OWASP Newsletter 7

Sent to owasp-all mailing list on 19 Mar 2007

OWASP Newsletter #7 (19-Mar-2007)
Welcome to the 7th OWASP Newsletter, featuring the new OWASP Spring of Code 2007, OWASP Chapter activities and introducing the new OWASP SWAAT Project. As always this newsletter is stuffed with the latest OWASP updates, blog entries and Web Application Security updates!

If you want to follow the latest changes to the OWASP web site, you can now point your favorite newsreader to the OWASP recent changes feed (atom feed).

If you have any content to add to the next edition, feel free to add it directly to its WIKI page (OWASP Newsletter 8).

Sebastien Deleersnyder

Belgium Chapter Leader

Featured Item 1: OWASP Spring Of Code 2007
Following the success of last year's Autumn of Code (AoC 06) we are are now launching the OWASP Spring of Code 2007 (SpoC 007) with more budget, more energy and more expectations :)

Here are the main links for this initiative:
 * OWASP Spring Of Code 2007 - main page
 * OWASP Spring Of Code 2007 : Press Release - The press release
 * OWASP Spring Of Code 2007 Project Ideas - If you are looking for projects to do
 * OWASP Spring Of Code 2007 Applications - Where to submit Applications
 * OWASP Spring Of Code 2007 : Selection - The selection criteria and links to each selected project page

Featured Item 2: OWASP Chapters
Currently there are over 80 OWASP chapters world wide! The OWASP chapters program helps to foster local discussion of application security around the world. Our local chapters are free and open to anyone. Check out the chapters page to locate a chapter near you or start a new chapter.

There are a lot of resources available for all chapters: The Chapter Rules, the OWASP Chapter Leader Handbook and if you are short of local chapter material, we have started to make available presentations in the monthly Chapter Presentation Bundles.

An extra call for action towards the OWASP (chapter) leaders: If you are in other countries/cities and you would like to participate in a local chapter meeting, do not hesitate to contact the local chapter leader!

Also have a look at the great Phoenix/Tools page, created by the Phoenix chapter.

Featured Item 3: WASC Threat Classification Project - Call for Participants
The WASC Threat Classification Project is seeking people to contribute towards The Threat Classification Version 2.0. Time has passed since the initial TC release, and it's important to keep this widely utilized document up to date.

Project Homepage: http://www.webappsec.org/projects/threat/

Interested participants can contact 'contact_@_webappsec.org' with any questions.

Featured Project: OWASP SWAAT Project
SWAAT is a free web application source code analysis tool. SWAAT searches through source code and analyzes against the database of potentially dangerous strings given in the .xml files. Thus it does NOT positively identify the existence of a vulnerability - this generally requires application contextual knowledge. It identifies the usage of functions / strings / SQL that could lead to a finding. All potentially dangerous code references are included in the output report.

Future releases of SWAAT will include:
 * a graphical user interface (GUI)
 * integrated development environment (IDE) plug-ins
 * more sophisticated functionality and logic (for example to work with .java source)

SWAAT was generously donated by Security Compass

Featured Event: Application Security Track at Spring &lt;br /&gt; Conference 2007 (Athens, OH Mar-22)
Harden web applications against the OWASP "Top 10 Threats"! The Spring &lt;br /&gt; Conference 2007 is held on Thursday, March 22, 2007 on the campus of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. They have a dedicated Application Security track and more in this day long event that has been described as, "one of the best kept secrets in Information Technology!".

At this event, the fifth annual, Joel Stanley of Resource Interactive, in Columbus, OH, will share his experiences in maintaining applications with user bases as large as 15+ million. He'll explore how to utilize standards by which application security and vulnerability can be judged. Join hundreds of your IT professional peers in this and your choices of thirty-four other sessions in seven tracks at this day long event that costs only $35 (including your lunch!). Ben Forta, Chief Product Evangelist of Adobe Systems will be giving the Key Note presentation, plus Ben will be back to give a presentation at the Lunchtime Session as well. Visit http://www.sbconference.com for all the details and to register online!

