Virginia

OWASP Washington VA

Welcome to the Washington VA chapter homepage. The chapter leader is John Steven, with assistance from Paco Hope. <paypal>Northern Virginia</paypal>

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

There will be no meeting on our regular March date (March 12) because of an OWASP event in downtown DC on Friday the 13th.

The next meeting is Thursday, April 9, 2009. If you are interested in presenting, please contact John.

Directions

To Booz Allen's One Dulles facility:

13200 Woodland Park Road Herndon, VA 20171

From Tyson's Corner:

1. Take LEESBURG PIKE / VA-7 WEST
2. Merge onto VA-267 WEST / DULLES TOLL ROAD (Portions Toll)
3. Take the VA-657 Exit (Exit Number 10 towards Herndon / Chantilly)
4. Take the ramp toward CHANTILLY
5. Turn Left onto CENTERVILLE ROAD (at end of ramp)
6. Turn Left onto WOODLAND PARK ROAD (less than 1⁄2 mile)
7. End at 13200 WOODLAND PARK ROAD

Past Meetings

February 2009

The next meeting is planned for February 12 6pm-830pm. We will have two speakers and an election for the new chapter chair.

Ryan C. Barnett, Breach Security: Patching Challenge: Securing WebGoat with ModSecurity

Identification of web application vulnerabilities is only half the battle with remediation efforts as the other. Let's face the facts, there are many real world business scenarios where it is not possible to update web application code in either a timely manner or at all. This is where the tactical use-case of implementing a web application firewall to address identified issues proves its worth.

This talk will provide an overview of the recommended practices for utilizing a web application firewall for virtual patching. After discussing the framework to use, we will then present a very interesting OWASP Summer of Code Project where the challenge was to attempt to mitigate as many of the OWASP WebGoat vulnerabilities as possible using the open source ModSecurity web application firewall. During the talk, we will discuss both WebGoat and ModSecurity and provide in-depth walk-throughs of some of the complex fixes. Examples will include addressing not only attacks but the underlying vulnerabilities, using data persistence for multiple-step processes, content injection and even examples of the new LUA programming language API. The goal of this talk is to both highlight cutting edge mitigation options using a web application firewall and to show how it can effectively be used by security consultants who traditionally could only offer source code fixes.

Ryan C. Barnett is the Director of Application Security Research at Breach Security and leads Breach Security Labs. He is also a Faculty Member for the SANS Institute, Team Lead for the Center for Internet Security Apache Benchmark Project and a Member of the Web Application Security Consortium where he leads the Distributed Open Proxy Honeypot Project. Mr. Barnett has also authored a web security book for Addison/Wesley Publishing entitled "Preventing Web Attacks with Apache."

(This talk is a preview of Ryan's talk at Blackhat Federal the following week - see https://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-dc-09/bh-dc-09-speakers.html#Barnett ) Download WAF Virtual Patching Challenge: Securing WebGoat with ModSecurity

John Steven, Cigital: Moving Beyond Top N Lists

Download Moving Beyond Top N Lists

Cigital published an article: The Top 11 Reasons Why Top 10 (or 25) Lists Don’t Work. Yet, these lists are a staple of conference abstracts, industry best practice lists, and the like. Are they good or bad? We’ll explore how to get beyond the Top 10 (or 25) list in making your software security effort real.

John is Senior Director, Advanced Technology Consulting at Cigital. His experience includes research in static code analysis and hands-on architecture and implementation of high-performance, scalable Java EE systems. John has provided security consulting services to a broad variety of commercial clients including two of the largest trading platforms in the world and has advised America's largest internet provider in the Midwest on security and forensics. John led the development of Cigital's architectural analysis methodology and its approach to deploying enterprise software security frameworks. He has demonstrated success in building Cigital's intellectual property for providing cutting-edge security. He brings this experience and a track record of effective strategic innovation to clients seeking to change, whether to adopt more cutting-edge approaches, or to solidify ROI. John currently chairs the SD Best Practices security track and co-edits the building security in department of IEEE's Security and Privacy magazine. John has served on numerous conference panels regarding software security, wireless security and Java EE system development. He holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Science from Case Western Reserve University.

January 2009

To kick off 2009, our January meeting featured a discussion of the relationship between application security and CMMI, and an overview of the OWASP ASVS project.

