SAP Security Recommendations Archives - Page 6 of 10

SAP CSO Recommends Solution Manager for Security Monitoring

Layer Seven on September 20, 2016

SAP Chief Security Officer, Justin Somaini, opened the first of a series of five webcasts from the America’s SAP User Group (ASUG) on the topic of SAP security. The series is intended to present SAP’s response to the growing concern over cybersecurity by discussing:

The IT threat landscape and SAP’s approach to strategic security;
Best-practices to safeguard both on-premise and cloud SAP landscapes;
Secure configuration and patch management;
Security for SAP HANA; and
SAP’s security portfolio for responding to internal and external attacks.

During the webcast, Somaini contends security is becoming an important differentiator between competitors in all markets, especially within the technology and manufacturing sector. He also acknowledges that SAP systems often store and process some of the most valuable data within organizations and are therefore particularly at risk from cyber threats. According to Somaini, “the application layer needs to be the first and last line of defence” due to inherent weaknesses in firewalls and other network technologies that cannot protect SAP applications from external threats. In his view, SAP applications should be hardened to build greater resilience against attacks.

Somaini tackles the question of single point versus integrated security solutions by recommending the use of tools that SAP customers already own in platforms such as Solution Manager over a patchwork of external tools. You can view a recording of the webcast and register for other upcoming webcasts in the series by following this link.

Detecting SAP Cyber Attacks with SAP Solution Manager

Layer Seven on September 15, 2016

Despite the $75 billion spent by organizations on security software in 2015, average times to detection for cyber attacks are an astounding 170 days (DBIR, 2016). Most attacks therefore go undetected for almost six months.

An incident response strategy can address this gap by enabling organizations to proactively discover and contain security incidents that could lead to data breaches if left unchecked. The cornerstone of effective incident response is detection. This involves collecting and analyzing information from a variety of sources to identify signs of abnormal events that could include potential malicious actions. SAP systems capture a variety of security-relevant events across multiple logs. The most significant is the Security Audit Log.

The Security Audit Log should be configured to log successful and unsuccessful logon attempts by privileged and standard users, RFC calls, changes to user records, report and transaction starts, and other critical events. This is performed through filters defined in each system. Log data is stored in local or central files that are read by the Security Monitor of the CCMS. This data is available to Solution Manager for centralized alerting.

Solution Manager should be configured to monitor not just events in the Security Audit Log, but also security-relevant events in logs for the gateway server, message server, SAProuter, Web Dispatcher, system log, UME log and, for HANA systems, syslog servers. This captures critical events such as external programs started through the gateway server, external programs registered with the gateway, HTTP requests from remote or unrecognized IPs, and successful/ unsuccessful connections through application gateways.

The Event Calculation Engine (ECE) within Solution Manager continuously monitors event data recorded in such logs to identify potential attacks based on metrics configured for each log source. This is performed using existing data providers such as Diagnostics Agents and sapstartsrv. Both are automatically installed with SAP systems. The monitoring interval for log sources can be customized but the recommended interval is 60 seconds. The ECE can be configured to perform event correlation for sophisticated pattern analysis.

Alerts are triggered by ECE for events that match a defined pattern or exceed thresholds for specific metrics. The alerts are displayed in the Alert Monitor for Solution Manager. Priority levels can be set for each alert based on a High-Medium-Low scale. Alert data also be transferred to Business Warehouse for detailed reporting and analysis using real-time dashboards.

Solution Manager also channels notifications for alerts to designated Incident Responders through email and text message. Notifications can be grouped to avoid alert flooding. Each notification provides a URL to the relevant alert or alert group within Solution Manager. Incident Responders can add comments to the alert in the Alert Monitor, follow guided procedures for handling alerts, and create and assign tickets for incident management within Solution Manager.

The example below displays the alert details and notifications generated by Solution Manager for a failed logon by the standard SAP* user in a monitored system.

