Application Security Weekly (audio)

Startups and small orgs don't have the luxury of massive budgets and large teams. How do you choose an appsec approach that complements a startup's needs while keeping it secure. Kalyani Pawar shares her experience at different ends of an appsec maturity spectrum. In complex software ecosystems, individual application risks are compounded. When it comes to mitigating supply chain risk, identifying backdoors or unintended vulnerabilities that can be exploited in your environment is just as critical as staying current with the latest hacking intel. Understand how to spot and reduce the risk to your environment and prevent disruption to your operation. This segment is sponsored by Threatlocker. Visit https://securityweekly.com/threatlockerbh for a free trial! Every mobile device connecting to enterprise assets hosts a unique blend of work and personal apps, creating a complex landscape of innumerable vulnerabilities. Thankfully, methods exist to provide security teams with the real-world insights necessary to pr

Even though Security Champions programs look very different across organizations and maturity levels, they share core principles for becoming successful. Marisa shares her experience in building these programs to foster a positive security culture within companies. She explains the incentives and rewards that lead to more engagement from champions and the benefits that come from so many people being engaged with security. Segment Resources: OWASP Security Champions Guide - Get Involved! - https://owasp.org/www-project-security-champions-guidebook/#div-getinvolved OWASP Security Champions Guide - LinkedIn page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/owasp-security-champions-guide/ The Security Champions Success Guide - https://securitychampionsuccessguide.org/ "Building a Successful Security Champions Program... What Does it Take?" - https://www.katilyst.com/post/building-a-successful-security-champions-program-what-does-it-take The code curation considerations of removing abandoned protocols in OpenSSL, kernel

Modern appsec isn't modern because security tools got shifted in one direction or another, or because teams are finding and fixing more vulns. It's modern because appsec is meeting developer needs and supporting the business. Paul Davis talks about how AI is (and isn't) changing appsec, the KPIs that reflect outcomes rather than being busy, and the importance of communication for security teams. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-293

Generative AI has produced impressive chatbots and content generation, but however fun or impressive those might be, they don't always translate to value for appsec. Allie brings some realistic expectations to how genAI is used by attackers and can be useful to defenders. Segment resources: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/generative-ai-will-not-fulfill-your-autonomous-soc-hopes-or-even-your-demo-dreams/ https://www.forrester.com/blogs/top-5-things-you-need-to-know-about-how-generative-ai-is-used-in-security-tools/ https://www.forrester.com/blogs/the-blob-is-poisoning-the-security-industry/ SAPwned demonstrates tenets of tenant isolation, a weak login flow puts Squarespace domains at risk, how AIs might (or might not) be useful for fixing code, getting buy-in for infosec investments, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-292

How can LLMs be valuable to developers as an assistant in finding and fixing insecure code? There are a lot of implications in trusting AI or LLMs to not only find vulns, but in producing code that fixes an underlying problem without changing an app's intended behavior. Stuart McClure explains how combining LLMs with agents and RAGs helps make AI-influenced tools more effective and useful in the context that developers need -- writing secure code. Cloudflare's 2024 appsec report, reasoning about the Cyber Reasoning Systems for the upcoming AIxCC semifinals at DEF CON, lessons in secure design from post-quantum cryptography, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-291

Sandy Carielli and Janet Worthington, authors of the State Of Application Security 2024 report, join us to discuss their findings on trends this year! Old vulns, more bots, and more targeted supply chain attacks -- we should be better at this by now. We talk about where secure design fits into all this why appsec needs to accelerate to ludicrous speed. Segment resources https://www.forrester.com/blogs/ludicrous-speed-because-light-speed-is-too-slow-to-secure-your-apps/ They're also conducting a survey on how orgs use Top 10 lists. Provide your response at https://forrester.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9Z7ARUQjuzNQf0q Polyfill loses trust after CDN misuse, an OpenSSH flaw reappears, how to talk about secure design from some old CocoaPods vulns, using LLMs to find bugs, Burp Proxy gets more investment, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-290

OAuth 2.0 is more than just a single spec and it's used to protect more than just APIs. We talk about challenges in maintaining a spec over a decade of changing technologies and new threat models. Not only can OAuth be challenging to secure by default, but it's not even always inter-operable. Segment Resources: https://oauth.net/2.1 https://oauth.net/specs/ https://oauth2simplified.com/ https://oauth.net/2/dpop/ https://oauth.net/2/oauth-best-practice/ https://oauth.net/fapi/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FedCM_API Thoughts on shared responsibility models after the Snowflake credential attacks, looking at AI's current and future role in offensive security, secure by design lessons from Apple's Private Cloud Computer, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-289

