Time to update knowledge

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This might be telling folks to suck eggs, but if you are doing secure code reviews and your development skills relate to type 1 JSP and Struts 1.3, it’s really time you got stuck into volunteering to code for open source projects that use modern technologies. There’s heaps of code projects at OWASP that need help, including helping me with code snippets that are in a modern paradigm.

I don’t care what technologies you choose, but your code reviews will not be using Type 1 JSPs or Struts for that much longer – if at all. Time to upskill!

I suggest:

  • Ajax anything. Particularly jQuery and node.js. GWT is on the wane, but still useful to know
  • Spring Security, Spring Framework and particularly Spring Web Flow are essential skills for any code reviewer doing commercial enterprise code reviews
  • .NET 4.5 and Azure are killer skills at the moment, particularly as Windows 2012 has just been released. Honestly, there is a good market to be a specialist just in this language and framework set, as it’s literally too large for any one person to know.
  • Essential co-skills: Continuous integration, agile methodologies (you have updated your services to be agile aligned, right?), and writing security unit tests so your customers can repro the issues you find.

It’s important to realise that good code reviewers can code, if poorly. Poor code reviewers don’t code and have never written a thing. Don’t be a bad code reviewer.

I do not suggest Python, Ruby on Rails, or PHP as these are rare skills in the enterprise market, but if they scratch your itch, go for it, but be aware that these skills do not translate out to commercial code review jobs. The fanbois of these languages and frameworks will hate on me, but honestly, there’s no reason to learn these languages except for the occasional job here and there, and if you’re any good at the list above, PHP in particular is easy to pick up. Fair warning, it’s a face palm storm waiting to happen.

PTV iPhone app – worst public transport app ever, or just pure evil?

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I take the train between Marshall and Southern Cross Station, a terminus station with 14 or 15 platforms and hundreds of V/Line country, suburban and bus services daily. I had an app that worked (the old MetLink app). That wasn’t stellar, but it worked well enough that I didn’t need to get a paper timetable.

So imagine my continuing frustration that the most basic of use cases just doesn’t work in the complete re-write of the new app:

I cannot find my station when standing on the station platform (!) using location search or by searching for the station in the default “Trains” mode the app comes in from the AppStore.

It cannot find the terminus of all V/Line services – Southern Cross Station. I’m serious. In “Train” mode, you cannot search for V/Line services or stations. In “V/Line” mode, Southern Cross is not even a station (!!). You cannot find it by clicking on “Find my location” icon whilst in the station (!), and you cannot choose it from the map, and you cannot search for it. Epic fail of all epic fails. It’s like the PTV app designers chose not to walk the 40 m from their office block to the biggest and busiest station in all of Victoria and test it out.

Modality. It’s nearly impossible to work out you can change the mode of transport you’re looking up by clicking the word “Trains” at the bottom of the screen. I am catching a “train”, but not the default type of “train”. Who knew? The thought that there are multiple types of trains obviously never entered to PTV’s UX designers. There’s no button shape or indicator, it’s just in a button bar by itself, which usually means that there are no other choices.

Honestly, PTV need to test their apps:

  • You should be able to find all the services within 500 m of where you are standing. Just list them all and let the filter function narrow things down in one or two keytaps.
  • You should be able to find ANY station or service or transport mode via text search. It’s just not that hard. There should be no difference between a regional bus, a metropolitan tram, an intercity V/Line service, or a station or bus stop. List ‘em all, and let the filter work its magic in a few keystrokes.
  • Get rid of modes. I don’t think of modes and I use at least two every day. Free up that wasted screen real estate and replace it with a search function that works across all modes, and services.
  • You should be able to view a line’s entire timetable with no more than two or three clicks. Timetables -> scroll to the timetable or tap in enough to narrow things down -> voila. It’s not rocket science. Allow it to be a favorite.
  • Planning a multi-mode trip is not rocket science. This is just not possible with the current PTV app.
  • The old app had notifications for the services / lines you were interested in. Please bring it back. This feature may actually be in the PTV app – I simply don’t know because I have not been able to find my station or the station at which I get off.

This app is terrible. It must be withdrawn.

OWASP Guide 2013 – Developers needed!

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The Developer Guide is a huge project; it will be over 400 pages once completed, hopefully written by tens of authors from all over the world, and will hopefully become the last “big bang” update for the Guide.

