Webb Application Security

WEB APPLICATION SECURITY

Introduction

        Internet technology and World Wide Web enabled people to access and exchange information on a wide variety of aspects. During the initial days, the information available on web site is not so well organized and is more static. However with the increased usage of web supported by internet, a revolution occurred in application design and development and it became necessary to come up with a dynamic web.

        A collection of web pages linked together through hypertext links is known as web site. A well designed web site should answer the problems of architectural, content related concerns and also the look and feel of all the pages. Information from the web site can be accessed by connecting a computer to internet running a web server. Web services are the business logic components that run on servers using internet-based protocols as Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to process the data that the users want to access. The data processed by web services is made available to the users quickly and easily by web applications through web browsers.

Web Application Definition

        A web application is a client/server application which performs an interactive service by connecting to servers over the internet and uses web browser on client side to view the application requested.

        A web site simply provides the data from static files where as a web application takes care of security concerns and users behavior to deliver the dynamic information based on user’s request.

In addition to this web applications

• Collect and store users information on server
• Provides customized interface to specific users
• Perform tasks for users such as shopping carts, login pages, support, product requests and so on.

What is Security?

        Security is a state of protecting someone or something from harm or threats. It is freedom from danger and deals with risk management. The degree of damage done to any of the assets can be avoided if not completely eliminated by applying security principles.

What is Hacker’s Motivation?

By gaining access to the information, controls and systems hackers will have the advantage to

• Gather private details of that of systems.
• Access personal data for identification threat.
• To do transaction fraud i.e. transfer funds from accounts or credit cards.
• Attack site or application and make it malfunction.

Application Security Vs Network Security

        Application security deals with data processing stack whereas network security deals with data in transit i.e. data being transferred between two nodes. It can be compared with that of microwave, where the connection of power supply acts as network and the things that we put inside or the options selected as application. Cutting power supply or sending wrong voltage is equivalent to network attack and using non-microwave safe appliances is equivalent to application attack.