A company's website represents it online and is often the first point of contact for customers, prospects, or applicants to get a first impression of the company, its brand image, or the products and services offered. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting poorly secured websites for criminal activities.

 

Many decision-makers or even website creators are often unaware that poorly or unsecured websites have vulnerabilities that not only jeopardize the integrity and confidentiality of data but can also serve as a platform for various cyberattacks.

 

Attackers exploit weaknesses in the website's code to embed so-called drive-by downloads, a particularly dangerous type of malware, into the website's script. Using iFrames, attackers integrate malicious HTML code into the website. Without the user's knowledge or consent, merely visiting a compromised website can result in harmful content and malware being downloaded and installed.

 

Unsecured but seemingly legitimate websites are also often exploited for malvertising, or malicious advertising. Users are lured into clicking on attractive ads, potentially leading to infection. Attackers specifically exploit security vulnerabilities in web browsers, plugins, or operating systems to infect systems with malware. Additionally, users may be redirected to malicious websites by clicking on an ad. These could be perfect replicas of the site they intended to visit or exact copies of legitimate websites. The hacker aims to gain the user's trust and prompt them to take a certain action (such as clicking a button). The risk of the user becoming infected with keyloggers, ransomware, or botnet software is high.

 

To prevent users from clicking on hidden buttons or content, X-Frame-Options should be configured on the web server. This prevents content from another domain from being embedded into the legitimate code.

 

Contact forms are popular for quickly establishing the first contact between an interested party and the company without needing further data such as an email address. However, these contact forms can be exploited by bots to send spam messages on a large scale, potentially overloading the email server or causing the system to crash. The attacker, of course, uses the company's legitimate domain for sending these spam emails, which can damage the company's reputation and lead to blacklisting.

 

Fake contact forms can also be used for phishing, where hackers collect valuable user data such as email addresses or credit card information. This data can be used for fraudulent activities, targeted phishing attacks, or even identity theft. Implementing honeypots or CAPTCHA can help protect against these threats.

 

Another method hackers use to steal data from insecure websites is Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). Hackers exploit security vulnerabilities, for example, in outdated PHP or JavaScript versions, to execute malicious scripts on the legitimate website and collect valuable data such as IP addresses, browser type, and version. To prevent the execution of malicious scripts, appropriate Content Security Policies (CSP) should be configured on the web server (e.g., Apache or NGINX) and sent as an HTTP header to the browser.

 

Website operators should fundamentally ensure that the privacy of users is protected as much as possible. The Referrer Policy should precisely define whether user data is passed on to external websites. A strict Referrer Policy protects the user by making it impossible to trace which external websites the user previously visited, thus protecting against tracking. Additionally, it protects the website by keeping the structure and URLs of the site hidden, making it harder for hackers to find vulnerabilities.

 

The best protection for the website is also control. The Permissions Policy should clearly regulate which functions are allowed and which are not. For example, the Permissions Policy can prevent access to the camera, microphone, or certain API calls. Restricting certain functions can reduce the risk of data theft and unauthorized actions, such as executing maliciously embedded scripts.