How to Get a Grip on Ajax Security

Ajax, today's tool of choice for developing Web 2.0 applications, opens up a wider attack surface for old security vulnerabilities. Do most enterprise developers understand the risks?

By Rick Cook
Fri, October 12, 2007

CIO — Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), the technology of choice today for building powerful, interactive Web applications, comes at a price. If developers aren't careful they will pay that price in security.

Most developers writing Ajax applications don't work for software companies, but inside large enterprises. Unfortunately a lot of the Ajax community doesn't understand the potential risks, security experts say.

"We're not seeing security consciousness with developers, we're not seeing it with the people writing frameworks, and we're not seeing it with the quality-assurance testers," says Billy Hoffman, lead researcher at security firm SPIdynamics. "Developers assume the client is going to work a certain way and they don't think about what happens if the client doesn't work like that."

But the bad guys do think about security weaknesses, and they're getting progressively better at exploiting them via Ajax.

For the most part, Ajax doesn't present new security problems—although there are a few new types. Mostly it presents old challenges in new ways, says Pete Lindstrom, a senior analyst for Burton Group. First, Ajax can offer a considerably larger attack surface for old vulnerabilities. Also, the lack of familiarity with Ajax security can compound that problem.

The Trouble with Ajax
As compared to Web 1.0 applications, Web 2.0 technologies such as Ajax in effect split an application, to offload a lot of the processing onto the client browser. This makes for a more flexible, responsive application, but it also exposes functionality previously handled on the server.

"The big change is that the amount of logic and smarts that is no longer on the server can expose immature applications to problems," says Kevin Henrickson, director of engineering at Zimbra, which makes an Ajax-based e-mail application.

This split is the main reason Ajax applications have a much larger attack surface than older Web applications.

"From a security standpoint this [division] introduces two flavors of problems," says Brian Chess, chief scientist and a founder of security firm Fortify Software. "First, it's a more complex system. You've got these two smart things interacting and there's more room for all kinds of errors." What's more, "because we have a much richer client interface we have much harder applications to test," Chess adds.

Top Mistakes to Prevent
The first rule of Ajax security, Henrickson says, is protect the server. "That's where you enforce your security. At the end of the day you can't trust the client," he says. "You have to have a way of ensuring that the person is authenticated and that the person making the request is the one you want getting data."

Continue Reading

With 1.5 billion instructions in one second (BIPS), while consuming less energy than ever before, Wintergreen Research says IT departments need to sit up and take notice of this hybrid system that combines the System z with servers.
Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.
With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security.  The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough.  Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs. 
This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.
The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.
This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.
As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.
A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.
Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Resource Center