The reality is our field is just too big to do big bang projects. We need to continuously update the Guide, and keep it watered and fresh. The Guide needs to become like a metaphorical 400 year old eucalypt, all twisty and turny, but continuously green and alive by the occasional rain fall, constant sunlight, and the occasional fire.

If you are a developer and have some spare cycles, you can make a difference to the Developer Guide. I need everyone who can to add at least a paragraph here and there. I will tend to your text and give it a single conceptual integrity and possibly a bit of a prune, but with many hands, we can get this thing done.

Why developers? Many security industry folks are NOT developers and can’t cut code. We need developers because we can teach you security, but it’s difficult to instil 3 years of post graduate study and a working life cutting code. I am not fussed about your platform. Great developers know multiple platforms, and have mastered at least a couple.

I am installing Atlassian’s Greenhopper agile project management tool to track the state of the OWASP Developer Guide 2013′s progress.

Feel free to join the mailing list, come say hi, and join in our next status meeting on Google+.

Speaking at Linux.conf.au 2013

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I’m glad to say that I’ve been accepted to speak at linux.conf.au 2013.

My talk is how to apply the OWASP Developer Guide 2013 to your open source project.

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Developer Guide 2013 is coming soon. In this presentation, you’ll learn about the major revision to one of the major open source code hardening resources.

The new version will encompass not only web applications (although that is its primary focus), but also general advice for all languages, frameworks, and applications through the use of re-usable architecture, designs, patterns and practices that you can adopt in your code with a bit of thought.

Learn about:

  • The latest research in application security
  • How to apply new patterns to eliminate hundreds of security flaws in your apps, such as the bizarre world of race conditions, distributed and parallel artefacts. Few apps can afford to be single threaded any more, and yet these subtle flaws are easily prevented if you only knew how
  • Challenges of documenting bleeding edge practices in long lived documents
  • How to pull together a global open source document team whilst holding down a day job

If you code web apps, or write apps that need to be secure, this is a must attend presentation!

Come see me! Challenge me! Make the Guide better for non-web apps!

Shame, Slashdot, Shame – misogyny and moderation

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Our industry suffers from a lack of women – women in senior positions are very rare, women who do what I do I can count on my hands without resorting to binary, and there are so few women coming out of Uni comp sci, developers and engineering courses that I can use and craft into my replacements.

IT needs women, and lots more of them, not only for the perspective they can bring to the table, but simply in the terrible truth that young women deciding on future careers at high school don’t see any future for themselves in our great industry, or any of the Science, Technology, Engineering or Medical research (STEM) subjects as a valid career choice.

There is so much to do to rectify this situation, not the least eliminating low hanging fruit, such as eliminating booth babes. I’ve heard lots of excuses, like:

  • “It’s a legal job, I don’t see the problem” (this one makes the least amount of sense)
  • “Everyone does it” (no, they most certainly don’t)

So when /. posts a story on what booth babes really think of us leering at them, you know it’s going to be a stinky disgusting mess, but you have to try to convert the heathens in any case.

I’ve been a Slashdot irregular for years. In 1999, the /. “community” said some disgusting things about Richard Stevens, the author of some of the (still) best Unix and TCP/IP books. I stopped going there every day after that shameful episode. I’ve not posted there since 2010, but I have /. in my RSS feed.

I have removed that feed today and I will be deleting my account shortly.

Why?

Many of you know my very low opinion of IT vendors who use booth babes at trade shows.

Update: I found this comment to a similar post last year just a few minutes ago:

Thanks for making the main point clear, I want to chime in here as a woman and someone who has represented my company from very early on at trade shows (and does to this day). In the telecom industry in particular these booth babes run rampant, they literally provide you with a form when you register to exhibit asking if you want to hire models.

At one event a couple years ago, a guy came over to talk with our CTO (a guy) and I and said point blank to me, “do you have an ownership stake in the company? if not, at least you’ve got one foot in the door to marry this guy?” Nevermind that I’m wearing my wedding ring! All I could do was paint a “go F&%$ yourself” smile on my face and wait for him to leave. The things I would have liked to say, but it just wasn’t worth it in that context.

