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Objective ID
Severity
Discussion
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
high
When the "Prevent McAfee services from being stopped" check box is selected under Access Protection, VSE will prevent anyone except the System account from terminating McAfee services. This protects VirusScan from being disabled by malicious programs that seek to circumvent virus protection programs by terminating their services.
medium
Log management is essential to ensuring computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.
medium
While logging is imperative to forensic analysis, logs could grow to the point of impacting disk space on the system. In order to avoid the risk of logs growing to the size of impacting the operating system, the log size will be restricted, but must also be large enough to retain forensic value.
medium
Many attackers use toolkits containing several different types of utilities and scripts that can be used to probe and attack hosts. All scripts should be scanned and none should be excluded from scanning.
medium
When scanning for malware, excluding specific files will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring antivirus software without any exclusions, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.
medium
Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.
medium
Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.
medium
Antivirus software vendors use collective intelligence from sensors and cross-vector intelligence from web, email, and network threats to compile scores that reflect the likelihood of whether a file in question is malware. The collective intelligence is constantly being updated, more frequently than the typical daily antivirus signature files. With File Reputation lookup, a more real-time response to potential malicious code is realized than with the local-running antivirus software, since by querying the cloud-based database when a file appears to be suspicious, up-to-the-minute intelligence is provided. This type of protection reduces the threat protection time period from days to milliseconds, increases malware detection rates, and reduces downtime and remediation costs associated with malware attacks. Using File Reputation lookup is mandated by US CYBERCOM on DoD systems.
medium
Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.
medium
Many attackers use toolkits containing several different types of utilities and scripts that can be used to probe and attack hosts. All scripts should be scanned and none should be excluded from scanning.
medium
Access Protection prevents unwanted changes to a computer by restricting access to specified ports, files and folders, shares, and registry keys and values. It prevents users from stopping McAfee processes and services, which are critical before and during outbreaks. Access Protection for VSE uses predefined and user-defined rules to strengthen systems against virus attacks. For instance, rules are used to specify which items can and cannot be accessed. Each rule can be configured to block and/or report access violations when they occur, and rules can also be disabled.
medium
Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infections capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the antivirus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.
medium
Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infections capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the antivirus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.
medium
Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infections capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the antivirus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.
high
For Antivirus software to be effective, it must be running at all times, beginning from the point of the system's initial startup. Otherwise, the risk is greater for viruses, trojans, and other malware infecting the system during that startup phase.
high
Antivirus signature files are updated almost daily by antivirus software vendors. These files are made available to antivirus clients as they are published. Keeping virus signature files as current as possible is vital to the security of any system.
medium
Boot sector viruses will install into the boot sector of a system, ensuring that they will execute when the user boots the system. This risk is mitigated by scanning boot sectors at each startup of the system.
medium
Computer viruses in the early days of personal computing were almost exclusively passed around by floppy disks. Floppy disks would be used to boot the computer and, if infected, would infect the hard drive files, as well. Although floppy drives have fallen out of use, it is still a good security practice, whenever the antivirus software allows, to enable the scanning software to scan a floppy disk at shutdown.
medium
An effective awareness program explains proper rules of behavior for use of an organization's IT systems and information. Accordingly, awareness programs should include guidance to users on malware incident prevention, which can help reduce the frequency and severity of malware incidents.
Organizations should also make users aware of policies and procedures that apply to malware incident handling, such as how to identify if a host may be infected, how to report a suspected incident, and what users need to do to assist with incident handling
Ensuring the antivirus software alerts the users when malware is detected will ensure the user is informed of the incident and be able to more closely relate the incident to action being performed by the user at the time of the detection.
medium
Good incident response analysis includes reviewing all logs and alerts on the system reporting the infection. If users were permitted to remove alerts from the display, incident response forensic analysis would be inhibited.
medium
Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.
medium
While logging is imperative to forensic analysis, logs could grow to the point of impacting disk space on the system. In order to avoid the risk of logs growing to the size of impacting the operating system, the log size will be restricted. If the data in the log file exceeds the file size set, the oldest 20 percent of the entries are deleted and new data is appended to the file, so although the file size is restricted, it must also be large enough to retain forensic value.
medium
Log management is essential to ensuring computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.
medium
Log management is essential to ensuring computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.
medium
Antivirus signature files are updated almost daily by antivirus software vendors. These files are made available to antivirus clients as they are published. Keeping virus signature files as current as possible is vital to the security of any system. The antivirus software product must be configured to receive those updates automatically in order to afford the expected protection.
