A Review of Cyber-Attacks on Web Applications and Their Countermeasures

Leaders have always wondered where and how precisely Information Technology (IT) can be of value in their organizations. However, the pacing rate of technology development and cutting-edge features that technologies can provide can cause the decision-maker of an organization to rush to invest in technology upgrades without taking risks into account. The risks that may cost the existence of organizations can be caused by an adversary who commits a cyberattack against the IT assets of an organization, seizing leaders' underestimations of the risks of IT upgrades. Inevitably, there will always be new vulnerabilities in IT assets, especially in information systems. This study aims to analyse the most recent cyberattacks and their criticalities. In addition, a review of countermeasures was conducted to withstand the attacks. Furthermore, this study addresses the key factors that contribute to the neglect of vulnerabilities in web applications. This study provides researchers and organizations with a review of recent real-world cyber-attack incidents using industrial reports and case studies as sources. The results of this study will provide practitioners and researchers with blueprint knowledge about cybercrimes and how critical cybersecurity is, especially in the field of software engineering, regardless of the size of the development team.