Application Security Weekly

We cover appsec news on a weekly basis, but sometimes that news is merely about the start of a new project, sometimes it's yet another example of a vuln class, and sometimes it's a topic we hope doesn't become a trend.

So, what themes have we seen and where do we see them going? Here are a few headline topics that have alternately generated yays and yawns.

• CISA's Secure by Design and Secure by Default
• CVSS 4.0
• Generative AI
• MFA mandates
• Microsoft, Rust, and Memory Safety
• New TLDs
• OAuth
• OpenSSF and OWASP

In the news, repetition extracts data from ChatGPT, more vulns in the software that surrounds AI, guidelines for secure AI, LogoFAIL trips a boot, BLUFFS attack on Bluetooth, CISA's first secure by design alert, Okta's updated breach disclosure, and more!

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This year we've talked about vulns, clouds, breaches, presentations, and all the variations of Dev, Sec, and Ops. As we end the year, let's talk about starting things -- like starting an appsec program or an appsec career. But is there still a need for an appsec team? Or has it turned into specializations for areas like cloud security and bug bounty programs? We'll cover careers and coding, with an eye towards figuring out what modern software development looks like and where application (or product!) security fits in that model.

Segment resources

• https://owaspsamm.org
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/11/02/announcing-microsoft-secure-future-initiative-to-advance-security-engineering/
• https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/secure-by-design

Weak randomness in old JavaScript crypto, lack of encryption in purported end-to-end encryption, a platform engineering maturity model, PyPI's first security audit, vision for a Rust specification, and more!

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Firmware security is complex and continues to be an industry challenge. In this podcast we'll talk about the reasons firmware security remains a challenge and some best practices around platform security.

Segment Resources:

• https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/04/27/firmware-blind-spots/

• https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/09/28/hardware-security-challenges/

• https://darkreading.com/application-security/4-open-source-tools-to-add-to-your-security-arsenal

• https://chipsec.github.io

Hardware Hacking created by Maggie: https://securityweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/eArt-2.png

In the rapidly evolving landscape of application security, 2023 brought significant changes with the rise of generative AI tools and an increase in automated threats. In this discussion, Karl Triebes takes a deep dive into the major trends of the past year, examining their impact on the industry and shedding light on what security professionals can anticipate moving forward into 2024.

This segment is sponsored by Imperva. Visit https://securityweekly.com/imperva to learn more about them!

CNCF's releases a handbook on fuzzing, OpenSSF and OWASP respond to CISA's Open Source Software Security RFI, 14 years of Go, lessons for today from an internet worm from 35 years ago, and more!

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A lot of appsec conferences have presentations for appsec audiences -- but that's not often the group that's building apps. What if more developer conferences had appsec content? We talk with Josh about security from the developer's point of view, both as an audience hearing about it and as a presenter talking about it. We discuss the importance of knowing your audience and finding the hooks in security tools and topics that can resonate with developers.

Segment resources:

• https://www.joshuakgoldberg.com/speaking/

Details of the Citrix Bleed vuln, exploitation of the Atlassian improper authorization vuln, so many jQuery installations to upgrade, the price of bounties and the cost of fixes, Microsoft's Secure Future Initiative, and more!

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The categories of security tools that we're most familiar with have struggled to keep up with how modern apps are designed and what modern devs need. What if instead of being beholden to categories, we created tools that solved problems devs have today in the types of apps they build today? And what if we had more dev leadership to influence security tools as well as secure by design? What would that leadership look like?

Segment Resources:

• https://danondev.com/youtube

In the news, OAuth implementation failures, the State of DevOps report, data poisoning generative AIs with Nightshade, implementing spectre attacks with JavaScript and WebAssembly against WebKit, sandboxing apps

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We return to discussions of OAuth and all sorts of authentication. This time around we're looking at the design of authentication protocols, the kinds of trade-offs they weigh for adoption and security, and how a standard evolves over time to keep pace with new attacks and put to rest old mistakes.

Segment resources:

• https://fusionauth.io/docs/v1/tech/core-concepts/modes
• https://webauthn.wtf/
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7636
• https://www.ietf.org/about/participate/tao/

In the news, appsec lessons from the Okta breach, directory traversal (and appsec) lessons from SolarWinds, how CISOs and Boards rank factors around vulns and patching, revisiting cryptocurrency attacks for lessons in business logic and threat modeling, CISA and friends update guidance on Secure Design, and more!

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It's no surprise that OT security has fared poorly over the last 30+ years. To many appsec folks, these systems have uncommon programming languages, unfamiliar hardware, and brittle networking stacks. They also tend to have different threat scenarios. Many of these systems are designed, successfully, to maintain availability. But when a port scan can freeze or crash a device, that availability seems like it hasn't put enough consideration into adversarial environments. We chat about the common failures of OT design and discuss a few ways that systems designed today might still be secure 30 years from now.

In the news, how HTTP/2's rapid reset is abused for DDoS, a look at the fix for Curl's recent high severity bug, OWASP moves to make CycloneDX a standard, Microsoft deprecates NTLM, VBScript, and old TLS -- while also introducing an AI bug bounty program.

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What if all these recommendations to shift left were more about shifting focus? It's all too easy to become preoccupied with vulns, whether figuring out how to find them earlier in the SDLC or spending time fixing them within specific number of days. Successful DevSecOps approaches can be so much more than just vulns and so much more than just tools. Sure, tools are useful for identifying known vulns in dependencies and new vulns in code, but teams that emphasize people and culture will find it easier to shift their attention to the security of their product and creating secure designs.

In the news, anticipating Curl's upcoming patch for a high severity flaw, the Looney Tunables flaw in Glibc, ShellTorch flaw hits PyTorch and lots of AI, lessons from some X.Org security patches, and more!

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Communication is a skill that doesn't appear on top 10 lists, rarely appears as a conference topic, and doesn't appear enough on job requirements. Yet communication is one of the critical ways that security teams influence developers, convey risk, and share knowledge with others. Even our own Security Weekly site falls a little short with only a podcast category for "Training" instead of more options around communication and collaboration.

Lina shares her experience presenting to executives and boards in high-stress situations, as well as training incident responders on real-world scenarios.

Segment resources

• https://training.xintra.org
• https://www.scmagazine.com/podcast-episode/2839-pointers-and-perils-for-presentations-josh-goldberg-asw-251

In the news segment, attackers impersonate Dependabot commits, an alg of "none" plagues a JWT, CISA calls for hardware bills of materials, OpenSSF lists its critical projects, Exim (finally! maybe?) has some patches, bug bounties and open source projects, and more!

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