Log4J has been the talk of the town recently and everyone is focused on the technical details of the specific vulnerabilities found. In this episode, James talks about the overarching ideas around dealing with vulnerable components. Are you vulnerable? If so, what needs to be done?
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For more info go to https://www.developsec.com or follow us on twitter (@developsec).
[Read more…] about Ep. 118: Log4J Sparking Thought on Vulnerable Components
Browsers play a role in web application security, but where does their responsibility stop and the developer’s start? In this episode, we are going to discuss a few changes happening in the Chrome browser, that change security by default.
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SameSite Default
Chrome has announced a few changes that we need to watch out for in the near future. We previously talked about the default value for samesite that is coming up fast. I wrote about this here: https://www.jardinesoftware.net/2019/10/28/samesite-by-default-in-2020/
This change could impact any application and as developers we should be aware of security defaults in the browsers.
Mixed Content
Also, they are getting ready to start blocking mixed content downloads:
https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/protecting-users-from-insecure.html
For more info go to https://www.developsec.com or follow us on twitter (@developsec).
[Read more…] about Ep. 117: How Browsers are Helping with Security
In this episode, James talks about investing in the development teams to increase application security priorities.
For more info go to https://www.developsec.com or follow us on twitter (@developsec).
Join the conversations.. join our slack channel. Email james@developsec.com for an invitation.
DevelopSec provides application security training to add value to your application security program. Contact us today to see how we can help.
[Read more…] about Ep. 114: Investing in People for Better Application Security
Application security, like any facet of security, is a complex challenge with a mountain of solutions. Of course, no one solution is complete. Even throwing multiple solutions will never get 100% coverage.
The push today is around devsecops, or pushing left in the SDLC. I am seeing more solutions recommending also pushing right in the SDLC. I feel like we are stuck at this crossroad where the arrow points both ways.
The good news is that none of these recommendations are wrong. We do need to push left in the SDLC. The sooner we address issues, the better off we are. The idea that if we don’t introduce a vulnerability in the first place is the best case scenario. Unfortunately, we also know that is an unrealistic assumption. So this brings us to pushing right. Here, we are looking to quickly identify issues after they are introduced and, in some cases, actively block attacks. Of course, let’s not leave out that automation is our key to scalable solutions as we build and deploy our applications.
Much of what we focus on is bringing in some form of tool. Tools are great. They take they mundane, repetitive work off of our plate. Unfortunately, they can’t do it all. In fact, many tools need someone that has at least some knowledge of the subject. This is where the people come in.
Over the years, I have worked with many companies as both a developer and an application security expert. I have seen many organizations that put a lot of effort into building an application security team, focused on managing everything application security. Often times, this team is separate from the application development teams. This can create a lot of friction. With the main focus on the application security team, many organizations don’t put as much effort into the actual application development teams.
How does your organization prepare developers, business analysts, project managers and software testers to create secure applications?
In my experience, the following are some common responses. Please feel free to share with me your answers.
By no means is this an exhaustive list, but just some of the more common scenarios I have seen. To be fair, many of these responses have a varying range of success across organizations. We will look at some of the pitfalls too many of these approaches in future articles.
The most important point I want to make is that the development teams are the closest you can get to the actual building of the application. The business analysts are helping flush out requirements and design. The developers are writing the actual code, dealing with different languages and frameworks. The QA team, or software testers, are on the front line of testing the application to ensure that it works as expected. These groups know the application inside and out. To help them understand the types of risk they face and techniques to avoid them is crucial to any secure application development program.
My goal is not, let me repeat, NOT, to turn your application development teams into “security” people. I see this concept floating around on social media and I am not a fan. Why? First and foremost, each of you have your own identity, your own role. If you are a developer, you are a developer, not a security person. If you are a software tester, don’t try to be a security person. In these roles, you have a primary role and security is a part of that. It is not the defining attribute of your tasks.
Instead, the goal is to make you aware of how security fits into your role. As a software tester, the historical goals focused on ensuring that the application functions as expected. Looking at validating use cases. When we start to think about security within our role, we start to look at abuse cases. There becomes a desire to ensure that the application doesn’t act in certain ways. Sometimes this is very easy and others it may be beyond our capabilities.
Take the software tester again. The goal is not to turn you into a penetration tester. That role requires much more in-depth knowledge, and honestly, should be reserved for looking for the most complex vulnerabilities. This doesn’t mean that you can’t do simple tests for Direct Object Reference by changing a simple ID in the URL. It doesn’t mean that you don’t understand how to do some simple checks for SQL Injection or Cross-site Scripting. It does mean you should be able to understand what the common vulnerabilities are and how to do some simple tests for them.
If you invest in your people correctly, you will start to realize how quickly application security becomes more manageable. It becomes more scalable. The challenge becomes how to efficiently train your people to provide the right information at the right time. What type of support are you looking for? Is it the simple CBT program, or do you desire something more fluid and ongoing that provides continuing support for your most valuable assets?
Different programs work for different organizations. In all cases, it is important to work with your teams to identify what solution works best for them. Providing the right type of training, mentorship, or support at the right time can make a huge impact.
Don’t just buy a training solution, look for a partner in your development teams training efforts. A partner that gets to know your situation, that is available at the right times, and builds an on-going relationship with the team.
A simple error to make when sending an email with sensitive data is to send it to the wrong email address. Imagine you are sending some information to Dave down in accounting. When you fill out the email you start typing Dave and the auto-complete pops up and you select the first one (out of habit). You think you have selected the right Dave, but what if you didn’t? How would you know that you were about to send potentially sensitive information outside of the organization?
