Ajax Security Basics
SecuirtyFocus has a decent article entitled Ajax Security Basics. A sample:
A second challenge relates to the difficulty involved in securing the increased attack surface. Ajax inevitably increases the overall complexity of the system. In the process of adopting Ajax, developers could code a great number of server-side pages, each page performing some tiny function (such as looking up a zip code for auto completing a user’s city and state fields) in the overall application. These small pages will each be an additional target for attackers, and thus an additional point which needs to be secured to ensure a new vulnerability has not been introduced. This is analogous to the well known security concept of multiple point of entry into a house: the difficulty involved in securing a house with one door as compared to securing one with ten doors.
Good basic explanation of Ajax, and the new security vulnerabilities it exposes. The article also points out some pitfalls for current webapp testing methodology:
Applications may periodically send requests to the server to update information on the web page. For example, a financial application may use the XHR object to update parts of the web page that display current stock market information. The tester may not be aware of this process happening in the background if they do not catch the request at the right time, since there may not be visible links or buttons to suggest to the tester that there are requests being made in the background.
Well worth checking out.

