20102010 IEEE 21st 21st International International Symposium Symposium on onSoftware Software Reliability Reliability Engineering Engineering The Web Attacker Perspective – A Field Study José Fonseca Marco Vieira, Henrique Madeira CISUC, University of Coimbra / CISUC, University of Coimbra Polytechnic Institute of Guarda, Portugal Coimbra, Portugal
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[email protected] Abstract—Web applications are a fundamental pillar of today’s corporations in recent years reflects the increasing concern globalized world. Society depends and relies on them for top managers now have about web security. However, there business and daily life. However, web applications are under are some significant factors that still make securing web constant attack by hackers that exploit their vulnerabilities to applications a task hard to fulfill. Some examples are the fast access valuable assets and disrupt business. Many studies and growing market, their high exposure to attacks and the reports on web application security problems analyze the general lack of knowledge or experience in the area of victim’s perspective by detailing the vulnerabilities publicly security from those who develop and manage these disclosed. In this paper we present a field study on the applications. attacker’s perspective by looking at over 300 real exploits used In spite of all security-related efforts, web applications by hackers to attack web applications. Results show that SQL are typically deployed with security vulnerabilities that make injection and Remote File Inclusion are the two most frequently used exploits and that hackers prefer easier rather them vulnerable to attacks. This suggests that web than complicated attack techniques.