Check out this interview from the ASW Vault, hand picked by main host Mike Shema! This segment was originally published on April 4, 2023. Following on from her successful title "Container Security", Liz has recently authored "Learning eBPF", published by O'Reilly. eBPF is a revolutionary kernel technology that is enabling a whole new generation of infrastructure tools for networking, observability, and security. Let's explore eBPF and understand its value for security, and how it's used to secure network connectivity in the Cilium project, and for runtime security observability and enforcement in Cilium's sub-project, Tetragon. Segment Resources: Download "Learning eBPF": https://isovalent.com/learning-ebpf Buy "Learning eBPF" from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Learning-eBPF-Programming-Observability-Networking/dp/1098135121 Cilium project: https://cilium.io Tetragon project: https://tetragon.cilium.io/ Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/vault-asw-11

Looking at use cases and abuse cases of Microsoft's Recall feature, examples of hacking web APIs, CISA's secure design pledge, what we look for in CVEs, a nod to PHP's history, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-288

Open source has been a part of the software supply chain for decades, yet many projects and their maintainers remain undersupported by the companies that consume them. The security responsibilities for project owners has increased not only in dealing with security disclosures, but in maintaining secure processes backed by strong authentication and trust. Segment Resources: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/lessons-xz-utils-achieving-more-sustainable-open-source-ecosystem https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/03/29/reported-supply-chain-compromise-affecting-xz-utils-data-compression-library-cve-2024-3094 https://www.cisa.gov/securebydesign/pledge https://tidelift.com/about/press-releases/tidelift-study-reveals-that-despite-increasing-demands-from-government-and-industry-60-of-maintainers-are-still-unpaid-volunteers https://blog.tidelift.com/paying-maintainers-the-howto Application security posture management has quickly become a hot commodity in the world of AppSec, but questions remain around

With hundreds or thousands of SaaS apps to secure with no traditional perimeter, Identity becomes the focal point for SaaS Security in the modern enterprise. Yet with Shadow IT, now recast as Business-Led IT, quickly becoming normal practice, it’s more complicated than trying to centralize all identities with an Identity Provider (IdP) for Single Sign-On (SSO). So the question becomes, “How do you enable the business while still providing security oversight and governance?” This segment is sponsored by Savvy. Visit https://securityweekly.com/savvy to learn more about them! CISOs encounter challenges in securing data amidst the rapid growth driven by Cloud and GenAI applications. In this segment, we will delve into how Bedrock Security powers frictionless data security, empowering CISOs to securely manage data sprawl, allowing their businesses to operate at optimal speed, without compromising security. Segment Resources: Bedrock Security: https://www.bedrock.security/ Bedrock Security X/Twitter: https://twitte

Check out this interview from the ASW Vault, hand picked by main host Mike Shema! This segment was originally published on April 18, 2023. We talk with Ben about the rewards, hazards, and fun of bug bounty programs. Then we find out different ways to build successful and welcoming communities. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/vault-asw-9

Secure coding education should be more than a list of issues or repeating generic advice. Liran Tal explains his approach to teaching developers through examples that start with exploiting known vulns and end with discussions on possible fixes. Not only does this create a more engaging experience, but it also relies on code that looks familiar to developers rather than contrived or overly simplistic examples. Segment resources: https://github.com/lirantal https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/NPMSecurityCheat_Sheet.html https://lirantal.com/blog/poor-express-authentication-patterns-nodejs The challenge of evaluating threat alerts in aggregate – what a collection and sequence of threat signals tell us about an attacker’s sophistication and motives – has bedeviled SOC teams since the dawn of the Iron Age. Vectra AI CTO Oliver Tavakoli will discuss how the design principles of our XDR platform deal with this challenge and how GenAI impacts this perspective. Segment Resources: Vectra AI Platform Vi

Everyone is interested in generative AIs and LLMs, and everyone is looking for use cases and apps to apply them to. Just as the early days of the web inspired the original OWASP Top 10 over 20 years ago, the experimentation and adoption of LLMs has inspired a Top 10 list of their own. Sandy Dunn talks about why the list looks so familiar in many ways -- after all, LLMs are still software. But the list captures some new concepts that anyone looking to use LLMs or generative AIs should be aware of. https://llmtop10.com/ https://github.com/OWASP/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/wiki/Educational-Resources https://owasp.org/www-project-ai-security-and-privacy-guide/ https://gandalf.lakera.ai/ https://quarkiq.com/blog How companies are benefiting from the enterprise browser. It's not just security when talking about the enterprise browser. It's the marriage between security AND productivity. In this interview, Mike will provide real live case studies on how different enterprises are benef

