Attacks on Web Services Need to Secure XML on Web

Abstract

Web Services are the newest mechanism of communication among applications. Web Services are independent of both hardware and software infrastructure, they are very flexible and scalable. Lack of security features provided by the web services creates a window of opportunity for attackers. Web Services are offered on Http with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) as an underlying infrastructure. Both SOAP and Web Services relies heavily on XML, hence, Web Services are most vulnerable to attacks using XML as an attack parameter. Several attacks use XML and most of them lies in the category of XML injection.XML based attacks discussed in this study covered a variety of attacks for example Denial of Services and Data Theft, escalation of privileges etc. Among these attacks the injections attacks on the web services are more severe and being given special attention. This study is aimed at providing an insight of the various forms of XML injections such as XPath injection, Coercive Parsing, and oversize payload.