Over 95 percent of SAP systems assessed had vulnerabilities that could lead to compromised data and disruption of critical business processes.On May 5, 2015, Onapsis revealed the three most common cyber attack vectors used for compromising SAP business systems at the application layer. These attack vectors put intellectual property, financial, credit card, customer and supplier data as well as database warehouse information at risk for the world's largest companies.
Based on assessments of hundreds of SAP implementations, the Onapsis Research Labs study found that over 95 percent of SAP systems were exposed to vulnerabilities that could lead to full compromise of the company’s business data and processes.
The research study found that most companies are also exposed to protracted patching windows averaging 18 months or more. In 2014 alone, 391 security patches were released by SAP, averaging more than 30 per month. Almost 50 percent of them were ranked as “high priority” by SAP.
SAP is run by over 250,000 customers worldwide, including 87 percent of Global 2000 companies and 98 percent of the 100 most valued brands.
Despite housing an organization’s most valuable and sensitive information, SAP systems are not protected from cyber threats by traditional security approaches.
Onapsis Research Labs analyzed thousands of vulnerabilities to identify the three most commonly used approaches for hacking into business-critical data hosted in SAP applications, as well as disrupting key business processes:
- Customer Information and Credit Card Breaches Using Pivoting Between SAP Systems. The attack begins with a pivot from a system with lower security to a critical system in order to execute remote function modules in the destination system.
- Customer and Supplier Portal Attacks. Backdoor users are created in the SAP J2EE User Management Engine. By exploiting a vulnerability, the hacker can obtain access to SAP Portals and Process Integration platforms and their connected, internal systems.
- Database Warehousing Attacks through SAP proprietary protocols. This attack is performed by executing operating system commands under the privileges of a particular user, and by exploiting vulnerabilities in the SAP RFC Gateway. The hacker is able to obtain and potentially modify any business information stored in the SAP database.
“The big surprise is that SAP cybersecurity is falling through the cracks at most companies due to a ‘responsibility’ gap between the SAP Operations team and the IT Security team,” said Mariano Nunez, CEO and co-founder of Onapsis. “The truth is that most patches applied are not security-related, are late or introduce further operational risk. Breaches are happening every day but still many CISOs don’t know because they don’t have visibility into their SAP applications. Onapsis constantly researches the attacks that are impacting the industry and works directly with our customers, the market and federal agencies to proactively prevent compromise and respond to incidents when they happen.”
“Companies today are looking ahead at the opportunities presented by moving systems to the cloud, enabling user adoption through mobile devices and big data. The challenge is that most of these new possibilities rely on legacy systems such as SAP. In a connected world, it is essential that critical business applications be protected. Securing a company’s crown jewels is a board-level discussion. Information security professionals need to re-evaluate how SAP is protected from cybersecurity threats,” said Renee Guttmann, vice president, Office of the CISO, Accuvant.
