Building Applications Securely (May 2021)

Security is now everyone’s problem, not just something that people who work for banks or Facebook need to worry about. This talk explains how to integrate security into the day-to-day work of a busy software delivery team, the practices that are important to understand, the (limited) role of tools, and how to ensure that every build is as secure as possible. The talk recaps security fundamentals, explain the tools and practices that help teams to increase the security of their software and how development teams can integrate these into their normal work.

Transcript

1. Eoin Woods @eoinwoodz | www.eoinwoods.info BUILDING APPLICATIONS SECURELY
2. EOIN WOODS • Endava’s CTO, based in London (6 years) • 10+ years in products - Bull, Sybase, InterTrust • 10 years in capital markets - UBS and BGI • Software engineer, architect, now CTO • Long time security dabbler concerned at increasing cyber threats to systems • Author, editor, speaker, community guy
3. CONTEXT OF THIS TALK link link link
4. 4 Agenda 1. The Threat 2. Mitigation via Software Security 3. Principles for Secure Implementation 4. Implementation Guidelines 5. Summary
5. 1 The Threat BUILDING APPLICATIONS SECURELY
6. SECURITY THREATS •We need systems that are dependable in the face of •Malice, Mistakes, Mischance •People are sometimes bad, careless or just unlucky •System security aims to mitigate these situations
7. TODAY’S THREAT LANDSCAPE Today’s internal application is tomorrow’s “digital channel” System interfaces on the Internet Introspection of APIs Attacks being ”weaponized”
8. DATA BREACHES: 2005 - 2007 http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/
9. DATA BREACHES: 2008 - 2011
10. DATA BREACHES: 2012 - 2015
11. DATA BREACHES: 2016 - 2018
12. DATA BREACHES: 2019 – 2021
13. THE IMPORTANCE OF SOFTWARE SECURITY • Verizon research security incidents annually • There are many root causes • Applications are significant • This study suggests that about a quarter are application related https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/dbir Applications 23% Crimeware 6% Cyber-Espionage 3% Denial of Service 62% Other 3% Payment Cards 2% Stolen Assets 1%
14. 2 Mitigation via Software Security BUILDING APPLICATIONS SECURELY
15. DIMENSIONS OF SECURITY PRACTICE SECURE SYSTEM OPERATION SECURE APPLICATION IMPLEMENTATION SECURE APPLICATION DESIGN SECURE INFRASTRUCTURE DESIGN SECURE INFRASTRUCTURE DEPLOYMENT
16. SECURE APPLICATION IMPLEMENTATION SECURE APPLICATION IMPLEMENTATION HOW YOU BUILD WHAT YOU DO HOW YOU VERIFY S-SDLC PRINCIPLES & GUIDELINES TESTING & VALIDATION Secure Design Inputs
17. SECURITY IN THE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE Microsoft SDL OWASP SAMM SAFECode Fundamental Practices Building Security In Maturity Model
18. MICROSOFT SECURE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE • Developed by Microsoft for their product groups • 17 practices across the lifecycle • Good resources available from Microsoft • Needs to be applied to your development lifecycle
19. OWASP SOFTWARE ASSURANCE MATURITY MODEL • Project from OWASP volunteers since 2008 • Governance, Construction, Verification & Operation • Three key practice areas for each • Maturity model rather than an SDLC
20. “BUILDING SECURITY IN” MATURITY MODEL • Synopsys study of software security practice • Member firms surveyed to establish practices • Statistics & trends published • Organisations can “benchmark” against aggregated findings
21. SAFECODE • Membership organization of some leading software security firms • Publish free on-demand training, blogs and guides
22. 3 Principles for Secure Development BUILDING APPLICATIONS SECURELY
23. SECURE DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES 1. Security is everyone’s concern 2. Focus continually through the lifecycle 3. Good design improves security 4. Use proven tools and technologies 5. Automate security checking 6. Verify your software supply chain 7. Generic and technology specific concerns matter
24. SECURITY IS EVERYONE’S CONCERN • A “concern“ not a ”feature” • Needs team-wide awareness • Avoid security being a ”specialist” problem • Integrate security awareness into normal dev tasks
25. SECURITY CHAMPIONS • Security is everyone’s problem … but always someone else’s • You need enthusiastic advocates • People who will take ownership • Self-selecting ”security champions” • Invest, involve, promote, support • don’t isolate them!
26. FOCUS CONTINUALLY THROUGH THE LIFECYCLE • Cannot “test security in” • Traditional security testing delays deployment • Need continual security work through lifecycle • analysis, design, dev, test, …
27. A WORD ON DEVSECOPS “Security says no” We’re all security engineers now ⇒ “Security” is another silo to integrate into the cross-functional delivery team
28. GOOD DESIGN IMPROVES SECURITY • Careless design often creates vulnerabilities • Strong types, simple mechanisms, well structured code all aid security • Simpler implementation is easier to understand & secure
