MENU
Scenario 4: In 2017, seeing that millions of people turned to online shopping, Ed and James Cordon founded the online marketplace for footwear called Poshoe. In the past, purchasing pre-owned designer shoes online was not a pleasant experience because of unattractive pictures and an inability to ascertain the products' authenticity. However, after Poshoe's establishment, each product was well advertised and certified as authentic before being offered to clients. This increased the customers' confidence and trust in Poshoe's products and services. Poshoe has approximately four million users and its mission is to dominate the second-hand sneaker market and become a multi-billion dollar company.
Due to the significant increase of daily online buyers, Poshoe's top management decided to adopt a big data analytics tool that could help the company effectively handle, store, and analyze dat
a. Before initiating the implementation process, they decided to conduct a risk assessment. Initially, the company identified its assets, threats, and vulnerabilities associated with its information systems. In terms of assets, the company identified the information that was vital to the achievement of the organization's mission and objectives. During this phase, the company also detected a rootkit in their software, through which an attacker could remotely access Poshoe's systems and acquire sensitive data.
The company discovered that the rootkit had been installed by an attacker who had gained administrator access. As a result, the attacker was able to obtain the customers' personal data after they purchased a product from Poshoe. Luckily, the company was able to execute some scans from the target device and gain greater visibility into their software's settings in order to identify the vulnerability of the system.
The company initially used the qualitative risk analysis technique to assess the consequences and the likelihood and to determine the level of risk. The company defined the likelihood of risk as ''a few times in two years with the probability of 1 to 3 times per year.'' Later, it was decided that they would use a quantitative risk analysis methodology since it would provide additional information on this major risk. Lastly, the top management decided to treat the risk immediately as it could expose the company to other issues. In addition, it was communicated to their employees that they should update, secure, and back up Poshoe's software in order to protect customers' personal information and prevent unauthorized access from attackers.
Based on the scenario above, answer the following question:
Poshoe detected a rootkit installed in their software. In which category of threats does this threat belong?
A rootkit installed in software due to an attacker gaining administrator access is considered a threat resulting from human actions. In this scenario, the attacker deliberately exploited a vulnerability to install the rootkit and gain unauthorized access to sensitive data. ISO/IEC 27005 categorizes threats into three main types: technical failures, human actions, and environmental events. Since this threat is a result of intentional malicious activity by an individual (human), it falls under the category of human actions. Option A (Technical failures) would refer to failures in hardware or software that are not caused by deliberate actions, while Option C (Organizational threats) would relate to internal organizational issues, neither of which apply to this case.