The problem is, most people don’t walk up to me expecting me to know about APIs, building applications, solving problems specific to their industry or use case, how supply chain works, or anything else important to their business. This is perpetuated by booth babes. How do I know? If I dress in a frumpy or slightly less feminine style, instead of my normal stylish heels and a skirt suit, I get a different reaction. If I wear skinny jeans and flats and a tshirt or hoodie, look my age (early 20s) and have a self-effacing air, they think “oh she’s a nerdy girl” and then they ask the real questions. PUH-LEASE.

If you are a vendor, I have a very strict, and very long standing rule – if you use booth babes, I either don’t recommend you to my clients, or I actively campaign against you, and I will never, ever buy from you again. Such vendors have lost more than a $1m in recommendations from me alone in the last 10 years, and I doubt I am alone in my opinion of such appalling, women hating sales tactics.

So fast forward to today. I logged in after a few days to see if my romantic idealization of early Slashdot met up with even 1999 Slashdot low life scum. I was saddened and disappointed. I lost my decade long ”excellent”  karma rating to peer moderation, and it’s no surprise the peers at Slashdot hate women.

One of my posts had to get more than seven negative flamebait downward moderation clicks to get the score it finally received.

So let’s look at the quality gem of a reply that gets +5 moderation (errors in copy and paste I will leave to the troll, can’t even do that right):

“ook at my low user ID, I’ve been here for longer than some of you have been alive.”

No one cares. I’m probably the same age as you but I don’t go around pointing it out as if it somehow adds extra weight to the argument.

“I am literally white hot angry with whomever did it b”

You’ll get over it.

“f you have a daughter, I expect you’ll want her to be a geekgrrl. If you want that outcome, you will join me in boycotting booth babes.”

Actually if I had a daughter I’d let her do whatever she wanted. Unfortunately you obviously don’t realise it but you’re just another one of those self righteous prudish males who seem to think that women should only do the jobs YOU approve of. Newsflash pal – its the WOMEN who get to decide whether to do it , not people like you.

I suspect in another century you’d be at the pulpit foaming at the mouth and damning any woman who dared go out with an unmarried man or wear a short skirt or speak before a man gave her permission.

You know what – Fuck you and your kind.

From viol8, a 40-something troll programmer who lives and works somewhere in Europe (if he can be trusted to thump things into the post box), who comes across as an arrogant Australian or English ex pat. I can’t be arsed working out who he is any longer – he’s exactly like any number of the worthless women hating smegheads that infest slashdot.

It’s time to put /. out of its misery and terminal decline. It has been an irrelevant community for years, and now the cesspool is dead to me.

ajv (4061, ex-member /. 1997-2012)

Update: RSS feed – deleted. Twitter – unfollowed. Can I find how to delete my /. account, no I can’t. Help appreciated in the box below.

PCI DSS QSA vs ISA smack down

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In his post “PCI’s Money Making Cash Cow“, Andrew Weidenhamer must have had a bad week of being challenged (or in his words, “bullied’) by an PCI DSS Internal Security Auditor (ISA). This is not acceptable, but QSA’s must accept that their advice is there to help the organization become compliant, not to provide a cash cow of their own nor to be unchallenged.

Not knowing the specifics of the background that led to this article, I have to assume that the ISA has pushed back on one or more of:

  • Scope – this has traditionally been the QSA’s sole domain, and (uncharitably) they probably don’t want anyone else busting a move in their profitability zone.
  • Interpretation of the meaning of various clauses. I wrote the OWASP Top 10 2007, which was incorporated in the PCI DSS. I find it highly amusing to hear some of the “meanings” attributed to what I wrote.
  • Being forceful about adhering to the “intent” versus the “letter” of the PCI DSS. This is a problem where the standard has to be deliberately vague, but the Council should be open and honest about what they meant when they wrote it – do they mean a web app, or something else? The PCI DSS is highly focussed on web apps, not other apps. Trying to extend it is like extending a repair manual for a ship to a bus. They both have diesel engines, but you know it doesn’t work that way. Don’t force the issue if you don’t know.

Being in this space right now, I understand the issues here. There are several problems I hope the SSC will pick up and resolve in the next major overhaul of the standard.

