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Demystifying JavaScript: A Comprehensive Introduction to Coding for Beginners
JavaScript is a powerful programming language that has become an essential skill for developers and web designers alike. Whether you’re looking to create interactive websites or develop robust applications, learning JavaScript is a worthwhile endeavor. In this article, we will demystify the world of JavaScript and provide a comprehensive introduction to coding for beginners.
Understanding the Basics of JavaScript
JavaScript is a high-level programming language that allows you to add dynamic behavior to your websites. It is primarily used for client-side scripting, meaning it runs on the user’s web browser rather than the server. This enables you to create interactive elements such as forms, buttons, and animations that respond to user actions in real-time.
To get started with JavaScript, it’s important to have a solid understanding of basic programming concepts. These include variables, data types, conditionals, loops, functions, and objects. Familiarizing yourself with these fundamental building blocks will provide a strong foundation for your coding journey.
Writing Your First JavaScript Code
Once you grasp the core concepts of programming, it’s time to write your first lines of JavaScript code. You can embed JavaScript directly into your HTML documents using script tags or link an external JavaScript file. The latter approach promotes better code organization and reusability.
In your initial coding endeavors, start with simple tasks such as displaying an alert message or changing the content of an HTML element dynamically. These small exercises will help you understand how JavaScript interacts with HTML and CSS.
Additionally, there are numerous online resources available that offer interactive coding environments where you can practice writing JavaScript code in real-time. These platforms provide hands-on experience and often include step-by-step tutorials that guide beginners through various coding challenges.
Exploring Key Concepts in JavaScript
As you progress in your journey to master JavaScript, it’s important to delve deeper into its key concepts. One such concept is variable scope, which determines the accessibility and lifetime of variables within your code. Understanding how scope works is crucial for writing clean and efficient JavaScript programs.
Another important aspect of JavaScript is its event-driven nature. Events are actions or occurrences that happen in the browser, such as a button click or a page load. By leveraging event handling techniques, you can create interactive user experiences that respond to specific events.
In addition to these concepts, it’s essential to learn about arrays, objects, and functions in JavaScript. Arrays allow you to store multiple values in a single variable, while objects enable you to represent complex data structures. Functions, on the other hand, are reusable blocks of code that perform specific tasks.
Best Practices and Resources for Learning JavaScript
As with any programming language, following best practices is crucial when coding in JavaScript. One important practice is writing clean and readable code by using meaningful variable names and proper indentation. Commenting your code can also help others (or even yourself) understand its purpose and functionality.
Furthermore, JavaScript has a vast ecosystem with numerous libraries and frameworks that can enhance your development workflow. Some popular libraries include jQuery for DOM manipulation and D3.js for data visualization. Frameworks like React.js and Angular.js provide powerful tools for building scalable web applications.
When it comes to learning resources, there are plenty of online tutorials, courses, and books available that cater specifically to beginners learning JavaScript. Websites like Codecademy, MDN Web Docs, freeCodeCamp offer comprehensive guides that cover everything from the basics to advanced topics.
In conclusion, coding JavaScript for beginners may seem daunting at first but with dedication and practice it becomes an achievable goal. By understanding the basics of JavaScript programming language and exploring its key concepts like variables scope or event-driven nature – beginners will be able to write their first lines of code in no time. Remember to follow best practices when coding in order to write clean and readable code. The resources available online will provide you with the information and guidance needed to become proficient in JavaScript.
This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.
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Web Application Security
- What is web application security?
Why is web security testing important?
What are the different types of security tests.
- How does application security testing reduce your organization's risk?
What features should be reviewed during a web application security test?
- What to read next
Web application security (also known as Web AppSec) is the idea of building websites to function as expected, even when they are under attack. The concept involves a collection of security controls engineered into a Web application to protect its assets from potentially malicious agents. Web applications, like all software, inevitably contain defects. Some of these defects constitute actual vulnerabilities that can be exploited, introducing risks to organizations. Web application security defends against such defects. It involves leveraging secure development practices and implementing security measures throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC), ensuring that design-level flaws and implementation-level bugs are addressed.
Software Vulnerability Snapshot
The latest report highlights persistent vulnerabilities in web and software application security, including information disclosure/leakage, misconfigurations, and insufficient transport layer protection. The report also emphasizes the risks of vulnerable third-party libraries and the importance of software supply chain security.
Web security testing aims to find security vulnerabilities in Web applications and their configuration. The primary target is the application layer (i.e., what is running on the HTTP protocol). Testing the security of a Web application often involves sending different types of input to provoke errors and make the system behave in unexpected ways. These so called “negative tests” examine whether the system is doing something it isn’t designed to do.
It is also important to understand that Web security testing is not only about testing the security features (e.g., authentication and authorization) that may be implemented in the application. It is equally important to test that other features are implemented in a secure way (e.g., business logic and the use of proper input validation and output encoding). The goal is to ensure that the functions exposed in the Web application are secure.
- Dynamic Application Security Test (DAST) . This automated application security test is best for internally facing, low-risk applications that must comply with regulatory security assessments. For medium-risk applications and critical applications undergoing minor changes, combining DAST with some manual web security testing for common vulnerabilities is the best solution.
- Static Application Security Test (SAST) . This application security approach offers automated and manual testing techniques. It is best for identifying bugs without the need to execute applications in a production environment. It also enables developers to scan source code and systematically find and eliminate software security vulnerabilities.
- Penetration Test . This manual application security test is best for critical applications, especially those undergoing major changes. The assessment involves business logic and adversary-based testing to discover advanced attack scenarios.
- Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP) . This evolving application security approach encompasses a number of technological techniques to instrument an application so that attacks can be monitored as they execute and, ideally, blocked in real time.
How does application security testing reduce your organization’s risk?
Majority of Web Application Attacks
- SQL Injection
- XSS (Cross Site Scripting)
- Remote Command Execution
- Path Traversal
Attack Results
- Access to restricted content
- Compromised user accounts
- Installation of malicious code
- Lost sales revenue
- Loss of trust with customers
- Damaged brand reputation
- And much more
A Web application in today’s environment can be affected by a wide range of issues. The diagram above demonstrates several of the top attacks used by attackers, which can result in serious damage to an individual application or the overall organization. Knowing the different attacks that make an application vulnerable, in addition to the potential outcomes of an attack, allow your firm to preemptively address the vulnerabilities and accurately test for them.
