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2025 3 marks Short answer Secure Software Architecture (Year 12) Defensive data input handling
NESA HSC Software Engineering Sample Examination + Marking Guidelines (official, 2025)
An online site requires users to create accounts using a 'Create Profile' web form (username, password, first name, last name, mobile number, date of birth). Each username must: 1. be at least 8 characters long; 2. start with an uppercase letter; 3. have a lowercase letter as the second last character; 4. have a numeric last character. Valid example: NESA24a3. (a) Explain how defensive data input handling practices can be implemented for this website. (3 marks, max 75 words)
Marking criteria
3: Explains how defensive data input handling practices can be implemented for the website. 2: Outlines some features of data input handling practices. 1: Some relevant information.
Sample answer
Data sanitisation using client-side scripting can clean the data and remove dangerous input. Input validation on the client-side can check that entered data meets all of the requirements before getting processed by the server. Errors generated by data not meeting rules can be shown to the user.