Apiiro Launches Application Attack Surface Exploration Tool – Source: www.securityweek.com

RSAC 2023: Tel Aviv and New York based Apiiro announced an application attack surface exploration tool to sit on top of its application security Risk Graph.

Apiiro provides a cloud application security platform. It finds vulnerabilities within applications that are being developed or continuously updated and relates those vulnerabilities into any associated business risks. It enables the developer or security team to understand the risks that matter in a business context.

Apiiro builds a Risk Graph of the application as a whole. This is continuous – as the application evolves, so does the Risk Graph. It provides a risk view in the context of the application concerned. So, for example, the app may incorporate OSS code with a known vulnerability that can only be exploited from the internet – but the code here is only deployed in an environment that is not internet connected. In this instance, the vulnerability exists, but is not a risk.

The Apiiro Risk Graph applies this approach throughout the application, including in-house code, OSS, APIs, legacy code, repositories, etcetera. It surfaces the actual business risk contained in the application.

All this data is contained within the Risk Graph. What is less clear – but nevertheless held within the data – is the attack surface that the application presents. This is what the new Risk Graph Explorer is designed to provide. Moti Gindi, CPO at Apiiro, gave SecurityWeek an example. “I’m looking for dependencies that are vulnerable, that also have a high critical risk (let’s say a CVE score of more than 9), and whether the impact on my application is severe because it is internet exposed and also touching private information, and so on. So, the way I would go about that is the following: I will ask to find all of the dependencies by selecting elements from drop down boxes.”

In this way, complex queries can be built to explore the attack surface of the application – it could be used, for example, to check for data protection compliance by examining whether any personal information is vulnerable to exposure. Other examples could include “All Log4j versions from 2.0-beta9 through 2.15.0 in code modules with internet-facing APIs that expose PII;” or “All instances of a specific secret appearing across public repositories or repositories that store PII in a storage bucket.”

Risk prioritization is a key benefit.

“The Risk Graph Explorer represents Apiiro’s vision to solve legacy application security challenges by empowering security practitioners with visibility into every element of their cloud applications and software supply chains,” said Gindi. “With the flexibility to quickly query for any specific questions using the Apiiro platform, this industry-first approach equips customers with the tools and knowledge they need to not only identify and reduce critical risks, but build smarter, more efficient application security programs overall.” 

It is worth stating that this is just the beginning of the evolution of Apiiro’s Risk Graph Explorer. Apiiro’s labs already has the ability to translate natural English language into Explorer’s editor. “This is something we’ll add as we evolve,” Gindi told SecurityWeek. “It will also suggest queries. You won’t need to invent all the queries yourself – we’re planning to release a library of queries that are suggested and populated by the community.”

Coming, he continued, is “the ability to write the question in English, and the Risk Explorer will generate the query itself. It’s a simple translation, and it’s something GPT technology can do very, very easily.”

Apiiro was founded in 2018 by Idan Plotnik (CEO) and Yonatan Eldar (CTO). It raised $100 million in a Series B round in November 2022, with total funding standing at $135 million.

Related: DevSecOps Company Apiiro Emerges From Stealth With $35 Million in Funding

Related: CISA Seeks Public Opinion on Cloud Application Security Guidance

Related: Application Security Protection for the Masses

Related: Application Security Firm StackHawk Bags $20.7 Million in Series B Funding