Online Retail Platform Security Assessment
Pre-deployment security validation for a rapidly growing e-commerce platform processing thousands of daily transactions
The Challenge
A rapidly growing e-commerce platform processing thousands of transactions daily needed pre-deployment security validation before expansion to new international markets. The platform required PCI DSS compliance for payment processing and needed assurance that customer data and payment information were adequately protected.
With aggressive growth targets and plans to handle significantly increased transaction volumes, the client needed to ensure their platform could scale securely without introducing vulnerabilities that could lead to data breaches, financial loss, or reputational damage.
Our Approach
We conducted a comprehensive pre-deployment security assessment covering all critical components:
Web Application Penetration Testing
Thorough testing of the e-commerce platform including product catalogue, shopping cart, checkout process, and customer account management. We tested for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, business logic flaws, and security misconfigurations.
Payment Integration Security Review
Detailed assessment of payment processing workflows, third-party payment gateway integrations, and PCI DSS compliance controls. We reviewed card data handling, tokenization implementation, and secure payment processing flows.
Customer Account Security Assessment
Testing of authentication mechanisms, password policies, session management, and account recovery processes. We assessed protection against account takeover, credential stuffing, and brute force attacks.
Cloud Infrastructure Review (AWS)
Security configuration review of AWS infrastructure including S3 buckets, EC2 instances, security groups, IAM policies, and CloudFront CDN. We identified misconfigurations and security gaps in cloud deployment.
Key Findings
- Business Logic Flaws in Discount System: Discovered critical logic errors allowing customers to stack discount codes inappropriately, potentially leading to significant revenue loss
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in Product Reviews: Found stored XSS vulnerabilities in customer review system that could be exploited to steal session tokens or execute malicious scripts
- Insecure S3 Bucket Configurations: Identified publicly accessible S3 buckets containing sensitive data including customer order information and internal documents
- Insufficient Rate Limiting: Lack of rate limiting on critical endpoints allowing potential credential stuffing and inventory scraping attacks
- IDOR Vulnerabilities: Insecure direct object references allowing users to access other customers' order histories and personal information
- PCI DSS Compliance Gaps: Several issues that would have prevented PCI DSS certification
Remediation & Impact
We provided detailed remediation guidance including:
- Business logic fixes with comprehensive test cases
- Input validation and output encoding for XSS prevention
- AWS security best practices and infrastructure hardening
- Proper authorization checks and access controls
- Rate limiting implementation for critical endpoints
- PCI DSS compliance roadmap with gap analysis
All critical vulnerabilities were addressed before market launch, with a follow-up retest confirming successful remediation.
Impact & Outcome
The platform launched securely in new markets without security incidents. By addressing vulnerabilities before deployment, the client prevented potential revenue loss from discount code exploits, avoided data breaches that could have damaged customer trust, and achieved PCI DSS compliance enabling secure payment processing at scale.