Secure Web Application: Preventing Application Injections

In the recent years, web applications are the number one source of vulnerabilities targeted by Hackers. Although traditionally companies have used intrusion detection and prevention systems which monitor the network in general, there is now a widespread use of Web Application Firewalls as a security solution that monitors and protects only web applications. A web application is a software application that is accessed over the Internet using HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). In a typical web application a client, such as a browser, interacts with a web server by exchanging a series of messages that are made up of HTTP requests and responses. An attacker often exploits vulnerabilities that exist in a web application to launch attacks. The focus of this research paper is to study and analyze the application level attacks for secure web application. Application level attacks covered Cross Site Scripting attack, SQL injection attack, Command Injection Attack and Cookie Poisoning attack.