OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls 2018: How it makes your code more secure

As developers prepare to write more secure code, though, they’re finding that few tools are designed with software writers in mind. For example, the OWASP Top 10, a cornerstone of web application security, identifies the risks of the most common vulnerabilities in applications. It lists security requirements such as authentication protocols, session management, and cryptographic security standards. Most importantly, the ASVS provides a phased approach to gradually implement security requirements as you are making your first steps.

• Information logged can be to the discretion of the security team but can include requests that violate any server-side access controls.
• A role that has read should only be able to read, any deviation is a security risk.
• The OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) is a catalog of available security requirements and verification criteria.
• You can use that data for feeding intrusion detection systems, aiding forensic analysis and investigations, and satisfying regulatory compliance requirements.
• Client-side and server-side validation ensure that client-side data is never trusted, while blacklisting and whitelisting of input work to prevent attacks such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).

The queries used to conduct the database calls must be properly sanitized to prevent SQL Injection attacks. Other examples that require escaping data are operating system (OS) command injection, where a component may execute system commands that originate from user input, and hence carry the risk of malicious commands being executed. When an application encounters an error, exception handling will determine how the app reacts to it.

OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls 2018¶

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. From the “Authentication Verification Requirements” section of ASVS 3.0.1, requirement 2.19 focuses on default passwords. For example, don’t log sensitive information such as passwords, session IDs, credit cards, and Social Security numbers.

Each technique or control in this document will map to one or more items in the risk based OWASP Top 10. This mapping information is included at the end of each control description. A prominent OWASP project named Application Security Verification Standard—often referred to as OWASP ASVS for short—provides over two-hundred different requirements for building secure web application software.

OWASP Proactive Control 7 — enforce access control

This cheatsheet will help users of the OWASP Proactive Controls identify which cheatsheets map to each proactive controls item. This mapping is based the OWASP Proactive Controls version 3.0 (2018). An injection is when input not validated properly is sent to a command interpreter.

The input is interpreted as a command, processed, and performs an action at the attacker’s control. The injection-style attacks come in many flavors, from the most popular SQL injection to command, LDAP, and ORM. Joseph Carson, chief security scientist at Thycotic, noted that database control requires developers to think not only about the security of their application owasp top 10 proactive controls but where that application stores its data. By having an application generate data for security, you can provide valuable information for intrusion detection systems and forensic analysis, as well as help your organization meet compliance requirements. Ensure that the security controls available from the DBMS and hosting platform are enabled and properly configured.

Leverage Security Frameworks and Libraries

In order to detect unauthorized or unusual behaviour, the application must log requests. Information logged can be to the discretion of the security team but can include requests that violate any server-side access controls. It’s highly likely that access control requirements take shape throughout many layers of your application. For example, when pulling data from the database in a multi-tenant SaaS application, where you need to ensure that data isn’t accidentally exposed for different users. Another example is the question of who is authorized to hit APIs that your web application provides.

• Use these techniques to prevent injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities as well as client-side injection vulnerabilities.
• The access control or authorization policy mediates what subjects can access which objects.
• Sometimes developers unwittingly download parts that come built-in with known security issues.
• A risky crypto algorithm may be one that was created years ago, and the speed of modern computing has caught up with the algorithm, making it possible to be broken using modern computing power.

Security requirements provide a foundation of vetted security functionality for an application, the OWASP team explained in a document on the project. Instead of creating a custom approach to security for every application, standard security requirements allow developers to reuse the definition of security controls and best practices. Security requirements provide a foundation of vetted security functionality for an application. Those same vetted security requirements provide solutions for security issues that have occurred in the past.

This investigation culminates in the documentation of the results of the review. Access to all data stores, including relational and NoSQL, should be secure. Take care to prevent untrusted input from being recognized as part of an SQL command.