By identifying the root cause of the vulnerabilities, mitigating controls can be implemented during the early stages of the SDLC to prevent any issues. Additionally, knowledge of how these attacks work can be leveraged to target known points of interest during a Web application security test.
Recognizing the impact of an attack is also key to managing your firm’s risk, as the effects of a successful attack can be used to gauge the vulnerability’s total severity. If issues are identified during a security test, defining their severity allows your firm to efficiently prioritize the remediation efforts. Start with critical severity issues and work towards lower impact issues to minimize risk to your firm.
Prior to an issue being identified, evaluating the potential impact against each application within your firm’s application library can facilitate the prioritization of application security testing. With an established list of high profile applications, wenb security testing can be scheduled to target your firm’s critical applications first with more targeted testing to lower the risk against the business.
The following non-exhaustive list of features should be reviewed during Web application security testing. An inappropriate implementation of each could result in vulnerabilities, creating serious risk for your organization.
- Application and server configuration . Potential defects are related to encryption/cryptographic configurations, Web server configurations, etc.
- Input validation and error handling . SQL injection , cross-site scripting (XSS), and other common injection vulnerabilities are the result of poor input and output handling.
- Authentication and session management . Vulnerabilities potentially resulting in user impersonation. Credential strength and protection should also be considered.
- Authorization . Testing the ability of the application to protect against vertical and horizontal privilege escalations.
- Business logic . These are important to most applications that provide business functionality.
- Client-side logic . With modern, JavaScript-heavy webpages, in addition to webpages using other types of client-side technologies (e.g., Silverlight, Flash, Java applets), this type of feature is becoming more prevalent.
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Questions about application security.
What Is Web Application Security?
Web application security refers to a variety of processes, technologies, or methods for protecting web servers, web applications, and web services such as APIs from attack by Internet-based threats. Web application security is crucial to protecting data, customers, and organizations from data theft, interruptions in business continuity, or other harmful results of cybercrime.
By most estimates, more than three-quarters of all cybercrime targets applications and their vulnerabilities. Web application security products and policies strive to protect applications through measures such as web application firewalls (WAFs), multi-factor authentication (MFA) for users, the use, protection, and validation of cookies to maintain user state and privacy status, and various methods for validating user input to ensure it is not malicious before that input is processed by an application.
The world today runs on apps, from online banking and remote work apps to personal entertainment delivery and e-commerce. It’s no wonder that applications are a primary target for attackers, who exploit vulnerabilities such as design flaws as well as weaknesses in APIs, open-source code, third-party widgets, and access control.
Common attacks against web applications include:
- Brute force
- Credential stuffing
- SQL injection and formjacking injections
- Cross-site scripting
- Cookie poisoning
- Man-in-the-middle (MITM) and man-in-the-browser attacks
- Sensitive data disclosure
- Insecure deserialization
- Session hijacking
One recent study 1 estimated that cybercrime will cost $5.2 trillion in lost value across all industries by 2024. Another estimated the losses will reach $6 trillion annually before then 2 . Security devices and technologies are crucial for limiting, if not eliminating, such costs. In addition to direct financial and data theft, web application threats can destroy assets, customer goodwill, and business reputations. That makes web application security imperative for organizations of all sizes.
Different approaches to web application security address different vulnerabilities. Web application firewalls (WAFs) , among the more comprehensive, defend against many types of attack by monitoring and filtering traffic between the web application and any user. Configured with policies that help determine what traffic is safe and what isn’t, a WAF can block malicious traffic, preventing it from reaching the web application and preventing the app from releasing any unauthorized data.
Other web application security methods focus on user authentication and access management, app vulnerability scanners, cookie management, traffic visibility, and IP denylists, for instance.
The F5 Advanced WAF can help organizations protect their apps and sensitive customer data by mitigating application vulnerabilities with application-layer encryption and behavioral analysis backed by machine learning and threat intelligence.
The Silverline Web Application Firewall provides app protection as a cloud-based managed service for enterprises interested in operational efficiency, flexibility, and expert support.
F5 WebSafe and MobileSafe protect against fraud activity by helping to secure transactions that may involve unsecure mobile devices or browsers while remaining transparent to users.
1 Chris Thompson, What Will Cybercrime Cost Your Financial Firm? , Accenture (July 15, 2019)
2 2019 Official Annual Cybercrime Report , Cybersecurity Ventures (December 2018

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See how imperva can help, web application security, what is web application security.
Web application security is the process of protecting websites and online services against different security threats that exploit vulnerabilities in an application’s code. Common targets for web application attacks are content management systems (e.g., WordPress), database administration tools (e.g., phpMyAdmin) and SaaS applications.
Perpetrators consider web applications high-priority targets due to:
- The inherent complexity of their source code, which increases the likelihood of unattended vulnerabilities and malicious code manipulation.
- High value rewards, including sensitive private data collected from successful source code manipulation.
- Ease of execution, as most attacks can be easily automated and launched indiscriminately against thousands, or even tens or hundreds of thousands of targets at a time.
Organizations failing to secure their web applications run the risk of being attacked. Among other consequences, this can result in information theft, damaged client relationships, revoked licenses and legal proceedings.
Web application vulnerabilities
Web application vulnerabilities are typically the result of a lack of input/output sanitization, which are often exploited to either manipulate source code or gain unauthorized access.
Such vulnerabilities enable the use of different attack vectors, including:
- SQL Injection – Occurs when a perpetrator uses malicious SQL code to manipulate a backend database so it reveals information. Consequences include the unauthorized viewing of lists, deletion of tables and unauthorized administrative access.
- Cross-site Scripting (XSS) – XSS is an injection attack targeting users in order to access accounts, activate Trojans or modify page content. Stored XSS occurs when malicious code is injected directly into an application. Reflected XSS takes place when malicious script is reflected off of an application onto a user’s browser.
