database vendors or rely on ad-hoc and manual solutions. These
approaches do not record details necessary to support auditing, attack detection, and forensics. Furthermore, native database
audit mechanisms are notorious for consuming CPU and disk resources forcing many organizations to scale back or eliminate
auditing altogether. Finally, most native audit mechanisms are unique to a database server platform. For example, Oracle logs are
different from MS-SQL, and MS-SQL logs are different form DB2. For organizations with heterogeneous database environments,
this imposes a significant obstacle to implementing uniform, scalable audit processes.

Database Threats

Top Ten Database Threats

When users access the database via enterprise Web applications (such as SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, or PeopleSoft) it can be
challenging to understand what database access activity relates to a specific user. Most audit mechanisms have no awareness of
who the end user is because all activity is associated with the Web application account name. Reporting, visibility, and forensic
analysis are hampered because there is no link to the responsible user.
Finally, users with administrative access to the database, either legitimately or maliciously obtained, can turn off native database
auditing to hide fraudulent activity. Audit duties should ideally be separate from both database administrators and the database
server platform to ensure strong separation of duties policies.

6 Storage Media Exposure

Backup storage media is often completely unprotected from attack. As a result, numerous security breaches have involved the
theft of database backup disks and tapes. Furthermore, failure to audit and monitor the activities of administrators who have
low-level access to sensitive information can put your data at risk. Taking the appropriate measures to protect backup copies of
sensitive data and monitor your most highly privileged users is not only a data security best practice, but also mandated by many
regulations.

7 Exploitation of Vulnerable, Misconfigured Databases

It is common to find vulnerable and un-patched databases, or discover databases that still have default accounts and configuration
parameters. Attackers know how to exploit these vulnerabilities to launch attacks against your organization. Unfortunately,
organizations often struggle to stay on-top of maintaining database configurations even when patches are available. It generally
takes organizations months to patch databases once a patch is available. During the time your databases are un-patched, they
remain vulnerable.
According to the 2012 Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG), 28 percent of Oracle users have never applied a Critical Patch
Update or dont know whether theyve done so. Another 10 percent take a year or longer to apply their patches.2

8 Unmanaged Sensitive Data

Many companies struggle to maintain an accurate inventory of their databases and the critical data objects contained within them.
Forgotten databases may contain sensitive information, and new databases can emerge e.g., in application testing environments
without visibility to the security team. Sensitive data in these databases will be exposed to threats if the required controls and
permissions are not implemented.

9 Denial of Service
Denial of Service (DoS) is a general attack category in which access to network applications or data is denied to intended users.
DoS conditions can be created via many techniques. The most common technique used in database environments is to overload
server resources such as memory and CPU by flooding the network with database queries that ultimately cause the server to crash.
The motivations behind DoS attacks are often linked to extortion scams in which a remote attacker will repeatedly crash servers
until the victim meets their demands. Whatever the source, DoS represents a serious threat for many organizations.

0 Limited Security Expertise and Education

Internal security controls are not keeping pace with data growth and many organizations are ill-equipped to deal with a security
breach. Often this is due to the lack of expertise required to implement security controls, policies, and training.
According to PWCs 2012 Information Security Breaches Survey, 75% of the organizations surveyed experienced staff-related
breaches when a security policy was poorly understood and 54% of small businesses did not have a program for educating their
staff about security risks.3

Top Ten Database Threats

Discovery and Assessment

Scan for Vulnerabilities

Calculate Risk Scores
Mitigate Vulnerabilities
Identify Compromised Endpoints

Analyze Discovery Results

Enrich Access Rights Information

Identify and Remove Excessive Rights
Review and Approve/Reject Individual User Rights
Extract Real User Identity
Real-Time Alerting and Blocking
Detect Unusual Access Activity
Block Malicious Web Requests
Monitor Local Database Activity

