Cyberattacks are dangerous attacks that take place on the computer systems of individuals/ organizations by unauthorized individuals known as cyber attackers or hackers. Cyberattackers aim to take advantage of computer system vulnerabilities to get into the computer network and access the secured user/ organization data. Cyberattacks are very important to be detected at the early stage so that preventive steps are taken. Knowledge and awareness of cyber crimes help in mitigating the cyberattack efficiently.
Input Validation Attack:
- Input Validation Attack is a dangerous cybersecurity attack.
- The unsafe data that is entered as a part of this attack is malicious enough to cause greater harm to the system’s vulnerability.
- They manually entered the suspicious data, and broke the secure system environment created as a part of the connection.
Mechanism of Input Validation Attack:
The mechanism of the Input Validation Attack is governed by the fact, that harmful inputs are injected into the computer systems where validated input is required. Unknowingly web applications can also contribute to input validation attacks however most commonly, there is manual feeding of data to hamper the system performance.
Types of Input Validation Attack:
There are 4 different types of Input Validation Attacks. They are listed as follows :
1. Buffer Overflow Input Validation: Buffer Overflow is a type of Input Validation Attack that makes the computer system unresponsive by overloading it with a huge chunk of information. The huge chunks result in successive memory consumption and occupy a great part of computer memory.
2. Canonical Ideation Input Validation Attack: Canonical Ideation is a type of Input Validation Attack is caused as a result of changing the file path that had secure access to secure information. Thereby making the secure and sensitive information accessible to unauthorized users to view, make changes, and even steal private sensitive information as and when required.
3. XSS Attack: XSS Attacks are cross-site scripting attacks where a suspicious link is placed alongside the valid legitimate URLs. The user is unable to detect or distinguish between the legitimate and malicious user link and unknowingly becomes a victim of the XSS Input Validation attack.
4. SQL Injection Attack: SQL Injection is another type of Input Validation Attack, involving the phenomenon where the public URL is tampered with by the injection of SQL code in the Public URL. The hacker injects the code with the purpose to allow actions such as copying of confidential user data, manipulating sensitive information, and purposely deleting significant important information.
Prevention from Input Validation Attacks:
Input Validation Attacks can be prevented by the following:
- Monitoring the input length and having a maximum limit set for input.
- Make use of filters to validate inputs that are given to the computer systems as input.
- Specify the data type that is allowed for the fields, thereby restricting unwanted data to be entered as input.