OWASP AppSensor Project

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OWASP AppSensor
The AppSensor project defines a conceptual framework and methodology that offers prescriptive guidance to implement intrusion detection and automated response into applications.

The project offers 1) a comprehensive guide and 2) a reference implementation. These resources can be used by architects, developers, security analyst and system administrators to plan, implement and monitor an AppSensor system.

Introduction
If you walk into a bank and try opening random doors, you will be identified, led out of the building and possibly arrested. However, if you log into an online banking application and start looking for vulnerabilities no one will say anything. This needs to change! As critical applications continue to become more accessible and inter-connected, it is paramount that critical information is sufficiently protected. We must also realize that our defenses may not be perfect. Given enough time, attackers can identify security flaws in the design or implementation of an application.

In addition to implementing layers of defense within an application, we must identify malicious individuals before they are able to identify any gaps in our defenses. The best place to identify malicious activity against the application is within the application itself. Network based intrusion detection systems are not appropriate to handle the custom and intricate workings of an enterprise application and are ill-suited to detect attacks focusing on application logic such as authentication, access control, etc. This project delivers a framework which can be used to build a robust system of attack detection, analysis, and response within an enterprise application.

Detection
AppSensor defines over 50 different detection points which can be used to identify a malicious attacker.

Response
AppSensor provides guidance on how to respond once a malicious attacker has been identified. Possible actions include: logging out the user, locking the account or notifying an administrator. More than a dozen response actions are described.

Defending the Application
An attacker often requires numerous probes and attack attempts in order to locate an exploitable vulnerability within the application. By using AppSensor it is possible to identify and eliminate the threat of an attacker before they are able to successfully identify an exploitable flaw.

Licensing
OWASP AppSensor is free to use.

Guide
The guide is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, so you can copy, distribute and transmit the work, and you can adapt it, and use it commercially, but all provided that you attribute the work and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Reference Implementation
The reference implementation is licensed under the MIT License, which is a permissive (commercial-friendly) license only requiring you to include a copy of the license upon distribution or copying.

&copy; OWASP Foundation


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What is AppSensor?
Detect and respond to attacks from within the application. This project includes both a well documented idea (the Guide) and a reference implementation (the Code).

AppSensor Website


See the new AppSensor website for an introduction and quick start instructions.

Overview


Download the PDF from CrossTalk Magazine.

Project Founder

 * Michael Coates [mailto:michael.coates@owasp.org @]

Project Leaders

 * Dennis Groves [mailto:dennis.groves@owasp.org @]
 * John Melton [mailto:john.melton@owasp.org @]
 * Colin Watson [mailto:colin.watson@owasp.org @]

Related Projects

 * OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set


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Quick Download

 * OWASP AppSensor Guide v2.0.1 EN
 * PDF
 * DOC
 * Hard copy
 * OWASP AppSensor Reference Implementation
 * v2 Code

News and Events

 * [18-19 Sep 2014] Guide book giveaway and signing at AppSecUSA 2014
 * [17 Sep 2014] Presentation at London API Group
 * [13 Sep 2014] AppSensor Code v2.0.0 beta released
 * [12 Sep 2014] AppSensor website launched
 * [15 May 2014] Presentation at OWASP London
 * [08 May 2014] AppSensor Guide v2.0.1 released
 * [02 May 2014] AppSensor Guide v2.0 released

Code Repository

 * AppSensor v2 https://github.com/jtmelton/appsensor (Current)
 * Note: LEGACY AppSensor v1 https://code.google.com/p/appsensor/

In Print


The AppSensor Guide v2.0 can be purchased at cost as a print on demand book from Lulu.com.

Classifications

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= Acknowledgements =

Volunteers
All OWASP projects rely on the voluntary efforts of people in the software development and information security sectors. They have contributed their time and energy to make suggestions, provide feedback, write, review and edit documentation, give encouragement, make introductions, produce demonstration code, promote the concept, and provide OWASP support. They participated via the project’s mailing lists, by developing code, by updating the wiki, by undertaking research studies, and through contributions during the AppSensor working session at the OWASP Summit 2011 in Portugal and the AppSensor Summit at AppSec USA 2011. Without all their efforts, the project would not have progressed to this point, and this guide would not have been completed.

