All You Need to Know About Secure Dot NET Application Development
With the increase in the internet usage and the number of web applications, various security threats have also multiplied. The number of attacks on various web based applications has increased rapidly during the past decade.
Thus, web application developers must stay aware of the best practices to secure their applications. Let me explain some security measures which helps in securing a .NET Application. Try these four ways to maintain integrity throughout the development process.
Sanitize the URL
A developer has many techniques to enable security prevention inside an application. However, it is more important to prevent the bad data from entering your website. Most of the security attacks happen when the query string values pass through the URL. The best security practice is to define a common place to whitelist the URL.
Clean the URL with a set of whitelisted characters and remove all the bad ones. Thus, you would not be encouraging other characters apart from the whitelisted set. Remember that blacklisting is not a fail-safe method as a hacker can break through it easily.
How Will You Encode a Data?
While processing and sending, we should always encode the data in the response fetched outside the trust limit. Remember that the type of encoding varies based on the handling of non-trusted data. Encoding the data makes the XSS scripts stay inactive. It prevents it from being executed. Microsoft now provides the AntiXss library, which equips a developer with sophisticated encoding methods.
Securing the Services Calls
It is important to know if you expose the WCF services through basic HttpBinding. However, the messaged transmitted will appear as a plain text. The intruders will be able to trap the request and stimulate them easily. You can use wsHttpBinding to transport the messages in an encrypted format. This will prevent unauthorized access to transmitted data. Despite all, it is always better to host services under an SSL layer.
Turning Off the ViewStateMAC
You will create a security loophole in the .Net Application as soon as you turn off the ViewStateMAC. It happens if you use ViewState on your web pages. The intruders will find this easy to intercept. They will read the 64-bit encoded values and will modify the values to exploit your website and compromise the security of any user. If you turn it on, it ensures that your ViewState values are encoded, but a cryptographic encoding is also performed using a secret key.
It is important to gain control over your .Net Application by building strict security walls. Since security attacks are increasing in frequency and severity, so we need to act with diligence. The outcome of every attack varies depending on the scenario. Since we vouch for protecting the intellectual property right of our clients, so protecting their assets will help us to secure our company repute as well.
The procedures discussed in this article for securing .Net Application development can help protect and minimize security vulnerabilities in the future.
