Building applications today includes the use of some pretty impressive platforms. These platforms have so much built in capability, many of the most common tasks are easily accomplished through simple method calls. As developers, we rely on these frameworks to provide a certain level of functionality. Much of which we may never even use. When it comes to security, the platform can be a love/hate relationship. On the one hand, developers may have little control over how the platform handles … [Read more...] about Understanding Your Application Platform
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Remember Me Features
Tired of constantly logging into your applications? Don't you wish they would just remember you each time you visit, logging you right in? It isn't as always easy to achieve such a status. There are multiple ways remember me can be implemented. Lets take a look at some of them. Remember UserName One of the most common ways for a site to implement the remember me functionality is to remember the username only. The username is typically stored in a cookie on the client's computer. … [Read more...] about Remember Me Features
Introducing our Slack channel
It is a new year and time for some new ways for all of us to communicate. We appreciate all that have read the posts and listened to the podcast. Both of these will continue to move forward in 2017 with some new material on the way. We are happy to announce we have started a Slack channel. You can find it at developsec.slack.com. The blog and podcasts have been great in providing information in a read-only manner. Slack is an opportunity to open up more conversation and create more … [Read more...] about Introducing our Slack channel
Login Forms and HTTP
Does your application have a login form? Do you deliver it over HTTPS to protect the username and password while being transmitted to the server? If you answered yes to both of those questions, are you sure? Many years ago, before there was a huge push for HTTPS all the time, it was common practice for many applications to load a login form using HTTP, but then submit the form over HTTPS. This was accomplished by setting the action attribute of the form to the full HTTPS version of … [Read more...] about Login Forms and HTTP
Application Security and Responsibility
Who is responsible for application security within your organization? While this is something I don't hear asked very often, when I look around the implied answer is the security team. This isn't just limited to application security either. Look at network security. Who, in your organization, is responsible for network security? From my experience, the answer is still the security group. But is that how it should be? Is there a better way? Security has spent a lot of effort to take and … [Read more...] about Application Security and Responsibility
ImageMagick – Take-aways
Do your applications accept file uploads? More specifically, image uploads? Do you use a site that allows you to upload images? If you haven't been following the news lately, there was recently a few vulnerabilities found in the ImageMagick image library. This library is very common in websites to perform image processing. The vulnerability allows remote code execution (RCE) on the web server, which is very dangerous. For more specific details on the vulnerability itself, check out this … [Read more...] about ImageMagick – Take-aways