In this blog post, I’ll discuss the importance of establishing the different components and modules you’ll need in your project and how to choose frameworks and libraries with secure defaults. Two great examples of secure defaults in most web frameworks are web views that encode output by default (providing XSS attack defenses) as well as built-in protection against Cross-Site Request Forgeries. Sometimes though, secure defaults can be bypassed by developers on purpose. So, I’ll also show you how to use invariant enforcement to make sure that there are no unjustified deviations from such defaults across the full scope of your projects. It’s important to carefully design how your users are going to prove their identity and how you’re going to handle user passwords and tokens.
Let’s explore each of the OWASP Top Ten, discussing how the pieces of the Proactive Controls mitigate the defined application security risk. As a general rule, only the minimum data required should be stored on the mobile device. But if you must store sensitive data on a mobile device, then sensitive data should be stored within each mobile operating systems specific data storage directory.
Implement Security Logging and Monitoring¶
Security requirements are derived from industry standards, applicable laws, and a history of past vulnerabilities. Security requirements define new features or additions to existing features to solve a specific security problem or eliminate a potential vulnerability. OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls describes the most important control and control categories that every architect and developer should absolutely, 100% include in every project.
A subject is an individual, process, or device that causes information to flow among objects or change the system state. The access control or authorization policy mediates what subjects can access which objects. A prominent OWASP project named Application Security Verification Standard—often referred to as OWASP ASVS for short—provides over two-hundred different requirements for building secure web application software. In this series, I’m going to introduce the OWASP Top 10 Proactive Controls one at a time to present concepts that will make your code more resilient and enable your code to defend itself against would-be attackers.
C4: Encode and Escape Data
Cryptographic failures are breakdowns in the use of cryptography within an application, stemming from the use of broken or risky crypto algorithms, hard-coded (default) passwords, or insufficient entropy (randomness). A broken or risky crypto algorithm is one that has a coding flaw https://remotemode.net/become-a-net-mvc-developer/owasp-proactive-controls/ within the implementation of the algorithm that weakens the resulting encryption. A risky crypto algorithm may be one that was created years ago, and the speed of modern computing has caught up with the algorithm, making it possible to be broken using modern computing power.
- This includes making sure no sensitive data, such as passwords, access tokens, or any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is leaked into error messages or logs.
- In the Snyk app, as we deal with data of our users and our own, it is crucial that we treat our application with the out-most care in terms of its security and privacy, protecting it everywhere needed.
- Just as business requirements help us shape the product, security requirements help us take into account security from the get-go.
- The first rule of sensitive data management is to avoid storing sensitive data when at all possible.
The Top 10 Proactive Controls are by developers for developers to assist those new to secure development. The first rule of sensitive data management is to avoid storing sensitive data when at all possible. If you must store sensitive data then make sure it’s cryptographically protected in some way to avoid unauthorized disclosure and modification. Database injections are probably one of the best-known security vulnerabilities, and many injection vulnerabilities are reported every year. In this blog post, I’ll cover the basics of query parameterization and how to avoid using string concatenation when creating your database queries. After the need is determined for development, the developer must now modify the application in some way to add the new functionality or eliminate an insecure option.
Data Classification¶
Each data category can then be mapped to protection rules necessary for each level of sensitivity. For example, public marketing information that is not sensitive may be categorized as public data which is ok to place on the public website. Credit card numbers may be classified as private user data which may need to be encrypted while stored or in transit. Snyk interviewed 20+ security leaders who have successfully and unsuccessfully built security champions programs. Check out this playbook to learn how to run an effective developer-focused security champions program.
As software developers author the code that makes up a web application, they need to embrace and practice a wide variety of secure coding techniques. All tiers of a web application, the user interface, the business logic, the controller, the database code and more – all need to be developed with security in mind. This can be a very difficult task and developers are often set up for failure. The languages and frameworks that developers use to build web applications are often lacking critical core controls or are insecure by default in some way. It is also very rare when organizations provide developers with prescriptive requirements that guide them down the path of secure software.
On Android this will be the Android keystore and on iOS this will be the iOS keychain. Cryptography (or crypto) is one of the more advanced topics of information security, and one whose understanding requires the most schooling and experience. It is difficult to get right because there are many approaches to encryption, each with advantages and disadvantages that need to be thoroughly understood by web solution architects and developers.
A user story focuses on the perspective of the user, administrator, or attacker of the system, and describes functionality based on what a user wants the system to do for them. The ASVS requirements are basic verifiable statements which can be expanded upon with user stories and misuse cases. The advantage of a user story or misuse case is that it ties the application to exactly what the user or attacker does to the system, versus describing what the system offers to the user. The OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) is a catalog of available security requirements and verification criteria.
A06 Vulnerable and Outdated Components
This approach is suitable for adoption by all developers, even those who are new to software security. The OWASP Top Ten Proactive Controls 2018 is a list of security techniques that should be considered for every software development project. This document is written for developers to assist those new to secure development.
