London

OWASP London

Welcome to the London chapter homepage. The chapter leader is Justin Clarke (justin.clarke [at] owasp.org) since January 2009, with Tobias Gondrom (tobias.gondrom [at] owasp.org), Dennis Groves (dennis.groves [at] owasp.org), and Chris Lamont-Smith (chris.lamont-smith [at] owasp.org) constituting the London Chapter Board

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/Event(s)

Thursday, May 10th 2012 (Application Security One-Day Conference - Free for OWASP Members)

Location: Bletchley Park, Sherwood Drive, Milton Keynes, MK3 6EB

Time: 10:00am - 4:30pm

ISSA-UK and OWASP are partnering for the first time to bring you a joint application security training conference, free for members of OWASP, ISSA-UK, or CSF. This unique event will attract attendees from both ISSA-UK's traditional information security membership base, and OWASP's web application specialists, bringing new thoughts and perspectives to both groups. The theme of the day is, no surprise, application security. We expect to focus on both methodologies and frameworks - such as OWASP's top 10 - and a variety of custom tools and frameworks, from open-source to proprietary. The goal is to deliver much needed tips and tricks to attendees, something to tackle our ever increasing workloads. Join us for a full day of application security tricks, tools and methods at the historic Bletchley Park. After the day's talks are over, please join us for a free tour of the famous WWII codebreaking facility!

AGENDA

9.30     Registration, tea & coffee, biscuits	 
9:50     Introduction	Gabe Chomic, VP of Alliances ISSA-UK,  & Justin Clarke, OWASP-London
10.00    Software Assurance Frameworks and Standards: ISO/IEC 27034-1 and OpenSAMM	Matt Bartoldus, Director, Gotham Digital Science
10.40    Best Practices and Lessons Learned around 3rd-Party Application Analysis	Chad Holmes, Solutions Architect, Veracode
11.20    Securing 3rd Party Software	Paco Hope, Principal Consultant, Cigital
12.00    Lunch	 
12.50    Graveyards & Zombies: How HTML5 Improves Web Security. Mostly.	Mike Shema, Director of Engineering, Qualys
1.30     Pitfalls of Application Security Programs (Working Title)	Anthony Zboralski, Managing Consultant
2.00     Refreshments	 
2.20     Man In The Browser (Working Title)	Ken Munro, Partner, Pen Test Partners
2.50     Building a Cost-Benefit Model for Application Security Testing	Pawel Krawczyk, Application Security Manager
3.20     Closing Thoughts and Questions	 
3.30     Tour of Bletchley Park	 
4.30     Event Close	 

RSVP

RSVP at the ISSA/OWASP EventBrite page for the event. Please note - OWASP, ISSA-UK, or Charity Security Forum membership is required for this event, and membership will be verified against the respective member databases. If you'd like to attend, and are not already a member, OWASP membership is only USD$50 (about £30) - sign up at the OWASP Membership page.

Future Events

Thursday, July 12th 2012 (Central London)

Location: To be confirmed

Thursday, September 13th 2012 (Central London)

Location: To be confirmed

Thursday, November 8th 2012 (Central London)

Location: To be confirmed

Past Events

Thursday, March 29th 2012 (Central London)

Location: Morgan Stanley, 25 Cabot Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 4QA

Talks

• Top 10 Web Defences - Jim Manico (PPTX)

  We cannot hack or firewall our way secure. Application programmers need to learn to code in a secure fashion if we have any chance of providing organisations with proper defences in the current threatscape. This talk will discuss the 10 most important security-centric computer programming techniques necessary to build low-risk web based applications.

• IronWASP - Manish Saindane (PPTX)

  IronWASP (Iron Web application Advanced Security testing Platform) is an open source system for web application vulnerability testing. It is designed to be customizable to the extent where users can create their own custom security scanners using it. Though an advanced user with Python/Ruby scripting expertise would be able to make full use of the platform, a lot of the tool's features are simple enough to be used by absolute beginners.

Speakers

Jim Manico, Manish Saindane

Thursday, March 8th 2012, 18:30-21:00 (Royal Holloway)

Location

Royal Holloway University of London, Bourne Lecture Theatre 2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

Talks

• Implementing cryptography: good theory vs. bad practice - Viet Pham ([PDF])

Abstract: Cryptography is being widely implemented in software to provide security features. The main reason is that, many cryptographic mechanisms are mathematically proven secure, or trusted secure given some mathematical reasoning. However, to take full advantages of these mechanisms, they must be implemented strictly according to the theoretical models, e.g., several cryptographic mechanisms must be used together, in a specific manner to provide a desired security goal. However, without strong cryptographic background, many software developers tend to deviate from these models, thus making their own security software a gold mine for attackers. This talk gives examples to show why such situations exist, where do they spread, and how bad they may turn into.

