E-Commerce Platform Security Assessment

Client Overview

A major e-commerce retailer with millions of monthly users needed to secure their customer-facing web application and checkout flow before the holiday season. The client had limited in-house security expertise and required end-to-end support from scoping through remediation.

Industry: Retail / E-Commerce
Challenge: Identify and fix critical vulnerabilities in web app and API before peak traffic
Engagement timeline: 3 weeks (scoping + scan + report + remediation support)

Scoping & Requirements

Scope: Customer-facing website (product catalog, search, cart, checkout), REST APIs for payment and inventory, and admin portal (read-only assessment).

Assets in scope: 3 web applications, 12 API domains, 2 admin subdomains.

Compliance: PCI DSS alignment for payment flows; success criteria included zero critical/high issues in payment path.

Rules of engagement: Testing window 02:00–06:00 local; no destructive tests; credentials provided for authenticated scanning.

Methodology & Test Cases

We followed OWASP Testing Guide and ran automated scanning (OWASP ZAP, custom crawlers) plus manual verification of high/critical findings. Test cases included:

Category	Test Cases Performed
Injection	SQL, NoSQL, XSS (reflected/stored), command injection
Access control	IDOR, privilege escalation, path traversal, forced browsing
Authentication	Session fixation, logout behavior, password policy, MFA bypass
API	Broken object level authorization, mass assignment, rate limiting
Config	Security headers, TLS, exposed debug endpoints, information leakage

Tools: OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite (manual), custom scripts. Standards: OWASP Top 10, PCI DSS 6.5.

Findings & Vulnerabilities

Summary: 47 findings (8 critical, 15 high, 18 medium, 6 low). Critical issues included:

Critical: SQL injection in search API allowing database read; CVSS 9.1. Affected: /api/search. Evidence: time-based blind extraction confirmed.

High: Broken access control on order history – user A could view user B orders by ID change. Affected: /api/orders/{id}.

High: Stored XSS in product review form; payload executed in admin panel. Affected: review submission endpoint.

Remaining high/critical items included authentication bypass in legacy admin endpoint, insecure direct object references in profile API, and missing security headers (CSP, HSTS) on checkout.

Remediation Support

We provided a prioritized remediation roadmap and specific fix guidance: parameterized queries and input validation for the SQL injection, role-based checks and resource ownership validation for IDOR, output encoding and CSP for XSS. Retesting was performed after each critical/high fix; two rounds of retests were completed within the 2-week remediation window.

Results & Impact

            Critical vulnerabilities reduced from 8 to 0; high from 15 to 0.
Overall risk reduction: 94% (by weighted severity score).
Payment path achieved zero critical/high findings – PCI DSS alignment maintained.
Mean time to remediate critical: 5 days; high: 10 days.

        

"SecureTechSquad brought our critical vulnerabilities to zero before peak season. Highly professional."

— VP Engineering, E-Commerce Retailer

Key Takeaways

Early scoping of payment and customer data flows ensured test coverage where it mattered most. Combining automated scanning with manual verification reduced false positives and caught business-logic issues. For similar organizations: include API and admin surfaces in scope; plan for at least one retest cycle; align success criteria with compliance (e.g. PCI) up front.