OWASP Security Ninja Project

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OWASP Security Ninja
The world of application security has a gaping hole when it comes to interesting and engaging security learning. Builders, breakers, and defenders lack a solid foundation of application security knowledge and an appreciation for the evolving threat landscape. These same folks also lack experience with secure development practices and tools. Finally, they lack the motivation to volunteer to improve application security.

Enter the OWASP Security Ninja program, a content and action based application security learning adventure. The project recognizes the learning and activity achievements of OWASP application security practitioners using a system of security belts. The OWASP security belts are white, yellow, green, brown, and black. Similar to belts in the world of martial arts, a student in our "virtual dojo" must train and test to earn a belt.
 * White Belt -- The journey begins with the student reviewing video learning modules and taking an assessment per module. When the learner achieves passing status on all the white belt modules, they earn the OWASP Security White Belt and are eligible to continue to Yellow Belt.
 * Yellow Belt -- focuses on applying the knowledge, and splits the content into builder and breaker specific roles.
 * Green, Brown, Black Belts -- After yellow, the student must put their new found knowledge into action by completing activities that improve some facet of application security. For each activity, the student earns points towards the next belt in the series (green, brown, and black). OWASP Security Black belt is the highest honor, and signifies that the student has become the teacher, and has taken a leadership stake in learning and doing application security.

Mission
OWASP Security Ninja educates, empowers, reaches, and recognizes builders and breakers in web application security.


 * Educates — providing the content to expand the application security knowledge of both the OWASP faithful and academia / industry
 * Empowers — opens doors and minds to new facets of application security
 * Reaches — connects with those who have had no historical appreciation or understanding of security
 * Recognizes — provides recognition for those that expand their minds and put forth effort to improve application security

Delivery
The tangible deliverables are broken down into two categories: content and infrastructure. Content refers to any artifacts that contain specific learning. Infrastructure is any of the systems required to deliver the training to the learner. On the content side, the deliverables are individual training module videos, assessments, and any associated slides or documentation that assist the learner in understanding the topic (and are used in the training video). Other deliverables may include virtual machines or lab based exercises available for download.

On the infrastructure side, front end interfaces, web servers, databases, storage, and a learning management system are required to deliver the training content to the Internet community. A front end interface and a custom piece of middleware are the main code based deliverables. A discussion will take place with the core team in the future to determine if any of the infrastructure is required, or if the content itself will be released.

Licensing
OWASP Security Ninja is free to use. Its licensing is dependent on several factors:
 * OWASP Security Ninja created documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, so you can distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon our work, even commercially, as long as you credit us for the original creation.
 * OWASP Security Ninja created software and tools are licensed under the GPLv3 or later license. You are free to use and modify this software as well as having the right to re-distribute this software as long as any changes you've made are contributed back to the project under the same license.  For questions, see the GPL FAQ
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Presentation
Coming Soon.

Project Leader

 * Chris Romeo

Related Projects

 * [OWASP Education Project]

Code Repository
The OWASP Security Ninja code will be stored on GitHub shortly.

News and Events

 * [2015-12-06] Project site kicked off, and search for volunteers begins.

Classifications

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= Road Map =

The OWASP Security Ninja program is a multi-phase, multi-year undertaking. The OWASP White and Yellow Belts require the creation of a series of video based learning modules. The Green, Brown, and Black belts require the creation of an activity submission process, including a tracking and review component.

Identify Project Vision & Strategy (November 2015 - January 2016)
In this phase, a core group of volunteers must come together to help in defining the OWASP Security Ninja program. While Chris Romeo as the project leader has many ideas and plans, the idea is for the core group of participants with broad knowledge of OWASP to help scope the content to be developed.
 * Scope and Governance (January 2016)
 * Initial project summit (January 2016)

OWASP White Belt (January 2016 - September 2016)
During the creation of the content for white belt, the official content creation process will be finalized. A user interface and set of web services must be developed to support the delivery of OWASP Security Ninja. Alpha is opening up the content and systems to a select group of testers. Beta is a wider group of testers pushing the system to it's limits. OWASP Security White Belt available to the world!
 * Content creation (January - March 2016)
 * Content recording (March 2016)
 * Infrastructure code and build (January - September 2016)
 * Alpha (July 2016)
 * Second project summit @ AppSec EU (July 2016)
 * Beta (August 2016)
 * Launch of content at AppSec USA (September 2016)

OWASP Yellow Belt (October 2016 - September 2017)

 * Content creation (October 2016 - March 2017)
 * Content recording (April 2017)
 * Infrastructure update (January - September 2017)
 * Alpha (July 2017)
 * Beta (August 2017)
 * Launch of content at AppSec USA (September 2017)

OWASP Green Belt, OWASP Brown Belt, OWASP Black Belt (October 2017 - September 2018)
Additional front end and web services will be developed to track the activity submissions of the participants. The processes and procedures for judging and tracking activities must be finalized.
 * Infrastructure update (January - July 2018)
 * Finalize governance and oversight (January - March 2018)
 * Alpha (July 2018)
 * Beta (August 2018)
 * Launch of concept and completion of initial scope (September 2018)

Content Refresh
The challenge with security learning modules is that they become stale after roughly one year of release. The content refresh process ensures that once per year content is reviewed and select pieces of content are updated. At the conclusion of the green, brown, and black belt deployment, the project will begin an aggressive content refresh process.

= White Belt =

Objective
Familiarity with basic security fundamentals and basic knowledge of Secure Development Lifecycle

Keyword
Learning

Module List
In development now.

= Yellow Belt =

Learning Objective
Application of knowledge tailored to a specific role (builder and breaker)

Keyword
Applying

Module List
In development now.

= Green, Brown, Black Belt =

Learning Objective
Putting the learning lessons to work by contributing to the betterment of application security through activities

Keyword
Doing, Leading, Leader

Activty List
In development now.

=FAQs=

What is the problem statement that this project is trying to solve?
Builders, breakers, and defenders lack:
 * general application security knowledge
 * appreciation for the evolving threat landscape
 * experience with secure development practices and tools
 * motivation to volunteer to improve security

What is the mission of this project?
OWASP Security Ninja educates, empowers, reaches, and recognizes builders, breakers, and defenders in web application security.

Who is the target consumer for this project?
The target audience begins with the OWASP faithful, the builders and breakers that are already part of the OWASP community. Our secondary audiences are educators / students and industry. We see the real benefit for this program in reaching builders and breakers in industry and the next generation studying now.

What is different about the learning created in this project versus regular security learning?
Face it, regular security learning training is boring. Voice over powerpoint is painful to listen to. Someone reading off a script in front of a camera is as interesting as watching paint dry. We do learning modules differently. We bake in fun to the process of how we record. Think of our modules as more of a late night talk show talking security then boring script readers. We use a laid back conversational style to deal with complex topics, ask lots of questions, and share our personal experiences within the content.

What roles / specializations are needed for this project?
We need folks who can perform any or many of the following roles:
 * 1) Security learning module content creator (security subject matter expert)
 * 2) Content reviewer
 * 3) Web interface / full stack developer
 * 4) Database developer
 * 5) AWS setup and administration
 * 6) Graphic designer
 * 7) Psychometrician -- fancy name for someone who writes fair test questions

Is this thing a certification?
At this stage, the plan is no. A certification program requires a more formal, rigid testing and evaluation process than we plan to build. We will revisit this as the project develops.

= Acknowledgements =

Contributors
The OWASP Security Ninja project is in need of some additional people to list on this site!

The first contributors to the project are:


 * Chris Romeo

=Project About=