- Remote File Inclusion – A hacker uses this type of attack to remotely inject a file onto a web application server. This can result in the execution of malicious scripts or code within the application, as well as data theft or manipulation.
- Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF) – An attack that could result in an unsolicited transfer of funds, changed passwords or data theft. It’s caused when a malicious web application makes a user’s browser perform an unwanted action in a site to which a user is logged on.
In theory, thorough input/output sanitization could eliminate all vulnerabilities, making an application immune to unlawful manipulation.
However, complete sanitization usually isn’t a practical option, since most applications exist in a constant development state. Moreover, applications are also frequently integrated with each other to create an increasingly complex coded environment.
Web application security solutions and enforced security procedures, such as PCI Data Security Standard ( PCI DSS ) certification, should be deployed to avoid such threats.

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Web application firewall (WAF)

Web application firewalls (WAFs) are hardware and software solutions used for protection from application security threats. These solutions are designed to examine incoming traffic to block attack attempts, thereby compensating for any code sanitization deficiencies.
By securing data from theft and manipulation, WAF deployment meets a key criteria for PCI DSS certification. Requirement 6.6 states that all credit and debit cardholder data held in a database must be protected.
Generally, deploying a WAF doesn’t require making any changes to an application, as it is placed ahead of its DMZ at the edge of a network. From there, it acts as a gateway for all incoming traffic, blocking malicious requests before they have a chance to interact with an application.
WAFs use several different heuristics to determine which traffic is given access to an application and which needs to be weeded out. A constantly-updated signature pool enables them to instantly identify bad actors and known attack vectors.
Almost all WAFs can be custom-configured for specific use cases and security policies, and to combat emerging (a.k.a., zero-day) threats. Finally, most modern solutions leverage reputational and behavior data to gain additional insights into incoming traffic.
WAFs are typically integrated with other security solutions to form a security perimeter. These may include distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection services that provide additional scalability required to block high-volume attacks.
Web application security checklist
In addition to WAFs, there are a number of methods for securing web applications. The following processes should be part of any web application security checklist:
- Information gathering – Manually review the application, identifying entry points and client-side codes. Classify third-party hosted content.
- Authorization – Test the application for path traversals; vertical and horizontal access control issues; missing authorization and insecure, direct object references.
- Cryptography – Secure all data transmissions. Has specific data been encrypted? Have weak algorithms been used? Do randomness errors exist?
- Denial of service – Improve an application’s resilience against denial of service threats by testing for anti-automation, account lockout, HTTP protocol DoS and SQL wildcard DoS. This doesn’t cover protection from high-volume DoS and DDoS attacks, which are best countered by a combination of filtering solutions and scalable resources.
Refer to the OWASP Web Application Security Testing Cheat Sheet for additional information; it’s also a valuable resource for other security-related matters.
See how Imperva Web Application Firewall can help you with web application security.
Imperva network and web application security solutions
Imperva offers an entire suite of web application and network security solutions, all delivered via our cloud-based CDN platform.

- Web application firewall (WAF) – Managed 24/7 by our team of security experts, Imperva cloud WAF uses crowdsourcing technology and IP reputation to prevent attacks aiming to exploit application vulnerabilities. This solution also comes complete with a custom rules engine, enabling total on-the-fly control over all security policies.
- DDoS protection – Our multi-faceted DDoS mitigation services offer blanket protection against all network layer and application DDoS attacks. Imperva users can choose between DNS and BGP-enabled options to secure websites, web applications and server infrastructure.
- Bot filtering – Malicious bots are used in mass-scale automated assaults, accounting for over 90% of all application layer attacks. Imperva bot filtering is a free service that uses advanced client classification, a progressive challenge system and reputational scoring to identify and filter out nefarious bot traffic.
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An Introduction to Web Application Security
Home » Microservices and Containers Guide
What Is Web Application Security?
Web application security is the notion of protecting web applications, web services such as APIs, and web servers from attack by building security controls that help websites function as designed, even under attack. Like any software, web applications have defects. Some are real vulnerabilities that can introduce risk to organizations and be exploited.
Web application security resolves these potentially harmful defects by implementing security measures and leveraging secure development practices throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC). Improving web application security addresses implementation-level flaws and design-level bugs.
Web application data security is crucial to protecting customers, their data, and organizations of all sizes from cybercrime including data theft. Cloud web application security architecture spans multiple layers in the cloud, which means it is vulnerable at various points.
Cloud web application API security delivers both distributed cloud protection for a web application and API security specifically, along with bot protection and other security for distributed apps and APIs across edge sites and in the cloud.
Web Application Security Basics
Many types of web application security threats exist, ranging from large-scale network disruptions to targeted manipulation of databases. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 list names the ten most critical web application security risks most likely to harm applications in production.
However, even beyond the OWASP top 10 web application security risks, numerous threats can affect software applications and web application cyber security. Here are some of the most common web application security vulnerabilities:
Injection vulnerabilities
Injection vulnerabilities such as cross site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection allow threat actors to deliver malicious data to be executed on the web application server. XSS vulnerabilities are common web application security issues that allow attackers to inject client-side scripts into a webpage to access important information directly or impersonate and trick the user into revealing important information. Attackers use SQL injection to exploit application vulnerabilities to gain access to unauthorized information, modify or create new user permissions, or otherwise access sensitive data.
Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are web application security issues that enable attackers to overwhelm a targeted server and its surrounding infrastructure with a variety of attack traffic and vectors. Eventually, the target server is slow and sluggish and cannot process requests effectively, denying service to the incoming requests of legitimate users.
Broken access control
Broken access control is among the most common web application security breaches and allows users to gain unauthorized access and privileges. Most often, broken access control enables attackers to act as administrators or regular users or grants unauthorized privileged functions.
Cryptographic failures
Cryptographic failures—sometimes referred to as sensitive data exposures—occur when data is improperly protected at rest and in transit, exposing sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers, and health records. These web application security challenges can lead to non-compliance with financial standards like PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) and data privacy regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Insecure design
Insecure design covers missing or ineffective security controls that cause more frequent web application security attacks. Secure design can remediate implementation flaws in applications, but no amount of configuration or remediation can repair insecure design.
