Scotland

OWASP Scotland

Welcome to the Scotland chapter homepage. The chapter leaders are Sean Wright and Rob Jansson.

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?

Local News

Best way to keep up to date with meet-ups and the like is subscribe to the mailing list (Link above).

You can also now follow us on Twitter (@OWASPScotland).

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to Pricewaterhouse Coopers for hosting our March 2018 event!

Upcoming Events

Signup to the chapter mailing list to be informed of upcoming events.

Monday, 21 May 2018

Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Location: Ernst & Young,144 Morrison St, Edinburgh EH3 8EX

We are pleased to let you know we have the second 2018 OWASP Scotland Chapter meeting pencilled in the diary for Monday 21^st of May. Many thanks to EY who has kindly offered to host this event for us.

On this occasion we have the pleasure of having Tal Mozes do a talk on ‘Cyber Terror’. Tal comes from an impressive background in information security; and is currently a Partner at EY leading their Hacktics Cyber Security Center.

In the second talk Rob will be presenting on ‘Responsible Disclosure – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’.

For attending this event you will be able to claim 2 CPE points.

Cyber Terror

Speaker: Tal Mozes

Most of us, cyber security professionals, help in the fighting of cybercrime. 

Most of our threat agents are opportunists, ideologists, organized crime and other Advanced Adversaries. But between those threat agents there are also terrorists, which are using the latest technologies to plant terror. From information warfare, to targeted attacks, what motivates them, what can they do and how can we all help in preventing the next digital terror attack.

Responsible Disclosure – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Speaker: Rob Jansson

What is responsible disclosure and is it something that would help protect your company from cyber attack? In this talk we will examine the benefits of having a responsible disclosure policy in place, what can go wrong and get ugly (really fast!).

Tickets will be made available on Eventbrite. Details will be shared as soon as they become available.

Past Events

Wednesday, 14 March 2018

Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Location: PwC offices, 144 Morrison Street, Edinburgh, EH3 8EX 

We are pleased to let you know we have the first 2018 OWASP Scotland Chapter meeting pencilled in the diary for Wednesday 14th March. Many thanks to PwC who has kindly offered to host this event for us.

We are still confirming speakers so please save the date and await further information in the near future.

If you would like to present, please drop Sean or Rob an email with a brief blurb of the proposed subject. We will review all submissions and get back to you.

For attending this event you will be able to claim 2 CPE points.

Website Discovery & Managing the Shadow Estate

Speaker: James Penny

There’s been a lot of writing and talks about the problem of Shadow IT – where users are working on their own cloud services, devices, and using unapproved software to get around “restrictive” or unresponsive controls.

A variation on this theme that’s talked about less is the “Shadow Estate” – services and websites that are launched without proper oversight and assent from departments that should be vital stakeholders. The core issue remains the same: the more controls we try to implement, the more project teams who don’t share our priorities will attempt to avoid them.

This talk explores a few possible reasons for this phenomenon, and the steps we in security can and have been taking to mitigate it.

Analyst, Engineer or Consultant?

Speaker:Harry McLaren

A looks at common roles with cybersecurity from the perspective of a Managing Consultant who’s been through several in quick succession and an introspective analysis of what makes a successful cybersecurity professional.

Tickets available on Eventbrite: https://owasp-scotland-march-2018.eventbrite.co.uk

Wednesday, 4 October 2017

Time: 18:00

Location: Secureworks, 

1 Tanfield, 

Edinburgh,

EH3 5DA

To attend, please register here for the event https://owasp-scotland-oct-2017.eventbrite.co.uk. Places are limited, so please only register if you will definitely be attending.

* Please note that if your name is not on the list, you will be unlikely to enter the venue.

Revocation is broken, here's how we're fixing it

Speaker: Scott Helme

The certificates we obtain from a Certificate Authority underpin trust on the web. The problem is that if we lose the key for our certificate an attacker can use that certificate to successfully impersonate us for as long as it's valid, potentially years. We need a way to revoke the trust in these certificates so that they can't be abused but all current revocation mechanisms are largely useless. Let's look at the new mechanisms being introduced to address the problem of revocation.

Thursday, 31 August 2017

Hope everyone is enjoying the summer and ready for the next OWASP Scotland Chapter meeting as we have secured two great talks for you. Please see blurbs below for details and Edinburgh University are again very kindly providing us with meeting space. 

We have had great feedback from the previous event and look forward to seeing you all at the end of August. Very likely to be networking opportunities after the talks over a refreshment at a nearby watering hole.

Time: 18:30

Location:  MF2 on the 4th floor,

Informatics Forum,

10 CrichtonStreet,

Edinburgh,

EH8 9AB

Deconstructing WannaCry

Speaker: James Slaughter

- Who, What, Where, Why and How.

-  Or, how I actioned the incident and learned more about the malware to help our organization weather one of the largest malware events to occur in recent history.

Driving Remediation in Large Organisations

Speaker: Andrew Scott

Congratulations!  Your vulnerability scanning, penetration testing and bug bounty programmes are all running really well.  But what about remediation?  When it comes to fixing the problems identified by the various assurance programmes it’s easy to become swamped by the sheer volume and not make enough progress on actual fixes.  How do you sort the must fixes from the nice to haves and how do you push the fix rate up and the time to fix down?  I’ll look at a number of the challenges here and some solutions.

Thursday, 18 May 2017

Good news! Edinburgh University is kindly providing us with meeting space for the next OWASP Scotland chapter meeting. We have an excellent talk lined up by Boglarka on MFA and a second speaker should be confirmed in the near future. If you are attending please register so we can keep an eye on the numbers.

Time: 18:30

Location: Ground floor main lecture room,

Informatics Forum,

10 CrichtonStreet,

Edinburgh,

EH8 9AB

Twice the pride, double the fall – why 2FA / MFA isn’t the cure we all thought it was.

Speaker: Boglarka Ronto

The security industry has been preaching the mantra of MFA for almost a decade. Indeed, many implementations have surfaced, some better than others, with all of these intending to add to the level of security of an existing solution (i.e. external logon interface).

The trust in such services appears to be unquestioned: companies are looking for cheap, simple and easily manageable solutions and rarely consider the actual level of security associated with the product of their choice.

This talk discusses ways of testing MFA solutions and includes a few case studies of broken and poor MFA implementations, including one which allowed SMS validation to be bypassed completely at an application level (no physical proximity or cloned phones required).

TLS Demystified

Speaker: Sean Wright

TLS along with PKI often seems to be some sort of black magic which is supposed to make you secure. This talk will attempt to help explain the key parts of TLS breaking it down to be easy to understand. This talk will also cover common mistakes which are made when implementing TLS.

Friday, 3 March 2017

Virtual event kicking off the year for the Scotland chapter.

Time: 12:00

The following talks will be given:

Penetration testing: a beginners paradise.

Ever wondered how to go from getting a certificate in penetration testing, or some tinkering in your spare time actually doing it as a full time job? Come and get answers as Andrew Scott (Head of Security Testing for an international bank) spills the beans. How did he get into testing, what other ways in are there? How do you sell yourself to prospective employers and make sure you are ready to do what they want to pay you for, not just what you want to do.

CSRF - Imitation is The Best Form of Flattery

Despite appearing at number 8 in the OWASP Top 10 list (2013 version), CSRF vulnerabilities are still prevalent in a multitude of applications. What is CSRF? And why is this the case? What can be done to mitigate it? Sean Wright (Lead Security Engineer at security MSP) will give you the details to those very questions and more.

Sponsors

If you would like to sponsor the OWASP Scotland chapter, please get in contact with Sean Wright or Rob Jansson.