Winter Code Sprint

Foreword
The OWASP Winter Code Sprint (OWCS) is a program to involve students with Security projects. By participating in OCWS a student can get real life experience while contributing to an open source project and getting university credits.

Benefits
You get to work for a popular project. Since the project is open source your work is publicly visible. You get university credits while doing so. You are supervised by a person with real-world experience on security You make excellent contacts and you participate in an international team

Perks
Students who successfully(*) participate in the project will get:


 * An OWASP annual individual membership. More info here: http://owasp.com/index.php/Individual_Member
 * An OWASP Winter Code Sprint t-shirt.
 * An OWASP conference pass (no flight/accommodation - just an OWASP conference pass of choice)

(*) successful participation means a passing score granted by University authorities.

How it works:
Any project that will give you university credits can participate in OCWS. Each project will be guided by an OWASP mentor along with a professor. Students are graded by their University, based on success criteria identified at the beginning of the project.

Projects are focused on developing security tools. It is required that the code any student produces for those projects will be released as Open Source. Universities are free to specify their own requirements to projects, such as written reports. OWASP does not influence the way grades are allocated. The OWASP advisers will provide any information professors need in order to grade their students.

Note on language: English is required for code comments and documentation, but not for interactions between students and advisers. Advisers who speak the same language as their students are encouraged to interact in that language.

As a Student
1. Review the list of OWASP Projects currently participating in OCWS

2. Get in touch with the OWASP Project mentor of your choice.

3. Agree deliverables with OWASP mentor and university professor.

4. Work away during Autumn/Winter 2014

5. Rise to Open Source Development Glory :-)

(Students apply now!)https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CFPzLIRje6Wb34MHq-8HwG0pjlkDixHA3xITVssN_Jw/viewform

As a Professor
1. Review the list of OWASP Projects currently participating in OCWS

2. Get in touch with the OWASP Project mentor of your choice.

3. Promote the participating OWASP Projects among students. Here is a handy slide deck that could be useful: Slides

4. Review student progress with help from OWASP mentors.

5. Grade student work according to university scoring system.

6. Provide student grade results to OWASP mentor/s.

As an OWASP Project Leader
1. Edit this page adding your project and some proposed tasks as per the examples

2. Promote the initiative to your academic contacts

Mailing List
Please subscribe to the following mailing list to receive updates or ask any particular questions:

OWASP Winter Code Sprint Google Group

How to Apply
Please fill up this form before the deadline.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CFPzLIRje6Wb34MHq-8HwG0pjlkDixHA3xITVssN_Jw/viewform

Deadlines
To facilitate the participation in the initiative for as many universities as possible, there are 2 deadlines for applying. The first one is 15 September 2014 and the next one is 15 October 2014. The double deadline means that OWASP Leaders will review the submissions and announce the choosen projects two times. Once at the end of September and once at the end of October.

OWASP OWTF - Testing Framework Improvements
Brief explanation:

As OWASP OWTF grows it makes sense to build custom unit tests to automatically re-test that functionality has not been broken. In this project we would like to improve the existing unit testing framework so that creating OWASP OWTF unit tests is as simple as possible and all missing tests for new functionality are created. The goal of this project is to update the existing Unit Test Framework to create all missing tests as well as improve the existing ones to verify OWASP OWTF functionality in an automated fashion.

Top features

In this improvement phase, the Testing Framework should: For example: Improve coverage of OWASP Testing Guide, PTES, etc. (lots of room for improvement there!) The goal here is to help contributors write tests for the functionality that they implement. This should be as easy as possible. This will be challenging but very worth trying after top priorities. The wiki should be heavily updated so that contributors create their own unit tests easily moving forward.
 * (Top Prio) Focus more on functional tests
 * (Top Prio) Put together a great wiki documentation section for contributors
 * (Top Prio) Fix the current Travis issues :)
 * (Nice to have) Bring the unit tests up to speed with the codebase

General background

The Unit Test Framework should be able to:
 * Define test categories: For example, "all plugins", "web plugins", "aux plugins", "test framework core", etc. (please see this presentation for more background)
 * Allow to regression test isolated plugins (i.e. "only test _this_ plugin")
 * Allow to regression test by test categories (i.e. "test only web plugins")
 * Allow to regression test everything (i.e. plugins + framework core: "test all")
 * Produce meaningful statistics and easy to navigate logs to identify which tests failed and ideally also hints on how to potentially fix the problem where possible
 * Allow for easy creation of _new_ unit tests specific to OWASP OWTF
 * Allow for easy modification and maintenance of _existing_ unit tests specific to OWASP OWTF
 * Perform well so that we can run as many tests as possible in a given period of time
 * Potentially leverage the python unittest library: http://docs.python.org/2/library/unittest.html