Security misconfigurations
Security misconfigurations such as XML external entities (XXE) vulnerabilities occur due to a lack of security hardening across the application stack. Other common security misconfigurations that give rise to web application security concerns include unrequired features that remain installed or enabled, cloud service permissions that are improperly configured, or admin accounts or default passwords left in place.
Vulnerable and outdated components
Vulnerable and outdated components are another class of common security threats for web applications that includes unsupported or outdated software. This commonly happens when using or building on applications without complete knowledge of versions and internal components.
Server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities
Server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities are challenges to web application security that occur when a web application fails to validate user input URLs before pulling data from remote resources.
Advantages of Web Application Security
Why is web application security important? Active web application security testing aims to detect security vulnerabilities in web applications and their configuration. Web application security targets the application layer to provoke the system to behave in unexpected ways and uncover unusual system errors unpredicted at the design stage.
However, the overall goal of managing web application security is to ensure that exposed functions in the web application are—and remain—secure. This is why web application security is important: it tests implemented security features inside the application such as authorization as well as secure implementation of other features such as business logic and input validation. Other benefits of web application security include reduced risk from insiders and enhanced protection of sensitive data.
Web Application Security Best Practices
What are the best practices for web application security?

Perform a threat assessment
Perform a threat assessment to know how specifically to enhance organizational web application security standards. Create a list of sensitive assets, consider the range of threats that face them, what methods a hacker might use to compromise your application, existing security measures, and how to mitigate threats with defensive measures and/or additional tools.
Shift security left
Web application development security best practices suggest transitioning from annual product releases to more frequent releases, and making security testing part of the development cycle to accommodate this change. Automated web application security tools in the CI/CD pipeline enable rapid repair of issues soon after release.
Prioritize remediation
Prioritize remediation based on severity and a threat assessment determined by common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) ratings and other criteria. Confirm whether proprietary code is using vulnerable open source components. If the product never invokes the function of the vulnerable component, its CVSS rating remains significant, yet there is neither risk nor impact.
Web application security monitoring
Measure and report application security program success by identifying the metrics that key stakeholders prioritize and present results in an actionable, clear format to achieve buy-in.
Manage privileges
Limit privileges, especially for sensitive and mission-critical systems, based on the least privilege principle. This means access to data and applications is limited to only those who need them, at the time they need access to them.
A web application firewall (WAF) is among the most important web application security features. A WAF creates a filtration barrier between a targeted server/web application and malicious HTTP traffic. In this way, the WAF intercepts attacks like cross site scripting, cross site forgery, and SQL injection.
How to Test Web Application Security: Application Security Testing
Application Security Testing (AST) is a process of identifying and remediating security vulnerabilities to help make applications more resilient to security threats. AST involves tools that can identify source code vulnerabilities and test applications for runtime security weaknesses as well as network vulnerability scanners.
Here are some common types of web application security testing:
Black box security testing
In a black box test, the tester takes the outside attacker’s perspective and the testing system lacks access to the internal system. A human tester or testing tool must actively discover vulnerabilities during reconnaissance, which allows identification of systems to be tested, but cannot test underlying application security weaknesses.
White box security testing
A white box test grants the testing system complete internal access to the tested application. Static code analysis is a classic example of white-box testing as is dynamic testing. White box testing is often used to identify issues with code quality, vulnerabilities in business logic, insecure coding, and security misconfigurations. However, not all vulnerabilities are truly exploitable in production environments—a real downside to the white-box approach.
Gray box security testing
A gray-box test seeks to strike a balance between white and black box models and offers a hybrid approach with the testing system having access to limited information on the tested application. For example, the tester might take the perspective of a signed-in user with provided login credentials so they can test the application and analyze privileged access. Gray box tests can simulate attackers who are already inside the network perimeter or other insider threats.
Dynamic application security test (DAST)
DAST is an automated form of application security testing. Used alone DAST is ideal for ensuring low-risk, internally facing applications comply with regulatory security assessments. For critical applications undergoing minor changes and other applications of medium-risk, it is best to combine DAST with manual web security testing for common vulnerabilities.
Static application security test (SAST)
SAST provides manual and automated testing techniques for identifying bugs in a production environment. It also allows developers to systematically scan source code to eliminate security vulnerabilities in software.
Interactive application security test (IAST)
IAST tools employ DAST and SAST tools and methods to detect a wider range of security issues. These tools run dynamically to inspect software during runtime to determine the root cause of vulnerabilities. This helps developers identify specific lines of affected code to better understand how to ensure security in web applications. IAST tools are also useful in API testing.
Mobile application security testing (MAST)
MAST tools test mobile application security using various techniques involving dynamic and static analysis and forensic data investigation. Organizations check security vulnerabilities with MAST tools and monitor mobile-specific issues, such as data leakage, jailbreaking, and malicious WiFi networks.
Penetration testing
This manual application security test is ideal for critical applications, particularly those undergoing big changes. The assessment involves adversary-based testing and deployment of business logic to identify advanced attack scenarios.
Runtime application self protection (RASP)
The RASP technology and security approach is an evolving technique for applications that encompasses various web application security principles and technological techniques aimed at monitoring and blocking attacks in real-time. RASP technology can analyze application traffic and user behavior at runtime to help prevent cyber threats by achieving visibility into application vulnerabilities and exploited security weaknesses.
Software composition analysis (SCA)
SCA tools generate an inventory of third-party commercial and open source components used inside software to identify which versions and components are actively used. Organizations use SCA tools to find security vulnerabilities contained in these third-party components.
Cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP)
A CNAPP unites tools needed to protect cloud native applications in a centralized control panel and unifies cloud security posture management (CSPM) and cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) with other capabilities. Container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes often deploy CNAPP technology to incorporate API discovery and protection, identity entitlement management, and automation and orchestration security for containers.
Web Application Security Solutions
Various web application security testing and security approaches address different vulnerabilities.
Web application security software such as firewalls, web application firewalls (WAF), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS), are basic tools in this space. Among the more advanced web application security tools, web application firewalls (WAFs) monitor and filter traffic between users and the web application to defend against many types of attacks. A WAF is configured with policies that help analyze traffic, block unsafe traffic, and stop the app from leaking data.
