Web application vulnerabilities in simpler words mean when a system flaw or weakness in a web-based application is involved. You wouldn’t believe it, these vulnerabilities have been around for years and there is nothing we could have ever done to completely stop them. These vulnerabilities usually happen due to not validating or sanitizing form inputs. Similarly, misconfigured web servers and application design flaws can also compromise the application’s security.
In this article, we are going to talk about the common web security vulnerabilities. We will learn all about what they are and how exactly they happen.
Common Web Security Vulnerabilities
Cross-Site Scripting
This type of vulnerability also known as XXS usually targets scripts embedded in a page which are then executed on the client side that is, the user browser rather than on the server side. The main reason behind these flaws is when the application somehow takes unauthentic data from any source and then sends it to the web browser without validating it properly. Attackers use this vulnerability to execute malicious scripts on the users. It is quite obvious the browser can never sense if the script is trusty or not so it will execute that script and then the attacker can hijack session cookies and do other things.
Broken Authentication
This type of vulnerability also focuses on user access. But in this case, the hackers or attackers misuse the information that confirms a user’s identity. This includes stealing passwords, keys, or session tokens. The attacker easily gains unauthorized access to the systems, network, and even software as the company failed to set appropriate identity and access management controls.
Cipher Transformation Insecure
Cipher information is known to be a set of operations that enable unreadable encrypted data to become readable. Now a cipher transformation insecure vulnerability usually refers to the fact that the encryption algorithm is too easy to break which ultimately undermines the purpose of encryption in the first place.
Credentials Management
User credentials always comprise a user ID and password. To open or gain access to any application, the user has to put his ID and password into the login page. The application then compares this data to the one stored in its database. If it matches then it grants access. If you’re developing your application with some reliable software provider like webisoft, then you can avoid such problems. However, if the credentials are managed poorly then it can give attackers the opportunity to steal them and use them to gain access to web applications that they have no right to use.
Fail to restrict URL access
Different types of applications use URL restrictions to stop non-privileged users from getting access to privileged data and resources. But since every clickable button in a web application directs to a URL, a failure to restrict access vulnerability means the application failed to restrict URL access and thus malicious actors can use “forced browsing” for an attack.
Injection Flaw
An injection flaw is something that allows different attack methods. It is present in any application that allows users to update a database, shell command, or operating system. In computing, we use an interpreter as a program that takes command and generate instructions. Malicious actors can easily use injection flaws to change the commands that lead to new and unintended actions within the application. This is how the attackers can create, read, update, and even delete data they have no right to.
Insufficient logging and monitoring
This type of vulnerability happens when your data even logs fail to capture the important information that can be used to prevent an attack. We all know that every user, device, or resource generates an event log that can tell your security team about what is happening in your systems, networks, and applications. All the attackers have to do is collect the right event log data and mitigate risk easily.
Insufficient session expiration
If you don’t know what session timeout is then it is something when an application logs a user out after being idle for a specific amount of time and that too automatically. So when an application is idle and opens it gives attackers a chance to steal the credentials associated with a particular account.
Malicious code
All such codes that cause harm are malicious codes. However, it also refers to a code that provides a backdoor into an application to let people gain remote access to a computer. This kind of application backdoors can only happen due to a lack of secure coding practices and thus these programming errors can make the web application vulnerable.
Final Thoughts:
The above-mentioned are only a few web security vulnerabilities and know that there are many more types out there waiting to hack our systems and data. So, it is up to us to gain as much information as we can about these vulnerabilities and then make necessary arrangements to stop them.