The Web Hacking Incident Database (WHID) is a project dedicated to maintaining a record of web application-related security incidents. WHID’s purpose is to serve as a tool for raising awareness of web application security problems and to provide information for statistical analysis of web application security incidents. Unlike other resources covering web site security – which focus on the technical aspect of the incident – the WHID focuses on the impact of the attack. Trustwave's SpiderLabs is a WHID project contributor.
Report Summary Findings
An analysis of the Web hacking incidents from the first half of 2010 performed by Trustwave’s SpiderLabs Security Research team shows the following trends and findings:
- A steep rise in attacks against the financial vertical market is occurring in 2010, and is currently the no. 3 targeted vertical at 12 percent. This is mainly a result of cybercriminals targeting small to medium businesses’ (SMBs) online banking accounts.
- Corresponding to cybercriminals targeting online bank accounts, the use of Banking Trojans (which results in stolen authentication credentials) made the largest jump for attack methods (Banking Trojans + Stolen Credentials).
- Application downtime, often due to denial of service attacks, is a rising outcome.
- Organizations have not implemented proper Web application logging mechanisms and thus are unable to conduct proper incident response to identify and correct vulnerabilities. This resulted in the no. 1 “unknown” attack category.
WHID Top 10 Risks for 2010
As part of the WHID analysis, here is a current Top 10 listing of the application weaknesses that are actively being exploited (with example attack method mapping in parentheses). Hopefully this data can be used by organizations to re-prioritize their remediation efforts.
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| WHID Top 10 for 2010 |
| 1 | Improper Output Handling (XSS and Planting of Malware) |
| 2 | Insufficient Anti-Automation (Brute Force and DoS) |
| 3 | Improper Input Handling (SQL Injection) |
| 4 | Insufficient Authentication (Stolen Credentials/Banking Trojans) |
| 5 | Application Misconfiguration (Detailed error messages) |
| 6 | Insufficient Process Validation (CSRF and DNS Hijacking) |
| 7 | Insufficient Authorization (Predictable Resource Location/Forceful Browsing) |
| 8 | Abuse of Functionality (CSRF/Click-Fraud) |
| 9 | Insufficient Password Recovery (Brute Force) |
| 10 | Improper Filesystem Permissions (info Leakages) |
Download the full report.