Several other techniques for promoting security and building secure web applications throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC) include:
- Introduce web application security testing tools and security standards during the design and application development phases.
- Protect applications in production environments with continuous web application security assessment.
- Implement strong authentication and web application security services for any mission-critical applications or any that contain sensitive data.
- Other web application security products and techniques include app vulnerability scanners, access management and user authentication, cookie management, IP denylists, and traffic visibility.

Does Avi Offer Web Application Security?
Traditional web application security solutions such as appliance-based web application firewalls (WAFs are rigid to scale, complex to manage, require costly overprovisioning to compensate for lack of elasticity, and lack application security insights. Along with growing numbers and severity of web application attacks, these web application security challenges have increased the need for a modern, secure web application framework critical for today’s enterprise.
In contrast to traditional hardware-based solutions, Avi’s Web App Security is a comprehensive Web Application and API Protection solution that delivers network and application security with a context-aware web application firewall (WAF) to protect against all forms of digital threats.
Avi’s Web App Security solution offers:
- Positive security with WAF learning mode
- Real-time app security insights
- Centralized application security management
Learn more about Avi’s web application security platform here .
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Web Application Security
Learn the fundamentals of web application security including common vulnerabilities.
Topic Overview
What is Web Application Security?
Why is web application security important, the owasp top 10 vulnerabilities, web application security reporting, 2023 gartner® market guide for cnapp.
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Web application security is the practice of defending websites, web applications, and web services against malicious cyber-attacks such as SQL injection , cross-site scripting , or other forms of potential threats .
Scanning your web applications for vulnerabilities is a security measure that is not optional in today’s threat landscape. But before you can effectively scan web applications, it’s essential to understand what a web application is and why it’s so important to have a web application security program at your organization.
You can think of web applications as open doors to your home or business. They include any software application where the user interface or activity occurs online. This can include email, a retail site, or an entertainment streaming service, among countless others.
With web applications, a user must be able to interact with the host’s network to serve up the content they are after. If a web application is not hardened for security, it’s possible to manipulate the application to go back into the host database that it sits on to send you any data that you or an attacker requests, even if it is sensitive information.
Web applications need to freely allow traffic through a variety of ports and usually require authentication; this means they also require a complex web application vulnerability scanner . Since websites must allow traffic to come and in and out of the network, hackers often attack the most commonly used ports. This includes:
- Port 80 (HTTP): For unsecured website traffic
- Port 443 (HTTPS): For secured website traffic
- Port 21 (FTP): The file transfer protocol for transferring files to and from your servers
- Ports 25 (SMTP), for simple mail transfer protocol, and port 110 (POP3), the default unencrypted port: Email protocols often used by organizations to send and receive email.
Given the breadth of ports available, it’s no wonder that hackers have abundant opportunities to break into networks by exploiting the openness that websites must have in order to interact with their users.
This is only proven by the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report , which as repeatedly shown that web application attacks remain the most common breach pattern and are a preferred vector for malicious attackers.
By continuously monitoring and scanning your web applications, you can proactively identify vulnerabilities and remediate them before a breach occurs, staying one step ahead of attackers. Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind when evaluating application scanners for our organization.
Free Scanning Web Application Scanning Is Inaccurate
The number of free web application vulnerability scanners abounds, and although free sounds good to just about everyone, keep in mind that free scanners will likely give you a high probability of both false positive and false negative alerts—a frustrating nightmare for an IT team that is already strapped for time and energy. The old adage applies here: you get what you pay for.
Having said that, many commercial full-functional scanners allow a free-trial version that you can try out before you buy. This offers you a big advantage in purchasing such critical security equipment for your organization. You can test out the scanners to ensure it’ll accomplish what you need it to.
You want your web scanner to accurately discover vulnerabilities, not just churn out information that is labor-intensive for your IT team to wade through. How can you tell if a web application scanner is accurate? Make sure it can detect the Open Web Application Security Project, or OWASP Top Ten Vulnerabilities:
- Injection: Attackers send untrusted data to a SQL, OS, or LDAP interpreter using a command query, “tricking” the interpreter to execute commands or access critical data.
- Broken Authentication and Session Management: Hackers use authentication and session management processes to steal passwords, tokens, or keys that enable them to assume the hacked user’s identity and gain access to your network.
- Sensitive Data Exposure: It’s hard to believe, but many web applications still don’t properly protect sensitive data, such as credit cards, authentication credentials, or tax IDs. Hackers take advantage of these weaknesses to commit identity theft, credit card fraud, and other attacks.
- XML External Entities (XXE): Old or misconfigured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML docs. External entities can be used to disclose internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks.
- Broken Access Control: Restrictions are not often enforced regarding what authenticated users are allowed to do. Attackers exploit this to access unauthorized data and/or functionality.
- Security Misconfiguration: Best practice requires security configuration within the application and its surrounding orbit and platform. So if there is a misconfiguration in the security layer, hackers can easily exploit this, gaining access to your network and critical data.
- Cross-Site Scripting: A way hackers hijack user sessions, redirect to malicious sites, or deface websites through flaws in XSS. An application takes untrusted data and sends it to a web browser without a validation process, enabling the hacker to run unwanted scripts in the victim’s browser.
- Insecure Deserialization: This often leads to remote execution. Deserialization flaws can be used to perform replay attacks, privilege escalation attacks, and injection attacks.
- Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities: Software module components usually run with full privileges, so if a vulnerable component (such as a library, framework, or other software module) is exploited, this can wreak havoc, with hackers easily gaining access to the entire system.
- Insufficient Logging & Monitoring: Most attacks are allowed to transpire due to a lapse in proper logging and monitoring. Without sufficient logging and monitoring procedures, attackers can go unnoticed and have a better chance of inflicting severe damage.
You want to make sure your web application vulnerability scanner provides easy-to-read reports that output the information your scanner finds in a digestible way. Reports allow your IT team to easily and quickly identify weaknesses or holes in your web applications that could be a prime target for hackers. Reports also let you identify security threats as they happen, providing real-time resolution for any application vulnerabilities.
