Offensive security (OffSec) has matured from a best practice into a mandate for effective cybersecurity. Regulatory standards such as PCI-DSS and GLBA now explicitly require OffSec penetration testing (pentesting), while others such as NIST require it under specific conditions, and a growing number of frameworks implicitly advise it. These trends underscore the growing vulnerability of digital networks and the increasing awareness that offensive security forms a foundation for effective defense. In this guide, we'll explain what offensive security is and explain its essential benefits, methods, tools, and techniques.
What Is OffSec? Offensive Security Defined
Offensive security is a cybersecurity strategy that identifies system vulnerabilities by simulating attacks. It proactively seeks to uncover weak points before actual attackers find them, as well as to discover hidden weaknesses that attackers are already exploiting. OffSec tests generate reports that list vulnerabilities, rank their severity, and recommend remediations.
Offensive security testing can be applied to all layers of a digital network, from devices, infrastructure, and applications to human users. OffSec includes a variety of testing methods, from automated vulnerability scanning to manual pentesting and red teaming. These methods deploy a full battery of technology tools, exploitation tactics, and mitigation techniques to deliver security teams actionable insights into how to fix vulnerabilities.
Value of Offensive Security: Improve Security with Intelligence
Offensive security benefits security teams by providing proactive intelligence that can be used to defend vulnerabilities before attackers discover and exploit them. Traditional defensive security measures such as firewalls and antivirus software react when known threats are detected. But they aren't equipped to protect systems against the unknown vulnerabilities emerging constantly as attack methods proliferate and the volume and speed of attacks increases.
OffSec prepares teams to face emerging threats by systematically gathering intelligence on vulnerabilities and recommending remediations, effectively beating attackers to the punch. Offensive security teams uncover threats by mapping all potential attack surfaces that hackers could use and the corresponding attack vectors that could be deployed against them, then testing how systems hold up when simulated attacks are deployed against them.
Offensive security tests can be tailored to specific risks identified as priorities by security teams and organizations. Testing teams can prioritize risks based on criteria such as regulatory requirements, business impact, or threat intelligence on attack trends.
Remediation recommendations likewise can be prioritized according to custom criteria. Typically, OffSec teams make recommendations based on threat severity, drawing from threat intelligence provided by industry leaders. For example, Cobalt's pentesting team works with the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP), an industry leader in tracking and prioritizing security risk trends. By providing security teams with risk reports and remediation recommendations informed by threat intelligence, OffSec delivers the insights organizations need to protect their digital infrastructure and data assets and meet regulatory requirements.
Offensive Security Testing Stages
The full OffSec testing process can be broken down into a standard sequence:
- Reconnaissance: gathering information about target attack surfaces and mapping potential vulnerabilities
- Scanning: automatically scanning systems to identify potential access points such as open ports, live hosts, and running services
- Vulnerability analysis: automatically scanning systems to identify vulnerable points and test responses to basic attacks
- Exploitation: targeting identified vulnerabilities to gain system access, escalate privileges, access functionality and files, and execute attack goals such as stealing data
- Reporting: Documenting vulnerabilities, assessing risk priorities, and recommending mitigations
Some offensive security tests may emphasize automated scanning of vulnerabilities, while others may use data gathered through automated scans to simulate manual attacks.
Offensive Security Methods
Offensive security programs[link to offensive security program blog when published] use several major methods to probe system vulnerabilities. The most important methods include:
- Vulnerability assessment
- Pentesting
- Red teaming
Vulnerability assessment is primarily automated, while pentesting and red teaming are primarily manual.
Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability assessment uses automated tools called vulnerability scanners to check for known vulnerabilities or test how systems respond to specific attack methods. Hacking bots (botnets) often use vulnerability scanners to gather initial intelligence on potential targets and set the stage for attacks. For example, a botnet might seek out websites that are using an outdated software version with known vulnerabilities.
In a similar way, offensive security teams use vulnerability scanners to gain a preliminary assessment of which attack surfaces are available, what their vulnerabilities are, and which ones represent priority risks for mitigation. Automated vulnerability scanning can set the stage for more advanced pentesting and red teaming tests.
