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 OWASP Scotland Google Group.

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

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to FanDuel for hosting our upcoming February 2019 event. As well as providing the beer and pizza!

Upcoming Events

Signup to the chapter Google Group to be informed of upcoming events.

Thursday, 9 May 2019

Time: 18:00 – 20:00 BST

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

Deception, Confusion, Mistrust: Attacks and Defences

Speaker: Matt Wixey

This talk will cover 2 topics. The first focuses on Remote Online Social Engineering (ROSE), an emerging long-term attack vector deployed by threat actors to build trust and rapport with targeted users in order to gain access to business networks. I'll provide an outline of attackers' methodologies, why they would want to deploy them, some case studies, and countermeasures. The second is a light-hearted look at ways in which defenders can confuse, deceive, or frustrate attackers on a compromised honeypot or other host, with an emphasis on practical implementation. I'll examine some historic ways in which this has been done, along with some case studies, and then present some new methods I've come up with, with a few demos.

Bio

Matt leads technical research for the PwC Cyber Security practice in the UK, and is a PhD candidate at University College London. Prior to joining PwC, Matt led a technical R&D team for a law enforcement agency in the UK. His research interests include antivirus and sandboxing technologies, unconventional attack vectors, side-channels, and radio security.

Why Security-as-a-Feature Will Never Happen

Speaker: Lawrence Munro

In a fairly dystopian view of our Cyber future, this talk discusses the reasons why we still haven't been able to include security as a design feature in applications.This talk goes into detail around the issues with human nature, education, financial requirements and laziness that contribute to the generally grim state of 'cyber' security.

As a security community (especially in Penetration testing), we’re very quick to throw mud and laugh at developers who’re not writing secure code. We also like to tell ourselves about new security issues and keep our learning within the community (as that's where we seek / receive the most praise). We should turn our view externally and reflect on information that we make available and how who we lobby to make positive changes. We simply don't teach people security early enough and position it as an essential design feature when people learn their trade. The general premise of the topic is that as an industry we know that one of the key challenges is that security needs to be 'baked in' at the design level. However, when we are taught the rudiments of Information Technology, security is not inherent or considered. The fundamental lack of security rubrics in education during key learning milestones means that security will always be an afterthought, or the domain of the specialist. If we're not addressing security at this level and providing the masses with a proper education, we'll never win the battle, let alone the war. In my opinion, the fault resides with those providing information to those seeking to learn. Specifically: Universities, Colleges, vendors, commercial providers, your friend Dave from school, authors and anyone who showed their friends how to customise their page on MySpace.com in the early 2000's. In order to validate my assertions, I have audited the occurrence of secure coding learning (at to respective top 25 UK / US universities) in undergraduate software engineering degrees (by module). I have also performed a similar evaluation on commercial offerings and looked at some of the most popular introductory books. I use this secondary data along with my own views to demonstrate the current failures of the industry and propose approaches to remedy this issue.

Bio

Lawrence Munro is the Worldwide VP of SpiderLabs, a Post-Graduate Student at Oxford University and Director for B-Sides London. My research (and presentation topics) are varied, but often include: red teaming, education in InfoSec and weird side-projects. Lawrence has previously presented his thoughts and research at: Black Hat USA 2018, DEFCON 2017, 44CON 2018, RootCon 2017, B-Sides (Various), ToorCon San Diego 2015.

Past Events

Thursday, 21 February 2019

Time: 18:00 – 20:00

Location: FanDuel, Quartermile One (Level 4), 15 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, EH39EP

We have two great speakers kicking off 2019 for us.

Tickets available here: https://owasp-scotland-november.eventbrite.co.uk

Many thanks to FanDuel for hosting this event.

Seeing what is not there: searching in Windows paths

Speaker: Margus Lind, Context IS

Windows – designed to make training materials self-improve.

During a recent Windows breakout and privilege escalation training session we stumbled upon several new instances of exploits. While the underlying principles are well known, it is shocking to see such weaknesses exploitable out of the box, even on the latest Windows 10 RS5.

Firstly, the presentation will give a brief overview of the way Windows searches for required commands and DLLs. This will be followed by some practical examples of how it can be exploited to escalate privileges and bypass UAC.

Overall, we’ll see that while Windows makes an ever improving attempt at security features, the spaghetti bowl of legacy features and behaviours remains rather entertaining...

