Understanding Authority Tampering

Strengthening Mainframe Cybersecurity with Advanced Mainframe Security Tools

Mainframes are the cornerstone of critical business operations, processing vast amounts of sensitive data for industries like finance, healthcare, and government. While their reliability and robustness have made them a trusted backbone of IT infrastructure, their increased connectivity and integration into hybrid cloud environments make them prime targets for sophisticated mainframe cyber threats. Employing advanced mainframe security tools is essential to safeguard these systems against evolving risks.

Two common yet distinct attack methods—authority tampering and privilege escalation—pose significant risks to mainframe security. Despite their similarities, understanding their unique characteristics is essential for implementing effective security measures. This blog explores these two threats, their impact on mainframe environments, and strategies to mitigate them using modern mainframe security tools like MainTegrity CSF 3.1 with Early Warning.

Authority Tampering

Manipulating Access Controls

Authority tampering involves the unauthorized modification of access control settings, permissions, and security configurations to gain or conceal unauthorized actions. Attackers manipulate the authority mechanisms within the system to perform actions beyond their legitimate access levels, often making it difficult for security teams to detect their presence.

Key Methods of Authority Tampering

  1. Altering Access Control Lists (ACLs): Attackers modify ACLs to grant themselves or others higher permissions. This could involve changing file permissions, dataset access rights, or resource controls within the mainframe.
  2. Modifying Security Policies: By changing security policies in systems like RACF, ACF2, or Top Secret (TSS), attackers can weaken security settings, disable mandatory access controls, or bypass authentication requirements.
  3. Disabling Security Audits and Logs: Attackers may disable or tamper with logging mechanisms to hide unauthorized activities. By suppressing audit trails, they make it challenging to trace their actions or detect anomalies.
  4. Creating Backdoor Accounts or Privileged Users: Unauthorized creation of new user accounts with elevated privileges allows attackers persistent access without raising immediate suspicion.

Why It Matters in Mainframe Security

Authority tampering poses significant challenges:

  • Stealthy Operations: By manipulating authority settings, attackers can operate under the radar, making detection difficult.
  • Extended Access: Unauthorized changes to permissions can provide attackers prolonged access to sensitive data and critical system functions.
  • Difficult Forensics: Tampered logs and audit trails hinder incident response efforts and forensic investigations.

According to the 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, breaches involving stolen or compromised credentials took the longest to identify and contain—an average of 292 days. Similarly, authority tampering can lead to extended breach lifecycles, increasing the overall cost and impact of a breach. Longer breach lifecycles are correlated with higher costs; breaches with a lifecycle exceeding 200 days had the highest average cost, at USD 5.46 million.

Traditional security tools may not detect subtle changes in authority configurations, especially when logs are altered or disabled. This is where MainTegrity CSF 3.1 with Early Warning excels, providing real-time detection of unauthorized modifications to authority settings and ensuring the integrity of security configurations.

Privilege Escalation

Climbing the Ladder of Authorization

While authority tampering focuses on manipulating access controls, privilege escalation involves exploiting vulnerabilities to move from a lower privilege level to a higher one. Once attackers escalate their privileges, they gain the ability to execute restricted commands, access sensitive data, or disable security measures.

Types of Privilege Escalation

  1. Vertical Privilege Escalation: Attackers elevate their access from a normal user to an administrator or system-level account. On z/OS systems, this might involve achieving Access Control Level 1 (AC=1), granting unrestricted access.
  2. Horizontal Privilege Escalation: Attackers gain access to peer user accounts with similar privilege levels but different permissions, facilitating lateral movement within the system.

Techniques for Privilege Escalation

  1. Exploiting Software Vulnerabilities: Leveraging bugs or flaws in system software, applications, or the operating system to gain higher privileges.
  2. Credential Theft and Reuse: Obtaining credentials of higher-privileged users through phishing, malware, or social engineering.
  3. Abusing Misconfigurations: Taking advantage of improperly configured systems that allow for privilege escalation, such as default passwords or weak security settings.

The Cost of Privilege Escalation Attacks

Privilege escalation attacks can lead to severe consequences, including data breaches, financial loss, and reputational damage. They often remain undetected for extended periods, increasing the potential impact.

The Report indicates that breaches involving stolen or compromised credentials are not only common but also costly, averaging USD 4.81 million per breach. These breaches also take longer to identify and contain, averaging 292 days. Longer breach lifecycles lead to higher costs; with breaches lasting over 200 days costing significantly more than those contained sooner.

MainTegrity CSF 3.1 helps detect privilege escalation attempts by monitoring for unauthorized changes to critical system files and configurations, providing real-time alerts, and enabling swift responses to contain threats.

Mitigating Threats with Advanced Mainframe Security Tools

1. Integrity Monitoring and Early Warning

MainTegrity CSF 3.1 with Early Warning provides integrity monitoring by tracking changes to critical authority configurations, permissions, and security policies. It detects unauthorized modifications in real-time, even when attackers attempt to disable logs or conceal their activities.

