web and database attacks

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Within the past decade, there has been a tremendous growing need for web servers and databases; also their related service and the two concepts have hit the headlines as the most researched knowledge domains in the technology sphere. Subsequently, this has revolutionized the way many people interact with one another through effective information sharing. This rapid spread and the management effectiveness of advanced technologies are establishing great opportunities for development of distributed system at a large scale. Although, this remarkable growth has also come with some security concerns which need to be carefully handled because some of data available in these platforms is really vulnerable as well as sensitive. For instance business now days have turned to ecommerce platforms to tap the increasing number of Internet user but the industry need to address several security concerns to ensure the safety of their customer and transaction as well. Customers credit cards used for online payments are highly exposed to online attacks such as hacking and needs to be secured.
Database is a generic term used to connote the collection of similar or related information/data in an organized and integrated manner such that can be easily accessed managed and updated. Kroenke 2010 refers to database as a collection of tables plus relationships among rows in those tables, plus special data (metadata) that describes the structure of the database. On the other hand, web server refers to the software, hardware, and networks that help in delivering digital or web content via Internet to users.
As Faubl 2011 asserts, databases are mainly created for three core functions; to organize, store, and retrieve information in a more effective and effic...

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...ed to them on demand through the Internet from the provider. The latter is more of depicting an online concept while the former can take both online and offline prototypes.
However, these forms of data representation or structure are prone to multitude of possible threats/attacks due to the mode of accessibility. Common attack in this has been the denial of service (DoS) attack. This type is more linked to the Web server allowing access to the database, but can also be attached to database itself. A couple of measures can be implemented such as use of firewall to secure the web servers as well as the databases. The information sent and accessed over the distributed systems or network can be made secure by number of ways; authentication certificates, use of secure sockets and primarily help to prevent the attack from collecting information through network sniffing.

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