Capture Detailed Transactions

Data
Protection

Archive External Data

Non-Tech.
Security

Generate Reports for Compliance and Forensics

Cultivate Experienced Security Professionals

Encrypt Databases

Educate Your Workforce

Limited Security
Knowledge

Denial of Service

Unmanaged
Sensitive Data

Validate Database Protocols

Automate Auditing with a DAP Platform

Impose Connection Controls

Response Timing

Vulnerability
Exploitation

Storage Exposure

Malware

Weak Audit Trail

Discover Database Servers

Aggregate Access Rights

Monitoring and Blocking

Analyze Risk and Prioritize Remediation Efforts

Identify and Classify Sensitive Data

Auditing

SQL Injection

Solution

Privilege Abuse

Threat

Excessive and
Unused Privileges

As mentioned in the first section of this paper, the top ten database security threats can be prevented by implementing simple
steps and following best practices and internal controls. Because there are many different attack vectors associated with each
threat, a multi-layered defensive strategy is needed to properly protect databases. The matrix below identifies solutions for each of
the top ten database threats. Detailed solution descriptions are presented following the matrix.

User Rights
Management

Database Threats

Multi-layered Database Security Defense Strategy

Top Ten Database Threats

Database Threats

Database Security Solutions Defined

There are six different categories of solutions in the matrix above that align with your organizations compliance and security
objectives.
Discovery and Assessment locate where database vulnerabilities and critical data reside.
User Rights Management identifies excessive rights over sensitive data.
Monitoring and Blocking protect databases from attacks, data loss and theft.
Auditing helps demonstrate compliance with industry regulations.
Data Protection ensures data integrity and confidentiality.
Non-Technical Security instills and reinforces a culture of security awareness and preparedness.

Discovery and Assessment

Scan for Vulnerabilities: Understanding vulnerabilities that expose databases to SQL injection is essential. Malware may be
looking to exploit known database vulnerabilities, making un-patched databases an easy target. Weak authentication rules can
enable a DoS attack by granting access to a database without needing a password. Use vulnerability assessment tools to detect
security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and missing vendor patches. Assessments should use industry best practices for
database security, such as DISA STIG and CIS benchmarks.
Calculate Risk Scores: Score risks based on the severity of vulnerabilities and the sensitivity of the data. Severity values should be
based on known systems such as the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). Risk scores help prioritize risk, manage, and
research vulnerabilities. In this case, higher risk scores would relate to SQL injection.
Mitigate Vulnerabilities: If a vulnerability is discovered and the database vendor hasnt released a patch, a virtual patching
solution should be used. Applying virtual patches will block attempts to exploit vulnerabilities without requiring actual patches or
changes to the current configuration of the server. Virtual patching will protect the database from exploit attempts until the patch
is deployed. Again, focus on patching high-risk vulnerabilities that can facilitate DoS and SQL injection attack.
Identify Compromised Endpoints: Identify malware-infected hosts so that you can prevent these devices from accessing
sensitive information in databases as well as unstructured data stores. Once you identify compromised devices, you should apply
controls to sensitive data to restrict those devices from accessing and exfiltrating data.
Analyze Risk and Prioritize Remediation Efforts: Use reports and analytical tools to understand risks and help prioritize
remediation efforts.
Discover Database Servers: In order to build and maintain an inventory of databases and isolate sensitive data contained within
them, organizations should first catalog all databases in their data centers. Leverage discovery tools that scan enterprise networks
and identify active database services. Look for solutions that can reduce scan duration by filtering on IP addresses and ranges
and by specific database services (e.g. Oracle, Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2, etc.). Periodically re-run discovery scans to identify new or
changed databases.
Analyze Discovery Results: Review database discovery and classification results to determine which databases that store
sensitive data need to be monitored.
Identify and Classify Sensitive Data: Once you have constructed a catalog of databases, it is critical to understand which
databases contain sensitive data. Scan the objects, rows, and columns of databases to pinpoint sensitive data. Use data classification
solutions that are aware of data types such as credit cards, email addresses, and national identity numbers, and which enable users
to add custom data types as well. Classification results should include the IP address and host name of the asset, and indicate the
existence of sensitive data on that server. Automatically identifying sensitive data and personally identifiable information helps
narrow the scope of security and compliance efforts.

