Application layer

From Computing and Software Wiki

Current revision as of 01:47, 23 March 2008

Description: The application layer is used by most programs for network communication. Data is passed from the program in an application-specific format, then encapsulated into a transport layer protocol.

Since the IP stack has no layers between the application and transport layers, the application layer must include any protocols that act like the OSI's presentation and session layer protocols. This is usually done through libraries.

Data sent over the network is passed into the application layer where it is encapsulated into the application layer protocol. From there, the data is passed down into the lower layer protocol of the transport layer.

The two most common end-to-end protocols are TCP and UDP. Common servers have specific ports assigned to them (HTTP has port 80; Telnet has port 23; etc.) while clients use ephemeral ports. Some protocols, such as File Transfer Protocol and Telnet may set up a session using a well-known port, but then redirect the actual user session to ephemeral ports.

Routers and switches do not utilize this layer but bandwidth throttling applications do, as with the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP).

An example of an attack:

SQL injection:

SQL injection is a technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of an application. The vulnerability is present when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and thereby unexpectedly executed. It is in fact an instance of a more general class of vulnerabilities that can occur whenever one programming or scripting language is embedded inside another.

Take a simple login page where a legitimate user would enter his username and password combination to enter a secure area to view his personal details or upload his comments in a forum.

When the legitimate user submits his details, an SQL query is generated from these details and submitted to the database for verification. If valid, the user is allowed access. In other words, the web application that controls the login page will communicate with the database through a series of planned commands so as to verify the username and password combination. On verification, the legitimate user is granted appropriate access.

Through SQL Injection, the hacker may input specifically crafted SQL commands with the intent of bypassing the login form barrier and seeing what lies behind it. This is only possible if the inputs are not properly sanitised (i.e., made invulnerable) and sent directly with the SQL query to the database. SQL Injection vulnerabilities provide the means for a hacker to communicate directly to the database.

The technologies vulnerable to this attack are dynamic script languages including ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, JSP, and CGI. All an attacker needs to perform an SQL Injection hacking attack is a web browser, knowledge of SQL queries and creative guess work to important table and field names. The sheer simplicity of SQL Injection has fuelled its popularity.

A way to defense:

A network-based intrusion detection (IDS) tool such as Snort can be set up to detect certain types of SQL injection and XSS attacks as they occur. Snort actually has a default rule set that contains signatures for detecting these intrusions. However, they can be easily bypassed by an attacker, mainly by converting the malicious input string into its hex-encoded value.