  • Make the meaning of “in scope” and “out of scope” a great deal more tightly defined. The biggest problem in my view is it’s far too easy to drag in unrelated systems in a cloud / virtualized / management environments. I’m all for a solid ring fence, but to think the only way to do it is by layer two firewalls is farcical at best and destructive of the Council’s reputation at worst. Firewalls have their place, but as part of a wider set of more than adequate other controls, such as strong authentication, authorization, auditing and escalation. Let’s put it this way, I do nearly all my penetration tests over SSL and through firewalls and in direct view of IDS’s, and I still manage to have a very, very good time. If firewalls are all you’ve got, we’ve got it very, very wrong.
  • Leaving the QSA to determine the scope is inherently conflicted. They get a lot more money if they scope it conservatively (i.e as many of the requirements as possible, and as many systems as possible), and there’s a lot of risk if they scope it to be a minimal but to the letter of the standard. I strongly suggest SSC require tier one merchants hire two QSA’s, one to find the information out and set the scope, and one to assess the desired scope and systems. Or work just like the internal audit versus external audit functions in the financial world, where the ISA’s output is treated as trustworthy and evaluated from time to time. Is either method perfect? No, but it’s a lot less conflicted than the current situation.
  • The glossary, the prioritized list, fact sheets, and PCI DSS for Dummes, what you heard on the community grapevine, or the guidelines ARE NOT the standard. They can be used to support an argument to do something in the spirit of the standard, but they are most certainly NOT the standard. QSA’s – please understand unless you demonstrate that your reason for a “not in place” actually is required by one of the in scope requirements, then it’s not required to be in place. Is it good idea? Almost certainly, but that’s a different standard.
  • Many folks need and want an Attestation of Compliance … but at what cost? The process of working through not getting an AoC is almost completely off the reservation. Most folks don’t even think about this third way, but it’s actually fairly likely. If your activities are all about getting an AoC at all costs, PCI DSS has failed to achieve a good balance. There are places for a black and white compliance standard, and there are places for risk based assessments. If it’s going to cost you $25m to fix a $25 a year problem, that’s a terrible, terrible outcome. I hope the SSC addresses this in the future, as many folks going through PCI DSS compliance will need an AoC but can’t get one because their QSA has said no for the most minor of reasons.
  • Make it easy for folks to ask questions directly to the council. Nearly all of the requirements are vague. One QSA might have been told one thing by the Council, and other has never come across it before, and you have two opinions, one right and one somewhat wrong. Too many times, an argument that goes on for weeks can be solved with a simple email to the Council. Channeling it through one side of the argument (the QSA) is inherently conflicted. Let’s be open and transparent in this process.

In my view, the best way to deal with a QSA is to be friendly, but make it known that you will challenge them in a collegiate way from time to time, and that there’s nothing personal about that challenge. The QSA may not understand the business or the technology, and they may have got it completely wrong.

On the other hand, you as an ISA or as a hiring company may not understand the intent or learnings of the Council, and need to get your house in order, which is far, far more likely.

PCI DSS does this in a very blunt, non risk assessed way. For the first time ever, someone with a bigger stick is holding you to account to do it the way you should have done it in the first place. There is simply NO EXCUSE for SQL injection or XSS in any app, let alone a payment app. However, so many of the requirements are vague and so open ended as to be nearly impossible to comply with unless you hoodwink the QSA. And that doesn’t serve the real purpose of this exercise.

QSA’s who fear going to every meeting with you are not going to offer good advice. They wont offer advice at all. It’s best to walk a very fine line between being friendly and learn all you can get from A to B in the best way possible that achieves credit card security, but don’t be so chummy that you find it hard to say “no” when you need to say “no”.

My rule of thumb is that if you’re having a difficult conversation with your acquirer when you should have been having a difficult conversation with your developers, your marketers, your business or the QSA, then you’ve done it wrong. PCI DSS is here to save your bacon, not be a speed bump. However, there is much to improve in the QSA engagement process, mainly in my view to advance true independence of QSAs.

Fedora 17 install on VMWare Fusion 4 / Workstation 8

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I am moving over to using Fedora from Ubuntu as I am helping out with the OLPC XS (School Server) on XO laptop effort, which is Fedora based. Fedora 17, codename The Beefy Miracle (seriously), has just been released, so it’s time to update my Linux development workstations.

Installing Fedora 17 in VMWare Fusion / VMWare Workstation 8

There are two problems with Fedora 17 and VMWare at the moment:

  • Fedora 17′s graphical installer on VMWare (and I’ve heard on Oracle VirtualBox too) does not show the Back / Next buttons. They are there and they work if you tab to them, but they are offscreen due to the video mode.
  • The next problem is that “Linux Easy Install” doesn’t work in VMWare Tools build 8.8.3 in the Fedora 17 guest. At all. Don’t use it, or you’ll end up in dracut debug shell purgatory after a “dracut Warning: Unable to process initqueue” message. The rest of the instructions here gets you to where Easy install would have managed to get you anyway.

