Belgium

Local News
The Belgium chapter has grown: It is now the BeLux chapter!

WHEN
May 10th 2007

WHERE
ps_testware sponsors the venue:  Location: Kasteel de Bunswyck, Tiensesteenweg 343, 3010 Leuven.  You can find a map and itinary online.

PROGRAM
OWASP Update and OWASP BeLux Board Presentation Update on Internet Attack Statistics for Belgium in 2006 Legal Aspects of (Web) Application Security (Presentation + Discussion?)
 * 18h00 - 18h20: Welcome, coffee & sandwiches
 * 18h20 - 18h40: Sebastien Deleersnyder
 * 18h40 - 19h00: Hillar Leoste (Zone-H)
 * 19h00 – 20h00: Jos Dumortier
 * Jos Dumortier will discuss important questions such as:
 * How far can you go if you want to ‘test’ the security of a web site?
 * How much application security can you contractually demand for when you outsource your application development?
 * Who is legally responsible when you personal data is exposed through hacking activity in Belgium?
 * Jos Dumortier is Of Counsel in the ICT and e-Business department of Lawfort. He is also Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law (K.U.Leuven) and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and Information Technology (http://www.icri.be).

Formal absence of implementation bugs in web applications: a case study on indirect data sharing.' (Presentation + Discussion?)''
 * 20h00 - 20h15: break
 * 20h15 - 21h15: Lieven Desmet
 * Several research tracks focus on tools and techniques to verify or guarantee the absence of implementation bugs in web applications, either at compile-time or at run-time. By guaranteeing the absence of certain implementation bugs, the reliability and security of the application can be improved. In this presentation, we will focus on the absence of implementation bugs due to broken data dependencies.
 * Web applications typically share non-persistent session data between different parts of the application, e.g. a shopping cart in a e-commerce application. By doing so, implicit dependencies arise between the different parts of the application, and breaking these dependencies in an application may result in information leakage of erroneous behavior.
 * In our research, we explicitly model dependencies between components that indirectly share data. Next, we verify that in a given composition these dependencies are not broken by applying a combination of static verification and dynamic checking (e.g. by using a Web Application Firewall).
 * We validated the presented approach in two existing applications: a Struts-based, open-source webmail application (GatorMail) and an e-commerce site (Duke's BookStore from the J2EE 1.4 tutorial).


 * Lieven Desmet Lieven Desmet was born on January 16, 1979 in Roeselare. He received a Bachelor of Applied Sciences and Engineering degree and graduated magna cum laude in Master of Applied Sciences and Engineering: Computer Science from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in July 2002.
 * He started working as a Ph.D. student at the DistriNet (Distributed systems and computer Networks) research group of the Department of Computer Science at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Within DistriNet, he was active in both the networking and security task forces. Lieven received his PhD on software security in January 2007 and is currently active as a post-doctoral security researcher within DistriNet.

Please send a mail to  to register by Monday evening, so we can size the venue appropriately and keep you updated on last-minute changes.
 * 21h15 - ??: Reception

OWASP Top 10 2007 Update (Infosecurity Belgium, 21 & &22 Mar 2007)
Seba presented the 2007 OWASP Top 10 (currently available as OWASP Top 10 2007 RC1) on the Infosecurity event in Belgium on the 21st and 22nd of March 2007. 

The presentation is uploaded on:. 

JavaPolis 2006 - Stephen de Vries - Security Sins and their Solutions
Stephen de Vries (project leader of the OWASP Java Project) did a talk at JavaPolis in Belgium about "Security Sins and their Solutions" that can be viewed again online on Parleys.

The talk covers the most insidious security vulnerabilities in Java Web and EE applications through practical demonstration of how to exploit these vulnerabilities and recommendations on how to prevent them. The threat posed by each vulnerability is explained and strategies for mitigating the flaw are introduced.

WHEN
January 23rd 2007

WHERE
Ernst&Young Offices (Business Centre) in Brussels. Parking places are available at nr 216. Here you can find.

