1. 'Secure Programming: How to Implement User Account Management'

    Thu 18 November 2010

    Most web applications work like this:

    The application uses a single database account to perform all actions. Users are just some records in a table. Account privileges and roles are part of this table, or separate tables.

    This implies that all security must be designed and build by the application developer. I think this is entirely wrong. There is a big risk:

    In such applications, SQL-injection will allow full control of the entire database.

    This is something that is often overlooked. And the solution is simple. The application should not use a general account with full privileges. The application should use the database account of the user accessing the application. All actions performed by this user are thus limited by the privileges of this database account. The impact of SQL-injection would be significantly reduced.

    The public part of a website is still using an application account, but the privileges of this account can be significantly reduced. To obtain elevated privileges, a user must first authenticate against the application and thus the database.

    Please understand another benefit: it is not required to store username/password combinations of privileged accounts on the application server. The configuration file will only contain the credentials of the unprivileged account. An attacker compromising the application server with limited privileges, won't have access to the database with elevated privileges.

    I understand that this solution requires a bit more work to setup at the start, but once implemented, it reduces complexity and improves security so much.

    Of course, the security of your data is as good as the hardening of your database server. But that's another story.

Page 1 / 1