2. Enforcing Immutable Security Configurations

Implementing immutable configurations for access controls and security policies ensures that any unauthorized changes are immediately flagged. MainTegrity CSF can enforce these configurations and alert administrators to deviations.

3. Tamper-Resistant Logging and Auditing

Attackers often attempt to disable or alter logs to hide their actions. MainTegrity CSF maintains independent, tamper-resistant logging mechanisms, ensuring that all activities are recorded and cannot be suppressed or modified by unauthorized users.

4. Real-Time Alerts and Automated Responses

By providing real-time alerts for suspicious changes to authority settings, MainTegrity CSF enables security teams to respond swiftly. Automated responses can include reverting unauthorized changes and isolating affected systems to prevent further compromise.

5. Behavior Analytics

Using AI-driven behavior analytics, mainframe security tools establish baselines of normal activity. MainTegrity CSF analyzes deviations that may indicate authority tampering or privilege escalation, such as unexpected changes to user permissions or security policies.

6. Regular Security Audits

Conducting regular security audits with tools like MainTegrity CSF helps identify vulnerabilities in access controls and security configurations before attackers can exploit them.

Real-World Applications: Leveraging MainTegrity CSF 3.1 for Mainframe Cybersecurity

MainTegrity’s CSF 3.1 with Early Warning integrates advanced detection and response mechanisms tailored for z/OS systems, solidifying its place among leading mainframe security tools:

  • Integrity Verification: Continuously monitors and verifies the integrity of authority configurations, permissions, and security policies, detecting tampering attempts instantly.
  • Tamper-Resistant Logging: Maintains secure logs that cannot be disabled or altered by attackers, ensuring that all activities are recorded for analysis.
  • Early Warning System: Provides proactive alerts when unauthorized changes occur, allowing for immediate action to prevent further compromise.
  • Automated Remediation: Automatically reverts unauthorized changes to authority settings and configurations, maintaining the security posture without manual intervention.
  • Compliance Support: Helps organizations meet compliance requirements by ensuring access controls and security configurations are secure and tamper-proof, aligning with frameworks like NIST CSF, PCI DSS, and Zero-Trust.

By detecting and preventing authority tampering, MainTegrity CSF makes it significantly harder for attackers to hide their presence, ensuring that security teams have full visibility into the system’s integrity.

Global Trends: The Need for Advanced Mainframe Security

The Report highlights the urgency for enhanced mainframe security:

  • Sophisticated Attack Methods: Attackers increasingly use techniques like authority tampering to evade detection and prolong their presence in systems.
  • Extended Breach Lifecycles: Breaches involving stolen or compromised credentials took the longest to identify and contain, averaging 292 days. Longer breach lifecycles led to higher costs, with breaches exceeding 200 days costing an average of USD 5.46 million.
  • Phishing and Credential Theft Prevalence: Phishing and compromised credentials were the top initial attack vectors, accounting for 15% and 16% of breaches respectively, and costing an average of USD 4.88 million and USD 4.81 million per breach.
  • Importance of AI and Automation: Organizations utilizing AI-driven mainframe security tools like MainTegrity CSF reduce breach costs and detection times significantly.
  • Security Teams’ Role: The report found that security teams and their tools detected breaches 42% of the time, an improvement over the previous year, indicating the effectiveness of proactive security measures.

These trends underline the necessity of adopting proactive, AI-driven solutions to safeguard mainframe environments against sophisticated mainframe cyber threats.

Building a Resilient Defense with Mainframe Security Tools

Authority tampering and privilege escalation are distinct but interconnected threats that can severely compromise mainframe systems. Attackers manipulate access controls and security configurations to gain unauthorized access and conceal their activities, making detection challenging.

Addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive approach that combines integrity monitoring, real-time detection, and automated responses. MainTegrity CSF 3.1 with Early Warning offers a unique solution by providing tamper detection and prevention capabilities critical for modern mainframe cybersecurity.

By leveraging advanced mainframe security tools like MainTegrity CSF, organizations can:

  • Detect Unauthorized Changes: Instantly identify and respond to tampering attempts on authority configurations and permissions.
  • Prevent Attackers from Hiding: Maintain secure logs and audit trails that cannot be disabled or altered, ensuring visibility into all activities.
  • Reduce Breach Impact: Swiftly contain and remediate threats, minimizing potential damage and associated costs.

With evolving attack vectors and increasing breach costs highlighted in the Report, the time to fortify your mainframe with advanced security measures is now.

Ready to strengthen your mainframe security? Contact us today to schedule a demo of MainTegrity CSF 3.1 with Early Warning and discover how our advanced mainframe security tools can protect your organization from evolving cyber threats.

(Note: This blog content is provided for educational purposes. Data and statistics are based on the 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report as provided.)

Download 2024-cost-of-data-breach-report.pdf
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