PROGRAM
 <BR> The OWASP presentation will shed a light on WEBGOAT and the Pantera Web Assessment Studio Project. Both OWASP projects will be covered and illustrated with a live demo, with a special focus on Webgoat and web services. <BR>        Presentation + Discussion?<BR> Philippe Bogaerts is an independent consultant specialized in network and application security testing, web application and XML firewalls.<BR> '''<BR> Over the last decade, Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP), a development paradigm that focuses on improving the modularisation of crosscutting concerns, has received a great deal of attention from the academic as well as from the industrial community. In the context of secure software development, AOP has been shown to bring a number of benefits, at least from a software engineering perspective. From a security perspective, the characteristics of AOP have been studied less. One of the key questions at this moment is whether we can really use AOP to build \emph{secure} software ?<BR> In this presentation we will address this key question by elaborating on a number of security implications of AOP. Risks will be shown to originate from the core concepts of AOP, as well as from tool-specific implementation strategies (with a specific focus on AspectJ). The presentation will be concluded by indicating how these risks could be mitigated, both from a theoretical and from a practical perspective.<BR> Presentation + Discussion?<BR> Bart De Win is a postdoctoral researcher in the research group DistriNet, Department of Computer Science at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. His research interests are in secure software engineering, includingsoftware development processes, aspect-oriented software development and model driven security. <BR>
 * 18h00 - 18h30: Welcome, get drink & sandwiches?<BR>
 * 18h20 - 18h40: Sebastien Deleersnyder<BR>
 * 18h45 – 19h45: Philippe Bogaerts<BR>
 * 19h45 - 20h00: break<BR>
 * 20h00 - 21h00: Bart De Win<BR>

Meeting Notes OWASP Belgium Chapter Meeting (Antwerp, 14-Sep-2006)
WHEN Thursday 14th of September 2006, 18h00 - 21h00.<BR> WHERE ING sponsored the venue and sandwiches. PROGRAM <BR> <BR> <BR> Presentation + Discussion<BR> The presentation showed how ING has implemented business application security by implementing a risk management approach. By starting from the definition of risks and risk management, we have changed the program governance and project lifecycle to ensure that security is not seen as an add-on in a late stage of the project, but that the security requirements are defined in the early start of a project. By this approach the security requirements are becoming real functional requirements which are supported by the business. The net result is that security is not an after-thought anymore but totally integrated in the product and its (functional) requirements. As security requirements have become demands of the business, they are not taken out when the project is getting in time and budget constraints. These are all the positive consequences we have obtained from the method that will be explained throughout the presentation. <BR> Presentation + Discussion<BR> Web Services are becoming a very popular protocol for communication between IT systems within and between organizations. Web services offer a nice alternative for all sorts of communication middleware. The security of Web Services is a major attention point, now being well addressed with the WS-Security standards. Guy Crets not only explains what WS-Security is, but also opens up the subject by addressing many related topics: how does WS-* compare to B2B protocols such as EDIINT AS2, why not use SOAP over email or FTP, the importance of WS-Addressing, shortcomings in WS-ReliableMessaging, what is the importance of Microsoft WCF (aka Indigo), ... and many more.
 * 18h00 - 18h30: Welcome, get drink & sandwiches<BR>
 * 18h20 - 18h40: Sebastien Deleersnyder, Ascure <BR>
 * 18h45 – 19h00: Toon Mordijck, ISSA<BR>
 * 19h00 - 19h55: Serge Moreno, ING<BR>
 * 20h05 - 21h00: Guy Crets, Apogado<BR>

Meeting Notes OWASP Belgium Chapter Meeting (Brussels, 8-May-2006)
WHEN Monday 8th of May 2006, 18h30 - 22h30.<BR> WHERE Deloitte sponsored the venue, drinks and snacks. PROGRAM <BR>
 * 18h00 - 18h30: Welcome, get drink & snack <BR>
 * 18h20 - 18h40: Sebastien Deleersnyder, Ascure <BR>


 * 18h45 - 19h15: Hillar Leoste, Zone-H

Can "Agile" Development Produce Secure Applications? Received wisdom has it that secure development and agile processes do not mix. Is that really so? Agile practices have proven in many projects to yield applications with fewer functional defects. Can they also be put to work to reduce the number of security vulnerabilities? The audience added to the discussion with questions and remarks!
 * 19h15 - 20h30: Johan Peeters, Program Director secappdev.org

Meeting Notes OWASP Belgium Chapter Meeting (Leuven, 22-Feb-2006)
WHEN Wednesday 22nd of February 2006, 18h00 - 21h00.

