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Most software security specialists agree that there are certain processes that must be observed in order to make software as secure as possible

Even a very small designer mistake in software security can lead to the loss of millions of dollars.

Of course, even large enterprises are not risk free. The most common malicious attacks, such as SQL injection, command injection, buffer overflow, buffer overflow attacks in the stack, can damage the reputation of any well-known company.

One of the most dangerous attacks on web applications is SQL Injection. This is where cyber attackers insert malicious SQL into a dynamic SQL statement.

SQL injection vulnerabilities are easy for an attacker to find and exploit using free tools like SQL Map or SQL Ninja, or even manually. Once SQL injection vulnerabilities are found, they’re easy to exploit.

Luckily, SQL injection is also easy to prevent. Organizations simply need to parameterize your SQL statements, making it clear to the SQL interpreter which parts of a SQL statement make up the command and which parts are data.

But, unluckily, SQL injection is only one type of injection attack. Stopping other kinds of injection attacks such as LDAP injection, XML injection, XPath injection, OS Command injection, and especially JavaScript injection ( Cross-Site Scripting)—takes a lot more work, but worth it considering the consequences of doing nothing.

To do this you need to output encode/escape data before handing it to the interpreter, so that the interpreter will not recognize executable statements in the data.

It’s important to understand the encoding or escaping rules for each interpreter, and you need to apply the encoding rules correctly in specific contexts. You also need to be certain that you don’t encode data more than once. 

At the initial stage of design and architecture, the software must be consistent and represent a unified security architecture that takes into account security principles. Designers, architects and analysts should carefully document assumptions and identify possible attacks.

Risk analysis is required for each stage of the software development life cycle. And most importantly, after the transfer of software, the maintenance and updating of software from time to time are necessary to protect the software from any new type of malicious attack.

Want to learn more? Tonex offers Software Security Training, a 2-day course where participants learn the fundamental principles of computer security, vulnerabilities, computer crimes, threats and concept of web security. Moreover, you will be introduced to the secure programming techniques as a part of software security, code auditing, SQL injection and secure coding principles.

Contact us for more information, questions, comments.

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