Web security

[dheeraj857]

Well i am studying about web security. I have found some threats that developer should take care while coding.

1) Validate user input
2) SQL Injection
3) Cross -site scripting

I would like to ask that Are there other threats than the above mentioned?

If there then please tell me as i am preparing one document on web security and i would like to cover all the threats that one would face.

[dlite922]

Well i am studying about web security. I have found some threats that developer should take care while coding.

1) Validate user input
2) SQL Injection
3) Cross -site scripting

I would like to ask that Are there other threats than the above mentioned?

If there then please tell me as i am preparing one document on web security and i would like to cover all the threats that one would face.

if you're refering to security in general, that's a whole ocean (see hacking)

as far as coding via a server-side language, such as PHP, you have the basics down. Those three are the major ones.

This may or may not fall under user input, but also there is session/cookie security If an application relies on it.

You could also add more security measures against brute force attacks. For example you could block someone's IP if they attempted to log in 20 times during 1 day and failed. Although the hacker can change his IP, this will cripple his brute force attack.

Another thing is have passwords be longer than 6 characters containing more than just plain characters but special characters and numbers as well.


Good luck on your paper,






Dan

[dheeraj857]

if you're refering to security in general, that's a whole ocean (see hacking)

as far as coding via a server-side language, such as PHP, you have the basics down. Those three are the major ones.

This may or may not fall under user input, but also there is session/cookie security If an application relies on it.

You could also add more security measures against brute force attacks. For example you could block someone's IP if they attempted to log in 20 times during 1 day and failed. Although the hacker can change his IP, this will cripple his brute force attack.

Another thing is have passwords be longer than 6 characters containing more than just plain characters but special characters and numbers as well.


Good luck on your paper,






Dan

Thanks Dan for your quick reply.

My intention behind posting the thread is to discuss all the threats and get the views from all users. By doing this at the end of this thread we will come to know about all the threats.

I am increasing the list.
4) Session/cookie
5) Validation on password
6) lock the user account after the 3 unsuccessful attempts

I am looking forward to increase this list by getting views from you all.......

[Atli]

Hi.

The main thing when dealing with web-security is user input. And by that I mean everything from user <input> data to cookies, sessions, URLs, files, all the super-globals (like $_SERVER), etc.

Running any user input through eval() or one of the system functions should never be done, even if you have run it through strict validation. Even the most innocent looking string of data can be used to cause damage under the right circumstances.

Try to use SSL/TLS when dealing with sensitive data, like say user login info. It's almost easy to sniff out data from unencrypted requests.

Like Dan says, make sure users use proper passwords. I'd say at least 8 chars including upper and lower case letters, numbers and preferably special chars to.

Make sure to hash them into you databases using a proper hashing algorithm to. (That does not include MD5 btw!).
And make sure to "sand" your hashes. That is; appending a string to the password before hashing it to make them harder to decode if they are ever stolen.

Setting proper file permissions on all files is important to, in case somebody manages to force their way in through a FTP connection or something similar.
Try not to give PHP write access to files or directories. There are methods of injecting PHP code into your scripts, which could take advantage of this.

Can't think up anything more atm.
Good luck with your project! :)

[chaosprime]

You should include some examination of denial of service attacks. While a lot of those are network issues outside of the scope of what a software developer can or should deal with, there are ways that software issues can make you vulnerable to DoSing. For instance, if your web site allows a user to start a very resource-intensive process, and there's nothing to prevent them from performing more requests and starting more processes, performing a denial of service attack against your site may be as simple as hitting Reload repeatedly on the right page. Safeguards on resource-intensive processes can mitigate this risk.