So to get through it, you can either run a text install that produces a very minimal install of Fedora (great for hardened servers like the XS!)

  • Boot from the ISO
  • Enter the troubleshooting menu
  • Press tab to bring up the linuz boot arguments
  • Delete the vesa arguments
  • Type in “text” on the end of the command line

or just use the graphical install…

  • If there’s only one control on screen, just press return and you can go to the next screen
  • If there’s many controls on screen, press tab until the focus disappears, and then press tab one more time (moves from the hidden Back button to the hidden Next button) and then press return.

Updating Fedora to allow VMWare Tools compilation

Once you have Fedora installed, login and open a terminal window

sudo yum update
sudo reboot
sudo yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers gcc make

Installing VMWare Tools

Now you’re ready to install the VMWare Tools

  • Virtual Machine -> Install VMWare Tools. Unfortunately, F17 now mounts CD ROMs in a user specific location (/run/media/<username>/<volume name>), so you need to know your username if the instructions below don’t work
  • Open a terminal
tar zxf /run/media/`whoami`/VMware\ Tools/VMw*.tar.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

NB: With tools build 8.8.3, there will be compilation errors until an update for the tools is released by VMware, but enough modules will compile to allow you to use shared folders, have auto-resizing monitors, working cut-n-paste, and a few of the other things that make running the tools worthwhile. Drag and drop doesn’t work yet.

Logout and then Restart the system to enable the tools. If you’re text only,

sudo reboot

will do the trick.

You are welcome!

On penetration testing – harmful?

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Over at Sensepost Security, there’s a new blog entry wondering about Haroon Meer‘s talk “Penetration Testing Considered Harmful“. Those who know me know that I’ve had this view for a very long time. I’m sure you could find a few posts in this blog.

Security has to be a intrinsic element of every system, or else it will be insecure. Penetration testing as a sole activity and piece of assurance evidence makes security appear on the fringes of the development, something that you pass or fail, something to be commodotized, a box to be ticked, and ultimately ignored. Penetration testing as is done by most in our industry is incredibly harmful. It’s a waste of investment to most organizations, and they know it so they try to minimize wastage by minimizing the scope, the time, and poo-pooing the outcomes.

Penetration testing should be a part of a wider set of security activities, a verification of all that came before. All too often, we come across clients who want to do a one or two day test the day before go-live. They’ve done nothing else, and when you completely pwn them, they’re terribly surprised and upset.

We need to move on to make penetration testing the same as unit testing – a core part of the overall software engineering of every application.

Penetration testing should never be ill informed (zero knowledge tests are harmful and a WAFTAM for all concerned), and it should have access to source, the project, and all documentation. Otherwise, you’re wasting the client’s money up against the wall and acting unethically in my view.

Tests should come from the risk register maintained by the project (you do have one of those, right?), as well as the use cases (the little cards on the wall) as well as from the OWASP ASVS / Testing Guides. More focus must be made on access control testing and business logic testing.

Penetration testing has become vulnerability assessment – run a tool, drool, re-write the tool’s results into a report, deliver. No! Write selenium tasks and automate it. If you’re not automating your pentests, how can your customers repeat your work? Test for it? They should be taught how to do it.

Folks at consultancies will shriek away in horror at my suggestion, but getting embedded is actually a good thing. Instead of hearing from a client once in a blue moon, you’re integrated into the birth and growth of software. This is a huge win for our clients and the overall security of software.

OWASP Development Guide – what do you want in, and what do you want out?

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It’s time to do some curating of the OWASP Developer Guide. This is where my tastes meet the community’s – what do you want in the Guide, and what do you want out of the guide?

As much as I want to be comprehensive, there is a real risk that a 800 page book would never be read. There ARE easter eggs in the Guide that no one has found or bothered to e-mail me about yet, so I know it’s not being read widely.

I want to ensure the Guide is used, in a way that the OWASP Top 10 and ESAPI are used daily throughout our industry.

  • What would you like to see IN the Guide? Why?
  • What would you like to see OUT of the Guide? Why?

Let me know by June. I’ll be sure to share your thoughts with the Developer Guide mail list.