Webapps in general
title: Webapp development with security in mind
audience: senior/medior developers, lead devs, testers and security champions (mostly comprehensible for juniors as well)
duration: 2 days (12 hrs education time) in the standard case
developed by: Glenn ten Cate, Péter Nyilasy, Marek Zachara
DIY code and ASVS audit
The below agenda represents a collection of topics and classes we deliver on a course, normally or optionally, in depth or in a short version depending on the needs of the client and the actual audience. The below agenda does not represent a lineup of the topics and classes.
For many of the topics in the below agenda we prepare demos, code fixing exercises, and DIY practices. Most of the hands-ons and other practical exercises are available as cloud instances developed and hosted by defdev.eu.
A defdev course for developers consists of the following ingredients:
Intros [see block A];
Secure coding [see block B];
Secure architecting [see block C];
Framework/language specifics [see block D];
Security testing and audit [see block E];
Options
By default the duration of a course is 2 days, 12 hours education time in the standard case. But it also can take 3 days depending on the demands, the preferences regarding the coverage or the depth and also the options requested. The general content variants are:
'Into the middle of things' hands-on hacking
Playing with untuned source code scanning
Playing with identifying real threats and security requirements
OWASP ASVS topics, an introduction to the areas to protect
How a properly designed infrastructure architecture should be built
Setting up the right security requirements
Create and train security champions
S-SDLC basics, secure development as integral part of SDLC
Automatic tools and their values, non-automatic tools, pentests, peer code review, assisted code-review
Injections: SQLi, XML injections, JSON, XPath, XSS, cookie injection, open redirection, http header injection
Path traversal, XXE, Buffer overflow, Zip bomb, Million laugh, RFI, Insecure file upload, Code execution
Insecure direct object reference
XSS (types, impact, causes, defenses, other html injections, BeEF)
CSRF, Clickjacking, Same-origin policy, CORS
Tabnabbing
Input validation vs encoding
Security logging, exception handling
Threat modelling
Separation of duties, trust boundaries, security boundaries, defence in depth, principle of least privilege, minimising the attack surface, risk driven mitigation
Business logic vulnerabilities
Cryptography basics
TLS, ciphersuites
HTTP certificate pinning
Perfect forward secrecy, certificate transparency
CSP, HSTS, Cookie settings, x-content-type-options
Authentication principles, session management, authorization
Access management in a RESTful environment (to JWT or not to JWT)
OAuth2, OpenID Connect
API security, design and implementation
Web service security [optional]
Attack surface
Audit support (separate audit logs, managing debug logs)
Intrusion detection, correct reactions
Protecting the admin interface
Here we can deliver one of the language specific modules:
Angular JS/TS
Polymer
React
Local storage/session storage
Web messaging, web sockets
Practicing is part of many of the above blocks. We start off basic hacking challenges, but the real exercises are about fixing vulnerable codes, and tasks when attendees need to assess code and an application on their own. We mostly offer cloud based facilities to run the exercise environments, so no local installation is needed.
For most of the courses there are intentionally vulnerable applications which we use to demonstrate and learn specific vulnerabilities and how to fix them.
In some cases we use public "damn vulnerable" applications, in some cases we prepared our own applications to practice with.
We assume that developers should be capable of running basic automated tests against the security of their codes on their own. And also be able to tune the SCA tools to produce reasonable false positive and valuable findings ratio.
Normally we teach how to use security plugins of Sonarqube.
We provide sample codes to test. Though the best experience is achieved when developers run the security SCA against their own codes.
See also the extra, on-demand block of 'Assisted code-review lab' below for practicing on your own codes.
OWASP ASVS is the current standard for assessing the security quality and design flaws of a (web) application, and it's the developers who know the answers to the ASVS audit questions. So we take developers to a short journey in assessing the security properties of their applications.
Upon request we also deliver additional blocks:
K: In case of languages and frameworks our trainers are familiar with as auditors we can deliver an additional day to let developers apply the knowledge and skills learnt against their own codes. We call it the 'Assisted code-review lab'.
L-N: We also suggest one of the related add-on courses: S-SDLC playbook Hacking applications Security test automation in CI/CD pipelines
In delivering the course one or two of the following trainers are involved as lead trainer or co-trainer:
When it comes to the actual proposal we define who is supposed to do the delivery and in what formation or schedule.
This document describes a subject under discussion. The agenda of the training and the particulars of the planned delivery may change during further iterations of the discussion.