Question

A developer builds a web-based network diagnostics tool that lets support staff enter a hostname, which the application passes to the operating system's ping utility. During a security review, an analyst confirms that entering '8.8.8.8; cat /etc/passwd' returns the contents of the password file. Which secure coding practice would MOST directly prevent this class of vulnerability?

Accepted Answer

Enforce strict input validation with an allow-list of permitted characters and avoid passing user input to a shell interpreter

Answer

Enable TLS 1.3 on the web server to encrypt the diagnostic request in transit

Answer

Apply output encoding to the ping results before rendering them in the browser

Answer

Set the session cookie with the HttpOnly and Secure attributes