Book Image

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition

By : Gilberto Najera-Gutierrez, Juned Ahmed Ansari
Book Image

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition

By: Gilberto Najera-Gutierrez, Juned Ahmed Ansari

Overview of this book

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition shows you how to set up a lab, helps you understand the nature and mechanics of attacking websites, and explains classical attacks in great depth. This edition is heavily updated for the latest Kali Linux changes and the most recent attacks. Kali Linux shines when it comes to client-side attacks and fuzzing in particular. From the start of the book, you'll be given a thorough grounding in the concepts of hacking and penetration testing, and you'll see the tools used in Kali Linux that relate to web application hacking. You'll gain a deep understanding of classicalSQL, command-injection flaws, and the many ways to exploit these flaws. Web penetration testing also needs a general overview of client-side attacks, which is rounded out by a long discussion of scripting and input validation flaws. There is also an important chapter on cryptographic implementation flaws, where we discuss the most recent problems with cryptographic layers in the networking stack. The importance of these attacks cannot be overstated, and defending against them is relevant to most internet users and, of course, penetration testers. At the end of the book, you'll use an automated technique called fuzzing to identify flaws in a web application. Finally, you'll gain an understanding of web application vulnerabilities and the ways they can be exploited using the tools in Kali Linux.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Preventing CSRF


Preventing CSRF is all about ensuring that the authenticated user is the person requesting the operation. Due to the way browsers and web applications work, the best choice is to use a token to validate operations, or, when possible, use a CAPTCHA control.

A CSRF attack is easier to execute when the vulnerable parameter is passed through the GET method. Therefore, avoid it in the first place and use the POST method wherever possible. It does not fully mitigate the attack, but it makes the attacker's task more difficult.

As attackers will try to break token generation or validation systems, it is very important to produce them securely; that is, in a way that attackers cannot guess them. You must also make them unique for each user and each operation, because reusing them voids their purpose. These tokens are usually included in a header field in every request or in a hidden input in HTML forms. Avoid including them in cookies, as they are automatically sent by the browser along...