Web application security in Java

Your Web application written in Java works as intended, so you are done, right? But did you consider feeding in incorrect values? 16Gbs of data? A null? An apostrophe? Negative numbers, or specifically -232? Because that’s what the bad guys will do – and the list is far from complete.
Handling security needs a healthy level of paranoia, and this is what this course provides: a strong emotional engagement by lots of hand on labs and stories from real life, all to substantially improve code hygiene. Mistakes, consequences and best practices are our blood, sweat and tears.
The curriculum goes through the common Web application security issues following the OWASP Top Ten but goes far beyond it both in coverage and the details.All this is put in the context of Java, and extended by core programming issues, discussing security pitfalls of the Java language and framework.
So that you are prepared for the forces of the dark side.So that nothing unexpected happens.
Nothing.

Day 1
Security basics

What is security?
Threat and risk
Types of threats against computer systems
Consequences of insecure software
Constraints and the market
Bugs, vulnerabilities and exploits

Categorization of bugs

Seven pernicious kingdoms
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors
SEI Cert Secure Coding Guidelines
Vulnerabilities in the environment and the dependencies

The OWASP Top Ten
A1 - Injection

Injection principles
Injection attacks
SQL injection* SQL injection basics  - Lab – SQL injection* Attack techniques* Content-based blind SQL injection* Time-based blind SQL injection* SQL injection best practices  - Input validation  - Output encoding  - Parameterized queries  - Other best practices  - Lab – Using prepared statements  - Case study – Hacking Fortnite accounts
Code injection* Command injection  - Lab – Command injection  - Command injection best practices  - Using Runtime.exec()  - Using ProcessBuilder  - Case study – Shellshock* Script injection* Expression language injection
Injection best practices* Input validation* Output sanitization  - Encoding and escaping the output  - Encoding challenges

A2 - Broken Authentication

Authentication basics
Authentication weaknesses
Spoofing on the Web
Case study – PayPal two factor authentication bypass
Password management* Inbound password management  - Storing account passwords  - Plaintext passwords at Facebook  - Lab – Why just hashing passwords is not enough?  - Dictionary attacks and brute forcing  - Salting  - Adaptive hash functions for password storage  - Password in transit  - Password policy  - Weak and strong passwords  - Using passphrases  - Lab – Applying a password policy  - The Ashley Madison data breach  - The dictionary attack  - The ultimate attack  - Exploitation of the results and the lessons learnt* Outbound password management  - Hard coded passwords  - Lab – Hardcoded password  - Password in configuration file  - Protecting sensitive information in memory  - Challenges in protecting memory  - Storing sensitive data in memory  - Lab – Using secret-handling classes  - Session management* Session management essentials* Why do we protect session IDs – Session hijacking* Session ID best practices* Insufficient session expiration* Session fixation* Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF)  - Lab – Cross-site Request Forgery  - CSRF best practices  - Lab – CSRF protection with tokens
Cookie security* Cookie security best practices* Cookie parameters

Day 2
The OWASP Top Ten
A3 - Sensitive Data Exposure

Information exposure
Exposure through extracted data and aggregation

System information leakage* Leaking system information* Relying on accessibility modifiers  - Lab – Inappropriate protection by accessibility modifier
Information exposure best practices

A4 - XML External Entities (XXE)

DTD and the entities
Entity expansion
External Entity Attack (XXE)* File inclusion with external entities* Server-side request forgery with external entities* Lab – External entity attack* Case study – XXE attack against some popular services* Preventing XXE

A5 - Broken Access Control

Access control basics
Missing or improper authorization
Failure to restrict URL access
Confused deputy* Insecure direct object reference (IDOR)  - Lab – Insecure Direct Object Reference* Authorization bypass through user-controlled keys* Case study – Authorization bypass on Facebook
File upload* Unrestricted file upload* Best practices* Lab – Unrestricted file upload

A6 - Security Misconfiguration

Configuration principles
Server misconfiguration
Configuration management
Java related components – best practices* Tomcat configuration

A7 - Cross-site Scripting (XSS)