Apple Mail and iOS mail has a built in feature to highlight any email address outside of a specified domain. The steps to enable this are a little different based on the desktop vs. an iPad/iPhone. Let’s look at each one.
Desktop
By default, email addresses all appear the same when composing a new message. The image below shows me composing an email with two addresses:
To change this, in the Mail program, go to Preferences…Composing. Under the Addressing: section there is a checkbox for “Mark addresses not ending with“. Check the box and enter your organization’s domain name in the text box. In the image below, I have entered my domain of @jardinesoftware.com.
Now, go back and compose a new message entering in an email address that is in the org and one that is out of it. The email address that is outside of your domain should be highlighted in red. The below image shows my configuration with the same 2 email addresses. Notice that the james@developsec.com address is now listed in red indicating it is external to my organization.
iPhone/iPad
The mail application with the iPhone/iPad also has this capability. To enable this, go into Settings->Mail. Scroll down to the Composing section and click the “Mark Addresses” button (shown below).
On the next screen, enter the email address you don’t want to highlight. In my case, I entered my domain of @jardinesoftware.com. (shown below)
Once the change is stored, go to mail and compose a new message. In my example, I used the same emails as above. Notice that the james@developsec.com email address is now highlighted in red:
Although this is not a fool proof way to stop this type of mistake, it does add in a visual clue that just might catch your attention. Simple changes like this can help reduce your risk of accidentally leaking sensitive information out of your organization.
Application security has become an important topic within our organizations. We have come to understand that the data that we deem sensitive and critical to our business is made available through these applications. With breaches happening all the time, it is critical to take reasonable steps to help protect that data by ensuring that our applications are implementing strong controls.
Over the years, testing has been the main avenue for “implementing” security into applications. We have seen a shift to the left more recently, leading to doing more throughout the entire development cycle, but we still have a ways to go. I am still a firm believer in embedding security into each of the phases as our main means of securing applications. Testing, however, is still a major component of any security program.
Typically, organizations rely on penetration testing to find the flaws in their applications. This is the de facto standard for understanding your risk. Unfortunately, penetration testing for applications has been watered down from what we think about with network testing. Many of the assessments we call penetration tests these days are just automated scans transposed into a custom report. These types of testing overlook one of the components a penetration test provides, which is the manual testing. Of course, there is much more to a penetration test, but that is not the focus of this post.
Internally, organizations may implement automated tools to help identify security flaws within their applications. These tools are good at finding certain types of flaws, and usually quite quickly. Like many current penetration tests, they lack the manual assessment side.
Not only does manual testing have the ability to find different types of flaws, such as authentication, authorization, CSRF, business logic, etc., it also has the ability to identify flaws that an automation tool overlooks. For example, a tool may not find every instance of cross-site scripting, depending on how that tool analyzes the system. Granted, manual testing is not guaranteed to find every instance either. With each type of testing, there is always a number of issues that will not be identified. The goal is to start reducing these numbers down over time.
Handling the results of all these res ports from the different assessments is critical to how well you start creating more resilient applications. In many organizations, vulnerabilities identified are handled as individual items and patched. In my opinion, the return on investment is when you can analyze these results to review your development process and see what improvements can be made to reduce the chance these types of flaws will be included in the future. Having an expert available to help review the issues and provide insight into how to use that information to improve your process is valuable.
Having a solid application development process in place is important before thinking about implementing a bug bounty program within your organization. If you are not already doing things consistently, there is a better chance the bounty program will fail.
Bug bounty programs have been becoming more prevalent over the last few years. This is especially true for newer technical startups. We have seen much slower adoption with most of the major corporations. There are many reasons for this, which are outside the scope of this post. There have been questions on whether bug bounties can replace penetration testing. The answer is no, because the goal of each of these is different. There are plenty of articles discussing the subject. A bug bounty program has also been seen by many as the evidence to show they are doing application security. Unfortunately, we can’t test ourselves secure. As I stated previously, testing is just a part of our solution for application security.
A key difference between our traditional testing and a bug bounty program is that bug bounties pay by the bug. Our traditional testing is provided at flat fees. For example, that automated tool is a set price for a month or year subscription. A penetration test is a set price per test. A bug bounty is priced per bug, which makes the cost very unpredictable. In addition, if you are not already doing many of the things previously discussed, there could be a lot of bugs to be found, leading to potentially high payouts.
As I have stated before, penetration testing has a different purpose and it can be very expensive. At Jardine Software we offer more budget friendly manual application security testing at a fixed cost. The goal is not necessarily to find every instance of every vulnerability or to exploit vulnerabilities in the way a penetration test would. The focus is on augmenting the automated testing you may already have in place and to provide that missing manual piece. The testing is performed manually by using the application in combination with Burp Suite, to look for weaknesses and provide those in a way that helps prioritize and then remediate them according to your organization’s needs.
The manual application security testing is typically performed over a week to two weeks and includes a broader scope than a typical bug bounty program. The reason for this is that we want to help identify risks that we see based on our years of experience to make you aware. This assessment can then help identify where you may have issues within your application before opening it up for a crowd sourced bounty program where each bug is priced individually.
If you are thinking about implementing a bug bounty program, reach out and lets chat first. Even if you are not considering a bug bounty program, do you have any manual application security testing implemented? We have the expertise to help provide the necessary testing or provide training for your internal teams to start applying manual testing techniques as part of your life cycle.