1. Attempted logon using SAP* user in client 001 of system PM1.

2. Event summary in the Security Audit log.

3. Event details in the Security Audit Log.

4. Email notification of event.

5. The email attachment for the alert notification.

6. The Alert Inbox in SAP Solution Manager

7. The details of the alert in the Alert Monitor

Three Reasons You Should Budget for SAP Breach Costs

Layer Seven on June 28, 2016

The average cost of a data breach has now surpassed $4 million. This is according to the latest study from the Ponemon Institute issued earlier this month. The study surveyed 383 organizations in 12 countries. It revealed that not only are data breach costs increasingly across the board, the probability that organizations will suffer a breach impacting 10,000 or more records is 25 percent.

The global results mask significant differences between countries and industries. For example, average data breach costs are highest in the U.S ($7M) and sectors such as healthcare, education and financial services. However, regardless of country or industry, the majority of breaches (48%) are caused by cyber attacks rather than human error or system glitches.

The results of the Ponemon study are contested by the report Beneath the Surface of a Cyberattack from Deloitte Advisory. According to the report, actual costs are far higher than indicated by the Ponemon study which focuses upon measuring direct and tangible costs for breach notification, forensic investigations, legal fees, public relations, regulatory fines and other areas. Deloitte estimate that such costs account for less than 5% of the total business impact of data breaches. The strategic impact of breaches in terms of increased insurance premiums, loss of intellectual property, reputational harm and other hidden costs is far higher than the direct impact. This is illustrated by a breach of patient records experienced by a healthcare company cited in the report. Only 3.5% of the $1.6 billion lost by the company as a result of the breach was associated with direct costs.

Both of the studies echo the results of an earlier report from the Ponemon Institute that placed the average cost of data breaches impacting SAP systems at $4.5M. The report also revealed that 65% of companies had experienced one or more SAP breach within the last 2 years. The significant impact of data breaches and the likelihood that organisations will experience a breach if they haven’t already done so suggests that breach costs should be planned and budgeted. However, aside from region, sector and other factors, there are three reasons that could negatively impact the extent your organization budgets for SAP breach costs. The reasons are outlined below.

1. You do not effectively identify, prioritize and apply security patches for SAP systems

The majority of exploits for SAP systems do not target zero-day vulnerabilities. Most exploits focus upon long-standing and well-known vulnerabilities that can be removed by regularly upgrading SAP systems and applying Security Notes provided by SAP. A case in point is the invoker servlet vulnerability addressed by the recent alert issued by US-CERT. This vulnerability was disclosed in 2010 and addressed by several Notes issued by SAP in the same year.

2. You do not effectively manage vulnerabilities in SAP systems

SAP systems can present a wide attack surface to attackers if they are poorly configured and monitored. A comprehensive vulnerability management program for SAP systems should include continuously monitoring and removing vulnerabilities in areas such as remote function calls, gateway servers, message servers, client-server and server-to-server communication, password policies, session management, audit settings, ICF services, UME settings, Java services and user privileges.

3. You do not effectively discover and respond to malicious events in SAP systems

SAP systems include a wide array of logs that should be continually monitored for indicators of a potential attack. This includes events such as logons or attempted logons with standard users, changes to RFC destinations, ICF services or global settings, trusted system logons, RFC callbacks, path traversals and suspected XSRF attacks. Alerts for such events should be triggered and automatically transmitted to incident response teams to ensure attacks are blocked and contained.

Customers that implement strong patch, vulnerability and threat management programs for SAP systems can justifiably budget far less for SAP breach costs that those that do not by reducing both the likelihood and impact of a potential breach. In fact, they may be able to remove the need to budget for breach costs altogether and rely upon on cyber insurance by satisfying the due diligence requirements of cyber insurance policies.

Customers that haven’t Implemented patch, vulnerability and threat management capabilities can address the gap by leveraging standard tools available in SAP Solution Manager without licencing third party software. This includes System Recommendations for patch management, Configuration Validation for vulnerability management and E2E Alerting for threat management. Layer Seven Security empower customers to unlock the capabilities of SAP Solution Manager for automated vulnerability scanning and security alerting. To learn more, contact Layer Seven Security.

