10 Prominent Online Threats to Websites That Could Tarnish Your Reputation as Hosting Services Provider

With the advent of the cloud services in the market, replacing local physical servers, websites face new threats to their integrity, by the incursion of more threatening malware that is present online. The Internet is an open forum, and hackers are using it to target unsuspecting users when they’re online through malicious software programs and web threats. Hackers can introduce malware into your website through various versions of cybercrime such as viruses, spyware, phishing, spam, and adware.

Let’s take a look at 10 of the most prominent online threats that could harm the integrity of your website and tarnish your image as a website hosting service provider.

Online Threats to Websites

10 Prominent Online Threats to Websites- 

1. Injection

Injection flaws such as those of SQL injection are very common for web applications to have. Through one of these injection flaws, hackers could easily send malicious data hidden inconspicuously as command or query to your website. Such incursions trick the application into changing data elements or executing a corrupt command.

2. Cross-site Scripting

Cross-site Scripting errors occur whenever an application sends data provided by users to a web browser without validation. Hackers keenly look for such flaws in the web applications and use them to deface a website or hijack users away from it, thereby, costing the website owner’s integrity and credibility.

3. Insecure direct object references

Often, an application doesn’t verify whether the user’s credentials are validated to view particular content or not. This insecure object referencing by unauthorized users could be easily used to manipulate access to private data.

4. Broken Authentication

Whenever website hosting services fail to protect the account credentials and session tokens, hackers can easily assume users’ identities. Thereby, they could easily commit identity thefts online and forgeries.

Must Read Website Vulnerabilities that Could Affect Your Website

5. Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF)

A CSRF attack tricks unsuspecting website visitors into submitting instances of forged HTTP requests via image tags, and XSS techniques. This cross-site forgery attack succeeds easily if the user is logged in.

6. Security Misconfiguration

Any security misconfiguration flaws equip hackers with unauthorized access to sensitive system data through various avenues such as default accounts, unpatched flaws, unprotected files, and directories. Such incursions can easily corrupt a website, all within a short time span.

7. Insecure Cryptographic Storage

Often web applications don’t have enough security protocols defined to protect sensitive user data such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, and login credentials. Fraudsters use these data elements for serious crimes such as identity thefts and credit card frauds among others.

8. Failure to Restrict URL Access

Service providers often protect sensitive interactions between users and web application by hiding links or URLs’ from unauthorized users. Attackers use this flaw to directly access those URLs’ and carry out any unauthorized action.

9. Insufficient Transport Layer Protection

Usage of weak algorithms and expired/incorrect certificates, often cripple the application’s ability to authenticate, encrypt and secure the confidentiality of network traffic. This allows malicious attackers to “eavesdrop” on online exchanges and gain access to sensitive information through them.

10. Invalidated Redirects and Forwards

Many web applications redirect authorized users to other pages and websites using insecure data, to determine the destination. Attackers use this susceptibility to redirect unsuspecting users to phishing sites, malware sites or forward them to open private pages.

Bottom Line

Website security is of paramount importance for organizations, as it helps scrutinize and remediate any malicious incursions towards their web content. Keeping a check on potential threats and vulnerabilities gives hosting service providers an upper hand when dealing with hackers. To learn more about possible infections and backdoors that might corrupt your website, give us a call at +91-120-466 3031 or fill our contact form, and we will get back to you.