The digital landscape is full of attackers with bad intentions who are looking for ways to make a quick, criminal buck off your application—and ruin your brand reputation in the process. Here are 11 of the most common application security vulnerabilities they can exploit, along with solutions to prevent a worst-case scenario.
SQL injection attacks occur when bad actors exploit vulnerabilities in an application’s input validation system. They use it to insert malicious code into the application’s queries. By injecting this code, attackers can execute arbitrary SQL commands and access, modify, or delete data in your database.
SQL injection attacks are among the most common ways hackers exploit web application security vulnerabilities—and also among the most dangerous.
By using tools such as input validation protocols and parameterized queries, you can strengthen your application’s security and make it more resilient to attacks. You can also use code security tools like Kiuwan to determine your app’s vulnerabilities and address them—before attackers can.
Broken authentication is an application vulnerability that has multiple forms. In most data breaches, common causes include URL rewriting, improper application timeout settings, inadequate password protection, and predictable login credentials.
Protecting your system from broken authentication issues starts with teaching your users some security best practices. Teach them to protect their passwords with encryption and not use easily guessable passwords—we all know at least one person whose password was compromised because they used “password” or “abcdefg1” as their password. Or worse, they used that same password in multiple places.
You can also take these steps to protect your app or system from broken authentication attacks:
Sensitive data exposure refers to the disclosure of private information, either during transmission, such as when someone logs in, or when it is stored in a manner that allows it to be viewed by the public. This is another standard method for phishing attacks.
Strong encryption features are crucial in preventing attacks that result from sensitive data exposure. Whether you use a password storage application or have updated passkeys, encryption, and vigilance are essential.
This common application security vulnerability occurs when attackers use a weakly configured XML parser to access sensitive data. It can lead to confidential data being exposed, DDOS attacks, server-side request forgery, and other impacts that can harm your system and organization.
The most effective form of application security vulnerability management to prevent these attacks is to disable XML external entity processing. However, if your system requires you to use XML parsers, use libraries that are explicitly resistant to these kinds of attacks.
Broken access control attacks occur when users attempt to access parts of your site or system that they don’t have permission to access.
Here is a classic example of this attack in action: Suppose your marketing department recently fired an employee, and the relationship ended on bad terms. The employee had access to your website, and because they were upset about losing their job, they used their active credentials to log in to your site and wreak havoc on your code, breaking the site.
At this point, you have a mess that can cause your business to lose money and customers and could take a long time to fix.
This entire situation can be prevented if you review permissions regularly and maintain good data hygiene regarding access to your systems.
Attackers can exploit security misconfigurations by leveraging untouched default settings on your system. For example, if you have a default password set up for new users, they can exploit that to access your system and potentially access customer data such as credit card or bank account information.
To prevent these types of attacks, regularly change your default passwords and frequently check your system’s configurations and patches to reduce the potential attack surface area in your digital infrastructure.
Cross-site scripting (XSS) occurs when attackers inject malicious scripts into a website, typically by sending malicious links that trick users into sending their session cookies.
In addition to helping your users understand the risks of clicking suspicious links, you can also use output encoding to ensure browsers interpret it as benign data rather than suspicious code.
Deserialization is the process of restoring serialized data into a functional replica of the object that was previously serialized. Insecure deserialization occurs when websites restore user-controllable data. Attackers can use this to manipulate your application and pass harmful data into its code.
To prevent these types of attacks, use only data sources that you can vet and trust. Using trusted serialization formats can also help prevent insecure deserialization attempts. Even more, if you want to be thorough, you can also conduct tests afterward with Ranorex Studio to ensure your application is both secure and functional.
Some plugins and drivers can be a data breach or ransomware attack waiting to happen. Open-source components are particularly vulnerable to this, especially if you can’t keep up with critical security patches as soon as they come out. Hackers can exploit outdated, vulnerable versions of your components to gain unauthorized access to your system with ease.
To prevent these types of attacks, conduct regular software composition analyses (SCA). SCA tools can work in tandem with programs like Dotfuscator to help you identify and patch vulnerable areas in open-source code.
Your IT and security teams need to regularly use monitoring tools to track all activity within your app. This includes checking open-source components for updates and security vulnerabilities. Otherwise, attackers can slip by as easily as a jewel thief sneaking past a sleeping security guard at a museum.
Cross-site request forgeries (CSRF) allow attackers to inject malicious code directly into a webpage. This often happens when users click on malicious links or submit suspicious forms, giving their username and password data to attackers.
Data obfuscation techniques, such as input validation and output encoding, can help prevent CSRF attacks. By checking user input to ensure its validity before processing it, your application reduces its attackable surface area.
PreEmptive’s products offer the best in-app protection for desktop and mobile programs across all the most widely used programming languages. Dotfuscator, DashO, and JSDefender add multiple layers of protection to reduce your application’s attack surface area.
In turn, they harden your application and make it less vulnerable to code tampering, unauthorized debugging, and reverse engineering attacks. You’ll be able to protect your user data and protect your sensitive data, and brand reputation.
See how PreEmptive’s suite of app security programs can make your program safer than ever. Request your free trial today!