A developer is designing a new customer-facing e-commerce portal that will receive search queries and form submissions from untrusted Internet users. To minimize the risk of SQL or command injection, which input-validation approach should the team adopt?
Implement an allowlist-based input validation mechanism that accepts only specifically permitted patterns
Apply cryptographic hashing to all inputs to avoid storing or processing plaintext data
Rely on a blocklist input validation routine to exclude known dangerous characters and patterns
Enforce data-type constraints so inputs must match expected data types
Using an allowlist (positive) input-validation strategy is the most effective validation control because it permits only inputs that conform to explicitly defined safe patterns or values; anything else is rejected. Blocklists can miss novel payloads, hashing does not validate input, and simple data-type checks alone cannot address the many ways injection strings can be crafted.
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Why is an allowlist approach more effective than a blocklist for input validation?
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How does input validation contribute to preventing injection attacks?