Application security risks can cause serious damage to an organization’s sensitive data and reputation with customers. This can be a result of attackers gaining access to information through vulnerabilities in your applications.
Therefore, keeping your applications secure throughout every stage of the development process is important. To learn more about the main application security risks involved, check out our post below.
You’ll be provided with more details about common vulnerabilities in applications that attackers often try to infiltrate.
Vulnerable Authentication
Vulnerabilities within authentication processes can provide attackers with a surface to exploit. Attackers can gain access to user and admin accounts if they successfully gain entry into accounts via weak authentication.
This can enable them to have a lot of control and see sensitive data within your system. This can include usernames, passwords, and customer information. This kind of breach can be disastrous for an organization and can leave them in a place that’s difficult to come back from.
Therefore, it’s important to keep your login authentication processes secure. Two-factor authentication is a popular and effective method to improve your authentication security. It’s a method that identifies users before granting them access to a system.
In addition to this, you can include a limiting feature that blocks a user from trying to log in to an account if there are too many unsuccessful login attempts. Authenticated users will be able to verify their login details, whereas hackers will simply be blocked and have no other means of entry.
Injection Attacks
Attacks through injection techniques occur when mistrusted data is sent to someone who interprets code via an input which is then sent to your web application. Hackers often use an SQL database to find code that creates a username in plaintext.
Without proper security measures in place, this SQL code could be allowed to pass through and hackers can use it to steal information and have access to your application.
You can prevent injection attacks through proper validation methods as well as cleaning data that users have submitted. Proper validation involves not accepting data that includes a suspicious activity.
Cleaning data that has been submitted by users involves finding the dodgy-looking elements within data and making changes to fix it. Organizations also integrate controls that limit how much information can be exposed through injection attacks.
This can be an effective way to safeguard against injection attacks, even if they’re successful. Attackers may only be able to have access to less information via injection attacks.
Access Control Authentication
Access control authentication involves putting a system in place that has control over who is granted access to information and functions. If access controls aren’t secure, attackers have an easier time getting past authorization steps and can use the account as an admin.
This can allow them to have access to sensitive information that only admins should have access to. To prevent this, you can set authorization tokens to web applications that have strict controls.
Requests to privileged accounts and functions can only be accepted if users present the correct tokens for proper authorization. This is an effective method that ensures your system only gives access to known users.
External Entity Attacks
External entity attacks involve hackers carrying out web application analysis on weaknesses in XLM inputs. Once they’ve analyzed XLM inputs for vulnerabilities, they can try to exploit the weakness.
Attackers can be sent sensitive data through XLM input attacks by being tricked into believing that the recipient is authorized.
These attacks can be prevented by using simpler code within your web applications. In addition to this, XML components should be patched and updated regularly.
Weak Sensitive Data Protection
Your web applications must have tight security measures when it comes to your sensitive data. If not, hackers can gain access to sensitive information and use it with malicious intent or sell it on.
This can cause irreparable damage to your organization such as a loss in revenue, as well as a lost reputation among your customers.
You can minimize the chances of attackers gaining access to your sensitive information by encrypting data. It’s also good practice to remove caching within your data to give attackers one less way to exploit your system.
Furthermore, developers must take caution to make sure that sensitive data isn’t being accidentally stored in areas that don’t have tight security.
Cross-Site Scripting
Cross-site scripting weaknesses happen when your applications provide users with the ability to implement code into a site that’s open for others to see. This provides hackers with the chance to integrate malicious code into a user’s browser.
A common example of this involves hackers sending emails to users that are laid out to look legitimate. However, the link included in the email includes malicious code which, if clicked on, can lead to the code being run in the user’s browser. As a result, hackers can gain access to sensitive user information.
Companies can reduce the chances of cross-site scripting by avoiding the use of HTTP requests that are untrusted. In addition to this, you should clean and properly validate content that users are creating through using your website.
Misconfiguration
Misconfigurations are an incredibly common type of security risk that companies face. This can be caused by developers making errors while coding which can create vulnerabilities within your applications.
You can reduce the chances of misconfigurations happening by getting rid of elements within your code that aren’t actively being used. In addition to this, developers should be in the habit of always checking their code to ensure that applications don’t contain misconfigurations.
Conclusion
That concludes our post about some of the main types of application security risks involved. Now that you have a better idea about what these main risks are, you can be sure to pay close attention to these areas of your applications and make sure that they don’t contain weaknesses.
Hackers are always finding ways to exploit a weakness in applications. Knowing the most common areas that they try to attack can help your organization put security measures in place that make it much more difficult for cybercriminals to access your system. We hope that the details throughout this post have helped you understand a little more about application security risks and how to prevent hackers from exploiting them.
