Burgers and Application Security

I love burgers. I also live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so was intrigued by an article in D Magazine a few years ago that caught my eye called Why Dallas is the Burger Capital of the World. What? How did I not know this?!?

And so began The Great DFW Burger Quest!

It's my tour of burger joints in the DFW Metroplex. It's a multi-year project. The pandemic set me back a little, but I'm up to 75 burger joints visited so far. Many more are on my "to do" list. I track everything on Yelp.

What does this have to do with application security? Well, there are some parallels I'd like to point out.

Building an application security program is a multi-year commitment. When an organization first dips their toe into application security, they might start with something easy like dynamic scanning of their Internet-facing web apps. It's a fine place to start, but a lot more is needed to understand your application security posture more broadly. Static analysis, software composition analysis (SCA), and manual assessments all have a place when it comes to identifying application security flaws. Implementing multiple testing techniques and automating them early in the software development process across an entire enterprise, with minimal disruption, takes both time and commitment.

At first, I assumed only burger joints would be part of The Great DFW Burger Quest. But it turns out that some of the highest rated burgers in DFW are served at local bars or family restaurants. I had to expand my quest to include these. Likewise, to mature your appsec program it would need to expand to cover not just Internet-facing web apps, but also APIs, internal applications, mobile apps, and other software that could bring risk. Secure code training for developers (or what I call The Ultimate in Shift Left) should be part of a mature appsec program as well. Instead of Yelp, you could track the growth of your program using a model such as the excellent Software Assurance Maturity Model from OWASP.

My burger quest often needs to be adjusted based on the current environment in the area. Many restaurants closed permanently due to the pandemic, including some I had planned to visit. However, I'm seeing new burger joints popping up rapidly this year. An application security program will need adjustment too. For example, recently Log4Shell, Spring4Shell, and the U.S. Cybersecurity Executive Order have highlighted a greater need for SCA, which helps uncover risks due to 3rd-party components. Organizational changes, such as a new CISO coming in, might also force adjustments to your program.

My initial burger outings were a solo activity, but now I usually have some friends join me. In the same way, a successful application security program is not a solo activity. It requires not only testing technology but also people and processes. In particular, Security and Development should be working together to build security into DevOps processes.

(This post first published as a LinkedIn article)

Airport Kiosk Admin Access

Don't underestimate the threat of shoulder surfing, especially when you're an airline employee accessing the administrative panel on kiosks at the airport.

This thought ran through my mind recently when I witnessed an employee - in a very busy ticketing area - casually double-tapping a certain spot on a kiosk's touchscreen.  A keyboard opened asking for input of a password.  Curiosity led to me continue watching as he proceeded to enter the password and access the local administrative menu.  I quickly jotted a note of what I saw for possible future testing.

One night a few weeks later, I was at the airport and found nobody in the ticketing area.  A good time for my test...

***** ACCESS GRANTED *****

Years ago I developed kiosk applications for colleges & universities as well as for Sprint retail stores. It's common practice to code in a "hot spot" somewhere on the screen to bring up a keyboard allowing for input of a password to access the admin menu (more examples here and here).  It might require a double-tap or triple-tap in a single spot, or a combination of taps in different spots.  The admin password itself is often something simple, such as the name of the business, the street number of the building, or the store number (if a retail store).

Moral of the story for kiosk admins: Be aware of shoulder surfing!

CWE: Disrespectful to Session ID in URL

Mitre's Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) is the most comprehensive and granular taxonomy for web application security vulnerabilities and weaknesses.  So why, may I ask, is there no CWE ID for Session ID Exposed in URL?

Am I missing something?

Sure, we have CWE-384 (Session Fixation), but that's not the issue.  Session fixation in my experience is much more rare (and dangerous) compared to a session ID exposed in a URL.

Some might suggest CWE-287 (Improper Authentication) is the best fit.  That's a tough sell.  I don't buy it.

The closest one in my opinion must be CWE-598 (Information Exposure Through Query Strings in GET Request).  It's not a perfect fit, but the consequences section does refer to "impersonating a legitimate user".  That's a true risk for sure.

At this stage of the game, we probably won't see a CWE ID specific to Session ID Exposed in URL.  It seems like a no-brainer, but oh well. 

What the Tech behind this Website? Wappalyzer Knows

Trying to figure out what technologies/frameworks a web app is built upon is an important part of application security, especially pen testing.  It's something that should be done in the reconnaissance phase of an assessment.  Knowing what an application is using under the covers is a definite advantage in your quest to pwn it.

Trouble is, it's not so easy anymore.  There is a vast array of technologies that make up today's web application development landscape.  Not only are there are different types of web servers, application servers, and  programming languages, you also have to consider different development platforms (Java vs. .NET vs. something else), client-side JavaScript frameworks (Angular vs. React vs. something else), authentication protocols (OAuth vs. Kerberos vs. one-off vs. API token vs. something else), CMSs, CDNs, advertising networks, analytics engines, and so on.  Is your head spinning yet?