Database Threats

Top Ten Database Threats

User Rights Management

Aggregate Access Rights: Scan databases for both granted and privileged user rights and extract details such as the actual
access right (e.g. SELECT, DELETE, CONNECT, etc), who granted them, who received those rights, and objects to which rights
have been granted. Aggregating user rights into a single repository helps streamline the reporting and analysis of user access to
sensitive data.
Enrich Access Rights Information with User Details and Data Sensitivity: Adding information related to user roles and
their database behavior adds considerable value to user rights analysis and helps zero-in on the abuse of privileges. Collect and
append contextual details to user rights information including the user name, department, database object sensitivity, and last
time accessed. This allows you to focus your analysis on the access rights that represent the highest business risk.
Identify and Remove Excessive Rights and Dormant Users: Identify users that have too many privileges and users who
dont use their privileges. This helps determine if user access rights are appropriately defined, find separation of duties issues, and
remove excessive rights that are not required for users to do their job. Hackers use access rights to impersonate users and go after
sensitive data stores. Therefore, reducing excessive rights helps protect against malware compromise.
Review and Approve/Reject Individual User Rights: Perform an organized review of user rights to determine if they are
appropriate. Reviewers should approve or reject rights, or assign them to another for review, and administrators can report on the
review process. Conducting organized user rights reviews meets regulatory requirements and reduces risk by ensuring that user
privileges are granted on a need-to-know basis.
Extract Real User Identity: Leverage solutions that correlate user information with database transactions, also known as
Universal User Tracking, or UUT. The resulting audit logs can then include unique application user names.

Monitoring and Blocking

Real-Time Alerting and Blocking: Monitor all database access activity and usage patterns in real time to detect data leakage,
unauthorized SQL transactions, and protocol and system attacks. When attempts to access unauthorized data occur, generate
alerts or terminate the user session. Use a solution that leverages policies both pre-defined and custom that inspect database
traffic to identify patterns that correspond to known attacks, such as DoS attacks, and unauthorized activities. Security policies are
useful for not only detecting excessive privilege abuse by malicious, compromised, or dormant users, but also for preventing most
of the other top ten database threats.
Detect Unusual Access Activity: Establish a comprehensive profile of each database users normal activity. These baselines
provide the basis for detecting DoS, malware, SQL injection, and anomalous activities. If any user initiates an action that does not
fit their profile, log the event, generate an alert or block the user. Creating activity-based user profiles increases the likelihood of
detecting inappropriate access to sensitive data.
Block Malicious Web Requests: Because Web applications are the most common vector for initiating a SQL injection attack; the
first line of defense is to use a Web Application Firewall (WAF). A WAF will recognize and block SQL injection attack patterns that
originate from Web applications.
To protect against SQL Injection attacks, a WAF should:
Inspect HTTP parameter values for special characters like apostrophes and brackets and know whether these characters are
expected or indicative of an attack.
Use application signatures and policies of known SQL injection patterns to alert and block.
Monitor Local Database Activity: DAP solutions can audit and monitor the activities of your most highly privileged users database and system administrators. These users have been granted the highest levels of access to your databases; they require
this access in order to perform their jobs. Should they abuse their privileges or become compromised by malware, the risks of data
theft and damage to your organization increases.

Database Threats

Top Ten Database Threats

Impose Connection Controls: Prevent server resource overload by limiting connection rates, query rates, and other variables for
each database user.
Validate Database Protocols: Leverage database activity monitoring solutions that can analyze the protocol and isolate
random/anomalous communications. When atypical communication events are detected, the solution should trigger an alert or
block the transaction.
Response Timing: Database DoS attacks designed to overload server resources lead to delayed database responses. This includes
delays in both individual query responses and the overall system. Use solutions that monitor response timing and generate alerts
when response delays or system sluggishness is observed.

