Know Everything About Business Logic- Definition, Vulnerabilities, and Prevention

Quick Summary: Business logic or domain logic is an integral part of the decision-making process that operates on the backend of business software. To utilize business logic to the best of our abilities, we need to understand its core concept and functionalities, business logic vulnerabilities, and defending practices to prevent them from causing adverse effects on business. This blog covers all the required insights that you need to optimize business logic while safeguarding it from vulnerabilities.

Have you ever wondered why businesses are always pretty concerned about maintaining the confidentiality of their data? Could it be just because it's sensitive information that could be misused? Well, yes, but there's a lot more than that!

Having large sets of data piled up collected from multiple resources acts as a key to unlocking groundbreaking decisions. And to help make promising business decisions, business logic plays a huge role!

Understanding what business logic is extremely imperative! Having a clearer understanding of the concept helps businesses implement business logic practices in a correct manner. Sometimes, failing to do so can end up inviting potential business logic vulnerabilities that can cause hefty damage to a business's reputation. To prevent businesses from potential security threats, regular security checks and assessment of business logic vulnerabilities must be done.

In this article, we are going to address what business logic is all about, its common examples, and undisputable practices that diminish vulnerability from the core.

Vulnerabilities Can Cause Significant Damage in Multiple Ways to Business, Seize Them Before They Ruin Your Software's Security Choose The Right Tool

What is Business Logic?

Business logic is the set of algorithms, rules, and workflows that determines how data is processed, and decisions are made within software applications. It encapsulates the precise requirements and operational procedures specific to a business, which ensures that software abides by the business's protocols and processes.

To put it in a simpler manner, let's take an example:

Suppose you own a store; the business logic will take care of things like how much you should charge for products when to reorder stock, how to keep track of profits, and regular calculations. Enforcing business logic rules maintains consistency and efficiency in how the business functions.

In contemporary business environments, the harmony between big data and business logic is symbiotic for driving informed decision-making and operational efficiency.

As per FinanceOnline's report, in 2025, 463 ZB of data will be generated on a daily basis, and the Big Data market will be worth a whopping $229.4 billion.

Since data carries this much weight and value, security concerns are bound to occur. To mitigate security risks caused by vulnerabilities, let's learn about common business logic vulnerabilities first.

Common Business Logic Vulnerabilities

Let's learn in detail about common business logic flaws or vulnerabilities to get a better idea about how they work and how they can be prevented.

1. Improper Access Control

This business logic flaw occurs when an application or system fails to implement required restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do. This can cause unauthorized access to perform malicious tasks, such as exploiting sensitive information or functionality.

Examples of Improper Access Control

Unprivileged Access: When users get excessive permissions or access to resources, which is sometimes unnecessary for their roles and responsibilities.

Inadequate Authentication: The lack of robust authentication mechanisms easily enables attackers to obtain unauthorized access to data.

Broken Access Control: It takes place because of flaws in the design or implementation of access control mechanisms, as well as mistakes in the authentication and authorization processes

2. Insecure Direct Object References

Insecure direct object references occur when internal objects like files, database keys, or URLs are exposed in front of users without having to validate and authenticate their identity or enforce required access controls. Attackers never leave a chance to manipulate these resources to execute malicious activities.

Examples of Insecure Direct Object Reference

Exposed Database Keys: Use of database record IDs directly in URLs that allow users to edit URLs and access the resources they have nothing to do with.

File Name Exposure: Allowance to directly access files based on filenames, which can be misused for abnormal activities.

URL Parameter Manipulation: Modifications in URL parameters to get access to multiple resources without proper sanitization and authentication.

3. Inconsistent Input Validation

Chances of inconsistent validation take place when input data is not uniformly validated across various aspects of applications or workflow. This leads to situations where specific data inputs bypass critical business rules or security checks, which enable attackers to misuse these unsystematic validation processes.

Examples of Inconsistent Validation

Payment Validation: Validation of payment amounts or currencies at the client side but sometimes skipping the same on the server side can lead to tampering with payment amounts.

Form Field Validation: Accepting some characters or input in one aspect of the app but rejecting the same in another potentially bypasses crucial business logic checks.

User Input Validation: User input validation is the process of Allowing different data formats in multiple parts of the application causes inconsistent behavior and exploitation of data.

