Application Security in the Cloud Training Course

This course will help professionals understand the value and limits of Application Security. While the Application Security Principals provides valuable awareness around some of the major risks in applications today, this course will highlight both the good and not so good.

This course is crucial because of the increasing need for developers to code in a secure manner. It is critical to introduce security as a quality component into the development cycle. This course aims at educating developers about various security vulnerabilities through hands-on practice using our purposely developed insecure web application.

Android is an open platform for mobile devices such as handsets and tablets. It has a large variety of security features to make developing secure software easier; however, it is also missing certain security aspects that are present in other hand-held platforms. The course gives a comprehensive overview of these features, and points out the most critical shortcomings to be aware of related to the underlying Linux, the file system and the environment in general, as well as regarding using permissions and other Android software development components.

Typical security pitfalls and vulnerabilities are described both for native code and Java applications, along with recommendations and best practices to avoid and mitigate them. In many cases discussed issues are supported with real-life examples and case studies. Finally, we give a brief overview on how to use security testing tools to reveal any security relevant programming bugs.

Participants attending this course will 

• Understand basic concepts of security, IT security and secure coding
• Learn the security solutions on Android
• Learn to use various security features of the Android platform
• Get information about some recent vulnerabilities in Java on Android
• Learn about typical coding mistakes and how to avoid them
• Get understanding on native code vulnerabilities on Android
• Realize the severe consequences of unsecure buffer handling in native code
• Understand the architectural protection techniques and their weaknesses
• Get sources and further readings on secure coding practices

Audience

Professionals

A number of programming languages are available today to compile code to .NET and ASP.NET frameworks. The environment provides powerful means for security development, but developers should know how to apply the architecture- and coding-level programming techniques in order to implement the desired security functionality and avoid vulnerabilities or limit their exploitation.

The aim of this course is to teach developers through numerous hands-on exercises how to prevent untrusted code from performing privileged actions, protect resources through strong authentication and authorization, provide remote procedure calls, handle sessions, introduce different implementations for certain functionality, and many more. A special section is devoted to configuration and hardening of the .NET and ASP.NET environment for security.

A brief introduction to the foundations of cryptography provides a common practical baseline for understanding the purpose and the operation of various algorithms, based on which the course presents the cryptographic features that can be used in .NET. This is followed by the introduction of some recent crypto vulnerabilities both related to certain crypto algorithms and cryptographic protocols, as well as side-channel attacks.

Introduction of different vulnerabilities starts with presenting some typical programming problems committed when using .NET, including bug categories of input validation, error handling or race conditions. A special focus is given to XML security, while the topic of ASP.NET-specific vulnerabilities tackles some special issues and attack methods: like attacking the ViewState, or the string termination attacks.

Participants attending this course will

• Understand basic concepts of security, IT security and secure coding
• Learn to use various security features of the .NET development environment
• Have a practical understanding of cryptography
• Understand some recent attacks against cryptosystems
• Get information about some recent vulnerabilities in .NET and ASP.NET
• Learn about typical coding mistakes and how to avoid them
• Get practical knowledge in using security testing tools
• Get sources and further readings on secure coding practices

Audience

Developers

Implementing a secure networked application can be difficult, even for developers who may have used various cryptographic building blocks (such as encryption and digital signatures) beforehand. In order to make the participants understand the role and usage of these cryptographic primitives, first a solid foundation on the main requirements of secure communication – secure acknowledgement, integrity, confidentiality, remote identification and anonymity – is given, while also presenting the typical problems that may damage these requirements along with real-world solutions.

As a critical aspect of network security is cryptography, the most important cryptographic algorithms in symmetric cryptography, hashing, asymmetric cryptography, and key agreement are also discussed. Instead of presenting an in-depth mathematical background, these elements are discussed from a developer's perspective, showing typical use-case examples and practical considerations related to the use of crypto, such as public key infrastructures. Security protocols in many areas of secure communication are introduced, with an in-depth discussion on the most widely-used protocol families such as IPSEC and SSL/TLS.

Typical crypto vulnerabilities are discussed both related to certain crypto algorithms and cryptographic protocols, such as BEAST, CRIME, TIME, BREACH, FREAK, Logjam, Padding oracle, Lucky Thirteen, POODLE and similar, as well as the RSA timing attack. In each case, the practical considerations and potential consequences are described for each problem, again, without going into deep mathematical details.

Finally, as XML technology is central for data exchange by networked applications, the security aspects of XML are described. This includes the usage of XML within web services and SOAP messages alongside protection measures such as XML signature and XML encryption – as well as weaknesses in those protection measures and XML-specific security issues such as XML injection, XML external entity (XXE) attacks, XML bombs, and XPath injection.

Participants attending this course will

• Understand basic concepts of security, IT security and secure coding
• Understand the requirements of secure communication
• Learn about network attacks and defenses at different OSI layers
• Have a practical understanding of cryptography
• Understand essential security protocols
• Understand some recent attacks against cryptosystems
• Get information about some recent related vulnerabilities
• Understand security concepts of Web services
• Get sources and further readings on secure coding practices

Audience

Developers, Professionals

To serve in the best way heterogeneous development groups that are using various platforms simultaneously during their everyday work, we have merged various topics into a combined course that presents diverse secure coding subjects in didactic manner on a single training event. This course combines C/C++ and Java platform security to provide an extensive, cross-platform secure coding expertise.

