6. Client side validation in AJAX routines

WEB 2.0 based applications use AJAX routines to do a lot of work on the client-side, such as client-side validations for data type, content-checking, date fields, etc. Normally, these client-side checks must be backed up by server-side checks as well. Most developers fail to do so; their reasoning being the assumption that validation is taken care of in AJAX routines. It is possible to bypass AJAX-based validations and to make POST or GET requests directly to the application – a major source for input validation based attacks such as SQL injection, LDAP injection, etc. that can compromise a Web application’s key resources. This expands the list of potential attack vectors that attackers can add to their existing arsenal. AJAX routines are

7. Web services routing issues

Web services security protocols have WS-Routing services. WS-Routing allows SOAP messages to travel in specific sequence from various different nodes on the Internet. Often encrypted messages traverse these nodes. A compromise of any of the intermediate nodes results in possible access to the SOAP messages traveling between two end points. This can be a serious security breach for SOAP messages. As Web applications move to adopt the Web services framework, focus shifts to these new protocols and new attack vectors are generated.


8. Parameter manipulation with SOAP

Web services consume information and variables from SOAP messages. It is possible to manipulate these variables. For example, “10” is one of the nodes in SOAP messages. An attacker can start manipulating this node and try different injections – SQL, LDAP, XPATH, command shell – and explore possible attack vectors to get a hold of internal machines. Incorrect or insufficient input validation in Web services code leaves the Web services application open to compromise. This is a new available attack vector to target Web applications running with Web services.

9. XPATH injection in SOAP message

XPATH is a language for querying XML documents and is similar to SQL statements where we can supply certain information (parameters) and fetch rows from the database. XPATH parsing capabilities are supported by many languages. Web applications consume large XML documents and many times these applications take inputs from the end user and form XPATH statements. These sections of code are vulnerable to XPATH injection. If XPATH injection gets executed successfully, an attacker can bypass authentication mechanisms or cause the loss of confidential information. There are few known flaws in XPATH that can be leverage by an attacker. The only way to block this attack vector is by providing proper input validation before passing values to an XPATH statement.