application program

June 3, 2018 by James Jardine

Thinking about starting a bug bounty? Do this first.

Application security has become an important topic within our organizations. We have come to understand that the data that we deem sensitive and critical to our business is made available through these applications. With breaches happening all the time, it is critical to take reasonable steps to help protect that data by ensuring that our applications are implementing strong controls.

Over the years, testing has been the main avenue for “implementing” security into applications. We have seen a shift to the left more recently, leading to doing more throughout the entire development cycle, but we still have a ways to go. I am still a firm believer in embedding security into each of the phases as our main means of securing applications. Testing, however, is still a major component of any security program.

Typically, organizations rely on penetration testing to find the flaws in their applications. This is the de facto standard for understanding your risk. Unfortunately, penetration testing for applications has been watered down from what we think about with network testing. Many of the assessments we call penetration tests these days are just automated scans transposed into a custom report. These types of testing overlook one of the components a penetration test provides, which is the manual testing. Of course, there is much more to a penetration test, but that is not the focus of this post.

Internally, organizations may implement automated tools to help identify security flaws within their applications. These tools are good at finding certain types of flaws, and usually quite quickly. Like many current penetration tests, they lack the manual assessment side.

Not only does manual testing have the ability to find different types of flaws, such as authentication, authorization, CSRF, business logic, etc., it also has the ability to identify flaws that an automation tool overlooks. For example, a tool may not find every instance of cross-site scripting, depending on how that tool analyzes the system. Granted, manual testing is not guaranteed to find every instance either. With each type of testing, there is always a number of issues that will not be identified. The goal is to start reducing these numbers down over time.

Handling the results of all these res ports from the different assessments is critical to how well you start creating more resilient applications. In many organizations, vulnerabilities identified are handled as individual items and patched. In my opinion, the return on investment is when you can analyze these results to review your development process and see what improvements can be made to reduce the chance these types of flaws will be included in the future. Having an expert available to help review the issues and provide insight into how to use that information to improve your process is valuable.

Having a solid application development process in place is important before thinking about implementing a bug bounty program within your organization. If you are not already doing things consistently, there is a better chance the bounty program will fail.

Bug bounty programs have been becoming more prevalent over the last few years. This is especially true for newer technical startups. We have seen much slower adoption with most of the major corporations. There are many reasons for this, which are outside the scope of this post. There have been questions on whether bug bounties can replace penetration testing. The answer is no, because the goal of each of these is different. There are plenty of articles discussing the subject. A bug bounty program has also been seen by many as the evidence to show they are doing application security. Unfortunately, we can’t test ourselves secure. As I stated previously, testing is just a part of our solution for application security.

A key difference between our traditional testing and a bug bounty program is that bug bounties pay by the bug. Our traditional testing is provided at flat fees. For example, that automated tool is a set price for a month or year subscription. A penetration test is a set price per test. A bug bounty is priced per bug, which makes the cost very unpredictable. In addition, if you are not already doing many of the things previously discussed, there could be a lot of bugs to be found, leading to potentially high payouts.

As I have stated before, penetration testing has a different purpose and it can be very expensive. At Jardine Software we offer more budget friendly manual application security testing at a fixed cost. The goal is not necessarily to find every instance of every vulnerability or to exploit vulnerabilities in the way a penetration test would. The focus is on augmenting the automated testing you may already have in place and to provide that missing manual piece. The testing is performed manually by using the application in combination with Burp Suite, to look for weaknesses and provide those in a way that helps prioritize and then remediate them according to your organization’s needs.

The manual application security testing is typically performed over a week to two weeks and includes a broader scope than a typical bug bounty program. The reason for this is that we want to help identify risks that we see based on our years of experience to make you aware. This assessment can then help identify where you may have issues within your application before opening it up for a crowd sourced bounty program where each bug is priced individually.

If you are thinking about implementing a bug bounty program, reach out and lets chat first. Even if you are not considering a bug bounty program, do you have any manual application security testing implemented? We have the expertise to help provide the necessary testing or provide training for your internal teams to start applying manual testing techniques as part of your life cycle.

August 17, 2016 by James Jardine

Should Your Application Have a Security Test?

The world is driven by technology and applications are at the forefront. You see them as corporate site, blogs, business critical applications and on the Internet of Things devices. Some are publicly available, others only available on the internal network. So which ones need to be tested for security?

The simple answer: All of them.

But is it really that simple? Of course, you have to prioritize your focus when performing security testing. There isn’t a strict formula that defines your specific priorities. Lets walk through a few scenarios and think about the potential impact.

Business Critical Applications Exposed to on the Internet

Due to the criticality of these applications, they should be higher on the priority list. Often times, these applications will contain sensitive information, of some sort. This data may be passwords (for login), credit card info, health info, financial info, or other information considered sensitive. Not only do you have a duty to protect your user’s information, you may also be under regulatory oversight.

These critical applications are an obvious target for hackers. These systems are typically public facing, however they require valid user accounts for full access. You shouldn’t assume that because the application requires a login, it isn’t public facing. Due to the availability and criticality of the functionality, these are the most commonly tested types of applications.

Business Critical Applications on the Intranet

Many organizations have applications that are only available on the local network. Like the internet exposed applications, these can still contain sensitive information and be a high priority for the organization. These applications often receive less attention from a security standpoint because they are not publicly available. While the exposure to potential hackers is reduced, these applications should not be completely overlooked due to the risk of an insider threat.