Auditing
Automate Auditing with a DAP Platform: Implement a DAP solution that delivers the performance, scalability, and flexibility
to meet the needs of the most demanding environments. A DAP solution can address most of the weaknesses associated with
native audit tools:
Separation of Duties: DAP solutions operate independently of database administers, making it possible to separate audit
duties from administrative duties. In addition, they operate independently of the database server and are invulnerable to
privilege elevation attacks carried out by non-administrators.
Cross-Platform Auditing: DAP solutions support database platforms from multiple vendors enabling uniform standards
and centralized audit operations across large and distributed heterogeneous database environments.
Performance: Leading DAP solutions can leverage appliances that operate at line speed and have zero impact on database
performance. In fact, by offloading audit processes to network appliances rather than using native auditing, organizations can
expect to improve database performance.
Capture Detailed Transactions: To support regulatory compliance requirements, advanced fraud detection, and forensic
analysis, DAP solutions can capture audit logs that include details such as source application name, complete query text, query
response attributes, source OS, source host name, and more. Use auditing rules to collect the required information needed for
regulatory compliance (e.g. SOX, PCI DSS, and HIPPA) or to meet internal audit requirements.
Generate Reports for Compliance and Forensics: Summarize and format database activity details into reports that help meet
compliance requirements, conduct forensic investigations, communicate vital database activity statistics, and monitor system
performance. Leverage DAP solutions that include reports for industry and government regulations which can be customized to
meet business needs.

Data Protection
Archive External Data: Automate the long-term data archival processes. Use solutions that can be configured to periodically
archive data to external mass storage systems. Data should be optionally compressed, encrypted, and signed prior to archival.
Encrypt Databases: Encrypt sensitive data across heterogeneous database environments. This allows you to secure both
production and backup copies of databases, then audit the activity of and control access to sensitive data from users who access
databases at the operating system and storage tiers. By leveraging database auditing along with encryption, organizations can
monitor and control users both inside and outside of the database.

Non-Technical Security
Cultivate Experienced Security Professionals: To defend against a growing array of internal and external threats, hire information
security personnel that are well versed in IT Security and have experience implementing, administering, and monitoring security
solutions. Ongoing education and training are also important for growing deeper security knowledge and skills. Consider outside
IT security and specialists to help with implementation, conduct security assessments and penetration tests, and provide training
and support for your administrators.

Database Threats

Top Ten Database Threats

Educate Your Workforce: Train your workforce on risk mitigation techniques including how to recognize common cyber-threats
(e.g. a spear-phishing attack), best practices around Internet and email usage, and password management. Failure to enforce
training and create a security conscious work culture increases the chances of a security breach. The end result is well-informed
users who are trained to securely function when connected to key systems.

Summary
Failing to safeguard databases that store sensitive data can cripple your operations, result in regulatory violations, and destroy
your brand. Understanding the top database threats and implementing the solutions outlined in this paper will enable you to
recognize when youre vulnerable or being attacked, maintain security best practices, and ensure that your most valuable assets
are protected.

Video [2:28]

Data Theft Prevention Case Study

An electronic payment processor was auditing their database for PCI compliance and discovered that ATM and PIN
numbers were being stolen. Detailed logs from Imperva SecureSphere Database Activity Monitoring helped track down and
apprehend the criminals. The company now generates alerts on suspicious database access to sensitive data.
View Video

Worldwide Security Products 2011-2014 Forecast (IDC - February 2011)

2012 IOUG Enterprise Data Security Survey, Unisphere Research, a Division of Information Today, Inc. November 2012
3
Information security breaches survey - Technical report, PWC, April 2012
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2

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Top Ten Database Threats

About Imperva
Imperva is a pioneer and leader of a new category of business security solutions for critical applications and high-value data in the
data center. Impervas award-winning solutions protect against data theft, insider abuse, and fraud while streamlining regulatory
compliance by monitoring and controlling data usage and business transactions across the data center, from storage in a database
or on a file server to consumption through applications.
For more information, visit www.imperva.com, follow us on Twitter or visit our blog.

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