OWASP Summer of Code 2008
The AppSensor Project was initially supported by the OWASP Summer of Code 2008, leading to the publication of the book AppSensor v1.1.

Google Summer of Code 2012
Additional development work on SOAP web services was kindly supported by the Google Summer of Code 2012.

Other Acknowledgements
The project has also benefitted greatly from the generous contribution of time and effort by many volunteers in the OWASP community including those listed above, and contributors to the OWASP ESAPI project, members of the former OWASP Global Projects Committee, the OWASP Board, OWASP staff and support from the OWASP Project Reboot initiative. The v2 code and documentation were conceived during the AppSensor Summit held during AppSec USA 2011 in Minneapolis.

= Road Map and Getting Involved =

Please join the project's mailing lists to keep up-to-date with what's going on, and to contribute your ideas, feedback, and experience:
 * General project
 * Code development

v2 Code
The current code being worked on is located on GitHub

The code has been fully rewritten. A v2.0.0 beta was released for review on 13 September 2014.

The main reason for the rewrite was to allow a client-server style model as opposed to requiring AppSensor be fully embedded in the application. You can now have a central server collecting events from multiple applications and performing analysis. These front-end applications can be in any language as long as they speak rest/soap. There's been a host of other changes, but this was the primary one. A number of starter ideas for coding, user interface and documentation have been outlined via the mailing list at 17th March 2014.

if you want to work on ANYTHING, please let jtmelton[@]gmail.com know.

Q4 2014

 * Oct - v 2.0.0 release candidate
 * Nov - v 2.0.0 final
 * Additional unit tests
 * Move appsensor.org site over from static html to python
 * Finish up user documentation at appsensor.org

Q1 2015

 * First version of administration UI for appsensor (reporting / monitoring UI)
 * Extend reporting APIs
 * Push v 2.1 when admin UI complete
 * Add at least 1 attack emitter for DEVOPS visualization (JMX -> SNMP, syslog, SNMP, .. something)
 * Workup example integration with ModSecurity CRS
 * Get CI server (cloudbees?) setup
 * Finish up developer documentation on github and appsensor.org
 * Video demo of setting up appsensor (screen capture)

Q2 2015

 * Sample applications - simple implementations of the different execution modes)
 * New detection point implementations
 * AOP examples of detection point implementations
 * Preparation for GSOC 2015 submission

Q3 2015

 * GSOC 2015 mentoring (if selected)
 * Trend monitoring implementation (good for GSOC project possibly)
 * Additional integrations for reporting (graphite, ganglia -> see list supported by codahale metrics)

Q4 2014
Update AppSensor Guide to keep in step with code changes and improvements to ideas.

Past activities
May 2014 Finalisation and publication of the AppSensor Guide v2.0

November, 2013 - AppSensor 2.0 hackathon, and document writing & review at AppSecUSA 2013, New York

2012-2013 - Active Development of next AppSensor book

September, 2011 - AppSensor Summit at AppSec USA 2011, Minneapolis

September, 2010 - Presented at AppSecUSA slides

June, 2010 - Active ESAPI Integration Underway

November, 2009 OWASP DC, November 2009

2009 v1.2 in the works, demo application in development

May, 2009 - AppSec EU Poland - Presentation (PPT) (Video)

January, 2009 - v1.1 Released - Beta Status

November, 2008 - AppSensor Talk at OWASP Portugal

November, 2008 - v1.0 Released - Beta Status

April 16, 2008 - Project Begins

= Detection Points =

Below are the primary detection points defined within AppSensor. These are just the titles; the document contains descriptions, examples and considerations for implementing these detection points.

