More than 86% of web applications have critical vulnerabilities that can lead to resource compromise and theft of confidential information. Statistics show that a third of companies apply already on the fact of the first incident. Saving and ignoring information security can at one time play a bad joke – to inflict financial damage and reputation losses. That is why even governments cooperate with each other to prevent cyber attacks.
External Threat
Websites are still the most easily accessible and vulnerable place to attack by hackers. In most cases, some of these attacks are carried out on various B2C/B2B services that provide a variety of services for their customers. The attacker is primarily interested in money or crypto currency on accounts when it comes to crypto exchanges and online exchangers, as well as any data that can be stolen and later monetized.
To this day, you can classify two types of major attacks:
1. DDoS (Denial of Service) – an attack aimed at disabling the site. The company’s website stops working and as a result attract customers and bring profit. This type of attack is a popular method for pressure and elimination of competitors, especially when the market becomes tight for several major players. For some companies, a few days of downtime can cost tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses. The customer of such attacks in most cases remains unpunished, as it is almost impossible to collect evidence. If before it was possible to track the chain of cash flows of the customer-executor, with the advent of cryptocurrencies to do it is much harder.
2. Attacks aimed at compromising the resource. In this case, the web resource is investigated for vulnerabilities, exploitation of which leads to full or partial control over the site, theft of confidential information, penetration into the internal network of the company, attacks on application users.
Such attacks can develop in two scenarios:
- The target is the company itself and its employees
- Attack on the customer, i.e. the customer of the company, by hacking into the service provider.
Why are Hackers so Attracted To b2c/b2b Services?
The answer is simple. It is easier to hack one service and already through it to conduct an attack on tens and hundreds of thousands of users. It is very convenient to do this by hacking a mailing list service. After hacking the service provider, the attacker gets access to your account and your subscriber base. The next step is to send Phishing emails asking you to change your password, update your payment details, etc. In this case, the user usually performs the required actions, as the emails come from a familiar address, without causing suspicion.
Conclusion
When you sum up and think about the most effective way to protect your projects, remember that security is a process, not a one-time event. Do not forget about trivial software updates and the use of safe programming methods.
- Use only a comprehensive approach – technical protection + audit.
- Update all network services and software to the latest versions to avoid public exploits. Use services to verify https://www.cvedetails.com and https://www.exploit-db.com and the like.
- Test vulnerabilities regularly with a scanner, such as Acunetix WVS
- Disable debugging and tracing in site code (to prevent data disclosure)
- Disable unused OS functions in environments
- Monitor and analyze server log files
- Restrict access by IP to critical data
- Strictly separate testing and development environments to avoid data leakage