For background on OWASP OWTF please see: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_OWTF

Expected results:


 * IMPORTANT: PEP-8 compliant code in all modified code and surrounding areas.
 * IMPORTANT: OWTF contributor README compliant code
 * Performant and automated regression testing
 * Unit tests for a wide coverage of OWASP OWTF, ideally leveraging the Unit Test Framework where possible
 * Good documentation

Knowledge Prerequisite:

Python, experience with unit tests and automated regression testing would be beneficial, some previous exposure to security concepts and penetration testing is welcome but not strictly necessary as long as there is will to learn

OWASP OWTF Mentor:

Abraham Aranguren - OWASP OWTF Project Leader - Contact: Abraham.Aranguren@owasp.org

OWASP OWTF - OWTF Health Monitor
Brief explanation:

In some cases, especially on large assessments (think: > 30 URLs) a number of things often go wrong and OWTF needs to recover from everything, which is difficult. For this reason, OWTF needs an independent module, which is completely detached from OWTF (a different process), to ensure the health of the assessment is in check at all times, this includes the following:

Feature 1) Alerting mechanisms

When any of the monitor alerts (see below) is triggered. The OWTF user will be notified immediately through ALL of the following means: NOTE: A configuration file from where the user can enable/disable/configure all these mechanisms is desired.
 * Playing an mp3 song (both local and possibly remote locations)
 * Scan status overview on the CLI
 * Scan status overview on the GUI

Feature 2) Corrective mechanisms

Corrective mechanisms are also expected in this project, these will be accomplished sending OWTF api messages such as:
 * Stop this tool
 * Freeze this process (to continue later)
 * Freeze the whole scan (to continue later)

Additional mechanisms:
 * Show a ranking of files that take the most space

Feature 3) Target monitor

Brief overview: All target URLs are checked for availability periodically (i.e. once x 5 minutes?), if a URL in scope goes down the pentester is alerted (see above). Potential approach: Check if length of 1st page changes every 60 seconds. NOTE: It might be needed to change this on the fly.

More background Consider the following scenario: Current Situation aka "problem to solve": 1) Website X goes down during a scan 2) the customer notices 3) the customer tells the boss 4) the boss tells the pentester 5) the pentester stops the tool which was *still* trying to scan THAT target (!!!!)

Desired situation aka "solution": It would be much more professional AND efficient that: 1) The pentester notices 2) The pentester tells the boss 3) The boss tells the customer 4) OWTF stops the tool because it knows that website is DEAD anyway A target monitor could easily do this with heartbeat requests + playing mp3s The target monitor will use the api to tell OWTF "this target is dead: freeze(stop?) current tests, skip target in future tests"

Feature 4) Disk space monitor

Another problem that is relatively common in large assessments, is that all disk space is used and the scanning box becomes unresponsive or crashes. When this happens it is too late, the pentester may also see this coming but wonder “which are the biggest files in the filesystem that I can delete”, it is not ideal to have to look for these files in a moment when the scanning box is about to crash :).

Proposed solution: Regularly monitor how much disk space is left, especially on the partition where OWTF is writing the review (but also tool directories such as /home/username/.w3af/tmp, etc.). Keep track of files created by OWTF and all called tools and sort them by size in descending order. Then when the disk space is going low (i.e. predefined threshold), an mp3 or similar is played and this list is displayed to the user, so that they know what to delete to survive :).

Feature 5) Network/Internet Connectivity monitor

Sometimes it may also happen that ISP, etc. connectivity go down in the middle of a scan, this is often a very unfortunate situation since most tools are scanning in parallel and they won’t be able to produce a report OR even resume (i.e. A LOT is lost). The goal here is that OWTF does all of the following automatically: 1) Detects the lack of connectivity 2) Freezes all the tools (read: processes) in progress 3) Resumes the scan when the connectivity is back.

