The Critical Analysis of E-Commerce Web Application Vulnerabilities

Introduction

Online forms, shopping carts, word processors, spreadsheets, video and photo editors, file conversion, file scanning, and email clients like Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL are illustrations of web apps out of which Google Apps and Microsoft 365 are two common programmes. In simple words, web applications are remote software application hosted on internet and accessed through web browsers. We can also define as, web services are web applications, and not all of them but most of the websites have web applications. For the purpose of shielding web applications, web servers, and online services like APIs from assault by Internet-based risks, web application security refers to a range of procedures, technologies, or techniques.

Figure 1.

Web application architecture

As we know, online applications include users' private and personal information, protecting them against data theft, disruptions in business continuity, and other harmful repercussions of cybercrime is of utmost importance. The concept of designing websites to work as expected even when they are attacked is known as web application security. The idea entails a set of security measures built together into web application to safeguard its resources from potentially harmful agents. Like any software, web applications inherently have flaws. Some of these flaws represent genuine vulnerabilities that can be used against businesses. Security for web applications guards against these flaws. It entails utilising secure development methodologies and putting security controls in place at every stage of the software development life cycle (SDLC), making sure that both implementation- and design-level defects are fixed(1). Protecting websites, programmes, and APIs from assaults is the practise of web application security. Although it is a diverse field, its ultimate goals are to maintain web applications operating efficiently and safeguard businesses against cyber vandalism, data theft, unethical competition, and other unfavourable effects. Web applications and APIs are vulnerable to assaults of varying sizes and sophistication due to the Internet's worldwide reach. Web application security hence comprises of various areas of the software supply chain and a wide range of tactics. Today's world is driven by apps, from e-commerce and personal entertainment delivery to online banking and remote employment. It should come as no surprise that applications are a top target for attackers that take advantage of faults in design as well as in APIs, open-source code, third-party widgets, and access control. Finding security flaws in Web applications and their settings is the goal of web security testing. The application layer is the main target (i.e., what is running on the HTTP protocol). Sending various inputs to a Web application to elicit errors and cause the system to react unexpectedly is a common practise for testing its security(1) These so-called “negative tests” check to see if the system is performing tasks that it wasn't intended to. It's also critical to realise that testing for web security encompasses more than just the login and authorisation mechanisms that may be included in the application. Equally crucial is testing how securely other features are implemented (e.g., business logic and the use of proper input validation and output encoding). The objective is to guarantee the security of the functions exposed in the Web application.