Normally at this time of the year, I would talk about the industry’s achievements over the last year.
None. Zilch. Nada.
We’re seeing more SQL injection used in real world attacks than ever before. XSS is still with us, and one of the biggest offenders – PHP – has made zero moves to include proper encoding or encoding by default for echo and print, or including a safe by default generic SQL layer that is enabled by default and works with the three or four most common databases (e.g. MySQL). The adoption of PCI seems to have made little difference in the amount or severity of breaches.
Things like ESAPI, App Sensor and ESAPI WAF are the only true breakthroughs in 2009. But outside of OWASP DC, there’s no love for defences. Hats off to Jeff Williams and the entire ESAPI for * team, Michael Coates, and Arshan for the only true web app security efforts this year.
So let’s forget about 2009 and move on to 2010.
- Full disclosure / responsible disclosure / etc has failed (again) to improve security as it always has. We should stop doing it. Nearly every app has at least one or more of the OWASP Top 10 2007 / 2010 issues. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel or using dynamite to fish. Stop wasting time on it and come research how to put in safety by default in every language and framework, starting with woefully insecure frameworks and languages like PHP.
- Conference presentations about attacks are still getting all the sexy girls and media! Conferences and the media have to stop promoting attacks – it’s irresponsible and wasteful. Let’s start talking about defences instead.
- No more penetration tests! We have to stop doing penetration tests. They suck at predicting the safety of a system, particularly insider risks. Pen tests have value at mature clients who have done the hard work – an SDLC, secure requirements, secure development, peer reviews, code reviews, and extensive testing. They are a validation of the other security benefits, not as a “my X is bigger than yours” exercise and certainly not absolute proof of security.
- SDLC’s are still rare in the clients I visit. We need to encourage the adoption of SDLC, and require secure requirements.
- Agile still needs a lot of security as yet. User Stories still have no space for a security outcome in most environments. It’s hard to code review every milestone let alone every sprint. We as a security community need to do a lot more work here to fit in with the modern development methods in use.
- Developer training is still in the nascent stage and is the only workable method of producing secure apps by default. I donated my full two day deck to OWASP at the beginning of 2009, but as far as I can tell, it hasn’t been updated or given any love. I hope that can change over the year. Please go here and help make this deck the de facto developer training deck!
- We have to encourage or even mandate folks who outsource / out task / buy off the shelf software to only allow the acquisition of secure software, with the burden of insecurity firmly on the developer. Laws and licenses that prevent this must be changed as insecure software is not fit for purpose and thus defective. Obviously, there’s a huge difference between accidentally insecure and deliberately insecure software. If you don’t have an SDLC and a security program, an ISV is deliberately insecure and must face the costs of their negligence.
- Over-reliance on silver bullets (WAFs and so on) is harming the effort to fix the problem. Silver bullets don’t always work, and eventually, you’ll have to do the right thing. I don’t know what we can do here but yell at the sky as the marketing dollars for these things overwhelm that simple message.
Let’s not waste another year. Let’s get moving on secure defenses, SDLC, R&D in agile technologies, and developer education.
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