Security in SAP HANA

Layer Seven on May 30, 2016

SAP HANA is now deployed by over 7,500 organizations worldwide. While this represents only a fraction of the 300,000 companies that use SAP software globally, adoption is growing rapidly, doubling in 2015 alone. As expected, the introduction of SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (S/4HANA) has accelerated this growth by widening the use-case for SAP HANA from analytics to transactional processing for core business processes.

While the performance and administrative benefits of SAP HANA are clear-cut, the benefits for security are more questionable. Unlike conventional persistent databases, HANA does not provide any native capability for label-based access control, data discovery and classification, data redaction and masking, or database firewalls. HANA also presents an architectural challenge for security engineers since some implementation scenarios integrate application and database layers that are traditionally hosted in separate physical or virtual servers.

SAP has addressed some of these concerns in later releases of HANA. SPS 12 includes features to isolate databases in multi-tenant environments to prevent cross-database attacks. It also includes more advanced logging capabilities to support multiple log formats and fine-grained audit policies. This is discussed in the newly updated whitepaper Security in SAP HANA, available in the resources section. The whitepaper provides a framework for securing HANA systems including network security, authentication and authorization, encryption for data in transit and at rest, and OS-level security for SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLES) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

HANA vulnerabilities such as potential misconfigurations in database parameters or users with special privileges should be monitored using SAP Solution Manager (SolMan). In common with other SAP systems, HANA is connected to and monitored by SolMan. Security-relevant data is extracted by agents from HANA and transmitted to SolMan for analysis. SolMan analyzes the data using rulesets to identify potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers. The results are accessible through BW or BI including Lumira and Crystal Reports.

Rulesets benchmarked against best practices and SAP recommendations can be licensed from Layer Seven Security and imported directly into your Solution Manager platforms. To learn more, contact us.

US-CERT Issues Alert for SAP Invoker Servlet Vulnerability

Layer Seven on May 12, 2016

US-CERT published an alert yesterday to warn SAP customers of the dangers posed by the invoker servlet vulnerability in AS Java systems. According to the alert, there is evidence to suggest that SAP systems at 36 organizations have been exploited by the vulnerability. The organizations are based in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, India, Japan, and South Korea, and operate in industries that include oil & gas, telecommunications, utilities, retail, automotive and the pubic sector.

The invoker servlet vulnerability arises when servlets can be called directly either by servlet name or by fully-qualified class name. This can be exploited to bypass authentication and authorization rules defined in the web.xml files of Java applications. In the cases referenced by the US-CERT alert, attackers appeared to have exploited the invoker servlet to call a Java component that enabled them to execute OS commands and create user accounts in SAP systems.

The vulnerability was patched by SAP in 2010. SAP also modified the default configuration of AS Java to disable the invoker servlet in versions 7.20 and later. Corrections were provided in Notes 1445998 and 1467771. The evidence of the active exploitation of the invoker servlet vulnerability five years after the underlying flaw was patched by SAP demonstrates that the greatest risk posed to SAP systems is the exploit of known weaknesses rather than so-called zero-day vulnerabilities.

The invoker servlet should be disabled at a global level by setting the EnableInvokerServletGlobally key to false. The key is located in the global properties of each J2EE instance. You can follow the three steps below to discover systems in your landscape vulnerable to the exploit using SAP Solution Manager.

1. Create a target system in Configuration Validation to check the value of the key for all systems using the servlet_jsp store. See below.

2. Edit the target system by removing all parameters in the servlet_jsp store except EnableInvokerServletGlobally. Set the value for the key to true and maintain the weight/ info. See below.

3. Run the weighted validation report for all Java systems and review the results of systems with the EnableInvokerServletGlobally set to true. See below.

