Introduction to Web Application and Security: OWASP Top 10
Understanding the basics of Application Security with OWASP Top 10
Watch the Full Talk on YouTube:
Introduction
This blog post serves as a primer, complementing the insights from my full-length YouTube talk. Whether you're new to cybersecurity or looking to refresh your knowledge, this post provides a solid foundation.
🐝 OWASP Top 10 🐝
The OWASP Top 10 list is an valuable resource for understanding the most critical cyber security risks to web applications. Here's a snapshot:
Broken Access Control: Involves the failure to properly restrict what authenticated users are allowed to do. Often leading to unauthorized access to admin interfaces, accessing other users' data, modifying data without permission.
Cryptographic Failures: Previously called Sensitive Data Exposure, it involves failing to protect data in transit and at rest.
Injection: Injection flaws occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as a command or query, like SQL Injection. Used to be Nr.1 in the 2017 edition.
Insecure Design: This involves a lack of adequate security controls due to poor design. Emphasizing secure design principles in the development lifecycle.
Security Misconfiguration: Avoiding improper security settings that leave applications vulnerable. Focus on security controls in terms of settings and configurations.
Vulnerable and Outdated Components: Using components with known vulnerabilities in the application. 🔥Probably going to be Nr. 1 in the next iteration. 🔥
Identification and Authentication Failures: Flaws in authentication processes that allow attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens.
Software and Data Integrity Failures: Occurs when an application doesn’t adequately protect against unauthorized changes to data and software.
Security Logging and Monitoring Failures: Not good enough observabillitty in terms of logging and monitoring can delay the detection of security breaches.
Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF): SSRF occurs when an attacker can manipulate a server to make unintended requests.
🔐 Web Security Controls 🔐
Some of the controls mentioned in the talk
Content Security Policy: A policy used to specify which content is allowed to run on the website, thus preventing a range of attacks including Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and data injection attacks.
Web Application Firewall (WAF): A firewall for web applications that monitors, filters, and blocks HTTP traffic to and from a web application.
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS): A security feature that allows or restricts requested resources on a web server based on where the HTTP request was initiated.
Security Headers: HTTP response headers that, when set, can provide additional layers of security (e.g., X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options).
TLS/SessionID HTTP Secure: The use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) for encrypting HTTP traffic, along with secure handling of session IDs to prevent session hijacking and other session-based attacks.
📕Resources Mentioned📕
For deeper exploration, numerous resources are available:
OWASP Resources: Including the OWASP Cheat Sheets and ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy).
MITRE ATT&CK and DEFEND Frameworks: Offering comprehensive approaches to understanding and countering cyber threats.
CIS Benchmarks: Providing best practices for securing IT systems and data.