Remediating Web Application Vulnerabilities
While having detailed reports is crucial to making use of the data that your scanner finds, it is not enough. Your scanner should also have the ability to convert vulnerability data into a specific, detailed remediation plan.
A remediation plan can provide you with prioritized tasks and context, including what needs to be fixed, why, and by when. The best vulnerability scanners allow you to track and measure the data within the scanner software itself, or integrate the data within your IT ticketing solution.
Web Application Security Summary
Today’s threat landscape is constantly evolving. Given the number of web applications that people interact with daily, whether for business or personal use, it’s critical that these apps are protected. By scanning your applications regularly, you can identify and remediate vulnerabilities before a breach occurs to stay one step ahead of attackers.
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Application programming interfaces (api) security, dynamic application security testing (dast), continuous integration and continuous delivery or continuous deployment (ci/cd), web application firewall (waf), software development life cycle (sdlc), runtime application self-protection (rasp), web application security testing, web application vulnerabilities, devsecops: definition and deep dive, application security testing programs.
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What is Web Application Security?

To be profitable, viable, sustainable, and successful, businesses must adapt to ever-changing customer behavior, needs, and preferences. Globally, the internet penetration rate is over 50% and is continuing to increase. As more customers go online and spend greater amounts of time there, it is vital for businesses to establish and augment their online presence. This is exactly what most businesses are already doing, and others are following suit.
The web applications are enabling businesses, especially small and medium ones, to build greater brand awareness, expand their reach, reach more target audiences spread across the globe in a cost-effective manner, engage their customers and target audiences better, earn higher returns and grow. Apart from being an effective communication and transactional channel, web applications enable businesses to get access to invaluable customer data which, in turn, enables them to understand the customer journey and create micro-moments. Therefore, web applications are core to businesses of today.
An introduction
Web application security , as the name suggests, is the process of securing websites, web applications, and other internet-based services from cyber-attacks, breaches, and security threats that leverage loopholes, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities in these applications or their codes.
Some of the most exploitative and critical web application vulnerabilities include Distributed denial of service (DDoS), SQL injections , cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), remote file inclusion, clickjacking, broken access control, security misconfigurations, business logic flaws, etc. There are unknown vulnerabilities about which businesses and developers learn only when the breach has happened, called zero-day threats . Zero-day threats are the most dangerous owing to this very nature.
Why is web application security necessary for businesses?
While businesses are leveraging the revolutionary developments in technology and communication and the internet penetration rates, cyber criminals too are doing the same. They are finding new and innovative ways to orchestrate breaches and cyber-attacks that will help them get access to data, which is the new oil.
The global nature of the internet exposes the websites and web applications to a greater risk of cyber-attacks that vary in nature, scale, magnitude, complexity, etc. and can be orchestrated from anywhere around the globe. It interferes with the smooth functioning of the business by causing downtimes, server crashes, exposing business and customer data, etc. So, security or the lack of it becomes a hindrance and the biggest risk for businesses.
Data breaches and cyber-attacks are costly affairs. They not only involve the obvious financial losses and monetary costs of escalation, litigation, post-attack response, etc. but also cause loss of customers, trust, reputation, and goodwill. These latter losses are often irreparable and costliest for businesses, as the biggest 21st-century data breaches have taught us.
While the big players like Facebook have the might and the resources to recuperate faster from such attacks and threats, it may not be the case for small and medium businesses that may have to shut down completely.
So, web application security is indispensable to organizations of all sizes and kinds.
How to go about web application security?
Businesses often hold two misconceptions that they need to steer away from: first that higher investment in technology and security leads to greater security and second that security is a hindrance and interferes with the speed and performance of their web applications.
Web application security and mitigation of risks should not come in the way of the business. And speed and performance of the web application need not be at the cost of web application security. It is possible to integrate all this and not compromise one for the other. How?
By hiring certified security specialists and the best of breed products like AppTrana that will provide advanced security solutions and secure your web applications while you concentrate on your core business.
AppTrana combines the power of automation and machine learning with the human intelligence and expertise of certified security specialists. It automates regular scanning and routine security tasks to continuously monitor and detect threats, DDoS attacks, anomalies, and other malicious activity. It includes a managed, intelligent WAF that provides round-the-clock, 360-degree, comprehensive, customized security which includes instantaneously blocks malicious requests, automatically patches application-layer until fixed, and analyzes traffic behavior/ attack patterns to secure applications. The security specialists aid in developing custom cybersecurity strategies and precise security measures based on of the risk profile of your business with zero assured false positives and proof of concept. Employing AppTrana will also enable you to incorporate custom rules, identify and mitigate business logic flaws.

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What is web application security, an introduction to web application security.
Web application security is the notion of protecting web applications, web services such as APIs, and web servers from attack by building security controls that help websites function as designed, even under attack. Like any software, web applications have defects. Some are real vulnerabilities that can introduce risk to organizations and be exploited.
Web application security resolves these potentially harmful defects by implementing security measures and leveraging secure development practices throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC). Improving web application security addresses implementation-level flaws and design-level bugs.
Web application data security is crucial to protecting customers, their data, and organizations of all sizes from cybercrime including data theft. Cloud web application security architecture spans multiple layers in the cloud, which means it is vulnerable at various points.
Cloud web application API security delivers both distributed cloud protection for a web application and API security specifically, along with bot protection and other security for distributed apps and APIs across edge sites and in the cloud.
Web Application Security Basics
Many types of web application security threats exist, ranging from large-scale network disruptions to targeted manipulation of databases. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 list names the ten most critical web application security risks most likely to harm applications in production.
However, even beyond the OWASP top 10 web application security risks, numerous threats can affect software applications and web application cyber security. Here are some of the most common web application security vulnerabilities:
Injection vulnerabilities
Injection vulnerabilities such as cross site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection allow threat actors to deliver malicious data to be executed on the web application server. XSS vulnerabilities are common web application security issues that allow attackers to inject client-side scripts into a webpage to access important information directly or impersonate and trick the user into revealing important information. Attackers use SQL injection to exploit application vulnerabilities to gain access to unauthorized information, modify or create new user permissions, or otherwise access sensitive data.
Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are web application security issues that enable attackers to overwhelm a targeted server and its surrounding infrastructure with a variety of attack traffic and vectors. Eventually, the target server is slow and sluggish and cannot process requests effectively, denying service to the incoming requests of legitimate users.
Broken access control
Broken access control is among the most common web application security breaches and allows users to gain unauthorized access and privileges. Most often, broken access control enables attackers to act as administrators or regular users or grants unauthorized privileged functions.
Cryptographic failures
Cryptographic failures—sometimes referred to as sensitive data exposures—occur when data is improperly protected at rest and in transit, exposing sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers, and health records. These web application security challenges can lead to non-compliance with financial standards like PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) and data privacy regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Insecure design
Insecure design covers missing or ineffective security controls that cause more frequent web application security attacks. Secure design can remediate implementation flaws in applications, but no amount of configuration or remediation can repair insecure design.
Security misconfigurations
Security misconfigurations such as XML external entities (XXE) vulnerabilities occur due to a lack of security hardening across the application stack. Other common security misconfigurations that give rise to web application security concerns include unrequired features that remain installed or enabled, cloud service permissions that are improperly configured, or admin accounts or default passwords left in place.
Vulnerable and outdated components
Vulnerable and outdated components are another class of common security threats for web applications that includes unsupported or outdated software. This commonly happens when using or building on applications without complete knowledge of versions and internal components.
Server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities
Server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities are challenges to web application security that occur when a web application fails to validate user input URLs before pulling data from remote resources.
Advantages of Web Application Security
Why is web application security important? Active web application security testing aims to detect security vulnerabilities in web applications and their configuration. Web application security targets the application layer to provoke the system to behave in unexpected ways and uncover unusual system errors unpredicted at the design stage.
However, the overall goal of managing web application security is to ensure that exposed functions in the web application are—and remain—secure. This is why web application security is important: it tests implemented security features inside the application such as authorization as well as secure implementation of other features such as business logic and input validation. Other benefits of web application security include reduced risk from insiders and enhanced protection of sensitive data.
Web Application Security Best Practices
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Perform a threat assessment
Perform a threat assessment to know how specifically to enhance organizational web application security standards. Create a list of sensitive assets, consider the range of threats that face them, what methods a hacker might use to compromise your application, existing security measures, and how to mitigate threats with defensive measures and/or additional tools.

Shift security left
Web application development security best practices suggest transitioning from annual product releases to more frequent releases, and making security testing part of the development cycle to accommodate this change. Automated web application security tools in the CI/CD pipeline enable rapid repair of issues soon after release.

Prioritize remediation
Prioritize remediation based on severity and a threat assessment determined by common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) ratings and other criteria. Confirm whether proprietary code is using vulnerable open source components. If the product never invokes the function of the vulnerable component, its CVSS rating remains significant, yet there is neither risk nor impact.

Web application security monitoring
Measure and report application security program success by identifying the metrics that key stakeholders prioritize and present results in an actionable, clear format to achieve buy-in.

Manage privileges
Limit privileges, especially for sensitive and mission-critical systems, based on the least privilege principle. This means access to data and applications is limited to only those who need them, at the time they need access to them.

A web application firewall (WAF) is among the most important web application security features. A WAF creates a filtration barrier between a targeted server/web application and malicious HTTP traffic. In this way, the WAF intercepts attacks like cross site scripting, cross site forgery, and SQL injection.
How to Test Web Application Security: Application Security Testing
Application Security Testing (AST) is a process of identifying and remediating security vulnerabilities to help make applications more resilient to security threats. AST involves tools that can identify source code vulnerabilities and test applications for runtime security weaknesses as well as network vulnerability scanners.
Here are some common types of web application security testing:
Black box security testing
In a black box test, the tester takes the outside attacker’s perspective and the testing system lacks access to the internal system. A human tester or testing tool must actively discover vulnerabilities during reconnaissance, which allows identification of systems to be tested, but cannot test underlying application security weaknesses.
White box security testing
A white box test grants the testing system complete internal access to the tested application. Static code analysis is a classic example of white-box testing as is dynamic testing. White box testing is often used to identify issues with code quality, vulnerabilities in business logic, insecure coding, and security misconfigurations. However, not all vulnerabilities are truly exploitable in production environments—a real downside to the white-box approach.
Gray box security testing
A gray-box test seeks to strike a balance between white and black box models and offers a hybrid approach with the testing system having access to limited information on the tested application. For example, the tester might take the perspective of a signed-in user with provided login credentials so they can test the application and analyze privileged access. Gray box tests can simulate attackers who are already inside the network perimeter or other insider threats.
Dynamic application security test (DAST)
DAST is an automated form of application security testing. Used alone DAST is ideal for ensuring low-risk, internally facing applications comply with regulatory security assessments. For critical applications undergoing minor changes and other applications of medium-risk, it is best to combine DAST with manual web security testing for common vulnerabilities.
Static application security test (SAST)
SAST provides manual and automated testing techniques for identifying bugs in a production environment. It also allows developers to systematically scan source code to eliminate security vulnerabilities in software.
Interactive application security test (IAST)
IAST tools employ DAST and SAST tools and methods to detect a wider range of security issues. These tools run dynamically to inspect software during runtime to determine the root cause of vulnerabilities. This helps developers identify specific lines of affected code to better understand how to ensure security in web applications. IAST tools are also useful in API testing.
Mobile application security testing (MAST)
MAST tools test mobile application security using various techniques involving dynamic and static analysis and forensic data investigation. Organizations check security vulnerabilities with MAST tools and monitor mobile-specific issues, such as data leakage, jailbreaking, and malicious WiFi networks.
Penetration testing
This manual application security test is ideal for critical applications, particularly those undergoing big changes. The assessment involves adversary-based testing and deployment of business logic to identify advanced attack scenarios.
Runtime application self protection (RASP)
The RASP technology and security approach is an evolving technique for applications that encompasses various web application security principles and technological techniques aimed at monitoring and blocking attacks in real-time. RASP technology can analyze application traffic and user behavior at runtime to help prevent cyber threats by achieving visibility into application vulnerabilities and exploited security weaknesses.