The invoker servlet vulnerability is one of the 500+ checks performed by security rulesets provided by Layer Seven for ABAP, Java, HANA, and database systems. The rulesets can be imported into your Solution Manager systems in seconds to perform daily automated scans for vulnerabilities in SAP systems. To learn more, contact Layer Seven Security.

How to Visualize Cyber Security Risks in Your Systems with SAP Lumira

Layer Seven on April 28, 2016

SAP Lumira can be used to access, visualize and explore data of any size from virtually any source. It enables users to build and share powerful interactive data visualizations using a simple user-friendly interface. Since Lumira can acquire data and enable users to create customized reports through self-service, it removes the need for programming, scripting and any other form of development.

This article demonstrates how you can use Lumira to visualize security vulnerabilities in your SAP systems and overcome limitations with standard Business Warehouse (BW) reports. The demonstration is based on the Standard Edition of Lumira, available at the SAP Store. This edition will operate with minimal hardware requirements from any system with a Windows 7 or higher operating system.

After Lumira is installed, you will need to add the BW data connector using the Extension Manager since the data source is underlying BW reports in Solution Manager (SolMan). The reports store the results of automated security reviews performed by SolMan. The next step is to set the connection to the BW server in SolMan under Network in the Preferences section. This includes the server URL, hostname, instance and user credentials required for the connection.

Once the connection is established, you can define the variables including reference systems, comparison systems, stores, items and fields. This covers the security policies setup in SolMan, the systems that are mapped for monitoring, and the containers that store the results of the security reviews. We recommend creating a separate Lumira report for each security policy based on different system types (ABAP, Java, HANA, etc.).

You can begin building your visualization and exploring security vulnerabilities as soon as the data is acquired by Lumira. In the report below, we have created charts and tables that convey security vulnerabilities discovered using SolMan by area, system and risk level.

The results can be filtered by any of these elements. The tables provide details of each finding including the objectives of every check, recommendations to remove vulnerabilities, links to relevant SAP Security Notes, and information available at the SAP Help Portal. The reports can be exported to PDF, CSV or Excel. They can also be shared via URLs with users or groups defined in Lumira.

SAP Lumira can be used to visualize not only security vulnerabilities discovered by Solution Manager but also unapplied Security Notes in SAP systems. See below.

To learn more or to discuss how we can assist your organization leverage the full capabilities of SAP Lumira for dynamic, cost-effective and real-time security monitoring, contact Layer Seven Security.

How to Block RFC Callback Attacks in Your SAP Systems

Layer Seven on March 23, 2016

Callback attacks exploit weaknesses in RFC security to execute function modules in calling systems. The impact of such attacks can be severe, ranging from the creation of dialog users with system-wide privileges to modifying or extracting sensitive data. This can occur if client systems execute malicious code within the function modules of connected systems. In the following example, the source code for the standard function module RFC_PING within a compromised system has been modified to create a new user with the SAP_ALL profile in any client system that connects to the system and calls the function module to perform a connection test.

The called system will exploit the callback functionality of RFC calls to firstly execute the BAPI_USER_CREATE1 function module to generate the dialog user in the calling system and secondly, run the BAPI_USER_PROFILES_ASSIGN function module to assign the SAP_ALL profile to the new user. Once this is complete, the attacker will be able to logon directly into the calling system with the new user. Since this is performed in the background, administrators that perform the connection test from the calling system would not be able to detect the exploit based on a review of the test results returned by the system (see below).

Callback attacks can be exploited to hop from development or test systems to productive systems by exploiting insecure RFC destinations between systems in different environments. Such attacks rely on the privileges of RFC users in client systems. Therefore, it’s important to restrict the authorizations of technical users to the minimal required for each scenario.

They also count on the ability to call any function module within client systems to run exploits. This should be controlled by enabling positive whitelists for RFC callbacks. Whitelists are controlled by the profile parameter rfc/callback_security_method. Empty whitelists should be enabled by default for all new RFC destinations. For existing destinations, rfc/callback_security_method should be set to 1 and the DUI event should be enabled in the Security Audit Log. This will log RFC callbacks executed within the system. The called function modules are displayed in the message text (see below).

