Explore Web Apps Vulnerabilities And The Ways To Prevent Them

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Web Apps Vulnerabilities

As we all know, web apps are one of the most attractive and mesmerizing choices for businesses and developers, since they give an additional dose of simplicity and security.

Today, this app type has gained advantage as they are able to run on smartphones as the web app, helping different users to access the services offered through this app solution.

However, amid this race of building different web apps, there are certain vulnerabilities that exist in the development journey, that kill the dream of businesses and stop them to try this ahead.

Well, you must know that as every technology has two sides of the coin, and challenges and complexities must not deter you from taking the final decision to proceed ahead with this type of app. 

Here in this post, we are going to discuss the number of vulnerabilities that are very much part of the web app, but with the right measure can be addressed or prevented from.

Let’s read this post ahead…

A quick look; web apps vulnerabilities 

It is a concerning factor for most developers to deal with the web app vulnerability as if left unanswered they can destroy the app fully. There are different challenges that must be taken into consideration before proceeding ahead, as they can cause financial losses while causing serious damage. Below we have brought you a quick look at some of the most common attacks that hackers might attempt on your website. 

Further, there are ways to prevent them as well, so your web app would not suffer the loss through any possible means.

Authentication Failure

Yeah, this is one of the most prominent vulnerabilities, that occurs, when there is an improper implementation of adequate user authentication controls. It brings users at a risk for their information.

Ways to prevent

  • The best way to avoid it can easily be done with the code testing much before the app gets deployed.
  • If possible, try to integrate multi-factor authentication to make the system less vulnerable.
  • Include adaptive hashing algorithms like bcrypt, pbkdf2, argon2, etc. to salt passwords and hash them before getting them stored in the database
  • For better password security, integrate weak-password checks.

Misconfigured security system

No prize for guessing but misconfiguration happening in and around the security system of your progressive web app, always leads to giving the upper hand to hackers to steal data and gain unauthorized access to the web app.

Ways to prevent

  • First and foremost, you need to use HTTPS to transfer data and information. 
  • Every admin task must be carried out through the secured channels.
  • Keep a regular check on the file integrity to check if any unauthorized changes are made to the critical files. 
  • Keeping minimal and unnecessary features and frameworks would help in controlling web apps.

SQL Injection

My list wouldn’t go complete without mentioning the SQL injection vulnerability that lets hackers gain access to the database. And further, this information can be used to access and modify or even destroy the information.

Ways to prevent

  • Keep a check on the prepared statements with parameterized queries.
  • You can migrate to ORMs to allow non-parameterized queries to 
  • work in the framework
  • With the SQL controls within the queries, you get an option to prevent the mass disclosure of records, when an SQL injection attack does occur.

Keep a check on the XML external entities

You would be surprised to know that XML external entity or an XML injection attack, is another type of vulnerability you need to keep a watch at. In such attacks, when hackers disturb the flow of the weakly-configured XML parser and invade additional data, to grab a hold onto the confidential data. 

Ways to prevent

  • You need to disable DTDs- Document Type Definitions (DTD’s), but it is not always possible to disable them fully. So what you can do best is to disable external document type declarations. 
  • Further, you need to ensure the use of less complex data formats like JSON. 
  • Integrate a healthy server-side method to validate, sanitize, and filter input. 
  • Include a manual code review to detect critical functionality of the complex app system.

Food for thought

Here mentioned are some of the most obvious web app vulnerabilities that you must keep a check on and try different preventive measures to proceed ahead. You must ensure to carry out the regular test and automated scans, to evade the harmful impacts on your web apps.

I truly hope the above strategies would help to trigger a scalable web app development process and bring a PWA that would help your business to flourish ahead.

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