Concerning C/C++, common security vulnerabilities are discussed, backed by practical exercises about the attacking methods that exploit these vulnerabilities, with the focus on the mitigation techniques that can be applied to prevent the occurrences of these dangerous bugs, detect them before market launch or prevent their exploitation.

Security components and service of Java are discussed by presenting the different APIs and tools through a number of practical exercises where participants can gain hands-on experience in using them. The course also covers security issues of web services and the related Java services that can be applied to prevent the most aching threats of the Internet based services. Finally, web- and Java-related security vulnerabilities are demonstrated by easy-to-understand exercises, which not only show the root cause of the problems, but also demonstrate the attack methods along with the recommended mitigation and coding techniques in order to avoid the associated security problems.

Participants attending this course will

• Understand basic concepts of security, IT security and secure coding
• Learn Web vulnerabilities beyond OWASP Top Ten and know how to avoid them
• Learn client-side vulnerabilities and secure coding practices
• Learn to use various security features of the Java development environment
• Have a practical understanding of cryptography
• Realize the severe consequences of unsecure buffer handling
• Understand the architectural protection techniques and their weaknesses
• Learn about typical coding mistakes and how to avoid them
• Be informed about recent vulnerabilities in various platforms, frameworks and libraries
• Get sources and further readings on secure coding practices

Audience

Developers

This three day course covers the basics of securing the C/C++ code against the malicious users who may exploit many vulnerabilities in the code with memory management and input handling, the course cover the principals of writing secure code.

Even experienced Java programmers are not mastering by all means the various security services offered by Java, and are likewise not aware of the different vulnerabilities that are relevant for web applications written in Java.

The course – besides introducing security components of Standard Java Edition – deals with security issues of Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) and web services. Discussion of specific services is preceded with the foundations of cryptography and secure communication. Various exercises deal with declarative and programmatic security techniques in JEE, while both transport-layer and end-to-end security of web services is discussed. The use of all components is presented through several practical exercises, where participants can try out the discussed APIs and tools for themselves.

The course also goes through and explains the most frequent and severe programming flaws of the Java language and platform and web-related vulnerabilities. Besides the typical bugs committed by Java programmers, the introduced security vulnerabilities cover both language-specific issues and problems stemming from the runtime environment. All vulnerabilities and the relevant attacks are demonstrated through easy-to-understand exercises, followed by the recommended coding guidelines and the possible mitigation techniques.

Participants attending this course will

• Understand basic concepts of security, IT security and secure coding
• Learn Web vulnerabilities beyond OWASP Top Ten and know how to avoid them
• Understand security concepts of Web services
• Learn to use various security features of the Java development environment
• Have a practical understanding of cryptography
• Understand security solutions of Java EE
• Learn about typical coding mistakes and how to avoid them
• Get information about some recent vulnerabilities in the Java framework
• Get practical knowledge in using security testing tools
• Get sources and further readings on secure coding practices

Audience

Developers

Even experienced programmers do not master by all means the various security services offered by their development platforms, and are likewise not aware of the different vulnerabilities that are relevant for their developments. This course targets developers using both Java and PHP, providing them essential skills necessary to make their applications resistant to contemporary attacks through the Internet.

Levels of Java security architecture are walked through by tackling access control, authentication and authorization, secure communication and various cryptographic functions. Various APIs are also introduced that can be used to secure your code in PHP, like OpenSSL for cryptography or HTML Purifier for input validation. On server side, the best practices are given for hardening and configuring the operating system, the web container, the file system, the SQL server and the PHP itself, while a special focus is given to client-side security through security issues of JavaScript, Ajax and HTML5.

General web vulnerabilities are discussed by examples aligned to the OWASP Top Ten, showing various injection attacks, script injections, attacks against session handling, insecure direct object references, issues with file uploads, and many others. The various Java- and PHP-specific language problems and issues stemming from the runtime environment are introduced grouped into the standard vulnerability types of missing or improper input validation, improper use of security features, incorrect error and exception handling, time- and state-related problems, code quality issues and mobile code-related vulnerabilities.

Participants can try out the discussed APIs, tools and the effects of configurations for themselves, while the introduction of vulnerabilities are all supported by a number of hands-on exercises demonstrating the consequences of successful attacks, showing how to correct the bugs and apply mitigation techniques, and introducing the use of various extensions and tools.

Participants attending this course will

• Understand basic concepts of security, IT security and secure coding
• Learn Web vulnerabilities beyond OWASP Top Ten and know how to avoid them
• Learn client-side vulnerabilities and secure coding practices
• Learn to use various security features of the Java development environment
• Have a practical understanding of cryptography
• Learn to use various security features of PHP
• Understand security concepts of Web services
• Get practical knowledge in using security testing tools
• Learn about typical coding mistakes and how to avoid them
• Be informed about recent vulnerabilities in Java and PHP frameworks and libraries
• Get sources and further readings on secure coding practices

Audience

Developers