The log results are available in RFC destination maintenance using transaction SM59. Administrators can use the log results to automatically generate whitelists for permitted callbacks to specific function modules for each destination. Once the whitelists are generated, rfc/callback_security_method should be set 2 to enable the whitelists in simulation mode. At this point, the DUJ event should be enabled in the Security Audit Log to record rejected RFC callbacks. The log results should be periodically reviewed to update the whitelists before finally activating all whitelists through rfc/callback_security_method=3. Once activated, callbacks to function modules outside the whitelists are rejected by client systems (see below).

Survey Reveals 65 percent of SAP Platforms Were Breached Between 2014-15

Layer Seven on February 26, 2016

Earlier this week, the Ponemon Institute released the results of the most comprehensive study performed to date on the state of SAP cybersecurity. The Institute is widely known for the annual Cost of Data Breach report that trends average data breach costs across major countries. However, it also performs a variety of other studies related to privacy, data protection and information security. It’s latest study Uncovering the Risks of SAP Cyber Breaches reviews the challenges and perceptions associated with securing SAP platforms. The study surveyed over 600 IT and security professionals between December 2015 – January 2016.

The key findings of the study include:

65% of SAP platforms suffered one or more security breach over the prior 24 months. 32% experienced between 1-2 breaches. 16% were breached 3-4 times and 12% between 5-6 times

75% of respondents believe it is likely their SAP platforms have one or more malware infection

The impact of an SAP breach is serious to catastrophic in 92% of organizations

The average cost of a breach that interrupts the availability of SAP systems is $4.5M

47% of respondents expect the volume of cyber attacks against SAP systems to increase over the next 24 months. 42% expect no change. Only 11% expect a decrease

75% express low levels of confidence in their company’s ability to immediately detect an SAP breach. 65% believe they would not be able to detect a breach within one week and 59% doubt they would be able to detect a breach within a month

59% expect trends such as the cloud, mobile, big data and IoT to increase the attack surface and the probability of a breach in SAP systems

The ability to assess and audit compliance levels of SAP systems against security policies and standards is considered important by 78% of respondents

81% believe it is important to continuously monitor the security of SAP platforms

54% of respondents supported the statement that it is the responsibility of SAP, not their organizations, to safeguard the security of SAP software. The reality is that the responsibility is shared. SAP is responsible for ensuring the integrity and security of software code. To this end, SAP works diligently to detect and remove programming errors before and after the release of applications. However, the responsibility for implementing patches for programming and other errors lays exclusively with the customer.

SAP is also accountable for providing guidance to securely configure its systems and counteract known vulnerabilities and attack vectors. Recommendations for dealing with RFC exploits, password attacks, standard users, vulnerable Java and ICF services, and numerous other areas can be found in online SAP security guides, as well as SAP advisories and papers such as the Secure Configuration of SAP NetWeaver Application Server using ABAP and Securing Remote Function Calls.

Finally, SAP is responsible for providing customers with the tools to secure their infrastructure. This includes tools for identifying and applying security patches, performing continuous and automated audits for vulnerabilities that may be exploited to breach systems, and supporting real-time threat detection and response. SAP’s product portfolio includes tools to meet all of these needs. Patch management can be performed using System Recommendations. Vulnerability management for over 500 vulnerabilities impacting ABAP, Java and HANA systems can be accomplished using Configuration Validation. Customers can leverage these tools within their Solution Manager platforms without resorting to third party software solutions. For real-time threat management, customers can deploy Enterprise Threat Detection. Alternatively, they can integrate their SIEM platforms directly with SAP systems using adaptors or indirectly using agents.

