Best Practices followed by .NET Developers for Secured Web Application!
1. Introduction
With its latest update for ASP .Net Core, Microsoft has shown that ASP.Net Core is the most influential, resourceful & impeccable framework ready for developing robust web, desktop, mobile as well as Cloud-based Applications.
If you think that Web application security is just about intruders hacking websites then you are wrong because it involves cross-site request forgery, taking sensitive data from websites, cross-site scripting (XSS), transferring high traffic to websites with the dismissal of service attacks, viruses, bugs, and other attacks. However, there are other security features that can help us to overcome these issues.
And we are going to discuss those features and how we can keep the application secure, however before we dive into that aspect, I would like to discuss one of the essential factors of the ASP.NET core web application that is— Development Cost.
As we all know, since the introduction of the .NET core in the market, its value has grown unprecedentedly because of the advantages the application offers to its users. The .NET framework cost changes as the requirements get complex.
Thus we need to determine our budget before we start the development process, and prior to estimating the total cost of developing a .NET application, we need to understand these below-mentioned factors:
- The complexity of App Development
- Choice of Developer
- Data Security Application
- Web App Developers Location
To comprehend these factors, I would recommend you to go through the original post, as it will give you in-depth knowledge, as it helped me to understand how letting your guard down while ensuring data security during the development process can cost me a fortune.
Hence we are here to resolve that problem by discussing best practices followed by .net developers for secured web applications. The purpose of this post is to provide you with an insight into many sections that a designer should concentrate on while creating a web application to develop it more securely.
Contrary to Desktop or Mobile Application, Web Applications works on an openly free address that’s one of the causes that Security aspects of Web Application are more significant.
Though Asp.Net Core is produced with the best security practices, you will still find some Vulnerabilities that we should resolve before and after delivering the Asp.Net Core Application.
An efficient method of interpreting the different security problems on web applications is by decaying the intricacy area into different fields of focus. I have explained some of the best practices for ASP.NET core applications in detail.
With these approaches, you can make your focus on the fundamental plan and implementation options that change your core applications’ security.
2. Top 4 Best Practices to Secure your ASP.NET Core Web Application.
2.1 Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Cross-site scripting is a type of network security issue discovered in the web application that enables intruders to insert client-side scripts along with malicious code into website pages that are inspected by the other users.
It is not similar to other web attacks such as SQL injection that doesn’t straight aim web app. In XSS, most attacks occurred due to the input area, query string, and request headers.
Ways to prevent XSS:
- Sanitizing user input: This is useful to block cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks on sites that let HTML increase as input. It indicates that it encodes the HTML that is collected.
- Input Validation: There are some incidents when the HTML character is understandable for user input. We can specify the validation for both clients and server-side that stop the malicious data that wrecks a website.
- Encoding the URL: Many web applications practice Query String to transport the data from one side of the page to another side of the page. The XSS attack can be reasonable on query string data because it is not encoded.
2.2 SQL Injection
SQL Injection is the most basic attack that inserts malicious SQL code for the database and an unofficial user can take the data. For instance, the user receives a report that they didn’t have the power to reflect practicing SQL injection.
Best way to prevent SQL Injection:
Practice Parameterized Query as well as stored procedures utilizing one of these approaches, we can avert SQL injection. It is more beneficial to practice stored procedures rather than an inline query.
Practice any of the ORM (Object-relational mapping) like Entity Framework maps SQL objects such as a schedule, aspect to our field object like class.
2.3 XXE (XML External Entities) attack
XXE (XML External Entity) attack occurs on the application that has XML input. The potential cause for this attack is XML input that includes the recommendation of the external entity framework which is poorly designed in the XML parser.
It may arise because of the exposure of secret data, SSRF (server-side request forgery), and port scanning via the intruder where the application (XML parser) hosted, denial of service (Dos), etc.
Ways to Prevent This Attack:
If you are practicing the “XmlTextReader” set to parse the XML, it has the feature”DtdProcessing” that should be arranged to Prevent or Neglect.
If we have established the DtdProcessing section of XmlTextReader to “Prohibit”, the system will toss the exemption as DTD (Document Type Definition) is known, and if we have arranged the DtdProcessing feature of XmlTextReader to “Ignore”, then the system will disregard DTD terms and proceed to prepare the document.
2.4 Improper Authentication & session management
Often we neglect to keep peculiar authentication that lets the hacker take user credentials in names of sessions and cookies. Utilizing this kind of user access, a hacker can get total entree to the application by the anti-forgery token. These are some techniques to use user login credentials.
- Non-secure connection without any SSL
- Login credentials cautiously hack-able or vulnerable credential
- Difficulty with a session like session-id shown in URL or the session has a lengthy timeout
- Incorrect log out from the web application
Following strong login in ASP.NET core web applications, some cookies are placed to the browser to recognize the user that is just entered.
These cookies are regularly exported to the webserver with all inquiries. Accepting the session choice, we can revoke the cookie setting.
How you can prevent this attack to secure the application:
The answer is very easy, eliminate the cookies after successful logout, practice secure HTTP to ensure cookies, session, and help with data protection.
If you are operating with built-in status membership, so “SignOutAsync” way of the SignInManager position will look after the removing task of all your cookies after logout.
SSL allows us to have a secure communication relationship between server and client so that every kind of data that is transferred between server and client is secured. Some cookie options require to commence to guard cookies and session
- HttpOnly
- Secure
- SameSite
3. Conclusion
So far we have covered the ways that intruders seek to abuse your ASP.NET core application. From this point, we are well aware of the fact that we can use these practices to prevent attacks and secure our applications. The next action is to protect the application using the techniques explained in this post.