Detailed Detection Point Information Here 

Response Action Information Here

Summary of Information Detection Categories:

RE - Request

AE - Authentication

SE - Session

ACE - Access Control

IE - Input

EE - Encoding

CIE - Command Injection

FIO - File IO

HT - Honey Trap

UT - User Trend

STE - System Trend

RP - Reputation

Signature Based Event Titles

ID Event

RE1 Unexpected HTTP Command

RE2 Attempt to Invoke Unsupported HTTP Method

RE3 GET When Expecting POST

RE4 POST When Expecting GET

RE5 Additional/Duplicated Data in Request

RE6 Data Missing from Request

RE7 Unexpected Quantity of Characters in Parameter

RE8 Unexpected Type of Characters in Parameter

AE1 Use Of Multiple Usernames

AE2 Multiple Failed Passwords

AE3 High Rate of Login Attempts

AE4 Unexpected Quantity of Characters in Username

AE5 Unexpected Quantity of Characters in Password

AE6 Unexpected Type of Character in Username

AE7 Unexpected Type of Character in Password

AE8 Providing Only the Username

AE9 Providing Only the Password

AE10 Adding POST Variable

AE11 Missing POST Variable

AE12 Utilization of Common Usernames

SE1 Modifying Existing Cookie

SE2 Adding New Cookie

SE3 Deleting Existing Cookie

SE4 Substituting Another User's Valid Session ID or Cookie

SE5 Source IP Address Changes During Session

SE6 Change Of User Agent Mid Session

ACE1 Modifying URL Argument Within a GET for Direct Object Access Attempt

ACE2 Modifying Parameter Within a POST for Direct Object Access Attempt

ACE3 Force Browsing Attempt

ACE4 Evading Presentation Access Control Through Custom POST

IE1 Cross Site Scripting Attempt

IE2 Violation of Implemented White Lists

IE3 Violation Of Implemented Black Lists

IE4 Violation of Input Data Integrity

IE5 Violation of Stored Business Data Integrity

IE6 Violation of Security Log Integrity

EE1 Double Encoded Character

EE2 Unexpected Encoding Used

CIE1 Blacklist Inspection for Common SQL Injection Values

CIE2 Detect Abnormal Quantity of Returned Records

CIE3 Null Byte Character in File Request

CIE4 Carriage Return or Line Feed Character In File Request

FIO1 Detect Large Individual File

FIO2 Detect Large Number of File Uploads

HT1 Alteration to Honey Trap Data

HT2 Honey Trap Resource Requested

HT3 Honey Trap Data Used

Behavior Based Event Titles

UT1 Irregular Use of Application

UT2 Speed of Application Use

UT3 Frequency of Site Use

UT4 Frequency of Feature Use

STE1 High Number of Logouts Across The Site

STE2 High Number of Logins Across The Site

STE3 Significant Change in Usage of Same Transaction Across The Site

RP1 Suspicious or Disallowed User IP Address

RP2 Suspicious External User Behavior

RP3 Suspicious Client-Side Behavior

RP4 Change to Environment Threat Level

= Media =

AppSensor Website


http://appsensor.org/

Code

 * v2 Github Code
 * (LEGACY) v1 Google Code

AppSensor Guide

 * OWASP AppSensor Guide
 * v2.0 EN
 * PDF
 * DOC
 * Print on demand at cost hard copy
 * (Source files for all of above) 96Mb zip
 * v1.1 EN
 * PDF
 * DOC

Presentations
Automated Application Defenses to Thwart Advanced Attackers (Slides & Audio)

July, 2010 - OWASP London (UK) -

June, 2010 - OWASP Leeds/North (UK) - OWASP AppSensor - The Self-Aware Web Application

June, 2010 - Video presentation - Automated Application Defenses to Thwart Advanced Attackers

November, 2009 - AppSec DC - Defend Yourself: Integrating Real Time Defenses into Online Applications

May, 2009 - OWASP Podcast #51

May, 2009 - AppSec EU Poland - Real Time Defenses against Application Worms and Malicious Attackers

November, 2008 - OWASP Summit Portugal 2008 PPT

Video Demos of AppSensor
Detecting Multiple Attacks & Logging Out Attacker

Detecting XSS Probes

Detecting URL Tampering

Detecting Verb Tampering

= Project About =

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