London

OWASP London

Welcome to the London chapter homepage. The chapter leader is Justin Clarke (justin.clarke [at] owasp.org) since January 2009, with Tobias Gondrom (tobias.gondrom [at] owasp.org), Dennis Groves (dennis.groves [at] owasp.org), and Chris Lamont-Smith (chris.lamont-smith [at] owasp.org) constituting the London Chapter Board

Participation

OWASP Foundation (Overview Slides) is a professional association of global members and is open to anyone interested in learning more about software security. Local chapters are run independently and guided by the Chapter_Leader_Handbook. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit professional association your support and sponsorship of any meeting venue and/or refreshments is tax-deductible. Financial contributions should only be made online using the authorized online chapter donation button. To be a SPEAKER at ANY OWASP Chapter in the world simply review the speaker agreement and then contact the local chapter leader with details of what OWASP PROJECT, independent research or related software security topic you would like to present on.

Sponsorship/Membership

to this chapter or become a local chapter supporter. Or consider the value of Individual, Corporate, or Academic Supporter membership. Ready to become a member?

Next Meeting/Event(s)

Thursday, March 8th 2012, 18:30-21:00 (Royal Holloway)

Location

Royal Holloway University of London, Bourne Lecture Theatre 2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

Talks

• Securing the SSL channel against man-in-the-middle attacks: Future technologies - HTTP Strict Transport Security and and Pinning of Certs - Tobias Gondrom

"In the recent months major trusted CAs providing trusted certificates for SSL/TLS in browser scenarios were compromised (e.g. seen in the Diginotar breach) and based on the current trust models (trusting all registered CAs equally for all domains) exposed vital web applications to the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks. Several approaches are currently discussed to mitigate this risk. The most advanced and closest to final adoption being the technologies discussed by the browser vendors at the recent IETF meeting in November in Taipei: HSTS and pinning of certificates. To better protect content providers against the distribution of bogus certificates, an HTTP header extension containing a fingerprint of their certificates linked to a domain address has been defined. This approach, which has been partly tested in Chrome, and already helped identify and protect to some extend Google's web application in the recent Diginotar compromise. Chrome users were able to detect the bogus DigiNotar certificates because Chrome had embedded the hashes of valid Google certificates. Back in July, the hacked DigiNotar certificate authority (CA), which has since gone out of business, was used to issue more than five hundred bogus certificates for companies including Google and various intelligence services."

• Implementing cryptography: good theory vs. bad practice - Viet Pham

Abstract: Cryptography is being widely implemented in software to provide security features. The main reason is that, many cryptographic mechanisms are mathematically proven secure, or trusted secure given some mathematical reasoning. However, to take full advantages of these mechanisms, they must be implemented strictly according to the theoretical models, e.g., several cryptographic mechanisms must be used together, in a specific manner to provide a desired security goal. However, without strong cryptographic background, many software developers tend to deviate from these models, thus making their own security software a gold mine for attackers. This talk gives examples to show why such situations exist, where do they spread, and how bad they may turn into.

Speakers

Tobias Gondrom, Viet Pham

Thursday, March 29th 2012 (Central London)

Location: Morgan Stanley, Canary Wharf, London E14 4QA

Talks

• Deep Access Control Best Practices and Anti-Patterns - Jim Manico

  Access Control is a necessary security control at almost every layer within a web application. This talk will discuss several of the key access control anti-patterns commonly found during website security audits. These access control anti-patterns include hard-coded security policies, lack of horizontal access control, and "fail open" access control mechanisms. In reviewing these and other access control problems, we will discuss and design a positive access control mechanism that is data contextual, activity based, configurable, flexible, and deny-by-default - among other positive design attributes that make up a robust web-based access-control mechanism.

• IronWASP - Manish Saindane

  IronWASP (Iron Web application Advanced Security testing Platform) is an open source system for web application vulnerability testing. It is designed to be customizable to the extent where users can create their own custom security scanners using it. Though an advanced user with Python/Ruby scripting expertise would be able to make full use of the platform, a lot of the tool's features are simple enough to be used by absolute beginners.

Speakers

• Jim Manico is the VP of Security Architecture for WhiteHat Security, a web security firm. Jim is a participant and project manager of the OWASP Developer Cheatsheet series. He is also the producer and host of the OWASP Podcast Series.
• Manish Saindane is a Senior Security Consultant at Gotham Digital Science. He also co-authors a security research website and blog http://andlabs.org. He has actively contributed towards conceptualising IronWASP and also maintains the Ruby plug-in repository for this framework.