Software composition analysis (SCA)
SCA tools generate an inventory of third-party commercial and open source components used inside software to identify which versions and components are actively used. Organizations use SCA tools to find security vulnerabilities contained in these third-party components.
Cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP)
A CNAPP unites tools needed to protect cloud native applications in a centralized control panel and unifies cloud security posture management (CSPM) and cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) with other capabilities. Container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes often deploy CNAPP technology to incorporate API discovery and protection, identity entitlement management, and automation and orchestration security for containers.
Web Application Security Solutions
Various web application security testing and security approaches address different vulnerabilities.
Web application security software such as firewalls, web application firewalls (WAF), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS), are basic tools in this space. Among the more advanced web application security tools, web application firewalls (WAFs) monitor and filter traffic between users and the web application to defend against many types of attacks. A WAF is configured with policies that help analyze traffic, block unsafe traffic, and stop the app from leaking data.
Several other techniques for promoting security and building secure web applications throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC) include:
- Introduce web application security testing tools and security standards during the design and application development phases.
- Protect applications in production environments with continuous web application security assessment.
- Implement strong authentication and web application security services for any mission-critical applications or any that contain sensitive data.
- Other web application security products and techniques include app vulnerability scanners, access management and user authentication, cookie management, IP denylists, and traffic visibility.
Does NSX ALB Offer Web Application Security?
Traditional web application security solutions such as appliance-based web application firewalls (WAFs are rigid to scale, complex to manage, require costly overprovisioning to compensate for lack of elasticity, and lack application security insights. Along with growing numbers and severity of web application attacks, these web application security challenges have increased the need for a modern, secure web application framework critical for today’s enterprise.
In contrast to traditional hardware-based solutions, NSX ALB Web App Security is a comprehensive Web Application and API Protection solution that delivers network and application security with a context-aware web application firewall (WAF) to protect against all forms of digital threats.
NSX ALB Web App Security solution offers:
- Positive security with WAF learning mode
- Real-time app security insights
- Centralized application security management
Learn more about NSX ALB's web application security platform here .
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Introduction to Web Application Security

- February 16, 2023
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Hello Everyone,
Hope Everyone is Safe and Secure.
Today we are discussing about Introduction to Web Application Security
Web security is the critical aspect for web applications. Web security is the real issue associated with the Internet. It is expressed as the principle framework for the worldwide data society. Web applications provide an attractive interface for a client through a web page. The web page script gets executed on the client’s browser.
Design patterns:
Design Patterns are reusable solution to commonly occurring problems in design phase. Design pattern within the field of software development, provides experts’ knowledge and experience in form of a design template. These templates are implemented in software development life cycle (SDLC) to avoid the recurrence of specific issues in software applications. The experience and knowledge of the developers during the course of development has been captured and modeled as an answer to specific problem named as a design pattern. The developers in future can use these patterns which can reduce their task for developing the applications. An equivalent idea of designed patterns when defined to resolve the security problems within the software applications called as security design patterns. The utilization of those security patterns then resolves the security issues within the applications.
Security Pattern:
Security design pattern applies the experts’ knowledge and experience in the form of proven solutions to recurring security problems. Generally security is disregarded due to lack of security aspects within the life cycle. Only the threat analysis within the viewpoint of an attacker reveals the vulnerabilities within the application and identifying the threats within the later stage requires an excellent deal of effort. Therefore the presence of an efficient security design pattern enables to bridge the gap between developer and security experts by reducing the vulnerabilities. Security patterns attempt to provide constructive assistance in the form of worked solutions and the guidance to use them properly. A significant amount of research has already been performed within the field of security patterns. Developers can also follow catalogue consisting the set of designs and implementation guidelines highlighting the programmers viewpoint for writing secure programs. These guidelines are pragmatically collected from actual programming experiences. Researchers have designed set of patterns to satisfy security requirements of the application , but the growing risks within the web and therefore the new threats has put a challenge and has provides a new dimension to research in security patterns.
Logic Implementation:
The business logic defines the functionality of the web application, which is specified to every application. Such a functionality is manifested as an intended application control flow and is typically integrated with the navigation links of web application. For instance , authentication and authorization are a standard part of the controled flow in many web applications, through which a web application restricts its sensitive information and privileged operations from unauthorized users. This task must be performed through a decent collaboration of two approaches. the primary approach, which is practiced by most web applications, is interface hiding, where only accessible resources and actions of the web applications are presented as web links and exposed to users. The secondary approach requires explicit checks of the application state, which is maintained by session variables (or persistent objects within the database), before sensitive information and operations might be accessed.
TOP WEB APPLICATION VULNERABILITIES:
Injection: Injection weakness like SQL Injections, NoSQL Injections, LDAP Active Directory injection, happens when non-trusted information is delivered from one place to other in form of command or query.
Broken Authentication: Application functions associated with authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, session tokens and exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently.
Sensitive Data Exposure: Web applications and APIs may not play vital role to protect sensitive data, like financial, healthcare, and PII. Hacker steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, steel sensitive info or other crimes. Sensitive data could also be compromised without using extra protection, like encryption.
XML External Entities (XXE): Many Poorly and older configured XML processors evaluates the external entity references within XML documents. Attacker discloses the internal files, perform remote code execution, internal file shares, internal port scanning, and DOS attacks.
Broken Access Control: Restrictions are not properly enforced. Attackers take advantage of this flaws to access unauthorized functionality and access data of other users.
Security Misconfiguration: Security misconfiguration is a commonly seen issue. Website showing verbose error messages containing sensitive information and misconfiguration of HTTP header. So Upgrade Operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications during a timely fashion.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): It happens whenever an application take untrusted data in a web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user supplied data Using browser which can create HTML or JavaScript. Attacker executes the malicious script in the victim’s browser and hijack user sessions, and redirect the user to malicious sites.
Insecure De-serialization: It happens when user-controllable data is deserialized by site. This vulnerability potentially enables an attacker to control serialized objects as to pass harmful data into application code.
Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities: Using vulnerable version of Applications and API enable various attacks and impacts. Attacker steel data if it not patched.
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