Critical Control 9: Controlled Access Based On Need to Know

Critical Control 9: Controlled Access Based On Need to Know
In an environment in which all information is available to all authenticated users, the attacker has a number of advantages when considering which user to take advantage of:
1) The number of choices of available user targets to obtain the most valuable information is higher than it should be;
2) Any user target is as valuable as the most prized user target;
3) The wealth of information that is available to any one user target is enormous, thus making a hidden, sustained exploit very productive.
But as well, when an attacker has full access to all electronic documents, they can modify the documents and files that end-users trust. Not only is every authenticated user a conduit to access, but every file in the system becomes a conduit too.
It is also important to consider that attackers may not always be on the outside trying to get in. Many attacks happen inside an organization by people who are angry, desperate or even careless. Consider viruses like iloveyou from 2000. The visual basic script that launched the virus was readily available to anyone who activated it from their e-mail attachment. And the effects of the virus – overwriting masses of files that were available to the person who opened iloveyou – were significant to organizations that did not segregate file access (continue reading...)