A fundamental component of many modern day applications is the ability to create and manage user accounts. So many of the services we use every day as consumers and build as developers depend on the ability for customers to register, login, and then perform tasks under their identity. However, every day we see a barrage of attacks against poorly implemented account management facilities. These range from brute force attacks against the login to the impersonation of authenticated users, to the cracking of breached passwords. Often, weaknesses in account management facilities are simply due to the developers not having thought through the potential risks from a hacker’s mindset. This course demonstrates how attackers think and exploit these weaknesses. There are numerous high-profile precedents including the celebrity iCloud photo hack, GitHub account attacks and Dropbox credential disclosure. In some of these cases, oversights in secure account management practices left systems unnecessarily vulnerable whilst in others, good practices undoubtedly mitigated the scale of the damage caused. This course regularly refers to real world examples – both good and bad – as a means of illustrating risks and the effectiveness of security controls.
Author Name: Troy Hunt
Author Description:
Troy Hunt is a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP for Developer Security, an ASPInsider, and a full time Author for Pluralsight—a leader in online training for technology and creative professionals. Troy has been building software for browsers since the very early days of the web and possesses an exceptional ability to distill complex subjects into relatable explanations. This has led Troy to become an industry thought leader in the security space and produce more than twenty top-rated courses … more