That Marketing Site Hosted by a Third Party

Almost all businesses have some form of marketing site. It is the corporate landing page to provide basic information to potential visitors. Often times these sites are even hosted externally, by a third party. This doesn’t mean they don’t present a risk. One example of this is a watering hole attack. In this scenario, an attacker may take advantage of a benign website that is frequented by a specific group of people. Once the potential victim loads the page, a malicious application may be planted and the user infected.

The risk here may be very different than the attack on business critical applications. Even a full compromise of the site would not be a direct link to business critical/sensitive information. It still must be realized that it does maintain a certain level of risk.

“Smart” Devices

The market is seeing a lot more devices that have internet capabilities. This goes from kids toys, televisions, all the way to automobiles. These types of devices present a different level of risk. You must understand what its availability is: Internal or External. What can the device do if it were to be remotely attacked? What type of data does it handle, and are you protecting that data in both transit and storage?

What Type of Testing Do I Need?

Depending on your risk level, the level of testing may vary. For example, those business critical applications should have an in-depth test performed. This includes both manual penetration testing as well as secure code reviews. For those sites that are at a much lower level, automated testing may be the right start. Application security is about understanding and managing the risks presented. Remember that all applications, no matter their size or functionality, could be a target.

No matter what type of application it is, or what type of testing may be required, a secure development process should be followed. Testing is great for finding flaws after the fact, but it is much better to not introduce them at all. This is done by having application teams that are aware of the types of security issues effecting their applications. This includes training for the teams, secure coding techniques, security testing and secure design. When these things are baked into the process, the external security testing becomes a formality and a last chance effort to find anything overlooked.

Jardine Software helps companies get more value from their application security programs. Let’s talk about how we can help you.

James Jardine is the CEO and Principal Consultant at Jardine Software Inc. He has over 15 years of combined development and security experience. If you are interested in learning more about Jardine Software, you can reach him at james@jardinesoftware.com or @jardinesoftware on twitter.

July 12, 2016 by James Jardine

Application Security and Responsibility

Who is responsible for application security within your organization? While this is something I don’t hear asked very often, when I look around the implied answer is the security team. This isn’t just limited to application security either. Look at network security. Who, in your organization, is responsible for network security? From my experience, the answer is still the security group. But is that how it should be? Is there a better way?

Security has spent a lot of effort to take and accept all of this responsibility. How often have you heard that security is the gate keeper to any production releases? Security has to test your application first. Security has to approve any vulnerabilities that may get accepted. Security has to ….

I won’t argue that the security group has a lot of responsibility when it comes to application security. However, they shouldn’t have all of it, or even a majority of it. If we take a step back for a moment, lets think about how applications are created. Applications are created by application teams which consist of app owners, business analysts, developers, testers, project managers, and business units. Yet, when there is a security risk with the application it is typically the security group under fire. The security group typically doesn’t have any ability to write or fix the application, and they shouldn’t. There is a separation, but are you sure you know where it is?

I have done a few presentations recently where I focus on getting application teams involved in security. I think it is important for organizations to think about this topic because for too long we have tried to separate the duties at the wrong spot.

The first thing I like to point out is that the application development teams are smart, really smart. They are creating complex business functions that drive most organizations. We need to harness this knowledge rather than trying to augment it with other people. You might find this surprising, but most application security tools have GUIs that anyone on your app dev teams can use with little experience. Yet, most organizations I have been into have the security group running the security tools (such as Veracode, Checkmarx, WhiteHat, Contrast, etc). This is an extra layer that just decreases the efficiency of the process.

By getting the right resources involved with some of these tools and tasks, it not only gets security closer to the source, but it also frees up the security team for other activities. Moving security into the development process increases efficiency. Rather than waiting on a scan by the security team, the app team can run the scans and get the results more quickly. Even better, they can build it into their integration process and most likely automate much of the work. This changes the security team to be reserved for the more complex security issues. It also makes the security team more scalable when they do not have to just manage tools.

I know what you are thinking.. But the application team doesn’t understand security. I will give it to you, in may organizations this is very true. But why? Here we have identified what the problem really is. Currently, security tries to throw tools at the issue and manage those tools. But the real problem is that we are not focusing on maturing the application teams. We attempt to separate security from the development lifecycle. I did a podcast on discussing current application security training for development teams.

Listen to the podcast on AppSec Training

Everyone has a responsibility for application security, but we need to put a bigger focus on the application teams and getting them involved. We cannot continue to just hurl statements about getting these teams involved over the fence. We say to implement security into the SDLC, but rarely are we defining these items. We say to educate the developers, but typically just provide offensive security testing training, 1-2 days a year. We are not taking the time to identify how they work, how their processes flow, etc. to determine how to address the problem.

Take a look at your program and really understand it. What are you currently doing? Who is performing what roles? What resources do you have and are you using them effectively? What type of training are you providing and is it effective regarding your goals?

We will be discussing more of these topics in the future. To get started in your own organization, start with the questions above. Want to talk more about these topics? Contact us

Thinking about starting a bug bounty? Do this first.

Should Your Application Have a Security Test?

Application Security and Responsibility

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