Over the years, a security breach has been on the rise and this trend is, set to be more pronounced this year.
The software will face higher levels of breaches, like never before, as we make progress into the new decade, hence, the need to always sensitize the public, about the trends in security breaches, how to identify them and neutralise them.
Sometimes in 2019, the Open Web Application Security Project, “OWASP”, released its 2019 edition of its top 10 list of API security risks that should be avoided, at all cost, by software developers.
The list includes:
- Broken Object Level Authorization – This exposes endpoints that handle object identifiers, resulting in a wide attack surface Level Access Control issue.
- Broken User Authentication – This occurs when authentication is, implemented incorrectly, allowing hackers, to breach the authentication tokens, or, to exploit implementation flaws, to assume other user’s identities.
- Excessive Data Exposure – This happens, when developers tend to expose, all object properties, paying little, or, no attention, to individual sensitivity, relying on customers, to perform the data filtering, before displaying it to the user.
- Lack of Resources and Rate Limiting – Most times, the APIs, do not impose any real restrictions, on the number of resources that can be requested, by the user. Not only can this impact the API server performance, leading to Denial of Service, (DoS), but it, also, renders the door open, to authentication breach.
- Broken Function Level Authorization – Where there is, an unclear separation, between administrative and regular functions and multiple access control policies, with different hierarchies, groups and roles, a breach, is definitely, inevitable.
- Mass Assignment – This happens, when the client’s data, are bind to data models, without proper properties filtering process.
- Security Misconfiguration – This flaw arises, when there are unsecured default configurations, incomplete, or, ad-hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, unnecessary HTTP methods, permissive Cross-Origin resource sharing, (CORS) and verbose error messages that contain sensitive information.
- Injection – Flaws relating to Injection, such as SQL, NoSQL, Command Injection, etc., oftentimes occur, when untrusted data is, sent to an interpreter as part of a command, or, query.
- Improper Assets Management – Unlike traditional web applications, APIs tend to expose more endpoints, making proper and updated documentation, very important.
- Insufficient Logging & Monitoring – When there is, insufficiency in logging and monitoring, mixed with ineffective integration and incident response.
In order to, effectively, prevail against this inevitable onslaught of security breaches that are bound to happen in 2020, there are some key things that, software security needs to contain and these are highlighted below:
Stay Abreast Of Software Security Breach And Educate Your Team
Hackers are always on the prowl, looking for loopholes to exploit.
The ugly truth is that, these loopholes, are there and its just a matter of time, before they are detected.
For this reason, it is, highly, essential that, software security companies, should be on the lookout, for the latest news on the software security breaches and ensure that, you educate your team, to be aware.
“If you are going to try to implement a formal education for developers, it doesn’t work, to bolt those on top of a one-time project, but making the effort, part of how developers build software, makes it possible to extend those services, to developers and create an advantage, rather than a disruption”, stressed Tim Jarrett of Veracode.
Access Your Open – Source Component
It is, highly, essential that, developers keep a well and easy-to-read manifest that contains all the components that are used, in creating the software codes, in case of problems arise. Once an issue arises, the software should be broken down and rebuilt.
Carry Out Multiple Tests
It is, highly, essential that, multiple forms of tests are carried out as, even, dynamic tools and static analysis tools, may give out different results that, do not detect the flaw. Carry out multiple tests that, will fish out the flaw.
Featured Image: medium
Don’t miss important articles during the week. Subscribe to cfamedia weekly newsletter for updates.
