HOW TO SECURE WEB APPLICATIONS FROM COMMONLY KNOWN VULNERABILITIES IN 2022
There is nothing as exciting and encouraging as getting a new web development project. Web designers, developers, and testers work hard to ensure that the web application is robust, highly functional, and feature-rich that serves the client’s business objectives.
However, one of the most significant viewpoints of any web application is security. Unfortunately, most companies start working on their web application security issues only after an attacker breaches IT security.
· More than 60% of the consumers reported gradually increased concern for data safety due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
· There’s a cyber-attack every 39 seconds.
· Companies are paying up to $500,000 for hackers to test their systems.
Another reason why web applications are vulnerable to cyber-attacks is their connectivity with the internet. Attackers can easily manipulate web inputs via forms and APIs.
When you offer web app development services, it is your prime responsibility to ensure that the application is highly secure and safe and does not possess any security threat.
So, what are the common security vulnerabilities, and what should be your plan of action to prevent any cybercriminals from attacking your application? This blog discusses it in length.
What you need is the appropriate mindset, a team of the best developers, quality engineers, and an end-to-end web application audit to ensure that your application is security-proof against all possible vulnerabilities.
What are the web application vulnerabilities?
They are security weaknesses that might jeopardize the web application’s security and safety by encouraging web attackers to breach the security and steal data and other vital information.
Web developers must address these security vulnerabilities so that cybercriminals find it hard to access your website through source code or any other means.
Let’s discuss some common security pitfalls to web applications.
1. SQL Injection
Here, the attacker attacks the application from the backend by using malicious SQL code. With such code, they manipulate the backend databases and control the website by getting unauthorized administrative access.
2. Insecure Direct Object References
When you trust your user’s input without asking for authorization, you might end up paying the price for it. A direct object reference is a security vulnerability where an internal object like a file or database key is known to the user. It is not an issue.
The issue arises when users can access such key without authentication. The thing is, an attacker can also provide such reference and access the key to do something you have never imagined. Therefore, a web application development company must ensure an enforced and strong authentication to prevent such attacks.
3. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Another common security vulnerability is cross-site scripting, where attackers target the application users to access user accounts, deface an application, inject Trojans, or make changes in the page content. Other XSS variants are stored XSS and Reflected XSS that can put your application in danger.
4. Sensitive Data Exposure
It is one of the common security vulnerabilities which occur due to the sheer negligence of developers. We all know security encryption is of utmost importance when it comes to data security.
Ensure that you encrypt your sensitive data in transit and at rest to avoid any security breaches and data exposure. Furthermore, ensure that all crucial data don’t travel or stored unencrypted and hash all the passwords. Finally, ensure that your application’s crypto/hashing algorithm is solid and robust.
Also, keep the secure flag on for your sensitive cookies to avoid such data exposure.
5. Remote File Inclusion (RFI)
This security vulnerability results from remote injection of files into an application server, leading to various security issues such as malicious script, code execution, web server compromise, data stealing, and unauthorized administrative access.
6. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Cross-site recovery forgery is a malicious attack on the application’s security, leading to unwanted fund transfers, password changes, or data stealing. Here, when the user is in the open session, the attacker strikes, and the browser unknowingly performs actions on a site.
Some of the best web app security practices include strengthening application inputs and outputs, employing secure coding practices, and testing the web application against all potential threats and breaches.
In addition, developers also ensure that they employ security practices at each stage of the development to identify and address security issues.
Thankfully, most of the popular website frameworks have in-built security features that might prevent common security vulnerabilities.
The Best Security Practices to Address Security Vulnerabilities
Now, let’s focus on the best security practices that might help us address these security vulnerabilities. It covers two aspects: Static security testing and Dynamic security testing of a web application.
1. Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Static application security testing ensures that all your source code is scanned for all types of possible security vulnerabilities and threats. The best and ideal practice is to incorporate code scanning in each stage of web application development. Ask web app development services provider to ensure it before the app development.
However, one limitation of this approach is its vulnerability to showing false positives. Therefore, developers need to analyze and filter all the results to identify and address real security threats.
2. Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Here, the quality engineers deploy testing manually or automatically to find any security vulnerabilities and issues. Developers use various testing tools to make it happen to rule out any security threats. Manual tools such as Burp suite, Postman, and Fiddler are used for manual testing, all about working with application API.
On the other hand, special DAST automation tools are used for automated testing. Here, devices send many requests to application code to find security vulnerabilities.
3. Penetration Testing
Penetrating testing is one of the most typical web application testing approaches to find out common security pitfalls. It perfectly combines human expertise with dynamic scanning tools to ensure no security vulnerabilities stay in the application posture.
Quality engineers, also known as Pentesters, act like cybercriminals and perform actions such as gaining access, stealing data, disturbing various functionalities and operations, and other security breaches. However, they have signed a contract with the website owner to discover security vulnerabilities for such actions.
However, don’t rush to ask a web application development company to carry out penetration testing. Understand that it is a tricky thing to carry out. Nevertheless, the approach can identify issues that other testing approaches can miss.
Web Application Best Security Practices
1. Authentication and Access Control
Authentication and access control are all about ensuring basic access control measures to prevent any security issues. You can implement various security measures such as:
a. Enforcing strong passwords.
b. Force re-authentication for sensible data access.
c. Use the principle of least privilege (POLP).
d. Use SSL and encryption for data security.
e. Monitor user accounts.
f. Block users if you smell any suspicious activity.
2. Avoid Security Misconfigurations
Misconfiguration is one of the apparent reasons for security breaches. You need to ensure the best configuration practices for any web framework you are using. Some of the things you can take care of are:
a. Choose administrator passwords that cannot be broken.
b. Ensure changing default usernames now and then.
c. Take proactive security measures for files with sensitive content.
d. Keep ports closed when you don’t want them open.
e. Update to the latest stable version for all plugins and libraries.
f. Scan your packages and third-party plugins to detect any security threats.
g. Remember to keep digital certificates up to date.
h. Ensure secure communication and networking protocols.
3. Exception Management
Sometimes, to offer valuable services, we show things to users that we should not, in the ideal case. For example, if a website is not performing due to an error, we establish long stack traces of exceptions and errors to understand the issue.
It would be best if you did not do that. Just show the error message, and that’s it. Such exceptions and information can be fatal as attackers will find it very useful to design their strategy.
Just show what the error is all about and how to resolve it — nothing else. I repeat, nothing else.
4. Managing Containers Perfectly
When you are using containers to run a web application, you might end up jeopardizing your app’s security. Follow the best security practices while doing so, as discussed here.
a. Use only trusted images that quality engineers thoroughly scan.
b. Don’t save sensitive information on a container directly. Use secret mechanisms to store sensitive data.
c. Never allow root access on a system. Better define a user perfectly in your images.
d. Have a robust network segmentation to ensure containers cannot access other systems except in exceptional cases.
5. Quality Assurance and Thorough Testing of an Application
As discussed earlier, ensure that you have the best quality engineers for web app security who can run different testing approaches during the web application development life cycle, such as penetration testing, static & dynamic testing, CI/CD adoption, etc.
Conclusion
The security of your web application is of utmost importance, and you should adhere to the best security practices to prevent any types of security mishaps and breaches.
If you don’t have an in-house development team to maintain your website, you should hire professional web app development services to do the job. They will ensure that your application is safe. In addition, they will leverage their expertise to meet your security goals.
