More than 10 million internet shoppers in India lure cybercrimes: Indusface

Indusface, has outlined some eye-opening website security statistics from India and the reasons behind it. Best practices in application security are often incredibly confusing and time-consuming in the Indian context.

Indusface report will help organizations understand the gradual changes in the web application security domain.

1. Database breach is easier

According to the data that Indusface had collected from more than 2.9 million scans and 4.5 billion ethical hacks, their experts are certain that it’s easier for hackers to infiltrate into the databases.

There’re two reasons for it. Firstly, SQLi vulnerability was found on more than 90 per cent of the application, which provides direct access to a database where attackers can read and edit files.

Secondly, system administrators rarely know about it. Given that most-medium sized organizations in our country are unable to detect SLQ Injection attacks, there are chances that many of them are bleeding sensitive data without knowledge.

2. Cross-site scripting is abundant

Although XSS is not really one of the most pressing issues for most companies, it is as common as SQLi. Approximately 97 per cent of the tested websites had XSS and chances are that they did not really consider it as a severe issue. However, XSS can cause real problems for businesses by not only putting their servers at risk but also users.

3. Most organizations are not testing their applications

According to the Indusface research team, 7 out of 10 websites are hacked at the application layer, but overemphasis on network security and lack of awareness of application security has made many companies overlook the risks entirely. Most of them do not even know about OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, and don’t know how they can be used to breach into the system.

4. Application patching is procrastinated

If it isn’t broken, why fix it? Probably one of the primary reasons why most companies overlook application layer vulnerabilities is that these are difficult to fix. E-commerce and other competitive industries have to frequently make changes, where customer experience is their top priority. On the other hand, banking, insurance, and other finance companies aren’t too keen to change things as it involves complete planning and auditing.

Venkatesh Sundar, CTO at Indusface says, “Application security is a very niche branch of information security. It requires specific understanding of how Layer 7 interacts over the World Wide Web and also other communication layers within the organization network”.

State of Application Security in India

Sub-continental organizations need to take a closer look at the local scenario of problems rather than reading about what’s happening with global companies like Target, Sony, and Alibaba.

Organisations in India need concrete facts whether the risks are real even for companies out here, and if they are, what are the ways that hackers can breach the system which inspired Indusface to work on ‘State of Application Security’ Infograph.”

Here are some of the key India-centric facts

• 91 per cent of the websites that IndusGuard web application scanner tested had SQL Injection vulnerability
• 97 per cent were prone to Cross-Site Scripting attacks
• SQL Injection and Sensitive Information Leakage by web application breach have increased significantly
• More than 10 million internet shoppers, growing yearly by 30 per cent, luring cybercrimes
• 185 million active mobile internet users with 243 per cent growth, a platform which is highly vulnerable
• 58 per cent attacks are for financial gains and 42 per cent by foreign governments
• 155 .GOV and .NIC domains were hacked last year
• 32,323 public Indian website were hacked in 2014 with 14 per cent Y-o-Y increase