Privilege escalation, in simple words, means getting privileges to access something that should not be accessible. Attackers use various privilege escalation techniques to access unauthorized resources. For web application security, privilege escalation is an important concern because web intrusions are usually only the first stage…
How Does IoT Security Relate to Web Security
Smart devices, which are part of the IoT ecosystem (Internet of Things), are not only increasingly prevalent at homes. They also find their way into businesses of all sizes including enterprises. Unfortunately, the cybersecurity of IoT devices leaves a lot to be desired and is…
What Is SEO Poisoning (Search Engine Poisoning)
Search engine optimization poisoning (SEO poisoning) is a term used to describe two types of activities: Illegitimate techniques used to achieve high search engine ranking, usually (but not only) to attack visitors Exploiting vulnerabilities on existing high-ranking web pages and using them to spread malware…
Password Reset Vulnerability (Poisoning)
Most web application security vulnerabilities leverage user interaction in ways that were not initially intended by their developers. Password reset poisoning is one such vulnerability that leverages headers, such as the Host header in an HTTP request: GET https://example.com/reset.php?email=foo@bar.com HTTP/1.1 Host: evilhost.com Notice that the…
What Is DNS Cache Poisoning
DNS cache poisoning is a type of DNS spoofing attack where the attacker stores fake data in a DNS resolver cache. All clients that use this DNS cache receive such fake data. It can be used for very effective phishing attacks (often called pharming) and…
HTTP Security: A Security-Focused Introduction to HTTP
HTTP is a ubiquitous protocol and is one of the cornerstones of the web. If you are a newcomer to web application security, a sound knowledge of the HTTP protocol will make your life easier when interpreting findings by automated security tools, and it’s a…
Cybersecurity Trends 2019 – Web Security
The year 2019 so far has seen its share of major security and data breaches. Unsurprisingly, they were not caused by new cybercriminal techniques but by the same ones that have plagued information security for up to two decades. Social engineering and cyberattacks on web…
Data Breaches Due to Exposed Databases
The recent massive breach of sensitive Ecuador population data is yet another case, where there was no actual hack involved. The data owner, an Ecuadorian company Novaestrat, simply left an unsecured Elasticsearch database exposed on a publicly accessible server in Miami. The database contained data…
Using Logs to Investigate – SQL Injection Attack Example
A log file is an extremely valuable piece of information that is provided by a server. Almost all servers, services, and applications provide some sort of logging. A log file records events and actions that take place during the run time of a service or…