I am looking at developing a web application that will need to work with personal health information. I am looking at the possibility to using KendoUI for the interface. However, can it be secured to not allow anyone to cross script, bypass or spoof the javascript code since it is on the client side? Or is it better to stay with standard server side controls that require a postback?
Your question lacks detail, but if you are talking about the Kendo DataSource sending data to the server, it is basically a wrapper around jQuery.ajax, so just about anything you can do with jQuery.ajax() you can do with Kendo DataSource.
The truth is the less complicated the security the less reliable it is. Just making a simple call to a datasource in kendo will not be very secure but heading the other way with something like o2auth will be a lot more secure but way harder to implement.I would recommend reading this before you continue down this path. You will have to consider how much effort you are willing to go through to protect your app/website from an encroachment. if this is for a commercial environment you will have to take as much precaution as possible to prevent a security breach.
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Let's say you set up a custom protocol handler to run an application with some startup data, right?
myapp:\\somedata
How secure is that data? I'm having trouble finding any resources talking about:
Do browsers cache this data?
Can other applications see this information get passed and how?
I've found resources talking about obvious problems, like attacking sites can abuse your protocol if they find you have one.
Otherwise, for developers looking to use their website to launch an app in this way, what do we need to be concerned about if we don't want anyone else seeing "somedata"? More specifically, how is the data accessible to attackers?
Any MDN or other official references would be much appreciated!
This question might sound trivial, but even after reading a number of tutorials, I still don't get how the REST security should be implemented.
I have a webpage and soon-to-be-ready mobile app. Both of them will be using the REST API (written in node.js), and the question is - how can I prevent users from modyfing those requests? It's very easy to see the network traffic in the browser, and all the GET/POST requests that are made to the server. It also seems very easy to copy such a request, modify its parameters and/or payload and send it to the server.
How do I make sure that's my webpage or the app who made the request, and not someone else?
Sisyphus is absolutely correct: your focus should be on securing the channel (TLS, SSH, etc) and authentication (e.g. OAuth2).
You should absolutely familiarize yourself with the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). In particular, start with:
OWASP Top 10 Cheat Sheet
OWASP REST Security Cheat Sheet
Here is an excellent "hands on" tutorial that gives you a great overview of all the different pieces you need to worry about:
Authenticate a Node.js API with JSON Web Tokens
Once you've gone through the tutorial and scanned the OWASP cheat sheets, you'll have a much better idea of what kinds of things you need to worry about, what options/technologies are available to mitigate those risks, and what might work best for your particular scenario.
Good luck!
Typically, security these days uses a combination of Transport Layer Security and OAuth2. OAuth2 provides authentication and authorisation, ensuring appropriate access to resources, with TLS both securing data over the network and preventing the kind of replay attacks which you're concerned about. Neither are really specific to Restful APIs and you can find them being used in non-Rest contexts also.
Could somebody advice me the best solution about JavaFX (JDK8) and security concept? Under security I mean authorization and authentication. Thank you in advance.
I might be a bit late in answering this, but you are very right Maryan. JavaFx doesn't seem to have good interoperability with any standard security mechanisms.
The only option is to use a 3PP to solve this. Examples are: Spring security, Apache Shiro etc. In order to eliminate the dependencies with a particular 3PP, I encourage you to wrap the 3PP implementation.
Unfortunately, This is just the beginning of a long list of issues(that are yet to come up) for you, even after you implement the security measure, you will still have to come up with ways of storing and managing security tokens(similar to browser cookies) so that your JavaFx client doesn't need to authenticate with server for every call.
If this is only the beginning of your project, I suggest you really think about whether to use JavaFx or go with web based UI.
I'm trying to secure my play application but I have no idea where to start. In play tutorial I have not found any chapter about that topic. As far as I see security topic is changing between play versions. So what are You guys using to secure Yours applications.
I'm new in Play so please forgive me if I'm asking obvious questions.
Edit:
Ok, maby question was't clear enough(I'm really sorry about that). When talking about security I mean that I need something to deal with users credentials and tool which allows me to restrict access to some pages and eventually to some rest actions in my application.
Edit2:
I'll try deadbolt2 now and we'll see how does it works. But I still encurage You guys to share Your knowledge about Play security with others:)
The documentation seems to still be a bit lacklustre on this topic, but essentially, authentication/authorisation functionality is usually performed using Action composition, which is the basis of reusable controller code in Play. There an example here (also linked from the docs that should help give you the general idea.)
Action composition in Play 2.2.x is done using ActionBuilders. These take a block which accepts a request and returns a Future[SimpleResult]. This allows the action builder to either execute the given block, or return a different Future[SimpleResult] (say, an Unauthorized in the case that a user's credentials did not check out.)
In our app we use the Play2-auth module for handling authentication with session cookies. This has (just) been updated to work with Play 2.2.x but uses a slightly different mechanism for action composition (stackable controllers.) You might be best off working out how the precise functionality you need can be accomplished just using the native framework tools before adding a dependency to it.
I agree with the other answers but just add that I use securesocial to integrate with other auth providers (google, FB, etc...), so I don't have to do auth myself. It's quite easy to get up and running.
https://github.com/jaliss/securesocial
Access control, security, etc. is a very wide topic, because it means very different things depending on context. This may be one of the reasons why Play has little documentation for it, which puzzled me at the beginning as well.
Play2 has some security helpers, namely it's the Authenticated method, for some insights on how to use it, check the comments in the source code. Its a simple method that you could implement yourself, and most do. It, essentially, just proposes a structure for where to place your methods that would check if request is authenticated and what to do if it's not.
Play2 also has some cryptography logic, which is used for signing cookies.
That's about it, you don't have any more pre-built security structures, but that's a good thing, because you don't want the framework making decisions like that for you, if it doesn't know in what context it will be used.
What is essential is to go and research how attacks relevant to your application are carried out, best practices and so on. I recommend going to OWASP, particularly the OWASP Cheat Sheets. If the list of Cheat Sheets seems intimidating start with the OWASP Top Ten Cheat Sheet. Don't mind the large volume of information, it's very useful knowledge.
I am planning to get my website development outsourced to a third party developer. Need your help in deciding on how/ what technology to be used to make it very secure. Since I am not a techie I need the website developed in a way, so that it is easy for me to maintain it and modify content easily if required.
The main purpose of the website is to provide company information about services offered and then also to exchange documents and other file using FTP server. Will be sending out surevey and newletters sometime
Looking for your advice to guide me to the right direction
As I already said on another answer, security is not a product, it's a process.
There isn't a 'secure' software or language. What makes your website/application secure is how it is developed and how the website is maintained.
There is no ready-made solution that, one time or another, won't be hacked.
If the people you are outsourcing to don't understand this, outsource to someone else.
Making your web server "hardened" against attack is best left to the expert sys-admins at Server Fault. However regardless of what technology you use, there is one HUGE thing an end user can do to protect her/his online assets:
USE STRONG PASSWORDS
You can make a site secure using any technology/language/framework.
It's the code quality that makes a site insecure, not the technology/language/framework.
There is no single "correct" language to use -- it's possible to write an insecure website in any language.
The key is hiring staff that have the skill and experience in developing secure web solutions, and also making sure that the system is tested often by external specialists