Web Shell Attack and Mitigation

In recent years, the amount of internet users is increasing due to the conveniences brought the technology. Web servers play an important role in hosting websites that are used to deliver contents such as images, text and video. The amount of valuable information stored in the webserver has caused the webserver to become a victim of cyberattacks. The motive behind the attack can be financial, to harvest data, compromise for future denial of service attack and so on. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the stages of a basic web server attack and the effects of the attack. To get a clear image of a web shell attack, a simulated scenario is set up where there will be a victim machine that will be attacked and compromised using a web shell attack. From there, stages in a basic web shell attack are simulated and the effects of the attack can be shown clearly. To set up the simulated scenario, multiple tools such as Metasploit framework, XAMPP, VMWare and others are introduced in the paper. The impact of these tools on security will also be discussed and analyzed. In section 5, possible countermeasures that can be taken are listed and discussed. This paper aims to increase knowledge on web shell attack and their countermeasures.