Cross-site scripting basics
Cross-site scripting types* Persistent cross-site scripting* Reflected cross-site scripting* Client-side (DOM-based) cross-site scripting
Case study – Yahoo mail stored XSS
Lab – Reflected and stored XSS
XSS protection best practices* Protection principles - escaping* Additional protection layers* Client-side protection principles* XSS protection APIs in Java  - Lab – XSS best practices

A8 - Insecure Deserialization

Serialization and deserialization challenges
Deserializing untrusted streams
Deserializing best practices
Using ReadObject
Sealed objects
Look ahead deserialization
Property Oriented Programming (POP)* POP best practices  - Lab – Creating POP payload

A9 - Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities

Using vulnerable components
Assessing the environment
Hardening
Importing functionality from untrusted sources
Case study – The British Airways data breach
Vulnerability management* Patch management* Vulnerability databases and scanning tools* Vulnerability rating – CVSS  - Lab – Finding vulnerabilities of used components* The build process and CI / CD* Dependency checking in Maven  - Lab – Detecting vulnerable components during the build

A10 - Insufficient Logging & Monitoring

Logging and monitoring principles
Logging* Insufficient logging* Logging best practices* Java logging best practices
Monitoring* Monitoring best practices

Web application security beyond the Top Ten

Client-side security
Same Origin Policy* Simple request* Preflight request* Bypassing the Same Origin Policy* Cross-origin resource sharing
Frame sandboxing* Clickjacking* Clickjacking protection best practices  - Lab - Clickjacking* JavaScript hijacking

Day 3
Common software security weaknesses
Input validation

Input validation principles* Blacklists and whitelists* Validation with regex* What to validate – the attack surface* When to validate – validation vs transformations* Where to validate – defense in depth* Server-side vs. client-side validation
Integer handling* Representing signed numbers* Integer visualization* Integer problems  - Integer overflow  - Lab – Integer overflow* Signed / unsigned confusion- Signed / unsigned confusion in Java* Integer truncation* Best practices  - Upcasting  - Precondition testing  - Postcondition testing  - Using big integer libraries  - Integer handling in Java  - Lab – Integer handling* Other numeric problems  - Division by zero  - Working with floating-point numbers
Unsafe reflection* Reflection without validation  - Lab – Unsafe reflection
Unsafe native code* Native code dependence  - Lab – Unsafe JNI
Some other input validation problems

Security features

Java platform security* The Java programming language and runtime environment* Type safety and security* Security features of the JRE  - The ClassLoader and the BytecodeVerifier* Application-level access control in Java  - Permissions and the Security Manager  - Privilege best practices  - Lab – Working with permissions in Java* Role-based access control  - Java Authentication and Authorization Services (JAAS)* Protecting Java code and applications  - Code signing

Errors

Error and exception handling principles
Error handling* Returning a misleading status code* Reachable assertion* Information exposure through error reporting
Missing custom error pages
Exception handling* In the catch block. And now what?* Empty catch block* Best practices for catch blocks* Overly broad throws* Catching NULL pointer exceptions* Improper completing of the finally block* Swallowed ThreadDeath* Checked exceptions escaping from finally* Throwing undeclared checked exceptions* Throwing RuntimeException, Exception, or Throwable  - Lab – Exception handling mess

Code quality

Data* Arrays and toString()* Initialization and cleanup  - Constructors and destructors  - Class initialization cycles  - Lab – Initialization cycles* Unreleased resource
Object oriented programming pitfalls* Accessibility modifiers* Overriding and accessibility modifiers* Inheritance and overriding* Implementing equals()* Mutability  - Lab – Mutable object* Cloning  - Cloning sensitive classes – object hijacking  - Object hijacking – best practices* Serialization  - Serializing sensitive data  - Serialization best practices  - Lab – Serializing sensitive data  - DoS with deserialization  - Memory leaks during serialization

Wrap up
Secure coding principles

Principles of robust programming by Matt Bishop
Secure design principles of Saltzer and Schröder
Some more principles

And now what?

Further sources and readings
.NET and C# resources
Further labs and challenges to do