4. Business Process Compromise

Business process compromise occurs when attackers get involved by exploiting vulnerabilities to hamper the sequence or flow of business processes. This comprises manipulation of transaction flows, bypassing business rules and approval processes to obtain unauthorized access and attain nasty objectives.

Examples of Business Process Compromise

Order Manipulation: Modification of the sequence of steps in an order processing system to bypass payment verification or approval procedures.

Approval Workflow Bypass: Exploitation of business logic flaws in approval workflows to permit unauthorized transactions and requests.

User Role Manipulation: Changing user roles dynamically to obtain access to prohibited functionalities of data.

5. Security Misconfigurations

Security misconfiguration vulnerabilities take place when security accessibility, settings, or business rules are not uniformly configured. This enables inadvertent exposure of data, unauthorized access, and other security threats.

Examples of Security Misconfiguration

Default Credentials: Leaving default passwords or credentials unchanged in place of administrative accounts.

Improper Access Controls: Implementation of improper permissions on confidential files and directories, which increases the chances of unauthorized access.

6. Social Engineering

Social engineering vulnerabilities misuse human behavior to exploit individuals into divulging sensitive data or executing activities that cause security breaches. This comprises phishing attacks, pretexting, or impersonation to bypass business logic controls.

Examples of Social Engineering

Phishing Attacks: Sending disguised legitimate emails to dupe users into divulging their confidential data like passwords or other credentials.

Pretexting: Creating fake scenarios to acquire information from employees under false pretenses.

7. Concurrency Issues

Concurrency vulnerabilities occur when many users access and edit shared resources concurrently. This enables race conditions, data corruption, or unintentional behaviors if not properly taken care of.

Examples of Concurrency Issues

Race Conditions: When more than one user simultaneously works on updating the same record in a database, this results in inconsistent data.

Data Corruption: When multiple processes or users attempt to write to the same file or database record simultaneously without consistent synchronization mechanisms in place.

Attackers Are Always in Search of Vulnerable APIs; Chase Them in an Advanced Way for Matchless Security Hunt For Free

Six Defensive Security Practices to Prevent Business Logic Vulnerabilities

Here's a detailed description of six steadfast security practices that help you get rid of business logic flaws and vulnerabilities.

1. Principle of Least Privilege

Enforce the least privileged principle to ensure that processes, users, and systems are only able to access the files that are relevant to their job roles and responsibilities. This relatively lessens the risk of unauthorized access or manipulation of confidential information.

2. Input Validation and Sanitization

Enforce meticulous validation and sanitization of all the inputs received from users, external sources or systems, and APIs. This helps to mitigate injection attacks like SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting attacks, and it also ensures that only legitimate and expected data formats and values are processed.

3. Business Process Validation

Validate crucial business processes to make sure they abide by standard business workflows, rules, and logic. Also, regular security checks and balances should be enforced to capture abnormal activities or unauthorized deviations in the execution of business programs.

4. Access Control and Segmentation

Enforce robust access controls to eradicate the risk of security threats and restrict access to confidential details and functionalities based on the principle of least privilege. Optimize network segmentation and segregation of duties to alleviate the effect of a compromised system.

5. Third-party Risk Management

Ensure uniform assessments and manage security risks posed by third parties like vendors, suppliers, and partners who could possibly access your system or data. Perform contractual obligations and consistent security audits to make sure they maintain adherence to your organization's security standards.

6. Security Configuration Management

Ensure to maintain proper security configuration across the entire infrastructure, hardware, software, and cloud services used within the organization. This comprises enforcing security patches on an immediate basis, deactivating unrequired services, and configuring settings to match pace with industry best practices.

Your Web Applications Demand Uniform Security Testing to Work in a Desired Manner; Use ZeroThreat to Achieve Advanced Security Take a Tour

How ZeroThreat Helps You Maintain the Best Security for Your Business?

In recent years, we have witnessed cyber threats in businesses becoming sophisticated with each day passing by. But we must rise back with resilience against business logic vulnerabilities and other cybersecurity threats with equally defensive security practices that cannot cause even minor damage to your business's reputation.

We hope this article helped you learn in detail about such security practices to mitigate potential vulnerabilities and threats. But you can make your security practices even more potent with the help of one such security tool that helps you rest assured of 98.9% accurate results at 5X speed!

Not just that, you will get a detailed report that covers demonstration of scanned vulnerabilities and flaws along with powerful mitigation practices! What else do you expect from a tool that provides an advanced and personalized scan for free! Try ZeroThreat today!