Managing Security with SAP Solution Manager

Layer Seven on January 14, 2016

SAP Solution Manager is the second most widely deployed SAP product after ECC. In other words, there are more installations of SolMan in the world than there are for products such as BI, PI, CRM and SRM. This isn’t surprising when you take into account that SolMan is for IT what ECC is for business: it drives the entire system lifecycle including design, deployment and maintenance. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring system operations, managing changes, provisioning users, and a score of other core IT services. Yet, despite it’s versatility and widespread deployment, most organizations fall short of leveraging the full potential of SolMan. This is especially the case for system security.

Other than central user administration, earlywatch alerts, and system recommendations, most SAP customers are in the dark when it comes to other tools in SolMan that could be used to further security. This includes tools to manage and secure custom code (Clone Finder, Coverage Analyzer), identify security risks (SOS), and validate compliance using customer-specific security policies (Configuration Validation). The SAP paper Managing Security with SAP Solution Manager is intended to bridge this gap by informing customers how to realize the potential of SolMan for security. According to SAP, SolMan’s deep connectivity into systems, it’s central position in each landscape, and its link to the SAP extranet provides the ideal platform for defining, implementing and sustaining secure system landscapes. The paper can be downloaded directly from SAP using this link.

What’s New in the SAP Cybersecurity Framework 3.0

Layer Seven on January 14, 2016

Released earlier this month, the third version of the SAP Cybersecurity Framework includes important changes in the areas of transport layer security, logging and monitoring, and vulnerability management. It also discusses the most significant hack against SAP systems to date: the devastating data breach suffered by U.S Investigation Services (USIS). USIS performed background checks on prospective federal employees for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and other government agencies before it’s contracts were severed after the announcement of the breach in 2015.

The breach is estimated to have impacted the personal information of up to 20 million individuals. According to the findings of an internal forensic investigation, attackers were able to breach systems at USIS by exploiting an undisclosed vulnerability in a connected SAP ERP system sometime in 2013. The attack went unnoticed by intrusion detection and other network-level monitoring devices. The specific vulnerability exploited by the attackers has been the subject of widespread speculation by security researchers. Some have argued that the breach was caused by a brute-force password attack. Others have pointed towards RFC exploits or unapplied security patches. The source of the breach could have been any one of these or a combination of other vulnerabilities. The wide attack surface presented by SAP systems makes it impossible to pinpoint the root cause without access to the log data. Regardless, the breach demonstrated the destruction that can be wrought by successful attacks against vulnerable SAP systems. The contracts lost by USIS as a direct result of the attack were valued at $3 billion. The organization laid off 2500 workers and filed for bankruptcy shortly after the public announcement of the breach.

For transport layer security, the framework has been updated in line with RFC 7568 issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for deprecating Secure Sockets Layer Version 3 (SSL v3). SSL was the standard protocol for securing Web-based communication between clients and servers. Support for SSL has been gradually waning as a result of the growing awareness of weaknesses in its encryption scheme and key exchange mechanism. The POODLE vulnerability proved to be the final straw since it could be exploited to break encrypted SSL sessions and access sensitive data passed within such sessions including cookies, passwords and tokens.

The new version of the Framework includes an improved section on Read Access Logging (RAL). RAL should be configured to log access and changes by unauthorized users for sensitive data fields in SAP systems. This includes fields for banking, credit card and salary data. Exclusion lists can be maintained to rule out logging for authorized users. Together with the updated framework, you can also refer to an earlier Layer Seven article on protecting sensitive data in SAP systems using RAL for more information.

Lastly, much of the technical jargon related to Configuration Validation (ConVal) in earlier versions has been removed to focus on the core use-case for ConVal. ConVal is a powerful vulnerability management framework included in SAP Solution Manager that is recommended by SAP for managing vulnerabilities in SAP systems.

Since licensing for Solution Manager is included in SAP support and maintenance agreements, ConVal provides the most cost-effective alternative to third party tools.

You can download version 3 of the SAP Cybersecurity Framework in the whitepaper Protecting SAP Systems from Cyber attack from the Resources section.