29. GOOD DESIGN IMPROVES SECURITY Perfectly “reasonable” code … but with a potential security problem … what happens if qty < 0 ?
30. GOOD DESIGN IMPROVES SECURITY Example of DDD improving security ”for free”
31. USE PROVEN TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY • Software is hard to secure • Security software is very hard to secure • Vulnerabilities emerge over time (from attacks) • Proven tools & technology reduce production vulnerabilities
32. AUTOMATE SECURITY CHECKING • Some security checks can be automated – SAST, DAST • Consistency and efficiency • Find (some) problems earlier • Challenges include false positives and responding effectively • Only ever part of the solution
33. VERIFY YOUR SOFTWARE SUPPLY CHAIN • 3rd party code is a possible risk – often open source • Tools exist for OSS security, risk & compliance: • BlackDuck, Whitesource, Sonatype, Snyk, … • Scan code to find dependencies • Checks for known vulnerabilities • Alerts and dashboards for monitoring
34. GENERAL AND SPECIFIC CONCERNS MATTER • Many security concerns transcend technology • Injection, logging, … • Technical stacks also have their specific weaknesses: • C/C++ - memory management • Java – reflection, serialisation • Python – module loading
35. 4 Implementation Guidelines BUILDING APPLICATIONS SECURELY
36. GENERIC SECURE CODING GUIDELINES OWASP Secure Coding Practices SAFECode Secure Coding Practices Common Weaknesses Enumeration
37. TECHNOLOGY SPECIFIC GUIDELINES Secure Coding Guidelines .NET Secure Coding Guidelines
38. SECURE CODING GUIDELINES • There are quite a few standards, which overlap significantly • Need time to understand and apply •Oracle Java Security Guidelines contains 71 guidelines in 10 sections • Something for your Security Champions to work through •you need the practical minimal subset for your threats and risks
39. GENERIC EXAMPLE – INJECTION ATTACKS Unvalidated input passed to any interpreter • Operating system and SQL are most common • Configuration injection often overlooked Defences include “escaping” inputs, bind variables, using white lists, … SELECT * from table1 WHERE name = ’%1’ Set ‘%1’ to ‘ OR 1=1 -- … this results in this query: SELECT * FROM table1 WHERE name = ’ ’ OR 1=1 --
40. JAVA SPECIFIC EXAMPLE – RANDOM NUMBERS Java has two random number generators: java.util.Random and java.security.SecureRandom Guess which one isn’t random but most people use? $> java com.artechra.RandomTest Util Random Execution Time: 7 Secure Random Execution Time: 49
41. Python has a serialization system called “Pickle” • Java, C# and others have similar mechanisms A useful way of moving data around … and a security liability To be fair, the docs clearly state: “The pickle module is not secure. Only unpickle data you trust.” PYTHON SPECIFIC EXAMPLE – UNPICKLING DATA
42. SECURITY TESTING AND VALIDATION • Like any other critical system quality application security needs to be tested early and often – mix of automation and manual techniques • Detailed description of testing is beyond this talk • But we need to be aware of it so that we know someone is doing it • Automated security testing: Static Analysis (SAST) and Dynamic Analysis (DAST) • Automated functional testing: do the application security features work? • Exploratory testing: fuzz testing and penetration testing • Platform testing: testing application’s use of platform & configuration Remember: security also needs to be tested from an infrastructure and operational perspective!
43. 5 Summary BUILDING APPLICATIONS SECURELY
44. SUMMARY (I) • Much of the technology we use is inherently insecure •Mitigation needs to be part of application development • Attacking systems is becoming industrialised •Digital transformation is providing more valuable, insecure targets • Secure implementation is part of an end-to-end approach
45. SUMMARY (II) • Three aspects to secure implementation •HOW do you go about building the software? (SDLC) •WHAT do you do to build the software? (Principles, Guidelines) •HOW do you verify what you build? (Testing, Validation) • We explored a set of principles • Security is everyone’s concern • Continual focus through the lifecycle • Good design improves security • Use proven tools and technologies • Automate security checking • Verify your software supply chain • Generic and technology specific concerns matter
46. SUMMARY (III) • Both generic and language-specific concerns •A number of sets of guidelines exist … use them! •SAFECode, OWASP Secure Coding Practices, Oracle Secure Java Guidelines, Microsoft .NET Secure Guidelines, CERT Coding Practices • We haven’t explored security testing and validation •critically important and another area to learn about •involve specialist experts, particularly for manual aspects
47. BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS
48. WHAT DO I DO NEXT? Get started … Work out where you are … Get some people interested … Work out what to improve next … Improve that thing … REPEAT !
49. Eoin Woods Endava @eoinwoodz eoin.woods@endava.com careers.endava.com THANK YOU 51