Web Security
In-depth guides and analysis on web security from the Safeguard engineering team.
11 articles
Privilege Escalation in Web Applications: Attacks and Defenses
Privilege escalation vulnerabilities let attackers elevate their access level within an application. This guide covers both vertical and horizontal escalation techniques, real-world patterns, and concrete defenses.
HTTP Request Smuggling: A Practical Guide
HTTP request smuggling exploits disagreements between frontend and backend servers about where one request ends and the next begins. This guide covers CL.TE, TE.CL, and TE.TE variants with detection and defense strategies.
Authorization Vulnerabilities: Prevention and Best Practices
Authorization flaws let authenticated users access resources and perform actions beyond their intended permissions. Learn the most common authorization vulnerabilities and how to build robust access control systems.
Cache Poisoning Attacks: How They Work and How to Prevent Them
Cache poisoning attacks manipulate web caches to serve malicious content to other users. This guide covers web cache poisoning, DNS cache poisoning, and practical defenses for modern applications.
Authentication Bypass: Common Patterns Attackers Exploit
Authentication bypass vulnerabilities let attackers access protected resources without valid credentials. This guide covers the most common bypass patterns found in modern web applications and how to prevent each one.
CDN Poisoning Attacks: How Cached Content Becomes a Weapon
CDN cache poisoning turns your performance infrastructure into an attack vector. When the cache serves malicious content to every user, the blast radius is massive and immediate.
Session Management Security: A Complete Guide
Session management vulnerabilities enable account takeover, privilege escalation, and data theft. This guide covers session ID generation, storage, lifecycle, and the attacks that exploit weak session handling.
Race Condition Vulnerabilities in Web Applications
Race conditions in web applications lead to double-spending, privilege escalation, and data corruption. This guide covers the most common patterns, detection techniques, and practical defenses.
Cookie Security for Modern Web Applications
Cookie misconfigurations remain one of the most common web vulnerabilities. From SameSite to cookie prefixes, here is how to configure cookies that resist session hijacking and CSRF attacks.
Security Headers Implementation Checklist: Hardening Your Web Application
HTTP security headers are your first line of defense against XSS, clickjacking, and data injection attacks. Here is a practical implementation checklist with correct configurations.
File Upload Vulnerability Prevention: A Practical Guide
File upload functionality is one of the most dangerous features in web applications. This guide covers the attack vectors, bypass techniques, and layered defenses needed to handle file uploads securely.