Defend Yourself: Integrating Real Time Defenses into Online Applications

The presentation

Michael Coates

Ask any attacker how many attempts it takes them to successfully exploit a vulnerability - two attempts, three, five? In general, an attacker requires several attempts before they can devise a successful exploit. And that is only after they've probed the site to find the vulnerable areas in the first place. Most applications are missing a critical opportunity, the attacker has made their presence known while probing for the vulnerability. Take defensive action and shut down the offending account! This presentation will continue the discussion on AppSensor, a strategy for implementing automatic attack detection and real time response to eliminate the threat of an attacker. During this presentation we will explore a new online application which implements AppSensor. The concepts discussed in this presentation can be immediately integrated into enterprise applications looking to bolster their security posture against determined attackers. We will see that the required changes have a minimal impact on the architecture of the application and require only a small amount of code change. However, there are immense benefits to detecting malicious attackers before they are successful.

The speaker

Michael Coates is a Senior Application Security Engineer for Aspect Security and has performed numerous penetration assessments, security code reviews, and security training sessions for leading corporations worldwide. Michael is the creator and leader of the AppSensor project and holds a Masters Degree in Computer Security from DePaul University. In addition to application security, in previous years Michael has been a lead in the detection and response center for a global fortune 100 corporation, assessed the security of telecommunication networks and performed social engineering testing for financial institutions.