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번역 작업 진행중입니다.

웹사이트 보안은 설계와 사용 모든 관점에서 주의 깊게 위험에 대비해야 한다. 이 글은 입문자용이므로 읽는다고  웹사이트 보안의 구루가 되는 것은 아니지만, 보안 위협 요소가 어디서 발생하는지 이해하고, 가장 주요한 위협에 대하여 웹 애플리케이션을 보강할 수는 있을 것이다.

사전 요구 지식 : 컴퓨터에 대한 기본적인 이해.
학습목표 :

웹 애플리케이션 보안을 위협하는 가장 주된 요소들을 이해하고, 사이트가 해킹되는 위험을 줄일 수 있다.

웹사이트 보안이란 무엇인가?

인터넷은 위험한 곳이다! 우리는 매번 정기적으로 이런 소식을 접한다. 서비스 거부 공격으로 웹사이트가 마비된다거나, 홈페이지에 변조된 (그리고 때때로 사용자에게 해를 가하는) 정보가 홈페이지에 게시된다는 소식 말이다. 또 우리가 눈여겨 봐야 하는 사례들이 있다. 수백만 개의 비밀번호, 이메일 주소, 신용카드 정보가 공용 도메인으로 유출되어, 웹사이트 사용자들은 개인적으로 당황스러울 뿐만 아니라 경제적인 위험에도 처한다.

웹사이트 보안의 목적은 이러한 종류의 (또는 어떠한 것이라도) 공격을 방지하는 데 있다. 딱딱하게 말하자면, 웹사이트 보안이란 웹사이트에 대한 비승인된 접근, 사용, 변형, 파괴, 붕괴를 방지하기 위한 행동 또는 실행을 가리킨다.

효과적인 웹사이트 보안은 웹사이트 전체에 걸쳐 설계 상 노력이 필요하다: 웹 애플리케이션에서, 웹 서버 설정에서, 비밀번호를 생성하고 재발급하는 정책에서, 클라이언트측 코드에서 말이다. 이 말이 불길하게 들리는가? 다행스럽게도 서버측 웹 프레임워크를 사용하는 중이라면, "기본으로" 주요 공격에 대해 이미 왕성하고 면밀한 방어 메커니즘을 가지고 있는 셈이다. 다른 공격들은 웹 서버 설정을 통해 방지할 수 있는데, 예를 들어 HTTPS를 사용하는 것이다. 마지막으로, 취약점 스캐너 도구가 공개되어 있으니, 도구의 도움을 받아 명백한 실수들은 잡아낼 수 있을 것이다.

이 글의 나머지 부분은 어느 정도 주된 보안 위협들을 자세히 다루며, 웹사이트를 지키기 위해 따라할 수 있는 간단한 지침도 제공한다.

Note: 입문자를 위한 주제이고, 웹사이트 보안에 대해 처음 생각해보는 이들을 돕기 위해 작성되었다. 완전하지 않으니 유의하길 바란다.

웹사이트 보안 위협들

이 부분은 어느 정도 주된 웹사이트 위협 요소들의 목록과 함께 그들을 어떻게 최소화할 수 있는지 다룬다. 다음을 상기하며 읽자. 브라우저에서 전달되는 데이터를 신뢰하기만 하고 충분한 피해망상을 가지지 않으면 보안 위협 요소는 꼭 성공한다는 것을 상기해두자.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

XSS is a term used to describe a class of attacks that allow an attacker to inject client-side scripts through the website into the browsers of other users. As the injected code comes to the browser from the site it is trusted, and can hence do things like sending the user's site authorisation cookie to the attacker. Once the attacker has the cookie they can log into a site as though they were the user and do anything the user can. Depending on what site it is, this could include accessing their credit card details, seeing contact details, changing passwords, etc.

Note: XSS vulnerabilities have historically been more common than any other type.

There are two main approaches for getting the site to return injected scripts to a browser — these are referred to as reflected and persistent XSS vulnerabilities.

  • A reflected XSS vulnerability occurs when user content that is passed to the server is returned immediately and unmodified for display in the browser — any scripts in the original user content will be run when the new page is loaded!
    For example, consider a site search function where the search terms are encoded as URL parameters, and these terms are displayed along with the results. An attacker can construct a search link containing a malicious script as a parameter (e.g.<script%20src=""></script>) and email it to another user. If the target user clicks this "interesting link", the script will be executed when the search results are displayed. As discussed above, this gives the attacker all the information they need to enter the site as the target user — potentially making purchases as the user or sharing their contact information.
  • A persistent XSS vulnerability is one where the malicious script is stored by the website and then later redisplayed unmodified for other users to unwittingly execute.
    For example, a discussion board that accepts comments containing unmodified HTML could store a malicious script from an attacker. When the comments are displayed the script is executed and can then send the attacker information required to access the user's account. This sort of attack is extremely popular and powerful, because the attacker doesn't have to have any direct engagement with the victims.

    While POST or GET data is the most common source of XSS vulnerabilities, any data from the browser is potentially vulnerable (including cookie data rendered by the browser, or user files that are uploaded and displayed).

The best defence against XSS vulnerabilities is to remove or disable any markup that can potentially contain instructions to run code. For HTML this includes tags like <script>, <object>, <embed>, and <link>.


