Amusing nomenclature, but it's a legitimate concern. If your SREs use application credentials to connect to the database, your ability to have effective access controls and have accurate access audit trails are severely hampered.
This focuses mostly more on internal security (i.e after the attacker already has a foothold inside) versus the classic OWASP that are for external front fracing applications
It has long been consensus that perimeter security is an outdated concept. With servers in public clouds workers remote etc just assume that a breach could potentially happen and mitigate the potential damage - stealing credentials from a marketing guy should not result in root access to prod db.
They are using some fancy wording, but this just seems to be about regular service accounts (i.e. "bots") when they are mixed with user accounts in a SoA setting. No AI needed.
AI is not mentioned. Besides, service accounts are not bots.
The collection provides a structured approach to self audit the security practice regarding non-human identities. The recent CCC showcased breach of a VW connected car repository based on the exploitation of those NHI.
I agree. A bot is a program or an application that provides some sort of functionality that appears automated or autonomous in some way. A service account could be the primary identity of a bot, but that doesn't make it a bot.
> Non-human identities (NHIs) are used to provide authorization to software entities such as applications, APIs, bots, and automated systems to access secured resources. Unlike human identities, NHIs are not controlled or directly owned by a human. Their identity object and authentication often work differently to human, and common human user security measures do not apply to them.
I think it's just a fancy description for service accounts, but possibly extended to any kind of access that is used for machine-to-machine interaction rather than for users; I guess tokens used by IoT devices to access an API would also count as NHI. I guess that "Non-Human" doesn't imply any AI around (nor other animals or extraterrestrials, although I guess nobody thought that...).
I would love to hear about any useful work around leak/abuse-resistance improvements of service accounts and API keys (i.e. the 'NHI' referenced here -- awkward terminology!). Passkeys are a great solution when some kind of end-user interactivity is feasible, and AWS Secrets Manager is supposedly very good if you're entirely on that platform, but for self-hosting, the options seem limited (and things like Hashicorp Vault still don't fully solve the problem)?
I recently refactored a moderately complicated system to remove the need for periodic distribution of updated network access credentials, and the best I could come up with were X509 client certificates, which (even if in this case it was a big improvement over the existing state of affairs) feel archaic...
It’s already wise to establish a shared authentication word or phrase with family and colleagues, because AI can now convincingly mimic a person’s face, voice, gestures, even their gait during video calls or phone conversations. A bot won’t know the secret passcode when you ask for it.
Within the next 20–25 years, you may need that same safeguard in face-to-face meetings, since Replicants will be lifelike enough to fool anyone.
Please click through the link before commenting. NHIs have absolutely nothing to do with AIs masquerading as humans. This is basically about service accounts and API keys...
I did. And took it further and read the docs.. :-)
"Unlike human identities, NHIs are not controlled or directly owned by a human. Their identity object and authentication often work differently to human, and common human user security measures do not apply to them."
So this is about identities who are not human as they use those service accounts. Some would go as far as to say: AIs masquerading as humans.
And yes, you're absolutely right. Attempting to manage NHIs across multiple cloud/service providers without having proper automation in place is a total nightmare.
Mice and ants are listed as some of the greater enemies of the datacenter according to a pest control company's website. I guess bees would cause some inconvenience too.
Full title is "OWASP Non-Human Identities Top 10".
This comprehensive list highlights the most critical challenges in integrating Non-Human Identities (NHIs) into the development lifecycle, ranked based on exploitability, prevalence, detectability, and impact.
- Top 10 for LLMs - https://owasp.org/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-mode...
- Top 10 for OT - https://ot.owasp.org/
- Top 10 for Smart Contracts - https://owasp.org/www-project-smart-contract-top-10/
- Top 10 for Open Source Software - https://owasp.org/www-project-open-source-software-top-10/
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