Aug. 31st, 2021

With the growing number of new and old companies moving online, hackers are in no shortage of targets. In 2020, every single day there were on average of 30,000 websites attacked by hackers, 43% of which were on small businesses. Within these data breaches, 70% of the attacks were financially motivated as cybercrime has generated over $1.5 trillion in a single year alone.

With these numbers only expected to increase in the following years, it is important to know the common vulnerabilities hackers exploit so that you can take proactive steps to prevent your business from adding to those statistics.

A SQL Injection is a website security vulnerability where an attacker uses application code to gain access to data that they are not able to view normally. This vulnerability can be used to gather private information or add, delete, and alter data stored in the database. Modified data can also lead to changes in the behavior of the application, such as crashing or the inability to load.

Successful SQL injection attacks result in customer’s sensitive data being compromised and sold. This data often includes names, passwords, birthdays, credit card details, and other personal information often entered into websites.

A Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack is where malicious client-side scripts are injected into a web application’s output. An attacker will send a malicious script to an unsuspecting user where the browser will then execute it as the script is coming from a trusted user.

A successful XSS attack can allow the hacker to access sensitive information retained by the browser (such as cookies and session tokens), as well as the ability to modify the content of the HTML page.

Broken Authentication & Session Management attacks encompass multiple application vulnerabilities. Attacks using this method are carried out with the goal of taking over user accounts to gain access to the same privileges as more authorized users. Some of the vulnerabilities hackers use to bypass authentication methods include:

An Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR) attack occurs when an application exposes objects with user-supplied input. These inputs include database records, files, directories, and database keys. IDOR allows attackers to bypass authorization and access directly access user data by modifying parameters used to point to an object.

A successful IDOR attack will allow the attacker to gain access to user credentials and other sensitive user data.

Attacks pertaining to security misconfigurations are simply exploited through poor server or web application security maintenance. Chances are most applications contain some sort of security misconfiguration as new vulnerabilities can arise every application update or whenever any bit of code changes. If the development team fails to implement all the security controls or even has an error in one, that leaves room for attackers to infiltrate the vulnerability.

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks occur when an unsuspecting user is tricked into executing unwanted actions on a web application that they are currently authorized on. The attacker can then access authorized user functionality through the victim’s already authorized browser.

A successful CSRF attack can cause a normal user to perform unwanted actions on certain websites such as posting or taking sensitive information off of social media or even transferring funds and taking bank credentials on online banking. If a user is authorized on an administrative level, the attacker can compromise the application as a whole.

No company or small business wants to become another number on the rapidly growing cybercrime statistic. Protect your application with the help of our highly trained team of ethical hackers (penetration testers) at SecureState and schedule a demo!

At SecureState, we provide a number of testing services that range from black-box testing to white-box testing. We test using a mixture of both manual and automated testing techniques. Manual testing is conducting penetration tests by an actual person, an experienced developer or engineer practiced in finding vulnerabilities. Automated testing is conducting penetration tests using tools and software that has been specifically created in order to aid penetration testers in finding certain exploits.

By using both forms of testing, we are able to provide the optimal testing results for the client’s application!

SecureState uses a combination of automated tools and manual testing to provide a hybrid approach that includes proactive and reactive security testing activities. Our team has decades of cybersecurity experience with some of the largest tech companies including AWS, VMware, Google and Nintendo.

Take the first step to security and schedule a call today!