Pentesting
Pentesting performs simulated attacks on a system's entire attack surface or select portions of its attack surface. For example, a pentest may be applied to an organization's network, cloud apps, mobile apps, APIs, or digital infrastructure.
Pentesters map target attack surfaces using recognized frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK or the OWASP Top 10 that model potential threat tactics, techniques, and procedures. Using such standardized frameworks gives pentesters the perspective to anticipate the full range of attacks available to hackers rather than addressing issues in a piecemeal fashion. It also enables pentesters to plan mitigations based on recommended best practices.
Pentests are scheduled and conducted with the knowledge of the target organization's security team and leadership. Pentesters follow up simulated attacks by delivering reports on vulnerabilities, severity, and recommended remediations.
Red Teaming
Like pentesting, red teaming manually simulates attacks, but in contrast, red teams don't give targets advance notice of tests, apart from designated personnel authorized to commission the testing. This makes red teaming more closely mimic real attacks.
Red team tests tend to have a narrower scope than pentests. Whereas pentests may systematically probe a set of attack surfaces and vulnerabilities using recognized frameworks as a guide, red teaming tests seek to exploit a target's weakest points.
Red team tests may be conducted over an extended period of time. This simulates real attackers, who may spend months using tactics such as social engineering to gain access to systems and privileges before launching their main offensives.
Offensive Security Tools
Offensive security tools are designed to automate the phases of OffSec testing and tend to correspond to these phases. They include:
- Reconnaissance tools that gather information (example: Nmap)
- Vulnerability scanners that identify or test system vulnerabilities (example: OWASP ZAP)
- Pentesting and red teaming that exploit vulnerabilities (example: Cobalt)
Additionally, some tools focus on specific layers of security testing or automate specific attack techniques. For example, Wireshark monitors and analyzes network traffic, while John the Ripper automates password cracking to test password management.
Offensive Security Exploitation Techniques
OffSec teams may use virtually any exploitation technique to test system defenses. Some of the most common techniques used in offensive security tests include:
- Buffer overflows: exploits poor bounds checking and input validation management by overwhelming buffers and potentially deleting data or overwriting code
- SQL injections: exploits poor access management and input validation by inputting malicious queries that prompt undesirable behavior
- Remote code execution: exploits poor input validation policies to execute arbitrary code that enables unauthorized access and behavior
- Privilege escalation: exploits vulnerabilities such as mismanaged user credentials to gain unauthorized access to functionality which can be misused for malicious purposes
- Man-in-the-middle (MTM) attacks: exploits vulnerabilities such as insecure networks to intercept communications and steal sensitive data or alter message content
These are just a few examples. MITRE catalogs hundreds of techniques and sub-techniques attackers can use, grouped into 14 categories corresponding to stages of an unfolding attack. Offensive security teams may use any of these techniques and others.
Offensive Security Mitigation Techniques
Like attack techniques, mitigation techniques available to OffSec teams are numerous. Some of the most important groupings of mitigations include:
- Network security controls to keep unauthorized parties out of systems, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and virtual private networks
- Patching and update policies and procedures to keep software current and free of known vulnerabilities
- Access controls to prevent unauthorized users and behavior, such as user authentication and authorization procedures and roles and permissions management
- Input validation and sanitization to prevent users from transmitting malicious code
- Memory corruption exploit mitigation to counter buffer overflow attacks
- Data encryption to protect information in storage and at rest
- Continuous monitoring and detection to collect real-time data on security events
- Automated alerts and incident response management to notify systems and teams of threats and initiate countermeasures
Sources such as OWASP prescribe mitigations corresponding to specific vulnerabilities.
Empower Your OffSec Testing with Cobalt
The vast array of offensive security techniques makes it advisable to work with experienced OffSec partners who can guide your internal security team through planning and executing tests and implementing mitigations. Cobalt's pentesting as a service (PTaaS) platform makes it easy for your team to connect with our elite team of 450+ OffSec experts and schedule pentests or red team tests. Our diverse talent pool enables us to match you up with experts possessing the exact skills to meet your testing needs and specifications at whatever scale you require. Our user-friendly platform lets you schedule and start customized tests within as little as 24 hours, not months like most pentesting services. Contact us about our offensive security testing services today to discuss how we can work with your security team to empower your OffSec testing.