A lot of AI security has nothing to do with AI -- things like data privacy, access controls, and identity are concerns for any new software and in many cases AI concerns look more like old-school API concerns. But...there are still important aspects to AI safety and security, from prompt injection to jailbreaking to authenticity. Caleb Sima explains why it's important to understand the different types of AI and the practical tasks necessary to secure how it's used. Segment resources: https://calebsima.com/2023/08/16/demystifing-llms-and-threats/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgDtOu17E&t=1s We already have bug bounties for web apps so it was only a matter of time before we would have bounties for AI-related bugs. Keith Hoodlet shares his experience winning first place in the DOD's inaugural AI bias bounty program. He explains how his education in psychology helped fill in the lack of resources in testing an AI's bias. Then we discuss how organizations should approach the very different concepts of AI s

Companies deploy tools (usually lots of tools) to address different threats to supply chain security. Melinda Marks shares some of the chaos those companies still face when trying to prioritize investments, measure risk, and scale their solutions to keep pace with their development. Not only are companies still figuring out supply chain, but now they're bracing for the coming of genAI and how that will just further highlight the current struggles they're having with data security and data privacy. Segment Resources: Complete Survey Results: The Growing Complexity of Securing the Software Supply Chain https://research.esg-global.com/reportaction/515201781/Toc   Misusing random numbers, protecting platforms for code repos and package repos, vulns that teach us about designs and defaults, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-283

How can open source projects find a funding model that works for them? What are the implications with different sources of funding? Simon Bennetts talks about his stewardship of Zed Attack Proxy and its journey from OWASP to OpenSSF to an Open Source Fellowship with Crash Override. Mark Curphy adds how his experience with OWASP and the appsec community motivated him to create Crash Override and help projects like ZAP gain the support they deserve. Segment resources: https://crashoverride.com/blog/welcome-zap-to-the-open-source-fellowship https://www.zaproxy.org https://crashoverride.com/blog/are-there-too-many-bubbles-of-similar-security-efforts CISA chimes in on the XZ Utils backdoor, PuTTY's private keys and maintaining a secure design, LeakyCLI and maintaining secure secrets in CSPs, LLMs and exploit generation, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-282

There are as many paths into infosec as there are disciplines within infosec to specialize in. Karan Dwivedi talks about the recent book he and co-author Raaghav Srinivasan wrote about security engineering. There's an appealing future to security taking on engineering roles and creating solutions to problems that orgs face. We talk about the breadth and depth of security engineering and ways to build the skills that will help you in your appsec career. Segment resources: https://kickstartseceng.com A Rust advisory highlights the perils of parsing and problems of inconsistent approaches, D-Link (sort of) deals with end of life hardware, CSRB recommends practices and processes for Microsoft, Chrome’s V8 Sandbox increases defense, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-281

We look into the supply chain saga of the XZ Utils backdoor. It's a wild story of a carefully planned long con to add malicious code to a commonly used package that many SSH connections rely on. It hits themes from social engineering and abuse of trust to obscuring the changes and suppressing warnings. It also has a few lessons about software development, the social and economic dynamics of open source, and strategies for patching software. It's an exciting topic partially because so much other appsec is boring. And that boring stuff is important to get right first. We also talk about what parts of this that orgs should be worried about and what types of threats they should be prioritizing instead. Segment Resources: https://tukaani.org/xz-backdoor/ https://news.risky.biz/risky-biz-news-supply-chain-attack-in-linuxland/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-backdoor-almost-infected-linux-everywhere-the-xz-utils-close-call/#ftag=RSSbaffb68 https://therecord.media/malicious-backdoor-code-linux-red-hat-cisa ht

Sometimes infosec problems can be summarized succinctly, like "patching is hard". Sometimes a succinct summary sounds convincing, but is based on old data, irrelevant data, or made up data. Adrian Sanabria walks through some of the archeological work he's done to dig up the source of some myths. We talk about some of our favorite (as in most disliked) myths to point out how oversimplified slogans and oversimplified threat models lead to bad advice -- and why bad advice can make users less secure. Segment resources: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/cybersecurity-myths-and/9780137929214/ The OWASP Top 10 gets its first update after a year, Metasploit gets its first rewrite (but it's still in Perl), PHP adds support for prepared statements, RSA Conference puts passwords on notice while patching remains hard, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-279