Creating and Curating Educational Resources for Secure Coding – Akira Brand – Akira Brand – ASW #215
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1. Creating and Curating Educational Resources for Secure Coding – Akira Brand – ASW #215
We talk with Akira Brand about appsec educational resources and crafting better resources for developers to learn about secure coding.
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Akira Brand has worked in the security space for the past four years, first for two years as a Developer Relations Engineer, and then two years as an Application Security Engineer. Passionate about education and Infosec, she has become a distinguished public speaker, an engaging cybersecurity podcaster with AppSec weekly, and a knowledgeable trainer. Deeply familiar with securing all stages of the SDLC, she owns and operates Akira Brand Consulting, where she works with companies to augment their AppSec engineering staff, troubleshoot existing security programs, or help companies build security from the ground up. Akira is not only a skilled technician, she is also a professional artist, gracing the stage as a classical singer with local opera companies in the Rocky Mountain Region.
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2. Rust in the Linux Kernel, Uber Security Verdict, Prototype Pollution, PHP Composer – ASW #215
Rust arrives in the Linux Kernel, verdict in the Uber security case, overview(s) of JavaScript prototype pollution, flaws in PHP Composer and the NPM vm2 package, reading CloudSecDocs
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- 1. Guilty verdict in the Uber breach case makes personal liability real for CISOsThe appsec angle to this story is the use and misuse of bug bounty programs -- they're not a mechanism for laundering and silencing breaches. It's also a topic that has received a variety of framing for a story that is ultimately about lying to the FTC. It doesn't seem like the harbinger of doom for CISOs that many headlines make it out to be.
- 2. Merge tag ‘rust-v6.1-rc1’ of https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/linuxRust finally gets a merge into the mainline Linux kernel. It represents about a year and a half of work from over 170 contributors. So, this is both excellent to see for the future of memory safety in the Linux kernel, and a slightly daunting amount of effort from the perspective of refactoring an existing code base. Note how a significant amount of the commit is wrangling makefiles and build scripts to support Rust.
- 3. NSA, CISA, FBI Reveal Top CVEs Exploited by Chinese State-Sponsored ActorsThe main appsec takeaway here is how overwhelmingly remote command execution vulns make up this list. Yes, memory safety issues plague plenty of apps and lead to exploitable vulns, but memory safety clearly isn't the only critical vuln class out there. Plus, the list includes a path traversal vuln! Read more in the PDF report at https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/06/2003092365/-1/-1/0/Joint_CSA_Top_CVEs_Exploited_by_PRC_cyber_actors_.PDF
- 4. What is prototype poisoning? Prototype bugs explained!Including this article as an educational followup to a recent prototype pollution flaw we covered. A lot of times the articles we find on vulns include good background and explanations on the underlying problem. But sometimes it's helpful to have articles dedicated to explaining a class of vulns rather than a specific instance of one. Also check out another resource on this topic at https://labs.withsecure.com/publications/prototype-pollution-primer-for-pentesters-and-programmers
- 5. Securing Developer Tools: A New Supply Chain Attack on PHPYes, yet another example of supply chain issues -- this time in PHP. But I grabbed this article and the other about about the JavaScript vm2 flaw for a tangent on how articles frame the impact or criticality of vulns they cover. In this case, we're told that Composer "serves 2 billion software packages every month", which is impressively large and sounds like a pretty fundamental tool in the PHP supply chain. At what point do numbers matter? Or not matter? This is like repeating the CVSS rating of a vuln. What would be more informative to readers?
- 6. JavaScript sandbox vm2 remediates remote code execution risk | The Daily SwigThe article tells us vm2 "has more than four million downloads per week", which sounds like a similarly large scale to the PHP vuln also mentioned this episode. What would be a more interesting metric than downloads or installs? What would be more useful than rattling off CVSS numbers? But that meta-question aside, this is also an interesting vuln for an RCE that has a one-line fix (and about seven lines of test code for the fix), which brings up a question about code review and how difficult it can be to review code for correctness, let alone for subtle security flaws.
- 7. Pod Security Standards – CloudSecDocsOne of the news sources I review every week is the CloudSecList (https://cloudseclist.com/). The maintainer of the list also curates CloudSecDocs, which covers a variety of hardening and security aspects of cloud computing.
- 8. Designing a Technical Interview | Laurie on TechThis article is from August 2020, but it remains relevant and fits with the career theme we've touched on in a few recent episodes.
- 9. HACKING GOOGLE – YouTubeGoogle invested in good production quality for a series of videos about the different security efforts within the company and the various teams tasked with keeping the org and its products safe. For an appsec focus, check out episodes 4 and 5 on bug bounties and the Project Zero team.
