Deploying the Reconmore scanner at a cryptocurrency exchange

Client

A fast-growing cryptocurrency exchange (FinTech). A trading platform where any flaw in the code can mean direct financial losses for users.

Challenge

The goal was to secure the platform launch and put in place continuous monitoring to protect the environment from bugs introduced during code updates by the client’s development team.

Scope of work

• Launch audit (month 1): during the first penetration tests under Reconmore, 17 vulnerabilities were identified — 2 critical, 3 high, 3 medium, 6 low, 3 informational
• Denial of Service (Critical): the platform could be taken down entirely from a single computer using a slow HTTP headers attack against the Apache server
• Reflected XSS (Critical): a flaw allowing malicious JavaScript to run in the context of a logged-in exchange user — a major session hijacking risk
• Missing encryption (High): inadequate encryption of connections on sensitive endpoints
• Continuous monitoring: over the following 23 months, the Reconmore scanner automatically identified 2 critical and 1 high vulnerability caused by new, faulty application releases from the client’s development team

How the engagement worked

Results and value for the client

The platform launched without a single incident, and the initial audit protected the exchange against critical flaws such as DoS and XSS. The following two years of ongoing cooperation proved the value of the continuous model: Remote Admin engineers quickly caught new, dangerous vulnerabilities that developers had unknowingly introduced during platform updates — 3 developer errors blocked in total, 2 of them critical.