Below is an example of an application that stores the user’s password in plaintext inside a MySQL database. Authentication is the process by which it is verified that someone is who they claim to be, or we can say it is the process of identifying individuals. Authentication is performed by entering username or password or any sensitive information. Access control should by default deny all requests which are from a user for a resource for which either access is restricted or an authorized entry has not been made. OWASP has an Input Validation Cheat Sheet to help you implement proper input validation in your application. Here this expression shows that username should include alphabets ‘a-z’, numbers ‘0-9’ and special characters underscore ‘_’ only.

There is no specific mapping from the Proactive Controls for Insecure Design. The Top Ten calls for more threat modeling, secure design patterns, and reference architectures. Threat modeling analyzes a system representation to mitigate security and privacy issues early in the life cycle. Secure design patterns and reference architectures provide a positive, secure pattern that developers can use to build new features.

A10 Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF)

Let’s explore each of the OWASP Top Ten, discussing how the pieces of the Proactive Controls mitigate the defined application security risk. A user story focuses on the perspective of the user, administrator, or attacker of the system, and describes functionality based on what a user wants the system to do for them. Gain insights into best practices for utilizing generative AI coding tools securely in our upcoming live hacking session. For any of these decisions, you have the ability to roll your own–managing your own registration of users and keeping track of their passwords or means of authentication. As an alternative, you can choose to managed services and benefit from the cloud’s Serverless architecture of services like Auth0.

• A broken or risky crypto algorithm is one that has a coding flaw within the implementation of the algorithm that weakens the resulting encryption.
• The ASVS requirements are basic verifiable statements which can be expanded upon with user stories and misuse cases.
• The answer is with security controls such as authentication, identity proofing, session management, and so on.
• Authentication takes care of your identity, whereas authorization makes sure that you have the authority or privilege to access a resource like data or some sensitive information.
• Here this expression shows that username should include alphabets ‘a-z’, numbers ‘0-9’ and special characters underscore ‘_’ only.
• Security requirements are categorized into different buckets based on a shared higher order security function.

Whereas a whitelist will say it contains a character that is not a number, and only numbers are allowed, so it is invalid. By converting input data into its encoded form, this problem can be solved, and client side code execution can be prevented. SQL injection vulnerability has been found and exploited in applications of very popular vendors like Yahoo! too. This landmark news marks a significant chapter in the ongoing saga of web security.

What Is the OWASP Proactive Controls?

Most developers did not learn about secure coding or crypto in school. The languages and frameworks that developers use to build web applications are often lacking critical core controls or are insecure by default in some way. It is also very rare when organizations provide developers with prescriptive requirements owasp controls that guide them down the path of secure software. And even when they do, there may be security flaws inherent in the requirements and designs. When it comes to software, developers are often set up to lose the security game. This document is intended to provide initial awareness around building secure software.

Then the user input is added to it where it is needed, but treated as a particular data type string, integer, etc. as whole. In a database operation with a parameterized query in the backend, an attacker has no way to manipulate the SQL logic, leading to no SQL injection and database compromise. More junior developers do not have the knowledge or time to properly implement or maintain security features, Kucic said. “Clearly, leveraging established security frameworks helps developers accomplish security goals more efficiently and accurately.”

OWASP Proactive Control 1 — define security requirements

The process begins with discovery and selection of security requirements. In this phase, the developer is understanding security requirements from a standard source such as ASVS and choosing which requirements to include for a given release of an application. The point of discovery and selection is to choose a manageable number of security requirements for this release or sprint, and then continue to iterate for each sprint, adding more security functionality over time.

• It is to be noted again that authentication is not equivalent to authorization.
• One of the main goals of this document is to provide concrete practical guidance that helps developers build secure software.
• Developers are already wielding new languages and libraries at the speed of DevOps, agility, and CI/CD.
• This should include processes and assumptions around resetting or restoring access for lost passwords, tokens, etc.

But she cannot open Bob’s family safe at home, because she is not authorized to do so. On the other hand, Bob’s sister Eve is known, so successful authentication occurs, and she is a family member, so she is authorized to access the family safe, aka successful authorization. Blacklisting is invalidating an input by looking for specific things only. For example, specifying that a phone number should be of 10 digits with only numbers is whitelist. Searching input for A-Z and then saying it is valid or not is blacklisting, because we are invalidating using alphabet characters only. In the above case, if a user enters +890, then a blacklist will say it is valid because it does not contain A-Z.

Recommended Posts

This mapping information is included at the end of each control description. Stay tuned for the next blog posts in this series to learn more about these proactive controls in depth. I’ll keep this post updated with links to each part of the series as they come out. Database injections are probably one of the best-known security vulnerabilities, and many injection vulnerabilities are reported every year. In this blog post, I’ll cover the basics of query parameterization and how to avoid using string concatenation when creating your database queries.