New Pages

 * ‎OWASP Spring Of Code 2007
 * Kansas City March 2007 Meeting
 * Authorization form
 * Session Fixation in Java

New Documents & Presentations from chapters
For a complete list of chapter presentations see the online table of presentations.
 * [[Media:KC_Mar2007_Advanced_Injection_Attacks.zip|Advanced Injection Attacks]] from the Kansas City chapter meeting (ppt within a zip)
 * [[Media:KC_Mar2007_Flash_Security.pdf|Adobe Flash Security]] from the Kansas City chapter meeting (pdf)
 * Luca Carettoni has published an interview to OWASP-Italy (OWASP interviews OWASP :) ) Here the full article (in Italian).
 * [[Image:Web Services Hacking and Hardening.pdf|Web Services Hacking and Hardening]] 3/8/07 NoVA chapter meeting, Adam Vincent from Layer7

Latest Blog entries

 * Quick updates (Orizon)
 * OWASP Phoenix chapter meeting presentation
 * DNS Pinning

Updated pages
Updated chapter pages:
 * Philadelphia
 * London
 * Phoenix
 * Kansas City March 2007 Meeting
 * Kansas City
 * New Jersey
 * Italy
 * Austin
 * SanDiego(new!)
 * Toronto
 * Helsinki
 * Long Island
 * Switzerland

Other pages:
 * Appendix A: Testing Tools
 * Testing for SQL Server
 * Ajax and Other "Rich" Interface Technologies
 * Testing for business logic  (OWASP-BL-001)
 * Category:OWASP SWAAT Project
 * Preventing SQL Injection in Java
 * Category:OWASP WebGoat Project
 * 6th OWASP AppSec Conference - Italy 2007
 * OWASP Java Table of Contents
 * Signing jar files with jarsigner
 * Testing for HTTP Methods and XST
 * Category talk:Code Snippet
 * OWASP Autumn of Code 2006 - Project Completion
 * OWASP Education Presentation
 * Category:OWASP Education Project
 * How to value the real risk
 * OWASP Education Presentation
 * Category talk:OWASP XML Security Gateway Evaluation Criteria Project
 * WebGoat User Guide Introduction
 * OWASP SiteGenerator
 * Chaining WebScarab onto another proxy
 * Edcuation Track: Web Application Security Primer
 * OWASP Education Presentation
 * DN BOFinder
 * OWASP Newsletter 8
 * OWASP Community
 * Java server (J2EE) code review
 * OWASP Code Review Guide Table of Contents
 * Application Security News
 * Webgoat‎
 * CSRF Guard
 * Testing for SQL Server‎
 * Ajax and Other "Rich" Interface Technologies
 * Testing for business logic  (OWASP-BL-001)
 * Category:Encoding

Latest Application Security News

 * Mar 15 - local IE 7 phishing hole
 * Provides a nice proof of concept with CNN (Link at the bottom). "Internet Explorer 7.0 is vulnerable to cross-site scripting in one of its local resources. In combination with a design flaw in this specific local resource it is possible for an attacker to easily conduct phishing attacks against IE7 users." CNET News also picked this up as a story.


 * Mar 14 - GMail Information Disclosure
 * Only a tiny XSS hole to demonstrate a disclosure proof-of-concept through AJAX/JSON of all contacts you ever mailed. If a domains covers a lot of functionality and users, one XSS can be devastating. Remember the Google Desktop vulnerability. What is frightening is that it took Beni only ~5 minutes to find a XSS hole.


 * Mar 8 - Anurag Agarwal's reflection series
 * Anurag Agarwal maintains an interesting blog on Web Application Security. Recently he started a serie of reflections on people active in this field. Up until now he covered Amit Klein, RSnake, Jeremiah Grossman, Ivan Ristic and Sheeraj Shah. Lot's of good pointers to web application research of the last years!

OWASP Community

 * Apr 17 (18:00h) - Rochester chapter meeting
 * Apr 12 (18:00h) - Netherlands chapter meeting
 * Apr 11 (18:00h) - Toronto chapter meeting
 * Apr 10 (18:00h) - Washington DC (N. VA) chapter meeting
 * Apr 4 (18:30h) - Boston chapter meeting
 * Apr 3 (18:00h) - Melbourne chapter meeting
 * Mar 28 (11:30h) - San Antonio chapter meeting
 * Mar 22 (18:00h) - London chapter meeting
 * Mar 21-22 - Belgium@InfoSecurity
 * Mar 20 (18:00h) - Rochester chapter meeting
 * Mar 14 (18:00h) - Toronto chapter meeting
 * Mar 14 (18:00h) - Chicago chapter meeting
 * Mar 13 (18:00h) - Washington DC (N. VA) chapter meeting

OWASP references in the Media

 * SPI Dynamics, Inc. Joins OWASP as Vendor Organization Member