What is IDOR and Why Should You Care About It?

Cybersecurity is a big concern these days, and for good reason. With so much of our personal and financial information stored online, we need to be vigilant about protecting ourselves from cyber threats. One common vulnerability that you may not have heard of is IDOR, or Insecure Direct Object Reference. In this post, we’ll explain what IDOR is, why it matters, and how you can protect yourself from it.

What is IDOR?
IDOR is a type of security vulnerability that occurs when an application uses user-supplied input to access or manipulate sensitive data without properly verifying that the user is authorized to do so. In simpler terms, it means that an attacker can modify or access sensitive data by changing the value of a parameter in a request. For example, if a web application displays private information when a user logs in, an attacker could exploit an IDOR vulnerability by changing the user ID parameter in the request to view someone else’s private information.

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Why Should You Care About IDOR?
The consequences of an IDOR vulnerability can be severe. Attackers can use IDOR to steal sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other personal data. They can also use it to manipulate or delete data, which can cause financial losses or other damage. And while IDOR is often associated with large companies or government agencies, anyone who uses web applications or online services can be at risk.

Below are just a few examples of how IDOR vulnerabilities can be exploited. It’s important to note that these vulnerabilities can occur in any web-based application that uses sequential or predictable identifiers for user data.

1. E-commerce website: Imagine you’re shopping on an e-commerce website and you want to purchase an item. You click on the “Buy” button, and the website generates a unique order ID for your transaction. However, if an attacker discovers that the order ID is simply incremented by one for each transaction, they can easily manipulate the ID to access other users’ orders and personal information.
2. Social media platform: On a social media platform, users can upload photos and set the privacy settings for each photo to either “public” or “private.” However…