Welcome Guest. | Log In | Register | Membership Benefits

Veracode: Top 5 Most Exploited App Security Flaws

Flaws that could be lurking in your organization's software portfolio

Oct 28, 2011 | 12:56 PM | 


BURLINGTON, Mass., Oct 28, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- As Halloween approaches, Veracode, Inc., provider of the world's only independent, cloud-based application risk management platform, is highlighting the top five scariest software application flaws that could be lurking in your organization's software portfolio. By pinpointing these commonly exploited vulnerabilities, developers, security teams and IT managers can more effectively prioritize and protect against these haunting threats.

According to Veracode, the top five scariest application security flaws for enterprises are:

-- SQL Injection: When an application uses untrusted input to generate an ad-hoc SQL query, allowing an attacker to manipulate the query. The Attacker may then be able to bypass authentication checks, retrieve or modify data he shouldn't have access to, determine the entire database schema and extract the contents, and even execute system commands on the database server.

-- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): When an application uses untrusted input to dynamically generate a web page, allowing an attacker to inject malicious executable content such as JavaScript code.

-- Information Leakage: When an application discloses too much detail about product functionality, environment or other sensitive info. While often not exploitable in and of itself, the leak, such as an error message, default error page, stack trace or directory listing info leak, is something an attacker can use to formulate and refine their attack strategy.

-- Cryptographic Issues: A broad category covering all sorts of ways to misuse cryptography including missing encryption, insufficient entropy and hard-copied crypto key.

-- Directory Traversal: When an application uses untrusted input to specify the target of a file I/O operation (such as open, read, write, delete).

To learn more about these top software vulnerabilities, the impact potential attacks could have on a company's application portfolio and its customers, and guidelines for developing a programmatic approach to verifying the security of critical applications, go to http://info.veracode.com/10611TopFiveMostPrevalentApp_TopFiveMostPrevalentApp.html and view the "Top 5 Most Prevalent Web Application Vulnerabilities" webcast delivered by Chris Eng, vice president of research, Veracode. For a general overview of application security risks faced by organizations today, go to http://info.veracode.com/082911-ApplicationSecurityFundamentals-ChrisWysopal_webinarApplicationSecurityFundamentals.html and view the "Application Security Fundamentals" webcast delivered by Chris Wysopal, CTO & CISO, Veracode.

About Veracode

Veracode is the only independent provider of cloud-based application intelligence and security verification services. The Veracode platform provides the fastest, most comprehensive solution to improve the security of internally developed, purchased or outsourced software applications and third-party components. By combining patented static, dynamic and manual testing, extensive eLearning capabilities, and advanced application analytics, Veracode enables scalable, policy-driven application risk management programs that help identify and eradicate numerous vulnerabilities by leveraging best-in-class technologies from vulnerability scanning to penetration testing and static code analysis. Veracode delivers unbiased proof of application security to stakeholders across the software supply chain while supporting independent audit and compliance requirements for all applications no matter how they are deployed, via the web, mobile or in the cloud. Veracode works with customers in more than 80 countries worldwide including Global 2000 brands such as Barclays PLC and Computershare as well as the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). For more information, visit www.veracode.com , follow on Twitter: @Veracode or read the ZeroDay Labs blog.



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dark Reading encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dark Reading moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Dark Reading further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS



Database Security Reports

report Securing The Data Warehouse
Many enterprises are building data warehouses to centralize the ever-increasing information flowing through their organizations into useful repositories. This makes good business sense, but it opens up a slew of concerns from a security standpoint. IT professionals can apply many of the same security best practices used with databases, but there are new lessons to be learned as well.

report Defend Your Data From Malicious Insiders
The biggest threat to your company?s most sensitive data may be the employee who has legitimate access to corporate databases but less-than-legitimate intentions. And while the incidence of insider data breaches has decreased, external attacks often imitate them--and do serious damage. Follow our advice to mitigate the risk.

report Ensuring Secure Database Access
Role-based access control based on least user privilege is one of the most effective ways to prevent the compromise of corporate data. But proper provisioning is a growing challenging, due to the proliferation of "big data," NoSQLdatabases, and cloud-based data storage.

Other reports from the Database Security Tech Center:

Related Content

Establishing a Strategy for Database Security is No Longer Optional
As databases continue to grow in size, complexity and importance, enterprises struggle to identify the most appropriate controls regarding their use and misuse. The report identifies best practices, including: Implementing database activity monitoring to mitigate the high levels of risk from database vulnerabilities, and address audit findings in areas such as database segregation of duties and change management; using data security measures, such as data masking and data encryption; and monitoring privileged-user access and access to critical data.

Database Activity Monitoring Is Evolving Into Database Audit and Protection
In this report, Gartner writes that "Database audit and protection (DAP) represents an evolutionary advance in database activity monitoring tools." DAP suites provide comprehensive, cross-platform support in heterogeneous database environments to protect sensitive data from inappropriate use. Organizations are increasingly concerned with optimizing database security and mitigating risks associated with database vulnerabilities.

Protecting Against Database Attacks and Insider Threats: Top 5 Scenarios
Data security presents a multi-dimensional challenge in today's complex IT environment. Multiple access paths and permission levels have resulted in a broad array of security threats and vulnerabilities. We invite you to read this new eBook: "Protecting against database attacks and insider threats" to learn the top five scenarios and essential best practices for preventing database attacks and insider threats.

Demo: Distributed Database Security with Real-time Monitoring and Audit Protection
Organizations across the globe continue to experience compromised data caused by malicious attacks, web application vulnerabilities or unauthorized changes. View this demo and learn how IBM InfoSphere Guardium? database activity monitoring can help protect your sensitive data in distributed DBMS environments with a holistic approach to data security and compliance.

Look Beyond Native Database Auditing To Improve Security, Audit Visibility, And Real-Time Protection
Today's attacks on enterprise databases are more sophisticated than ever, and they occur so fast that it's often difficult to stop them in real time. Despite significant efforts to protect enterprise databases, the number of records breached has grown each year - due to all types of internal and external attacks and violations of corporate policy.




Featured Webcasts
Featured Whitepapers
Featured Reports