Coding Practices and Recommendations of Spring Security for Enterprise Applications

Mazharul Islam, Sazzadur Rahaman, Na Meng, Behnaz Hassanshahi, Padmanabhan Krishnan, Danfeng Daphne Yao

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Spring security is tremendously popular among practitioners for its ease of use to secure enterprise applications. In this paper, we study the application framework misconfiguration vulnerabilities in the light of Spring security, which is relatively understudied in the existing literature. Towards that goal, we identify 6 types of security anti-patterns and 4 insecure vulnerable defaults by conducting a measurement-based approach on 28 Spring applications. Our analysis shows that security risks associated with the identified security anti-patterns and insecure defaults can leave the enterprise application vulnerable to a wide range of high-risk attacks. To prevent these high-risk attacks, we also provide recommendations for practitioners. Consequently, our study has contributed one update to the official Spring security documentation while other security issues identified in this study are being considered for future major releases by Spring security community.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2020 IEEE Secure Development, SecDev 2020
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages49-57
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9781728183886
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2020
Externally publishedYes
Event2020 IEEE Secure Development, SecDev 2020 - Virtual, Atlanta, United States
Duration: Sep 28 2020Sep 30 2020

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2020 IEEE Secure Development, SecDev 2020

Conference

Conference2020 IEEE Secure Development, SecDev 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityVirtual, Atlanta
Period9/28/209/30/20

Keywords

  • Spring security
  • insecure coding practices
  • security anti patterns

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Software
  • Information Systems and Management
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

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