AppSecEU08 Trends in Web Hacking: What's hot in 2008

The presentation

The web hacking incident database (WHID) is a Web Application Security Consortium project dedicated to maintaining a list of web applications related security incidents.

The database is unique in tracking only media reported security incidents that can be associated with a web application security vulnerability. We also try to limit the database to targeted attacks only.

Breach Labs which sponsors WHID has issued an analysis of the Web Hacking landscape in 2007 based on the incidents recorded at WHID. We tried to answer the following questions:

• The drivers, business or other, behind Web hacking.
• The vulnerabilities hackers exploit.
• The types of organizations attacked most often.

To be able to answer those questions, WHID tracks the following key attributes for each incident:

• Attack Method - The technical vulnerability exploited by the attacker to perform the hack.
• Outcome - the real-world result of the attack.
• Country - the country in which the attacked web site (or owning organization) resides.
• Origin - the country from which the attack was launched.
• Vertical - the field of operation of the organization that was attacked.

The talk will present the WHID 2007 annual report findings, updates for the 1st half of 2008 and expand of several key areas such as the sharp rise in iframe hacking and the risk associated with service providers.

The speaker

Ofer Shezaf leads information security research for Breach Security, Inc. where he is responsible for defining security features for Breach Security’s products and driving the diverse research activities of Breach Security Labs, the research arm of Breach Security.

His research program is focused on the design and operations of web application firewalls including leading the Core Rule Set project, an open source project for generic detection of application layer attacks. Shezaf serves as an officer of the Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) where he leads the Web Hacking Incidents Database project. He also leads the Israeli chapter of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).

Prior to joining Breach Security, Shezaf was a group manager and later a special advisor on national infrastructure protection for the Israeli government and intelligence forces.