Mitigating OWASP Web Application Risk: Identification and Authentication Failure using BIG-IP

Introduction:

As web applications continue to grow in complexity and reach, they have become prime targets for attackers seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in identification and authentication mechanisms. Common attack vectors include credential stuffing, brute-force attempts, session hijacking, exploitation of default credentials, and insecure login implementations. These threats are in the OWASP Web Top 10 category of Identity and Authentication Failures. They pose serious risks to data privacy, application integrity, and user trust.

Also, organizations often face significant challenges in implementing and maintaining strong authentication frameworks. Key issues include inconsistent enforcement of policies, inadequate protection against automated login attacks like credential stuffing, and there is often insufficient insight into authentication irregularities, especially across complex, large-scale application infrastructures.

Consequences:

The effects of these failures can be big. This is why web developers and security professionals should fully understand these risks and take steps to fix them. This involves attackers using lists of known passwords along with automation tools like Selenium, Postman, and others to gain unauthorized access. If an application does not have protections in place against automated threats or credential stuffing, attackers can exploit the login page, executing these attacks to bypass authentication successfully.

Here are the key outlines on the consequences associated with this risk.

Unauthorised Access:
- Attackers may gain access to sensitive user accounts, administrative panels, or internal systems.
Data Breaches:
- Compromised accounts can expose personal, financial, or proprietary data.
Account Takeover:
- Through techniques like credential stuffing or brute-force attacks, attackers can fully hijack user accounts.
Business and Financial Loss:
- Fraudulent transactions, stolen customer data, or disrupted services can lead to significant financial losses.
Session Hijacking and Replay Attacks:
- Poor session management allows attackers to impersonate users via stolen session tokens.
Increased Attack Surface:
- Weak or inconsistent authentication increases the likelihood of being targeted repeatedly.
- Attackers may use successful exploits to test other applications in the ecosystem.
Service Downtime:
- Automated attacks (e.g., credential stuffing bots) can overwhelm login endpoints, causing performance degradation or denial-of-service.

Credential Stuffing:

Credential stuffing is a cyberattack where an attacker uses previously leaked usernames and passwords, often sourced from past data breaches, and tries logging into other websites. Since many users reuse credentials across different platforms, attackers automate login attempts using scripts or bots to gain unauthorized access to accounts on various services.

An attacker might use a Selenium script to read a list of known or stolen username-password pairs or automate login attempts on a target website using Selenium to fill and submit login forms. They could also detect success or failure based on factors such as page redirects, content changes, or error messages.

Problem Statement:

If an application lacks automated protection against threats such as credential stuffing, attackers can exploit the login page by launching credential stuffing attacks to gain unauthorized access.

Demonstration Example:

In this demonstration, we will see how BIG-IP helps to mitigate this risk and protect the application seamlessly. Here, we are using the vulnerable DIWA application to showcase the migration steps.

Architecture:

After deploying the DIWA application, and before applying the BIG-IP configuration, log in using the credentials manually to observe the application's default behavior.

Validate with invalid credentials.

Now, Configure BIG-IP with a virtual server and associate it with the DIWA demo application. Then, attempt to execute the credential stuffing attack using the Selenium script provided below.

Attackers can leverage simple scripts like the one above to identify valid login credentials from large datasets of leaked username-password combinations.

Mitigation Steps using BIG-IP:

Log in to the BIG-IP console, go to Security > Bot Defense > Bot Defense Profiles> Create a profile with the below settings.

Associate the profile with the created virtual server by enabling Bot Defense under the security section.

Now, when the script is executed again, the security policy that was configured blocks it.

This can also be verified through the corresponding event logs in BIG-IP.

Conclusion:

As shown above, brute force attacks—including forceful browsing and credential stuffing, can be effectively mitigated by configuring Bot Defense on BIG-IP Advanced WAF. This not only makes the application safer, but it also makes sure that automated threats are found and blocked early, protecting user accounts and sensitive data.