Modern browsers use the Same-Origin Policy (SOP) by default which means that fetching resources from other origins is not allowed. However, in some situations, such operations are necessary. Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) was designed to address such situations using HTTP response headers, which include Access-Control-Allow-Origin….
Agile and Secure SDLC – Best Practices
Agile development processes help businesses release software much quicker than it would be possible if using classic design and development cycles such as those based on the waterfall model. Most web applications require an agile methodology because they need to be updated very often and…
HttpOnly Flag – Protecting Cookies against XSS
Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks are often aimed at stealing session cookies. In such an attack, the cookie value is accessed by a client-side script using JavaScript (document.cookie). However, in everyday use, web applications rarely need to access cookies via JavaScript. Therefore, a method of protecting…
What Is Broken Link Hijacking
Broken link hijacking (BLH) is a type of web attack. It exploits external links that are no longer valid. If your website or web application uses resources loaded from external URLs or points to such resources and these resources are no longer there (for example…
SQL Injection Cheat Sheet for Developers
In this cheat sheet, we will assume that: You are a developer or you know programming You have limited web application security knowledge You need to know how SQL injection attacks happen You need to know how to fix SQL injection issues in your code…
Web System Hardening in 5 Easy Steps
To harden a computer system means to make it more difficult for a malicious hacker to attack. In formal terms, system hardening means reducing the attack surface – the attack surface is the combination of all the points where an attacker may strike. Many computer…
nginx Security: How To Harden Your Server Configuration
Currently, nginx is the most popular web server, recently beating Apache. It is lightweight, fast, robust, and supports all major operating systems. It is the web server of choice for Netflix, WordPress.com, and other high traffic sites. An nginx server can easily handle 10,000 inactive…
Exploiting SSTI in Thymeleaf
One of the most comfortable ways to build web pages is by using server-side templates. Such templates let you create HTML pages that include special elements that you can fill and modify dynamically. They are easy to understand for designers and easy to maintain for…
Paul’s Security Weekly: New Web Technology & Impact on Automated Security Testing
Our core security researcher, Benjamin Daniel Mussler, has been invited to Paul’s Security Weekly podcast to participate in a discussion about new web technologies and their impact on automated security testing. Benjamin primarily talked about the fact that web browsers have gone a long way…