Feature 6) Tool crash detection

Sometimes, certain tools (most notably, ahem, w3af), when they crash they do NOT exit. This leaves OWTF in a difficult position where 1+ process is waiting for nothing, forever (i.e. because “Tool X” will never finish)

Feature 7) Tool (Plugin?) CPU/RAM/Bandwidth abuse detection and correction

OWTF needs to notice when some tools crash and/or “go beserk” with RAM/CPU/Bandwidth consumption, this is different from the existing built-in checks in OWTF like “do not launch a new tool if there is less than XYZ RAM free” and more like “if tool X is using > XYZ of the available RAM/CPU/Bandwidth” and this is (potentially) negatively affecting other tools/tests, then throttle it.

For background on OWASP OWTF please see: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_OWTF

Expected results:


 * IMPORTANT: PEP-8 compliant code in all modified code and surrounding areas.
 * IMPORTANT: OWTF contributor README compliant code
 * CRITICAL: Excellent reliability -i.e. the Health Monitor cannot crash! :)-
 * Good performance
 * Unit tests / Functional tests
 * Good documentation

Knowledge Prerequisite:

Python and bash experience would be beneficial, some previous exposure to security concepts and penetration testing is welcome but not strictly necessary as long as there is will to learn

OWASP OWTF Mentor:

Abraham Aranguren - OWASP OWTF Project Leader - Contact: Abraham.Aranguren@owasp.org

OWASP Hackademic Challenges - Source Code testing environment
Brief Explanation:

Existing challenges are based on a dynamic application testing concept. We would like to work on a project that will give the capability to the attacker to review a vulnerable piece of source code, make corrections and see the result in a realistic (but yet safe) runtime environment. The code can either be run if needed or tested for correctness and security. The implementation challenges of such a project can be numerous, including creating a realistic but also secure environment, testing submitted solutions and grading them in an automatic manner. At the same time there are now numerous sites that support submitting code and then simulate or implement a compiler's functionality.

Expected Results:

A source code testing and improvement environment where a user will be able to review, improve and test the result of a piece of source code.

Knowledge Prerequisites:

Comfortable in PHP, HTML and possibly Java. Good understanding of Application Security, source code analysis and related vulnerabilities.

OWASP Hackademic Mentors: Konstantinos Papapanagiotou, Spyros Gasteratos - Contact: Konstantinos@owasp.org / spyros.gasteratos@owasp.org

OWASP Hackademic Challenges - Challenge Sandbox
Now, in order to create a challenge, one has to validate the solution with regular expressions (or just plaintext comparison) and report success or failure to the backend, we'd like the ability to write a normal vulnerable web application as a challenge and leave it to hackademic to make sure that the server is not affected. Since this is probably the most difficult task proposed, if you are considering it, please get in touch with us early on so we can discuss about it and plan it correctly.

Ideas on the project:

 *Administrator's point of view* 

Create an infrastructure that spawns virtual environments for users while keeping the load reasonable on the server(s). Or configure apache,php,mysql in a way that allows for multiple instances of the programms to run in parallel completely seperated from the rest of the server. The student is expected to provide configuration scripts that do the above

 *Coder's Way* 

This is better explained with an example: In order to create an sql injection challenge one should be able to call a common unsecure mysql execute statement function. The student can override common functions like this providing their own implementation of a very temporary database (based on flat files or nosql solutions e.t.c.). The new functions should be able to detect the sqli and apply its results in a secure way(if the student drops a table no actual tables should be dropped but the table should not be visible to the student anymore).

 * Your solution here * 

 Expected results 

You should be able to upload a trully vulnerable web application as a hackademic challenge without compromising the server outside the sandbox.

OWASP Hackademic Challenges - CMS improvements
Brief Explanation:

The new CMS was created during 2012 GSOC. We have received feedback from users that suggest various improvements regarding functionality e.g. better user, teacher and challenges management. There are also some security improvements that are needed and in general any functionality that adds up to the educational nature of the project is more than welcome. For a complete list you can take a look at the issues in our github page here https://github.com/Hackademic/hackademic Some ideas to get you started: Ideas on this project:


 *  Template *

Since it's creation the project has received a good number of new features, but the visual/ux/ui part has never gotten much love. It would be good if we had a new template with proper ui design.


 * Questionaire creation plugin *

We'd like the admin to be able to create questionaires, assign rules for each question (e.g. correct answer +2pts incorrect answer -2, no answer 0) and assign them to students as homework/exams. The grading can either be done automatically (for multiple choice) or be submitted to the creator of the questionaire.