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc., from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc., from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc. from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc., from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
medium
Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.
medium
While logging is imperative to forensic analysis, logs could grow to the point of impacting disk space on the system. In order to avoid the risk of logs growing to the size of impacting the operating system, the log size will be restricted. If the data in the log file exceeds the file size set, the oldest 20 percent of the entries are deleted and new data is appended to the file so although the file size is restricted, it must also be large enough to retain forensic value.
medium
Email has become one of the most frequently used methods of spreading malware, through embedded HTML code and attachments. User awareness and training, warning users to not open suspicious emails or email attachments and not clicking on hyperlinks, etc., from unknown or known senders, will not fully protect from email-borne malware. Mass mailing worms are similar to an email-borne virus but is self-contained rather than infecting an existing file. Protecting from email-borne viruses and mass mailing worms by scanning email upon delivery mitigates the risk of infection via email.
medium
Antivirus software is the mostly commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Antivirus software on hosts should be configured to scan all hard drives and folders regularly to identify any file system infections and to scan any removable media, if applicable, before media is inserted into the system. Not scheduling a regular scan of the hard drives of a system and/or not configuring the scan to scan all files and running processes, introduces a higher risk of threats going undetected.
medium
Boot sector viruses will install into the boot sector of a system, ensuring that they will execute when the user boots the system. This risk is mitigated by scanning boot sectors at each startup of the system.
medium
When scanning for malware, excluding specific file types will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring antivirus software to scan all file types, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.
medium
Interpreted viruses are executed by an application. Within this subcategory, macro viruses take advantage of the capabilities of applications' macro programming language to infect application documents and document templates, while scripting viruses infect scripts that are understood by scripting languages processed by services on the OS. Many attackers use toolkits containing several different types of utilities and script that can be used to probe and attack hosts. (NIST SP 800-83) The scanning of scripts is crucial in preventing these attacks.
medium
When scanning for malware, excluding specific files will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring antivirus software without any exclusions, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.
medium
Containment during a virus outbreak is crucial. Infected hosts may attempt to spread malware and will use every network path available to them when spreading that infection. By containing the system when a detection is found, the malware will be restricted to that one system. Likewise, if malware is detected in a shared folder, maintaining the connection between a system and the shared folder would allow the malware to spread. Placing temporary restrictions on network connectivity is an effective mitigation mechanism.
These block connection settings will most often be used on a server housing shared folders and files, and will block the connection from any network user on a remote computer who attempts to read from, or write to, a threatened file in the shared folder. In addition, it will block the connection from any user on a remote computer who attempts to write an unwanted program to the computer. The connection will be unblocked after the specified amount of time, re-allowing access to the other shared files and folders, but will be re-blocked should those same file accesses be attempted.
medium
Malware is often packaged within an archive. In addition, archives might have other archives within. Not scanning archive files introduces the risk of infected files being introduced into the environment.
medium
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) encoded files can be crafted to hide a malicious payload. When the MIME encoded file is presented to software that decodes the MIME encoded files, such as an email client, the malware is released. Scanning these files as part of the regularly scheduled scans tasks will mitigate this risk.
medium
Antivirus software vendors use collective intelligence from sensors and cross-vector intelligence from web, email, and network threats to compile scores that reflect the likelihood of whether a file in question is malware. The collective intelligence is constantly being updated, more frequently than the typical daily antivirus signature files. With File Reputation lookup, a more real-time response to potential malicious code is realized than with the local-running antivirus software, since by querying the cloud-based database when a file appears to be suspicious, up-to-the-minute intelligence is provided. This type of protection reduces the threat protection time period from days to milliseconds, increases malware detection rates, and reduces downtime and remediation costs associated with malware attacks. Using File Reputation lookup is mandated by US CYBERCOM on DoD systems.
medium
Containment during a virus outbreak is crucial. Infected hosts may attempt to spread malware and will use every network path available to them when spreading that infection. By containing the system when a detection is found, the malware will be restricted to that one system. Likewise, if malware is detected in a shared folder, maintaining the connection between a system and the shared folder would allow the malware to spread. Placing temporary restrictions on network connectivity is an effective mitigation mechanism.
These block connection settings will most often be used on a server housing shared folders and files, and will block the connection from any network user on a remote computer who attempts to read from, or write to, a threatened file in the shared folder. In addition, it will block the connection from any user on a remote computer who attempts to write an unwanted program to the computer. The connection will be unblocked after the specified amount of time, re-allowing access to the other shared files and folders, but will be re-blocked should those same file accesses be attempted.
medium
Containment during a virus outbreak is crucial. Infected hosts may attempt to spread malware and will use every network path available to them when spreading that infection. By containing the system when a detection is found, the malware will be restricted to that one system. Likewise, if malware is detected in a shared folder, maintaining the connection between a system and the shared folder would allow the malware to spread. Placing temporary restrictions on network connectivity is an effective mitigation mechanism.