SQL injection

SQL injection vulnerabilities enable malicious users to execute arbitrary SQL code on a database, allowing data to be accessed, modified or deleted irrespective of the user's permissions. A successful injection attack might spoof identities, create new identities with administration rights, access all data on the server, or destroy/modify the data to make it unusable.

This vulnerability is present if user input that is passed to an underlying SQL statement can change the meaning of the statement. For example, consider the code below, which is intended to list all users with a particular name (userName) that has been supplied from an HTML form:


If the user enters a real name, this will work as intended. However a malicious user could completely change the behaviour of this SQL statement to the new statement below, simply by specifying the "bold" text below for the userName. The modified statement creates a valid SQL statement that deletes the users table and selects all data from the userinfo table (revealing the information of every user). This works because the first part of the injected text (a';) completes the original statement (' is the symbol to deliniate a string literal in SQL).


The way to avoid this sort of attack is to ensure that any user data that is passed to an SQL query cannot change the nature of the query. One way to do this is to escape all the characters in the user input that have a special meaning in SQL.

Note: The SQL statement treats the ' character as the beginning and end of a string literal. By putting a backslash in front we "escape" the symbol (\'), and tell SQL to instead treat it as a character (just part of the string).

In the statement below we escape the ' character. The SQL will now interpret the name as the whole string shown in bold (a very odd name indeed, but not harmful!)


Web frameworks will often take care of this escaping for you. Django, for example, ensures that any user-data passed to querysets (model queries) is escaped.


Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)



If a user clicks the submit button, an HTTP POST request will be sent to the server containing the transaction details and any client-side cookies that the browser associates with the site (adding associated site cookies to requests is normal browser behaviour). The server will check the cookies, and use them to determine whether or not the user is logged in and has permission to make the transaction.


Note: The trick here is that John doesn't need to have access to the user's cookies (or access credentials) — the user's browser stores this information, and automatically includes it in all requests to the associated server.

One way to prevent this type of attack is for the server to require that POST requests includes a user-specific site-generated secret (the secret would be supplied by the server when sending the web form used to make transfers). This approach prevents John from creating his own form because he would have to know the secret that the server is providing for the user. Even if he found out the secret and created a form for a particular user, he would no longer be able to use that same form to attack every user.

Web frameworks often include such CSRF prevention mechanisms.

Other threats

Other common attacks/vulnerabilities include:

  • Clickjacking. In this attack a malicious user hijacks clicks meant for a visible top level site and routes them to a hidden page beneath. This technique might be used, for example, to display a legitimate bank site but capture the login credentials into an invisible <iframe> controlled by the attacker. It could alternatively be used to get the user to click a button on a visible site, but in doing so actually unwittingly click a completely different button. As a defence your site can prevent itself from being embedded in an iframe in another site by setting appropriate HTTP headers.
  • Denial of Service (DoS). DoS is usually achieved by flooding a target site with spurious requests so that access to a site is disrupted for legitimate users. The requests may simply be numerous, or they may individually consume large amounts of resource (e.g. slow reads, uploading of large files, etc.) DoS defences usually work by identifying and blocking "bad" traffic while allowing legitimate messages through. These defences are typically within or before the web server (they are not part of the web application itself).
  • Directory Traversal/File and disclosure. In this type of attack a malicious user attempts to access parts of the web server file system that they should not be able to access. This vulnerability occurs when the user is able to pass filenames that include file system navigation characters (e.g. ../../). The solution is to sanitize input before using it.
  • File Inclusion. In this attack a user is able to specify an "unintended" file for display or execution in data passed to the server. Once loaded this file might be executed on the web server or in the client-side (leading to an XSS attack). The solution is to sanitize input before using it.

There are many more. For a comprehensive listing see Category:Web security exploits (Wikipedia) and Category:Attack (Open Web Application Security Project).

A few key messages


Important: The single most important lesson you can learn about website security is to never trust data from the browser. This includes GET request data in URL parameters, POST data, HTTP headers and cookies, user-uploaded files, etc. Always check and sanitize all incoming data. Always assume the worst.

A number of other concrete steps you can take are:

  • Configure your web server to use HTTPS and HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). HTTPS encrypts data sent between your client and server. This ensures that login credentials, cookies, POST data and header information are all much less available to attackers.
  • Use vulnerability scanning tools to perform automated security testing on your site (later on, your very successful website may also find bugs by offering a bug bounty like Mozilla does here).
  • Only store and display data that you need to. For example, if your users must store sensitive information like credit card details, only display enough of the card number that it can be identified by the user, and not enough that it can be copied by an attacker and used on another site. The most common pattern these days is to only display the last 4 digits of a credit card number.

Web frameworks can help mitigate many of the more common vulnerabilities.


This article has explained the concept of web security and some of the more common threats that your website should attempt to protect against. Most importantly, you should understand that a web application cannot trust any data from the web browser! All user data should be sanitized before it is displayed, or used in SQL queries or file system calls.

That's the end of this module, covering your first steps in server-side website programming. We hope you've enjoyed learning the fundamental concepts, and you're now ready to select a Web Framework and start programming.

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