What Are Business Logic Vulnerabilities And How They Destroy A Company?

Understanding Business Logic Vulnerabilities.

Nowadays scenario, every business relies on digital operations. This is how business logic vulnerabilities arise. How do you translate an abstract business idea in machine language? How can you process overlapping theories without making the machines bleed? Actually, you cannot. That’s the problem with business logic vulnerability.
Machines, unlike human brains, work on simplified binary logic. They respond to conditions that must lead to a simple ‘YES’ or ‘NO’, and absolutely nothing between them. A business logic flaw is an application vulnerability, which arises from circumstantial security weakness. As a one-of-a-kind problem, it does not have a universal solution and cannot be detected by automated web application scanning either. Here is a simple way to understand this Only those who understand your business will be able to detect your business logic flaws.

The Logic Behind Logical Flaws

In days when hacking fetches much greater rewards, crooks are always looking for ways to get around your database, or whatever they can get their hands on, which should alarm you. When complex business ideas overlap each other, In fact, in recent times, more and more hackers are looking for ways that go undetected by automated scanning, the ways that exploit business logic paradoxes. Security analysts believe that web applications were and are being exploited with business logic vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, most companies do not even know about them unless there is monetary leakage.

The following are some of the rules that need assessment.
• Money-Related Application Logics- These logics command online monetary transactions, deals, discounts, refunds, shipping fees, and so on.
• Time-Related Application Logics- These logics define how web applications handle sessions and timeouts for users.
• Process-Related Application Logics- It is also possible to exploit internal-facing applications for human resources management, procurement, warehousing, and other processes.

Dealing With Business Logical Vulnerability

How do you patch business logic vulnerabilities before the hackers could find them? You find them first. Business logic vulnerability is essentially a human task that requires expertise, trained to identify flaws, much like hackers do. Managed web application scanning is a better way to detect all kinds of vulnerabilities within the application. While automated scanning looks for top OWASP threats, security experts will understand your business functions and their subsequent effects on web applications.
Once detected, you can either patch the vulnerability in each application or shield them with a managed web application firewall. A managed web application firewall’s value goes beyond virtual patching and time to fix the benefits of patching vulnerabilities. The main benefit is
a) Providing visibility of an attempted attack
b) Providing more insights about attackers, which can help in taking more proactive detect and protect steps to track and block them.

Why are Business Logic Problems Dangerous?

Business Logic Testing

The classification of business logic flaws has been under-studied; although exploitation of business flaws frequently happens in real-world systems, and many applied vulnerability researchers investigate them. The greatest focus is on web applications. There is debate within the community about whether these problems represent particularly new concepts, or if they are variations of well-known principles. Testing of business logic flaws is similar to the test types used by functional testers that focus on logical or finite-state testing. These types of tests require that security professionals think a bit differently, develop abused and misuse cases, and use many of the testing techniques embraced by functional testers. Automation of business logic abuse cases is not possible and remains a manual art relying on the skills of the tester and their knowledge of the complete business process and its rules.
More Information about Business Logic Problems For further reading, you can take a look at the OWASP pages on business logic problems. You can also put your newfound defensive knowledge to the test with the free demo of swift safe, which trains cybersecurity teams to become the ultimate cyber warriors. To learn more about defeating this vulnerability.

Fixing Business Logic Problems

Unfortunately, using common tools like vulnerability scanners won’t help identify or fix business logic problems, since testing for business logic issues cannot be easily automated. The best way to avoid them is to implement good planning, error handling, and testing for negative test cases while an application is being developed. This first requires a clearly defined set of business rules that includes all possible and desired actions that an application is designed to take.
Armed with a business rule plan, one of the best ways to prevent business logic flaws from creeping in is to create a flow chart showing all the possible ways that data and transactions should flow within an application. This includes modeling behavior for every instance where a user is able to make a choice or input data. Constantly check to ensure that the possible actions in the flow diagram match the functions in the business rule plan.
Finally, use threat modeling to help identify flaws in the business logic during the design, implementation, and testing phases. As a failsafe, create an action that the program should take if it encounters any situation not specifically anticipated. This could be as simple as denying the action and alerting an administrator about the encountered problem.

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