These block connection settings will most often be used on a server housing shared folders and files, and will block the connection from any network user on a remote computer who attempts to read from, or write to, a threatened file in the shared folder. In addition, it will block the connection from any user on a remote computer who attempts to write an unwanted program to the computer. The connection will be unblocked after the specified amount of time, re-allowing access to the other shared files and folders, but will be re-blocked should those same file accesses be attempted.
medium
Interpreted viruses are executed by an application. Within this subcategory, macro viruses take advantage of the capabilities of applications' macro programming language to infect application documents and document templates, while scripting viruses infect scripts that are understood by scripting languages processed by services on the OS. Many attackers use toolkits containing several different types of utilities and scripts that can be used to probe and attack hosts. The scanning for unknown macro viruses will mitigate zero day attacks.
medium
Organizations should use centrally managed antivirus software that is controlled and monitored regularly by antivirus administrators, who are also typically responsible for acquiring, testing, approving, and delivering antivirus signatures and software updates through the organizations. (FISMA SP 800-83) Some processes are known to be higher risk, while others are low risk. By restricting policy configuration to the Default Processes policy, all processes will be interpreted equally when applying the policy settings and will provide the highest level of protection. Best practice dictates configuring Low Risk and/or High Risk policies only when it is necessary to improve system performance, and will focus the scanning where it is most likely to detect malware. There is risk associated with configuring the Low Risk and/or High Risk policies for the purpose of specifically excluding processes from scanning, and should only be done after evaluating other policy settings and determining risk.
medium
Adware, like spyware, is, at best, an annoyance by presenting unwanted advertisements to the user of a computer, sometimes in the form of a popup. At worst, it redirects the user to malicious websites. Detecting and blocking will mitigate the likelihood of users being tricked into visiting sites with malicious content.
medium
Antivirus software is the most commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Real-time scanning of files as they are written to disk is a crucial first line of defense from malware attacks.
medium
Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option so as to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.
medium
Spyware is software that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge, and that may send such information to another entity without the consumer's consent, or that asserts control over a computer without the user's knowledge. Spyware may try to deceive users by bundling itself with desirable software. A spyware infestation can create significant unwanted CPU activity, disk usage, and network traffic. Some types of spyware disable software firewalls and antivirus software. Detecting, blocking, and eradicating malicious spyware or preventing it from being installed will alleviate the negative side effects of the spyware.
medium
Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) include Spyware, Adware, Remote Administration Tools, Dialers, Password Crackers, Jokes, and Key Loggers. While PUPs do not typically have any infections capability on their own, they rely on malware or other attach mechanisms to be installed onto target hosts, after which they will collect and transfer data from the host to an external host and/or will be used as attach mechanisms. Configuring the antivirus software to attempt to clean the file first will allow for the possibility of a false positive. In most cases, however, the secondary action of delete will be used, mitigating the risk of the PUPs being installed and used maliciously.
medium
Due to the ability of malware to mutate after infection, standard antivirus signatures may not be able to catch new strains or variants of the malware. Typically, these strains and variants will share unique characteristics with others in their virus family. By using a generic signature to detect the shared characteristics, using wildcards where differences lie, the generic signature can detect viruses even if they are padded with extra, meaningless code. This method of detection is Heuristic detection.
medium
Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option so as to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.
medium
Log management is essential to ensuring computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.
medium
Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time. Routine log analysis is beneficial for identifying security incidents, policy violations, fraudulent activity, and operational problems. Logs are also useful when performing auditing and forensic analysis, supporting internal investigations, establishing baselines, and identifying operational trends and long-term problems.
medium
While logging is imperative to forensic analysis, logs could grow to the point of impacting disk space on the system. In order to avoid the risk of logs growing to the size of impacting the operating system, the log size will be restricted, but must also be large enough to retain forensic value.
.
medium
Antivirus software is the mostly commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Antivirus software on hosts should be configured to scan all hard drives regularly to identify any file system infections and to scan any removable media, if applicable, before media is inserted into the system. Not scheduling a regular scan of the hard drives of a system and/or not configuring the scan to scan all files and running processes, introduces a higher risk of threats going undetected.
medium
Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.
medium
Malware may have infected a file that is necessary to the user. By configuring the antivirus software to first attempt cleaning the infected file, availability to the file is not sacrificed. If a cleaning attempt is not successful, however, deleting the file is the only safe option to ensure the malware is not introduced onto the system or network.
medium
Antivirus software is the most commonly used technical control for malware threat mitigation. Real-time scanning of files as they are read from disk is a crucial first line of defense from malware attacks.
medium
When scanning for malware, excluding specific file types will increase the risk of a malware-infected file going undetected. By configuring antivirus software to scan all file types, the scanner has a higher success rate at detecting and eradicating malware.
medium
Due to the ability of malware to mutate after infection, standard antivirus signatures may not be able to catch new strains or variants of the malware. Typically, these strains and variants will share unique characteristics with others in their virus family. By using a generic signature to detect the shared characteristics, using wildcards where differences lie, the generic signature can detect viruses even if they are padded with extra, meaningless code. This method of detection is Heuristic detection.
medium
Due to the ability of malware to mutate after infection, standard antivirus signatures may not be able to catch new strains or variants of the malware. Typically, these strains and variants will share unique characteristics with others in their virus family. By using a generic signature to detect the shared characteristics, using wildcards where differences lie, the generic signature can detect viruses even if they are padded with extra, meaningless code. This method of detection is Heuristic detection.
medium
Malware is often packaged within an archive. In addition, archives might have other archives within. Not scanning archive files introduces the risk of infected files being introduced into the environment.