After a web application attack, HealthFirst traced the breach to an insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) vulnerability. They want to patch it and fortify the app. What should be their primary action?
A.
Introduce a WAF with default rules.
B.
Conduct regular penetration testing on the application.
C.
Implement role-based access controls (RBAC) for data access.
IDOR is fundamentally an authorization flaw: the application exposes object identifiers (IDs) and fails to enforce that the requesting user is allowed to access that object. The primary remediation is to implement robust authorization checks—commonly RBAC (C) plus object-level access control—so every request verifies user identity and privileges against the requested resource.
(A) WAFs can help with certain injection patterns, but default WAF rules rarely fix logical authorization flaws like IDOR. A WAF also risks false positives and doesn’t replace secure design. (B) pen testing is important for assurance, but it’s not the primary patch; it helps validate the fix later. (D) encryption protects confidentiality in transit/at rest, but it does not prevent an authenticated user from accessing another user’s records if authorization checks are missing.
Therefore (C) is the correct first-line fix: enforce authorization server-side, avoid predictable identifiers, and ensure access control is consistently applied across all endpoints (including APIs).
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