A view of the threat landscape

Speaker: Don Smith, Secureworks

Using examples of real world attacks, Senior Director Don Smith will discuss lessons learned from recent incidents involving determined and persistent adversaries. This session will illustrate the methods used by advanced actors  to avoid detection and consolidate their access in compromised environments. The session will also explore how security teams can improve their chances of defending against such adversaries, pragmatic advice with the odd reality check. 

Thursday, 15 November 2018

Time: 18:00 – 20:00

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

We are in for a treat in the final OWASP Scotland chapter meeting for 2018 with presenters from the USA and Spain. We have Matt Nelson, Lee Christensen and Brian Reitz from SpecterOps as well as Simon Goldsmith from EY’s Cyber Security Hub presenting.

Tickets available here: https://owasp-scotland-november.eventbrite.co.uk

Many thanks to EY for hosting this event.

Cyber Infusion: Security in Innovation for Financial Services

Speaker: Simon Goldsmith, EY

It's almost become a cliché to say that "digital transformation (DX) is changing the way we do things". Technology enabled transformation is changing the way we interact, how we do business and the speed at which we innovate. It´s also changing the way we need to look at security.

Cyber Infusion is about ensuring security is embedded into how we innovate, rather than the more costly and practically ineffective approach of “bolting it on”. It means security has to operate less as the external “policeman” and more as a “guide” within the team to help chart a course. While there are business imperatives, digital and Open Banking inherently brings cyber risks: with greater connectivity, more data, more parties and more identities to manage, there is greater opportunity for increasingly industrialised and innovative threats to compromise systems, as well as greater regulatory attention and the potential for vulnerabilities to exist.

In this discussion, we will outline the nature and issues around Cyber Infusion in financial services innovation and a case study from an Open Banking programme showing where good practice can not only ensure a compliant and secure capability, but also add value through differentiation.

Bio: Simon leads the Innovation and Infusion team in EY’s EMEIA Financial Services Cyber Centre of Excellence. His team’s role is to develop new security approaches for EY’s financial services clients and integrate with EY´s digital transformation and financial crime capabilities to help other teams secure their innovation.

Outlander: Traveling Back in Time for Windows Attack Paths

Speaker: Matt Nelson (@enigma0x3), Lee Christensen (@tifkin_) and Brian Reitz (@brian_psu), SpecterOps

Microsoft Windows is built on a number of technologies that seemed like good ideas at the time.

In practice these were often poorly implemented, overly ambitious, difficult to understand, and insecure by default: a great combination for pentesters.

We'll examine two technologies in the Windows graveyard, COM and RPC, that are still in modern versions of Windows and provide multiple attack paths for pentesters.

We'll go over our methodology for enumerating and discovering the lesser-known features of these technologies, and how the attack surface still remains largely untested in 2018.

Thursday, 20 September 2018

Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Location: FanDuel, Quartermile One, Level 4, 15 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, EH39EP

The next OWASP Scotland Chapter meeting pencilled in the diary for Thursday 20th September. Many thanks to Fanduel, who has kindly offered to host this event for us.  They will also be providing pizza and beer!

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

Tickets available on Eventbrite:

https://owasp-scotland-chapter-meeting-september-tickets.eventbrite.co.uk

DNS over TLS / DNS over HTTPS - The privacy magic bullet?

Speaker: Sean Wright

ith the introduction of Cloudflares new DNS service there was much hype around how it supported DNS over HTTPS and how this would help privacy. This talk investigates some potential short comings with this technology and how it is still possible in some cases to have information leaked about what site is being visited.

Raising Organisational Security Awareness with CTFs

Speaker: Rob Jansson

Capture the Flag (CTF) events are run frequently throughout the security community and conferences around the globe. Outside of security this is commonly unknown territory and means little to Joe Bloggs. Everyone within an organisation is responsible for security, whether it be data entry, developers, infrastructure / hosting services etc.; and security is often seen a blocker or some sort of black magic. This talk will walk you through how a CTF event was run within an organisation to raise security awareness amongst its employees, the challenges, successes and failures encountered. At the end of the talk you should have a good idea how to get one setup and whether you’d want to incorporate this into your organisation’s security programme.

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.

Tickets available on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/owasp-scotland-chapter-meeting-may-tickets-45703255668

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!).

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.

Sponsors

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