Software And Architecture

Securing Applications with ASP.NET Core OWIN Middleware Against Payload Attacks Introduction:  Cybersecurity is a crucial aspect of modern application development. One area of concern is preventing attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in request payloads. This article explores how to use ASP.NET Core OWIN middleware to enhance the security of your applications by addressing payload-based attacks. Vulnerability:  Payload Attacks Payload attacks involve sending malicious data in the request payload to exploit vulnerabilities. These attacks can lead to various security breaches, including data exposure, injection attacks, and remote code execution. Using OWIN Middleware:  ASP.NET Core provides the OWIN (Open Web Interface for .NET) middleware pipeline, which can be customized to intercept and process requests before they reach the application's core logic. This provides an opportunity to implement security measures. Sample Code Implementing Payload Inspection Middleware: Here'

I ran into a situation today wherein I was required to debug the Google Authentication middleware built on top of OWIN. I already had the code checked out from Katana project in CodePlex. However, when I tried to use, it was the latest bits [dev channel]. My app was using the version 2.1 and the dev version was in 3.0. Tired of searching the tag for the version 2.1, I came to know that the symbols for the various open source projects are made available from SymbolSource.org Given this piece of information, I read the steps on how to configure the symbol server in Visual studio and then upon successful source registration, I was able to step through the middlewares and do the debugging stuff. Things that I did were, Grab the public [authentication less uri access] from Symbol Source [ http://srv.symbolsource.org/pdb/Public] Go to Tools -> Options -> Debugger -> General. Uncheck “Enable Just My Code (Managed only)”. Uncheck “Enable .NET Framework source stepping”.

This post illustrates the compatibility of OWIN with the existing technologies MVC5 requires ASP.NET/IIS but can co-exist with OWIN components. MVC is tightly coupled to ASP.NET, hence not standalone with respect to OWIN WebApi is fully OWIN compatible In order to find out where your app is loaded from, use “AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ApplicationBase”  The stage markers apply to OwinHttpModule, not OwinHttpHandler