 * Ability to show different articles on the user's home screen

Now each user is served the latest article in her/his home screen. We need the ability for either the teacher/admin to be able to define what article each class is served.


 * Gamification of the user's progress *

A series of plugins and a template which allow the user to earn badges as they solve challenges and a better visual representation of their progress.


 * Ability to define series of challenges

The teacher/admin should be able to define a series of challenges (e.g. 2,5,3,1) which are meant to be solved in that order and if one is not solved then the student can't try the next one.


 *  Tagging of articles, users, challenges 

A user should be able to put tags on articles and challenges if he is a student and on users, classes, articles and challenges if he is a teacher. Also the user should be able to search according to the tags.


 * Your idea here

We welcome new ideas to make the project look awesome.

Expected Results:

New features and security improvements on the CMS part of the project.

Knowledge Prerequisites:

Comfortable in PHP and HTML. Good understanding of Application Security and related vulnerabilities if you undertake security improvements.

OWASP Hackademic Mentors: Konstantinos Papapanagiotou, Spyros Gasteratos - Contact: Konstantinos@owasp.org / spyros.gasteratos@owasp.org

OWASP Hackademic Challenges - Fix issues
Hackdemic has an issues page [here | https://github.com/Hackademic/hackademic/issues] some of the issues are small projects which can be solved in an afternoon, others need more work. If your professor agrees with the workload, you can fix one or multiple issues as part of OWCS. Additionally, you can open some issues that later you can fix, or propose new features.

 Knowledge Prerequisites  PHP and optionally some knowledge of application security.

 NOTE 

This "project" was added to encourage students to be creative and participate, we do accept projects outside the ones proposed if they can be integraded to the platform and are relevant to the purpose of Hackademic.

OWASP ZAP - Web UI
Brief explanation: 

ZAP is already an extremely capable tool used by many different groups of users. Work has already been done to make ZAP useful in environments where it can't run interactively (e.g. via the API). ZAP main Swing UI doesn't provide convenient access to remote users; a UI which provides some functionality for for users in such environments would be very useful.

Adding a powerful HTML interface to ZAP would allow it to operate in an even wider range of situations.

Expected Results:


 * A working example of an effective HTML UI that allows ZAP to be configured or used in a new way.

Optional:

Multi user / access controls, etc?

General background

ZAP is written in Java, so a good knowledge of this language is recommended, as is knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Some knowledge of application security would be useful, but not essential.

OWASP ZAP Mentor: Simon Bennetts - Contact: psiinon@gmail.com

OWASP ZAP - Advanced reporting
Brief explanation: OWASP ZAP has a limited reporting feature. The actual version can print only the 'Alerts' results into a simple pdf, html or in xml format.

Expected Results: We want to be able to print more than the Alerts results, which includes many other outputs such as: Request and Response, Active Scan, Zest among others.

General background During the Gsoc 2013, we did a research and a prototype module was created, using BIRT plugins for Advance reporting. Read more about the results of the explorative research : https://www.owasp.org/index.php/GSoC2013_Ideas/OWASP_ZAP_Exploring_Advanced_reporting_using_BIRT]

ZAP is written in Java, so a good knowledge of this language is recommended, as is knowledge of HTML. Some knowledge of application security would be useful, but not essential.

OWASP ZAP Mentor: Johanna Curiel - Contact: johanna.curiel@owasp.org

OWASP ZAP - CI Integration
Brief explanation:

ZAP is ideally suited for performing security tests in a Continuous Integration environment.

Right now there are a lot of manual steps to perform. This development will be to investigate and implement code/plugins etc to make it much easier to integrate ZAP with tools like Selenium and Jenkins / Hudson.

Expected Results:

Code, plugins and documentation to make it as easy as possible to integrate ZAP with common CI tools.

General background

ZAP is written in Java, so a good knowledge of this language is recommended, as is knowledge of HTML. Some knowledge of application security would be useful, but not essential.

OWASP ZAP Mentor: Simon Bennetts - Contact: psiinon@gmail.com

Participating Universities, Professors
Here's a small and not complete list of professors who are accepting participants (If your professor wants to accept more than one team, and you want to help your classmates please add institute name and professor/course here)

More info?
Please get in touch with the OWASP Winter Code Sprint Lead: spyros.gasteratos@owasp.org