The Importance Of Web Application Security

Security is an important in protecting the integrity of web content. When it comes to web applications, there are many security threats that exist today. Some of these threats include but not limited to: spoofing, tampering, information disclosure, denial of service, and elevation of privilege. All web applications must contain measure to protect its’ contents and users against these types of threats. Spoofing is a form of impersonation of a user or a process. Microsoft Developer Network talked about spoofing in that it, “mean(s) typing in a different user 's credentials. A malicious uses might also change the contents of a cookie to pretend that he or she is a different user or that the cookie comes from a different server” (Overview of

One way to prevent this is to not store passwords or sensitive information at all. This way there is nothing to for anyone to steal to begin with. If you must store password information, Microsoft recommends “to store only a hash of the password. When a user presents credentials, you can hash the user 's password and compare only the hashes of the two” (Overview of Web Application Security). Storing hashed passwords is the best way to store passwords if it is necessary. Again, it is always best to use authentication when users’ are access sensitive information to ensure that they are authorized to access the information. One of the most common attacks that occur today is denial of service. Microsoft describes denial of service attacks as, “deliberate attacks to cause an application to be less available than it should be” (Overview of Web Application Security). This is done by servers receiving multiple requests for service at the same time. This is also known as overloading the server causing it to crash. This was recently in the news with attacks against the Ferguson and St. Louis County Police Departments causing their website to be completely unavailable for the public to access their information for several