Lukas Vileikis

Insecure data storage is the second vulnerability in the OWASP Mobile Top 10 list. Insecure data storage comes straight after improper platform usage – such an attack might occur after a malicious party has stolen a mobile device, gained control of a lost mobile device or simply managed to execute some kind of malware on the mobile device of a victim. What is Insecure Data Storage? Put simply, insecure data storage refers to, well, insecure storage of data that is…

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If you ever heard of web application security, you probably heard of OWASP. And if you heard of OWASP, you probably heard about the OWASP Top 10. The Open Web Application Security Project, or OWASP for short, is an international non-profit organization dedicated to web-application security. OWASP is widely known for publishing materials covering their projects – one of their projects is OWASP Top 10 which is a regularly-updated report outlining security concerns for web application security. The OWASP Top…

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Another day, another web application gets hacked. Most of the time web application hacks fly under the radar and are discovered years after the data breach occurred, but every so often, after learning what had happened, website administrators hire computer forensic experts in order to help reconstruct and solve high-tech (computer-related) crimes. Every computer forensic expert (or a team of computer forensic experts) has different methods of approaching and solving the problem – but in many cases, the very first thing computer…

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Attacks on today’s web are an unsurprising reality – websites are hacked daily, data is being stolen and leaked left, right and centre. In many (though not all) cases, attacks on web applications are successful because a targeted web application is susceptible to security vulnerabilities – vulnerabilities which derive from its components. In the penultimate segment of the 2017 OWASP Top 10 series, I will cover how using components with known vulnerabilities can affect your web application, tell how such risks are…

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When developing a web application, web developers sometimes need to first turn data into a proper format so that it can be processed. Occasionally, converting data into a proper format is a requirement in order for it to be stored in a file, database or simply to boost effectiveness. Here’s where serialization comes in – serialization in web applications covers turning data into a stream of bytes so that it can be, for example, stored in a database or in a…

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We have all seen search forms, haven’t we? Take a look at mine: The above search form is pretty basic – when a search query is provided, the page will respond with “You’ve searched for …” and display the results. This search form does not have anything unusual compared to the other search forms out there – except that it does not sanitize the input.. What happened here is we have entered a different search term. Here’s what was provided: <script>alert(“2017…

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Web applications can be susceptible to all sorts of vulnerabilities: a web application can be vulnerable to at least one of the 2017 OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, it can have remote or local file inclusion flaws or be vulnerable to other types of weaknesses. A web application can even be compromised by utilizing social engineering – there are all sorts of ways. With that being said, web applications can also be configured in ways that make them vulnerable. Such a vulnerability is…

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Let’s take a scenario like so: I have a web application that allows people to buy software I created – after a person has bought the software, an account must be made. After the individual creates an account, the software can be downloaded. After the purchase, the customer is also granted access to some resources available exclusively to customers. Should any issues arise, support tickets can be lodged. Now imagine you’re an attacker who wants to gain access to the resources available…

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