• Securing the SSL channel against man-in-the-middle attacks: Future technologies - HTTP Strict Transport Security and and Pinning of Certs - Tobias Gondrom ([PDF])

"In the recent months major trusted CAs providing trusted certificates for SSL/TLS in browser scenarios were compromised (e.g. seen in the Diginotar breach) and based on the current trust models (trusting all registered CAs equally for all domains) exposed vital web applications to the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks. Several approaches are currently discussed to mitigate this risk. The most advanced and closest to final adoption being the technologies discussed by the browser vendors at the recent IETF meeting in November in Taipei: HSTS and pinning of certificates. To better protect content providers against the distribution of bogus certificates, an HTTP header extension containing a fingerprint of their certificates linked to a domain address has been defined. This approach, which has been partly tested in Chrome, and already helped identify and protect to some extend Google's web application in the recent Diginotar compromise. Chrome users were able to detect the bogus DigiNotar certificates because Chrome had embedded the hashes of valid Google certificates. Back in July, the hacked DigiNotar certificate authority (CA), which has since gone out of business, was used to issue more than five hundred bogus certificates for companies including Google and various intelligence services."

Speakers

Tobias Gondrom, Viet Pham

Thursday, February 2nd 2012 ,18:30-21:00

Location: Royal Holloway University of London, Bourne Lecture Theatre 2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

Speakers: Sarah Baso, Dinis Cruz, Dennis Groves

• Security as Pollution (lessons learned) - Dinis Cruz

  Based on David Rice's "Upon the Threshold of Opportunity" presentation at the OWASP AppSec USA 2010

• Making Security Invisible by Becoming the Developer's Best Friends - Dinis Cruz

  Based on Dinis' presentation at OWASP AppSec Brazil 2011

• How to get a job in AppSec by Hacking and fixing TeamMentor - Dinis Cruz and Dennis Groves

  This is for students and developers who want to get into the application security space and need to have/show real-world experience.

• What's Happening on OWASP Today - Sarah Baso

  This is an overview of the multiple activities that are currently happening around the world at OWASP presented by one of OWASP's employees currently focused on logistics, community and empowerment

Thursday, September 8th 2011

Location: Royal Holloway University of London, Bourne Lecture Theatre 2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

Speaker: Daniel Cuthbert (deck)

Title: Doing it for the Lulz: Why Lulzsec has shown us to be an ineffective industry.

Friday, June 3rd 2011

Location: Royal Holloway University of London, Room BLT2, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX

• Wordpress Security - Steve Lord (PDF)

  Wordpress is one if the most popular blogging systems in the world but is routinely used to shoehorn complex sites into a blog shaped box, often because of it's flexibility and ease of use. In this talk, Mandalorian's Steve Lord discusses common Wordpress security snafus and how to avoid them.

Thursday, April 14th 2011

Location: Charterhouse Bar, 38 Charterhouse Street, Smithfield, London EC1M 6JH

• Wordpress Security - Steve Lord (PDF)

  Wordpress is one if the most popular blogging systems in the world but is routinely used to shoehorn complex sites into a blog shaped box, often because of it's flexibility and ease of use. In this talk, Mandalorian's Steve Lord discusses common Wordpress security snafus and how to avoid them.

• Outcomes from the recent OWASP Summit in Portugal - London based attendees of the Summit

  Discussion of what came out of the recent OWASP Summit, "OWASP 4.0" and what is changing in the OWASP world now and in the near future

Thursday, February 17th 2011

Location: ThoughtWorks, Berkshire House, 168-173 High Holborn, City of London WC1V 7AA

A special meeting event, in conjunction with London Geek Nights on SSL usage and dangers. An opportunity to get some of the developer and security communities together to talk more pragmatically on this very key topic.

Archived Events

For events before 2011, see Archived OWASP London Events

Other Activities

• February 2010 - Personal Information Online COP

The Leeds UK, London and Scotland Chapters joint response to the UK Information Commissioner's Office draft Personal Information Online Code of Practice.

• March 2009 - Entry for Nominet Best Practice Challenge 2009

Open Web Application Security Project was nominated by OWASP London for the Best Security Initiative Award (File:Nominet best practice challenge 2009 owasp entry.pdf) in the Nominet Best Practice Challenge 2009. Short-listed June 2009. Announcement due 2 July 2009.

• 16th October 2008 - COI Browser Standards for Public Websites

The London and Scotland Chapters joint response to the Central Office of Information draft document on browser standards for public websites (version 0.13) (File:OWASP-COI-Browser-Standards.pdf).