WHERE KUL sponsored the venue:<BR> BeeWare sponsored the Pizza and Drinks!

PROGRAM 18h00 - 18h20: Welcome, get Pizza & Drink<BR> 18h20 - 18h40: Sebastien Deleersnyder, Ascure <BR> <BR> 18h40 - 19h30: Philippe Bogaerts, BeeWare  19h30 - 20h45: Web Application Firewalls (WAF): Panel Discussion  Then we organized a panel discussion with people from industry, vendors and research: How mature are WAFs? What do WAFs protect you from? What not? Where do you position WAFs in your architecture? What WAF functionality do you really need? … We then had an interesting panel Discussion with:
 * Philippe Bogaerts, BeeWare
 * Jaak Cuppens, F5 Networks
 * David Van der Linden, ING Belgium
 * Lieven Desmet, K.U.Leuven

The audience (up to 50 !) added to the discussion with questions and remarks!

Belgium OWASP 2006 New Year Drink
On January 19th we had a New Years Drink. It was sponsored by Zion Security 

Meeting Notes second OWASP Belgium Chapter meeting (Leuven, 28-Sep-2005)
On 28th of September 2005 we had our second OWASP Belgium Chapter meeting. We had nearly 50 people coming to the meeting!

WHEN Wednesday 28th of September 2005, 18h00 - 21h00 at Ubizen in Leuven.

PROGRAM 18h00 - 18h15: Welcome & get a drink

18h15 - 18h45: Sebastien Deleersnyder, Ascure 

18h45 - 19h30: Emmanuel Bergmans, I-logs  Emmanuel gave an interesting introduction on ModSecurity. The presentation is included as attachment and contains a lot of great pointers and SWOT analysis. Conclusions were: ModSecurity can be particularly useful in an ISP environment Increased effort is necessary to synchronize multiple ModSecurity configurations in a Webfarm

19h30 - 20h45: OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities: Panel Discussion  Then we had a lively panel Discussion with: We handled questions about the Top 10:
 * Erwin Geirnaert, Security Innovation
 * Dirk Dussart, Belgian Post
 * Eric Devolder, Mastercard
 * Herman Stevens, Ubizen
 * Frank Piessens, KU Leuven
 * Is the OWASP Top 10 still necessary?
 * Are we talking vulnerabilities, solutions or threats?
 * Can we base our best practices / standards on the Top 10?
 * How to test your web site security on the Top 10?

The overall discussion was interesting, and at times diverted to an overall application security discussion. Some of the remarkable opinions covered: Can / or should the OWASP Top 10 form the basis for a certification scheme If it is used as an awareness tool, can we promote it with an OWASP magazine? The OWASP Top 10 is too vague A bigger exhaustive list is needed with a clear classification and taxonomy It should be based on threat modelling. One of the more pertinent questions: how did the original authors come to the Top 10?

Meeting Notes First OWASP Belgium Chapter Meeting (Gent, 26-May-2005)
On 26th of May 2005 we held the first OWASP Belgium Chapter meeting!

It was a big success: we had nearly 40 people attending, despite the Belgium-unlike hot weather.

PROGRAM 17h30 - 18h00: Welcome & get a drink

18h00 - 18h45: Sebastien Deleersnyder, Ascure 

19h00 - 19h45: Erwin Geirnaert, Security Innovation 

20h00 - 20h45: professor Frank Piessens, KU Leuven 

We had some interesting discussions with Frank on the position of security controls: within the code or within the supporting infrastructure? Another idea is also to look for a top 10 solutions for Web Applications and have some guidance system when selecting countermeasures.