Moving Target Defense for Web Applications

abstract: Web applications continue to remain as the most popular method of interaction for businesses over the Internet. With it's simplicity of use and management, they often function as the "front door" for many companies. As such, they are a critical component of the security ecosystem as vulnerabilities present in these systems could potentially allow malicious users access to sensitive business and personal data. The inherent nature of web applications enables anyone to access them anytime and anywhere, this includes any malicious actors looking to exploit vulnerabilities present in the web application. In addition, the static configurations of these web applications enables attackers the opportunity to perform reconnaissance at their leisure, increasing their success rate by allowing them time to discover information on the system. On the other hand, defenders are often at a disadvantage as they do not have the same temporal opportunity that attackers possess in order to perform counter-reconnaissance. Lastly, the unchanging nature of web applications results in undiscovered vulnerabilities to remain open for exploitation, requiring developers to adopt a reactive approach that is often delayed or to anticipate and prepare for all possible attacks which is often cost-prohibitive. Moving Target Defense (MTD) seeks to remove the attackers' advantage by reducing the information asymmetry between the attacker and defender. This research explores the concept of MTD and the various methods of applying MTD to secure Web Applications. In particular, MTD concepts are applied to web applications by implementing an automated application diversifier that aims to mitigate specific classes of web application vulnerabilities and exploits. Evaluation is done using two open source web applications to determine the effectiveness of the MTD implementation. Though developed for the chosen applications, the automation process can be customized to fit a variety of applications.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Computer Science 201

An Analysis of Various Methods to Identify Web Based Applications Vulnerabilities

Recently Web based applications takes a noteworthy palace in people’s daily routine furthermore as in progress of nation’s different domains as well. Web based applications have undergone a reasonably express improvement within the last few decades and their appreciation is moving faster than that was predictable few years ago. Presently, huge volumes of transactions are prepared online using various Web based applications. Even though these Webs based applications are utilized by a lot of people, in some cases the defense level is vulnerable, and that compiles them prone to obtain negotiation. In most of the eventualities, a client has to be recognized previous to any contact is set upped with the backend data. A precipitate client shouldn't be permitted entrée to the scheme without legal credentials. However, a crafted injection query provides illegal entrée to illegal clients. This is regularly accomplished via SQL Injection input. In spite of the occurrence of dissimilar procedures to discover and avoid SQL injection, still there stays a shocking threat into Web based applications. While working on this paper, we studied and did analysis on various manners of SQL Injection vulnerabilities, different types of assaults, and their recognition and avoidance techniques. Flanking we present our assessment of this analysis. We also clarified future research direction for probabilities and possible expansion of challenge proceedings against different web application attacks. Keywords: Vulnerability, SQL injection, XSS, Web based application, WWW, ID

UPRISING DIGITAL CYBER-ATTACKS AND STAGNANT CYBER LAWS WORLDWIDE

Cybersecurity is vast area for research with multiple domains. Any individual can focus on minimum topics for research and it becomes cumbersome to follow various tools and technique. In this research paper, I have tried to focus on digital cybersecurity crime and terrorism efforts by hackers however there are numerous ways to minimize the hacking activities. To reduce such attacks and understand the chronology, research paper will display research and understanding

An Analysis of Successful SQLIA for Future Evolutionary Prediction

Web applications are a fundamental component of the internet, many interact with backend databases. Securing web applications and their databases from hackers should be a top priority for cybersecurity researchers. Structured Query Language (SQL) injection attacks (SQLIA) constitute a significant threat to web applications. They can hijack the backend databases to steal personally identifiable information (PII), initiate scams, or launch more sophisticated cyberattacks. SQLIA has evolved since its conception in the early 2000s and will continue to do so in the coming years. This paper analyzes past literature and successful SQLIA from specific time periods to identify themes and methods used by security researchers and hackers. By extrapolating and interpreting the themes of both literature and effective SQLIA, trends can be identified, and a clearer understanding of the future of SQL injection can be defined to improve cybersecurity best practices

SafeWeb: A Middleware for Securing Ruby-Based Web Applications

Web applications in many domains such as healthcare and finance must process sensitive data, while complying with legal policies regarding the release of different classes of data to different parties. Currently, software bugs may lead to irreversible disclosure of confidential data in multi-tier web applications. An open challenge is how developers can guarantee these web applications only ever release sensitive data to authorised users without costly, recurring security audits. Our solution is to provide a trusted middleware that acts as a “safety net” to event-based enterprise web applications by preventing harmful data disclosure before it happens. We describe the design and implementation of SafeWeb, a Ruby-based middleware that associates data with security labels and transparently tracks their propagation at different granularities across a multi-tier web architecture with storage and complex event processing. For efficiency, maintainability and ease-of-use, SafeWeb exploits the dynamic features of the Ruby programming language to achieve label propagation and data flow enforcement. We evaluate SafeWeb by reporting our experience of implementing a web-based cancer treatment application and deploying it as part of the UK National Health Service (NHS)