This site is the archived OWASP Foundation Wiki and is no longer accepting Account Requests.
To view the new OWASP Foundation website, please visit https://owasp.org

AppSecEU08 Input validation: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

From OWASP
Revision as of 19:40, 30 March 2008 by Yo (talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search

This talk discusses input validation design choices and recommends practices that will give you a fighting chance to survive architectural decay as the application matures.

The OWASP 2004 Top Ten adviced to never trust user input. The advice is sound, but led many web application developer to write code that is a maintenance nightmare and insecure. This talk argues that the enthusiasm for input validation must be tempered by a resolve to eliminate code duplication to maintain sanity and security. I will show that it is possible to do so, even in the face of apparently conflicting objectives: usability and protection against malicious users.

The talk's discussion takes place against the backdrop of a case study of a well-intentioned but flawed attempt at implementing meticulous input validation and goes on to suggest some architectural refactoring, often mundane but often neglected, to get rid of the worst code smells. For those who favor life on the bleeding edge, the discussion also ambles into some more tentative territory.