Michele Moss, Booz Allen Hamilton: Evolutions In The Relationship Between Application Security And The CMMI

Addressing new and complex threats and IT security challenges requires repeatable, reliable, rapid, and cost effective solutions. To implement these solutions, organizations have begun to align their security improvement efforts with their system and software development practices. During a “Birds of a Feather” at the March 2007 SEPG, a group of industry representatives initiated an effort which led to the definition of assurance practices that can be applied in the context of the CMMI. This presentation will provide an understanding how applying the assurance practices in the context of security contribute to the overall increased quality of products and services, illustrate how the a focus on assurance in the context of CMMI practices is related to application security practices, and present and approach to evaluate and improve the repeatability and reliability of assurance practices.

Michele Moss, CISSP, is a security engineer with more than 12 years of experience in process improvement. She specializes in integrating assurance processes and practices into project lifecycles. Michele is the Co-Chair of the DHS Software Assurance Working Group on Processes & Practices. She has assisted numerous organizations with maturing their information technology, information assurance, project management, and support practices through the use of the capability maturity models including the CMMI, and the SSE-CMM. She is one of the key contributors in an effort to apply an assurance focus to CMMI.

Slides available: [[1]]

Mike Boberski, Booz Allen Hamilton: About OWASP ASVS

The primary aim of the OWASP ASVS Project is to normalize the range of coverage and level of rigor available in the market when it comes to performing application-level security verification. The goal is to create a set of commercially-workable open standards that are tailored to specific web-based technologies.

Mike Boberski works at Booz Allen Hamilton. He has a background in application security and the use of cryptography by applications. He is experienced in trusted product evaluation, security-related software development and integration, and cryptomodule testing. For OWASP, he is the project lead and a co-author of the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard, the first OWASP standard.

Slides available: [[2]]

November 2008

For our November 2008 meeting, we had two great presentations on software assurance and security testing.

Nadya Bartol, Booz Allen Hamilton: Framework for Software Assurance

Nadya's presentation will provide an update on the Software Assurance Forum efforts to establish a comprehensive framework for software assurance (SwA) and security measurement. The Framework addresses measuring achievement of SwA goals and objectives within the context of individual projects, programs, or enterprises. It targets a variety of audiences including executives, developers, vendors, suppliers, and buyers. The Framework leverages existing measurement methodologies, including Practical Software and System Measurement (PSM); CMMI Goal, Question, Indicator, Measure (GQ(I)M); NIST SP 800-55 Rev1; and ISO/IEC 27004 and identifies commonalities among the methodologies to help organizations integrate SwA measurement in their overall measurement efforts cost-effectively and as seamlessly as possible, rather than establish a standalone SwA measurement effort within an organization. The presentation will provide an update on the SwA Forum Measurement Working Group work, present the current version of the Framework and underlying measures development and implementation processes, and propose example SwA measures applicable to a variety of SwA stakeholders. The presentation will update the group on the latest NIST and ISO standards on information security measurement that are being integrated into the Framework as the standards are being developed.

Slides available: [[3]]

Paco Hope, Cigital: The Web Security Testing Cookbook

The Web Security Testing Cookbook (O'Reilly & Associates, October 2008) gives developers and testers the tools they need to make security testing a regular part of their development lifecycle. Its recipe style approach covers manual, exploratory testing as well automated techniques that you can make part of your unit tests or regression cycle. The recipes cover the basics like observing messages between clients and servers, to multi-phase tests that script the login and execution of web application features. This book complements many of the security texts in the market that tell you what a vulnerability is, but not how to systematically test it day in and day out. Leverage the recipes in this book to add significant security coverage to your testing without adding significant time and cost to your effort.

Congratulations to Tim Bond who won an autographed copy of Paco's book. Get your copy here [[4]]

Slides available: [[5]]

October 2008

For our October 2008 meeting, we had two fascinating talks relating to forensics.

Dave Merkel, Mandiant: Enterprise Grade Incident Management - Responding to Persistent Threats

Dave Merkel is Vice President of Products at Mandiant, a leading provider of information security services, education and products. Mr. Merkel has worked in the information security and incident response industry for over 10 years. His background includes service as a federal agent in the US Air Force and over 7 years experience directing security operations at America Online. He currently oversees the product business at Mandiant, and is in charge of building Mandiant Intelligent Response - an enterprise incident response solution. But no, he won't be selling you anything today.

Slides available: [[6]]

Inno Eroraha, NetSecurity: [Responding to the Digital Crime Scene: Gathering Volatile Data

Inno Eroraha is the founder and chief strategist of NetSecurity Corporation, a company that provides digital forensics, hands-on security consulting, and Hands-on How-To® training solutions that are high-quality, timely, and customer-focused. In this role, Mr. Eroraha helps clients plan, formulate, and execute the best security and forensics strategy that aligns with their business goals and priorities. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, IRS, DHS, VA, DoD, and other entities.

Slides available: [[7] ]