For quick feedback on what technologies a web application is using, I recommend the Wappalyzer browser extension.  It is available for both Chrome and Firefox.  Once installed, you will see the following icon in your browser's toolbar: 

Click this icon and you'll see a categorized listing of different types of technologies used by the website currently loaded in your browser.  Here is an example:

I have personally found this extension to be very useful... for pen testing or even when you see an interesting-looking site.  Find out what it's built on!  This extension thankfully works with Firefox 55 and later, which is something that can't be said of many popular Firefox extensions nowadays (this is thanks to Mozilla's shift to use the cross-browser WebExtensions API.

One last important note about Wappalyzer - you probably want to uncheck the option (shown below) where you send them "anonymous" reports for research.

Quick (but telling) IE vs. Chrome Comparison

The following "perfect timing" slideshow on MSN is entertaining, so my first thought was that IE would be the best browser with which to view it.  It's *MS*N after all.  Firefox is my main browser, but I like to fire up alternatives from time to time to understand the experience (well, except for Edge which still sucks).

http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/smart-living/photos-taken-at-the-perfect-time/ss-BBEzdUL?li=BBnbcA0&ocid=UE01DHP&fullscreen=true#image=1

Boy was I wrong about IE here.  It was slow, flaky, and then starting giving me "long-running script" errors and offering to stop the script for me. Even after saying yes to stop the script, the whole browser eventually locked up on me. FAIL.

Contrast that to Chrome, which was fast and worked flawlessly displaying the slideshow

I didn't try Firefox, because I have NoScript installed and just didn't want to deal with getting the slideshow to work.

Let's say "TLS" instead of "SSL"

A trend I noticed within information security circles is to use the term "SSL" even when we mean "TLS".  TLS is the newer and more secure replacement for SSL.  All versions of SSL, even the latest SSLv3 flavor, are considered to be insecure at this point. 

It's habit to say "SSL".  Our infosec minds auto-translate it to "TLS", but there are interesting, concrete reasons that the IETF chose the name TLS back in 1999.  In addition, words have meaning and many people who don't eat, drink, and sleep security aren't up to speed on the nuances of this stuff.  This includes millions of IT personnel who are responsible for configuring servers in a secure manner.  It also includes newbies who are entering the infosec field every day.

Information security professionals can be arrogant.  If someone isn't as knowledgeable as them, then that person is called stupid. For example, application security experts tend to denigrate developers for writing insecure code.  That bothers me a lot.

Here's another example:

So people who don't know about SSL vs. TLS are not clever.  Nice.

Years ago I didn't know much about security.  I was a developer and appreciated the opportunity to learn from others.  So let us be technically accurate and use "TLS", even if it turns out to be a losing battle in the end.

Webinar - Intro to Security Testing

I haven't done much blogging for a while.  I will be doing more posts this year.  At least that's one of my new year's resolutions!  Some of my posts will be original content residing here, but others will be links to articles or posts I've done elsewhere.

I'd like to start 2017 by sharing a link to the webinar I did in 2015 that is aimed at anyone who wants to dip their toes into the world of web application penetration testing.  The webinar was for the benefit of the uTest Community, and you therefore need an account to view the webinar.  It's easy and free to sign up though.

I'm proud to say the uTest community has given my webinar a stellar rating of 4.86 stars out of 5!  If you are new to the field of manual appsec testing, I'm sure you'll find it helpful.  Pro tip: install and learn Burp Suite!

The webinar is here: 
https://www.utest.com/courses/recorded-webinar-introduction-security-testing-dave-ferguson

Enjoy.

OWASP #4 Continues to Laugh at Automated Scanners

I was thinking back to 2006 when I was new to the world of Application Security.  Someone on our consulting team arranged a call with a vendor called Secure Software, Inc.  They were a company with a code scanning product called CodeAssure, but they were probably best known for a freeware tool called Rough Auditing Tool for Security ("RATS").  The company was bought by Fortify in 2007 and their products essentially died off. 

On the call I wanted to better understand how this magical CodeAssure product worked.  For example, how could it recognize Insecure Direct Object Reference in a web application?  (Actually, that term wasn't even coined yet.  Back then it was called Broken Access Control. Come to think of it, I like that name better.)  Anyway, I described some of the vulnerabilities I was seeing during my application pen testing where I could edit numerical parameters in the URL or the HTTP request body and gain access to another user's data.

For a moment, there was dead silence on the call.  It was one of those times when nobody on their side knew how to answer and they were all hoping that one of their teammates would step up and offer an intelligent response.  In the end there was no intelligent response, only dancing around the question as sales people often do.  I was a little naive back then to ask the question in the first place.  I should have known their product could do absolutely nothing to identify this type of vulnerability. 

SAST scanning tools can't be relied upon to identify insecure direct object references.  But hey, the same is true for dynamic scanners.  DAST tools aren't human and aren't smart enough to know that if you change acct_id=100011 in a URL to acct_id=100012 and you get back a valid response with another person's data that it's a big freaking problem.  The exploitability rating of this flaw is off the chart.  Almost anyone can perform the attack and it is still happening today.  Even big companies that pay attention to security like Citibank can succumb. 

The bottom line in my opinion is that you can't use one security testing technique and have confidence that your apps are secure.  Multiple testing approaches are needed for the best assurance.  Obviously, cost is a factor here, but for your most business-critical applications, I would use SAST, DAST, and manual pen testing.  Techniques like IAST and RASP are making strides and have much promise as well.  Both of these are going to require development teams to be more involved (and accountable) for application security however.