This can be a very difficult task and developers are often set up for failure. 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 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.

Successfully authenticating to your bank account proves that you are the owner of that account. From this discussion, it is clear that username and password are the elements of authentication that prove your identity. Many developers have a tough time handling authorization, and at some point leave a gap that gets exploited, leading to unauthorized data access. 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. OWASP has an Input Validation Cheat Sheet to help you implement proper input validation in your application. The OWASP Proactive Controls is one of the best-kept secrets of the OWASP universe.

Equip your developers with relevant knowledge on OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities

This regular expression ensures that first name should include characters A-Z and a-z. We recently migrated our community to a new web platform and regretably the content https://remotemode.net/become-a-net-razor-developer/owasp-proactive-controls/ for this page needed to be programmatically ported from its previous wiki page. Use the extensive project presentation that expands on the information in the document.

• All tiers of a web application, the user interface, the business logic, the controller, the database code and more – all need to be developed with security in mind.
• OWASP ProActive Controls recommends that developers should use parameterized queries only in combination with input validation when dealing with database operations.
• Stored XSS are those XSS which get stored on a sever like in a SQL database.
• Broken Session Management is also a type of vulnerability which exists in a web application that does not properly implement session management.

If at any point in time you have to modify an access control check, then you will have to change it at multiple locations, which is not feasible for large applications. To solve this problem, access control or authorization checks should always be centralized. All user requests to access some page or database or any information should pass through the central access control check only. This cheatsheet will help users of the OWASP Proactive Controls identify which cheatsheets map to each proactive controls item. Injection flaws such as SQL, NoSQL, or Command happen when, as part of a command or query, untrusted data is sent to an interpreter.

Learning Objectives

This category was previously called “Insufficient Logging & Monitoring”. When weakly applied, attackers can stay under the radar for months and cause enormous amounts of damage. Meanwhile, they are opening the door to further exploit systems, and to tamper with, extract, or destroy data. If the integrity of software updates and CI/CD pipelines are not verified, malicious actors can alter critical data that affects the software being updated or released. The earlier entry “Insecure Deserialization” was also merged into this category. Incomplete and rarely updated configurations, open cloud storages, and error messages containing sensitive information often lead to security issues.

They provide structure for establishing good practices and processes
and are also useful during code reviews and design activities. A Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) is when an application is used as a proxy to access local or internal resources, bypassing the security controls that protect against external access. Security misconfiguration is when an important step to secure an application or system is skipped intentionally or forgotten. Authentication and secure storage is not just limited to the username-password module of an application. Other key modules like forgot password and change password are also part of authentication. Financial data and personal information like SSN are some of the most important details a person is concerned with, so an application storing that data should make sure it is encrypted securely.

Software and data integrity failures

The document was then shared globally so even anonymous suggestions could be considered. Probably the best advice on checklists is given by the Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS). The OWASP Top Ten Proactive Controls describes the most important controls and control categories that every architect and developer should absolutely, 100% include in every project. The OWASP Developer Guide is a community effort and this page needs some content to be added. If you have suggestions then submit an issue and the project team can assign it to you,
or submit a pull request with some content.

• We recently migrated our community to a new web platform and regretably the content for this page needed to be programmatically ported from its previous wiki page.
• Another example can be a session cookie for pre- and post-login being same.
• 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.

In order to achieve secure software, developers must be supported and helped by the organization they author code for. As software developers author the code that makes up a web application, they need to embrace and practice a wide variety of secure coding techniques. All tiers of a web application, the user interface, the business logic, the controller, the database code and more – all need to be developed with security in mind.

Everyone knows the OWASP Top Ten as the top application security risks, updated every few years. Proactive Controls is a catalog of available security controls that counter one or many of the top ten. Below is an example of an application that stores the user’s password in plaintext inside a MySQL database.

In the above case, if a user enters +890, then a blacklist will say it is valid because it does not contain A-Z. 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. Logging is storing a protected audit trail that allows an operator to reconstruct the actions of any subject or object that performs an action or has an action performed against it. Monitoring is reviewing security events generated by a system to detect if an attack has occurred or is currently occurring.

It has to be ensured at all times that access certain parts of the application should be accessible to users with certain privileges only. OWASP has a project named OWASP ESAPI, which allows users to handle data in a secure manner using industry tested libraries and security functions. In the above code, user input is not filtered and used, as it is part of message to be displayed to the user without implementing any sort of output encoding. Using a parameterized query makes sure that the SQL logic is defined first and locked.