Demo Series: Protecting Your Application Server From Exposing TLS Keys

Memory scraping attacks can be particularly damaging to application servers, leaving your sensitive data vulnerable to malicious actors. To keep that data safe and prevent unauthorized access, Confidential Computing is an extremely valuable tool for safeguarding the privileged data that you and your users generate through the application.

After having recently touched on how Anjuna Seaglass keeps web servers secure, we're exploring how it protects app servers from scraping attacks, keeping your sensitive data out of the wrong hands.

Understanding the Threat: Memory Scraping Attacks

To begin, let's understand precisely what kind of threat a memory scraping attack poses to an application server. In multi-tier application architectures, sensitive data will most often be encrypted, both at rest and in transit. By doing this, the URL will include an "https," and the web browser will show a padlock icon. Both of these features provide a sense of security to your users, indicating that they can safely submit their data within your application.

It's worth noting, though, that the true problem here is related to the application server itself. Even if the data is encrypted while it's being stored or transmitted, it still becomes vulnerable when the application uses it. This vulnerability is the opportunity attackers will be looking for to gain root access to the server.

Attackers who have obtained root access to your app server can run fairly simple commands to easily scrape plain text data from the server's memory. This vulnerability poses a massive threat to your server's security, putting all manner of sensitive data, like personally identifiable information (PII), at risk of data breaches.

Anjuna's Solution: Confidential Computing

The Anjuna Seaglass platform provides your app server with a robust solution for protecting against memory scraping attacks. This is achieved by using a specialized method called "Confidential Computing." Let's look at how Anjuna's solution works:

Secure Enclaves

Using the new hardware capabilities made available in the cloud, Anjuna Seaglass creates secure enclaves where your application server can run. Within these secure enclaves, your server receives unparalleled levels of protection from the threat of cyber attacks, even in cases where the attacker has root access to the application server.

Simple Implementation

A huge advantage of Anjuna Seaglass is its simplicity. Administrators can easily invoke the Anjuna Confidential Runtime through one effortless command. This quickly creates a secure enclave that shields your application from unauthorized users without requiring you to re-engineer your application to implement the added protections.

Anjuna’s Protection in Action

In the video, you can see a practical demonstration of how Anjuna Seaglass protects the security of your application server in the event of an attack. Here's how it plays out:

1. Attacker's Attempt: An attacker with root access attempts to retrieve plain text data from your server's memory. Under normal circumstances, it's fairly easy for an attacker with root access to scrape the data by using simple commands.
2. Anjuna's Protection: An administrator quickly invokes the Anjuna Confidential Runtime with just one command. This instantly secures the application server against the incoming threat.
3. Attacker's Retry: Using the same level of access and identical commands as before, the attacker is now unable to access PII data stored within your server's memory. Anjuna effectively eliminates the threat of the memory-scraping attack

Benefits of Anjuna Seaglass

Application servers that use Anjuna Seaglass see many different benefits:

Enhanced Security

Through Confidential Computing and secure enclaves, Anjuna Seaglass gives your application server enhanced protection, even against a determined attacker who has gained root access. Protecting your sensitive user data is crucial to building and maintaining trust with your customers.

Easy Implementation

Ease of implementation makes Anjuna Seaglass a no-brainer. With a single command, you can greatly enhance your app security with no need for time- and money-intensive application re-engineering.

Compatibility

Anjuna Seaglass is designed to seamlessly integrate into your existing applications without requiring extensive changes to your infrastructure or sacrificing vital functionality, allowing you to make a smoother transition toward a secure environment for your applications.

Immediate Protection

Probably one of the most impressive features of the Anjuna Seaglass platform is the prospect of instant protection for your application server. Threats can be eliminated quickly by activating Anjuna Confidential Runtime, providing a secure environment in just one simple command.

Use Anjuna to Safeguard Your Application Server and More

By implementing Anjuna Seaglass, you can provide significantly enhanced security for your application server while also removing the need for complicated re-engineering. This helps to ensure that your sensitive data is kept safe and secure.

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