Future Events

Thursday, May 10th 2012 (Central London)

Location: To be confirmed

Thursday, July 12th 2012 (Central London)

Location: To be confirmed

Thursday, September 13th 2012 (Central London)

Location: To be confirmed

Thursday, November 8th 2012 (Central London)

Location: To be confirmed

Past Events

Thursday, March 8th 2012, 18:30-21:00 (Royal Holloway)

Location

Royal Holloway University of London, Bourne Lecture Theatre 2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

Talks

• Implementing cryptography: good theory vs. bad practice - Viet Pham ([PDF])

Abstract: Cryptography is being widely implemented in software to provide security features. The main reason is that, many cryptographic mechanisms are mathematically proven secure, or trusted secure given some mathematical reasoning. However, to take full advantages of these mechanisms, they must be implemented strictly according to the theoretical models, e.g., several cryptographic mechanisms must be used together, in a specific manner to provide a desired security goal. However, without strong cryptographic background, many software developers tend to deviate from these models, thus making their own security software a gold mine for attackers. This talk gives examples to show why such situations exist, where do they spread, and how bad they may turn into.

• Securing the SSL channel against man-in-the-middle attacks: Future technologies - HTTP Strict Transport Security and and Pinning of Certs - Tobias Gondrom ([PDF])

"In the recent months major trusted CAs providing trusted certificates for SSL/TLS in browser scenarios were compromised (e.g. seen in the Diginotar breach) and based on the current trust models (trusting all registered CAs equally for all domains) exposed vital web applications to the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks. Several approaches are currently discussed to mitigate this risk. The most advanced and closest to final adoption being the technologies discussed by the browser vendors at the recent IETF meeting in November in Taipei: HSTS and pinning of certificates. To better protect content providers against the distribution of bogus certificates, an HTTP header extension containing a fingerprint of their certificates linked to a domain address has been defined. This approach, which has been partly tested in Chrome, and already helped identify and protect to some extend Google's web application in the recent Diginotar compromise. Chrome users were able to detect the bogus DigiNotar certificates because Chrome had embedded the hashes of valid Google certificates. Back in July, the hacked DigiNotar certificate authority (CA), which has since gone out of business, was used to issue more than five hundred bogus certificates for companies including Google and various intelligence services."

Speakers

Tobias Gondrom, Viet Pham

Thursday, February 2nd 2012 ,18:30-21:00

Location: Royal Holloway University of London, Bourne Lecture Theatre 2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

Speakers: Sarah Baso, Dinis Cruz, Dennis Groves

• Security as Pollution (lessons learned) - Dinis Cruz

  Based on David Rice's "Upon the Threshold of Opportunity" presentation at the OWASP AppSec USA 2010

• Making Security Invisible by Becoming the Developer's Best Friends - Dinis Cruz

  Based on Dinis' presentation at OWASP AppSec Brazil 2011

• How to get a job in AppSec by Hacking and fixing TeamMentor - Dinis Cruz and Dennis Groves

  This is for students and developers who want to get into the application security space and need to have/show real-world experience.

• What's Happening on OWASP Today - Sarah Baso

  This is an overview of the multiple activities that are currently happening around the world at OWASP presented by one of OWASP's employees currently focused on logistics, community and empowerment

Thursday, September 8th 2011

Location: Royal Holloway University of London, Bourne Lecture Theatre 2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

Speaker: Daniel Cuthbert (deck)

Title: Doing it for the Lulz: Why Lulzsec has shown us to be an ineffective industry.

Friday, June 3rd 2011

Location: Royal Holloway University of London, Room BLT2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

• Wordpress Security - Steve Lord (PDF)

  Wordpress is one if the most popular blogging systems in the world but is routinely used to shoehorn complex sites into a blog shaped box, often because of it's flexibility and ease of use. In this talk, Mandalorian's Steve Lord discusses common Wordpress security snafus and how to avoid them.

Thursday, April 14th 2011

Location: Charterhouse Bar, 38 Charterhouse Street, Smithfield, London EC1M 6JH

• Wordpress Security - Steve Lord (PDF)

  Wordpress is one if the most popular blogging systems in the world but is routinely used to shoehorn complex sites into a blog shaped box, often because of it's flexibility and ease of use. In this talk, Mandalorian's Steve Lord discusses common Wordpress security snafus and how to avoid them.

• Outcomes from the recent OWASP Summit in Portugal - London based attendees of the Summit

  Discussion of what came out of the recent OWASP Summit, "OWASP 4.0" and what is changing in the OWASP world now and in the near future

Thursday, February 17th 2011

Location: ThoughtWorks, Berkshire House, 168-173 High Holborn, City of London WC1V 7AA

A special meeting event, in conjunction with London Geek Nights on SSL usage and dangers. An opportunity to get some of the developer and security communities together to talk more pragmatically on this very key topic.

Archived Events

For events before 2011, see Archived OWASP London Events

Other Activities

• February 2010 - Personal Information Online COP

The Leeds UK, London and Scotland Chapters joint response to the UK Information Commissioner's Office draft Personal Information Online Code of Practice.

• March 2009 - Entry for Nominet Best Practice Challenge 2009

Open Web Application Security Project was nominated by OWASP London for the Best Security Initiative Award (File:Nominet best practice challenge 2009 owasp entry.pdf) in the Nominet Best Practice Challenge 2009. Short-listed June 2009. Announcement due 2 July 2009.

• 16th October 2008 - COI Browser Standards for Public Websites

The London and Scotland Chapters joint response to the Central Office of Information draft document on browser standards for public websites (version 0.13) (File:OWASP-COI-Browser-Standards.pdf).