JAWAHARLAL NEHRU TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY HYDERABAD B.Tech III Year ETHICAL HACKING Previous Question Paper (February/March - 2022 - R18)

Ethical hacking and risk analysis are essential for securing custom web applications, but they carry distinct trade-offs.

Pros:

• Identifies vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, and broken authentication before malicious actors can exploit them.
• Provides a realistic assessment of the application's security posture by simulating real-world attack vectors.
• Ensures compliance with regulatory standards such as GDPR, PCI-DSS, or HIPAA.
• Helps in prioritizing security patches based on the actual risk level of discovered flaws.

Cons:

• Potential for service disruption or system instability during aggressive penetration testing.
• Risk of data corruption or accidental exposure if testing is not performed in a controlled environment.
• High costs associated with hiring skilled professionals and conducting recurring assessments.
• False sense of security if the scope of the assessment is too narrow or fails to account for evolving threat landscapes.

Quantifying risk involves assigning numerical values to security threats to enable objective decision-making. The fundamental formula for risk is:

The process follows these key steps:

1. Asset Identification: Cataloging all digital assets and determining their business value based on confidentiality, integrity, and availability requirements.
2. Threat Assessment: Identifying potential threat actors and their capabilities, and estimating the likelihood of a threat exploiting a specific vulnerability.
3. Vulnerability Analysis: Evaluating the susceptibility of the application to specific threats, often using scoring systems like the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
4. Impact Analysis: Calculating the potential financial, operational, and reputational damage if a vulnerability is successfully exploited.
5. Risk Calculation: Combining the probability of occurrence with the magnitude of impact to categorize risks as Low, Medium, High, or Critical. This allows organizations to allocate resources toward mitigating the most significant risks first.