Category:OWASP Enterprise Security API

About

Reinventing the wheel when it comes to developing security controls for every web application or web service leads to wasted time and massive security holes. The OWASP Enterprise Security API (ESAPI) Toolkits help software developers guard against security-related design and implementation flaws. Just as web applications and web services can be Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) enabled (PK-enabled) to perform for example certificate-based authentication, applications and services can be OWASP ESAPI-enabled (ES-enabled) to enable applications and services to protect themselves from attackers.

Using an ESAPI Toolkit realizes cost savings through reduced development time, and the increased security due to using heavily analyzed and carefully designed security methods provide developers with a massive advantage over organizations that are trying to deal with security using existing ad hoc secure coding techniques. Available platforms, frameworks, and toolkits (Java EE, Struts, Spring, etc...) simply do not provide enough protection! ESAPI Toolkits are designed to automatically take care of many aspects of application security, making these issues invisible to the developers.

Additional Benefits
The use of the ESAPI will also make it much easier for static analysis tools to verify an application, by building ESAPI calls into static analysis tool rulesets.

Where did ESAPI come from?
The OWASP ESAPI project is led by Jeff Williams, who serves as the volunteer chair of OWASP and is the CEO of Aspect Security. Jeff is a software developer who has specialized in application security since 1995. The ESAPI is the result of over a decade of code review and penetration testing of critical enterprise applications. If you'd like to volunteer to help on the project, you can contact him at [email protected].

FAQ

More About OWASP ESAPI

• ESAPI interface documentation (JavaDocs)
• Project presentation (PowerPoint)
• Video presentation (YouTube)
• One Page Conference Handout (PDF, Word)

Related projects:

• OWASP Top Ten

Java EE

Provisory Release Quality
(Waiting for Second Reviewer's assessment)
Please see here for complete information.

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Java Edition of the OWASP ESAPI Toolkit

• This release is the first public release and will undoubtably undergo significant revision over the coming months. We are seeking organizations willing to pilot this ESAPI and work with us to make this library better. Please contact [email protected] for more information. If you're interested in application security, please join the OWASP ESAPI mailing list and help make ESAPI better!
• Versions (archived source files are also available on the SVN under tags)

JAR Files	Source Files
ESAPI v1.4 Complete JAR file JAVA 1.4 compatible JAR for ESAPI v1.4 ESAPI v1.4 Basic JAR file Java 1.4 compatible JAR for ESAPI v1.4 (does not contain many reference implementations)	ESAPI v1.4 Source archive Source files for ESAPI v1.4

ESAPI Demo application - The ESAPI Swingset
JAVA 1.4 compatible JAR for ESAPI v1.4 - Complete & Basic JAR files
Source files for ESAPI v1.4
ESAPI Google Code repository
Browse the Java source at Google
Problems with the ESAPI may be reported here

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Using the ESAPI

If you want to see what the ESAPI is all about, and want to use the built-in implementations,

• Download the latest version of the ESAPI JAR from above.
• Add the ESAPI JAR to your project's build path.
• The current ESAPI JAR has been built for Java 1.6, however support for Java 1.4.2+ is available. Please see ESAPI-Building here for information on building ESAPI for a different version of Java.
• Use the ESAPI's Javadocs to take advantage of all the built-in functions of the ESAPI.

Running Demo App

The ESAPI Demo application has been named The ESAPI Swingset. More information about Swingset is available here.

PHP

The PHP Edition of the ESAPI Toolkit is under development and not yet available for download.

• Contact Andrew van der Stock for further details. Volunteers wanted!

The current plan is as follows:

Release 1 (OWASP EU - May 2009)

Where I mention a class, it's a 100% equivalence to the J2EE reference implementation @ that point.

• ESAPI main class
• All interfaces (even those that are stubbed out)
• AccessReferenceMap
• Exceptions (i.e. everything in errors/)
• Encoder and everthing in codecs/
• HTTP Utilities
• String Utilities
• Validator
• PHPdoc for all classes builds and is on the site
• SimpleTest tests for the classes implemented in this release

Release 2 (2H 2009 - OWASP USA if possible, if not, Christmas / NY 2009)

• Executor
• SafeFile
• EncryptedProperties
• Encryptor
• Randomizer
• Logger
• IntrusionDetector
• Simple Tests for the new classes
• PHPdoc for all classes builds and is on the site
• No updates to release 1 functionality (for now) - it's too hard to chase a moving target

Release 3 (1H 2010 - OWASP EU 2010)

Equivalence to J2EE Reference Implementation

• Filters:
• SafeRequest, SafeResponse, SafeHTTPFilter, ESAPIFilter, RequestRateThrottler
• Authenticator
• AccessController
• User
• SimpleTests for all classes
• PHPdoc for all classes builds and is on the site
• Updates to release 1/2 functionality to bring them inline with the current J2EE implementation

Features that will not be ported:

• Tags. There's no equivalent in the PHP world. I might consider a short name function like h() for HTML Encode, but honestly, that's fairly trivial compared to trying to force a JSP-ism onto PHP.

.NET

The .NET Edition of the ESAPI Toolkit is under development and not yet available for download.

News

Project News:

Project Mail List:
Subscribe here
Use here

Contributors/Users

Project Leader
Jeff Williams

Project Contributors
Jim Manico
Dave Wichers
Arshan Dabirsiaghi
Jerry Hoff

The ESAPI project is sponsored by:

This project licensed under the BSD license, which is very permissive and about as close to public domain as is possible. You can use or modify ESAPI however you want, even include it in commercial products.