This site is the archived OWASP Foundation Wiki and is no longer accepting Account Requests.
To view the new OWASP Foundation website, please visit https://owasp.org

Difference between revisions of "Web Service Security Cheat Sheet"

From OWASP
Jump to: navigation, search
Line 19: Line 19:
 
== 5. Message Integrity  ==
 
== 5. Message Integrity  ==
  
Encryption does guarantee confidentiality but it does not guarantee integrity as the message can be changed en route. In addition, encryption does not ensure the identity of the sender.  
+
Encryption does guarantee confidentiality but it does not guarantee integrity as the message can be changed en route. In addition, encryption does not ensure the identity of the sender.<br>  
 
 
<br>  
 
  
 
'''Rule '''- Use XML signatures to ensure message integrity using the sender's private key
 
'''Rule '''- Use XML signatures to ensure message integrity using the sender's private key

Revision as of 01:18, 4 October 2011

DRAFT CHEAT SHEET - WORK IN PROGRESS

Introduction

This article is focused on providing guidance to securing web services and preventing web services related attacks. Please notice that due to the difference of implementation between different frameworks, this cheat sheet is kept at high level.

1. Transport Confidentiality

Transport confidentiality protects against eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks against web service communications to\from the server.

Rule:All communication with and between web services containing sensitive features, an authenticated session, or transfer of sensitive data must be encrypted using well configured TLS. For more information see Transport Layer Protection Cheat Sheet

2. Transport Authentication

3. Transport Encoding

4. Message Authentication

5. Message Integrity

Encryption does guarantee confidentiality but it does not guarantee integrity as the message can be changed en route. In addition, encryption does not ensure the identity of the sender.

Rule - Use XML signatures to ensure message integrity using the sender's private key

6. Message Confidentiality

Message confidentiality guarantees that data is protected from eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Rule - SOAP Messages must be encrypted using a strong encryption cipher.

7. Authorization

Web services need to authorize web service clients the same way web applications authorize users. A web service needs to make sure a web service client is authorized to perform a certain action.

RULE - A web service should authorize its clients whether they have access to the method in question. This can be done using one of the following methods:

  • Having clients authorize to the web service using username and password
  • Having clients authorize to the web service using client certificates

8. Schema Validation

Schema validation enforces constraints, syntax and semantics defined by the schema.

RULE - Web services must validate SOAP payloads against the web service schema.

9. Content Validation

RULE - Like any web application, web services need to validate input before consuming it. Content validation include:

  • Validation against malformed XML entities
  • Validation against XML Bomb attacks
  • Validating inputs using a strong white list
  • Validating against external entity attacks


10. Output Encoding

Web services need to ensure that output sent to clients is encoded to be consumed as data and not as scripts. This gets pretty important when web service clients use the output to render HTML pages either directly or indirectly using AJAX objects.

RULE - All the rules of output encoding applies as per XSS (Cross_Site_Scripting) Prevention CheatSheet

11. Virus Protection

SOAP provides the ability to attach files and document to SOAP messages. This gives the opportunity for hackers to attach viruses and malware to these SOAP messages.

RULE - SOAP messages must be scanned against viruses and malware.

12. Message Size

Web services like web applications could be a target for DOS attacks by automatically sending the web services thousands of large size SOAP messages. This either cripples the application making it unable to respond to legitimate messages or it could take it down entirely.

RULE - SOAP Messages size should be limited to an appropriate size limit. Larger size limit (or no limit at all) increases the chances of a successful DOS attack.

13. Message Throughput

14. Identity, key, cert, provisioning

15. Endpoint Security Profile

16. Audit Logging

18. Software Engineering Assurance

19. XML Denial of Service Protection

20. Testing

OWASP Cheat Sheets Project Homepage