Secure JEE Web Application Development Seminar Training

The Secure JEE Web Application Development Seminar is an intense JEE security training workshop/seminar essential for web developers who need to produce secure web applications, integrating security measures into the development process from requirements to deployment and maintenance. This course explores well beyond basic programming skills, teaching developers sound processes and practices to apply to the entire software development lifecycle. Perhaps just as significantly, students learn about current, real examples that illustrate the potential consequences of not following these best practices. This course is short on theory and long on application, providing students with in-depth, code-level demonstrations and walkthroughs.

In this course, students are shown best practices for defensively coding JEE web applications, including XML processing and web services. Demonstrations repeatedly attack and then defend various assets associated with a fully-functional web application. This approach illustrates the mechanics of how to secure JEE web applications in the most practical of terms.

Security experts agree that the least effective approach to security is "penetrate and patch". It is far more effective to "bake" security into an application throughout its lifecycle. After spending significant time examining a poorly designed (from a security perspective) web application, developers are ready to learn how to build secure web applications starting at project inception. The final portion of this course builds on the previously learned mechanics for building defenses by exploring how design and analysis can be used to build stronger applications from the beginning of the software lifecycle.

A key component to our Best Defense IT Security Training Series, this workshop is a companion course with several developer-oriented courses and seminars. Although this edition of the course is Java-specific, it may also be presented using .Net or other programming languages.

Students who attend Secure JEE Web Application Development will leave the course armed with the skills required to recognize actual and potential software vulnerabilities, implement defenses for those vulnerabilities, and test those defenses for sufficiency.

This course quickly introduces developers to the most common security vulnerabilities faced by web applications today. Each vulnerability is examined from a Java/JEE perspective through a process of describing the threat and attack mechanisms, recognizing associated vulnerabilities, and, finally, designing, implementing, and testing effective defenses. In many cases, there are labs that reinforce these concepts with real vulnerabilities and attacks. Students are then challenged to design and implement the layered defenses they will need in defending their own applications.

Working in a dynamic learning environment attendees will learn to:

• Understand potential sources for untrusted data
• Understand the consequences for not properly handling untrusted data such as denial of service, cross-site scripting, and injections
• Be able to test web applications with various attack techniques to determine the existence of and effectiveness of layered defenses
• Prevent and defend the many potential vulnerabilities associated with untrusted data
• Understand the vulnerabilities of associated with authentication and authorization
• Be able to detect, attack, and implement defenses for authentication and authorization functionality and services
• Understand the dangers and mechanisms behind Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and Injection attacks
• Be able to detect, attack, and implement defenses against XSS and Injection attacks
• Understand the concepts and terminology behind defensive, secure, coding
• Understand the use of Threat Modeling as a tool in identifying software vulnerabilities based on realistic threats against meaningful assets
• Perform both static code reviews and dynamic application testing to uncover vulnerabilities in Java-based web applications
• Design and develop strong, robust authentication and authorization implementations within the context of JEE
• Understand the fundamentals of Java Cryptography (JCA) and Encryption (JCE) and where they fit in the overall security picture
• Understand the fundamentals of XML Digital Signature and XML Encryption as well as how they are used within the web services arena
• Be able to detect, attack, and implement defenses for XML-based services and functionality
• Understand techniques and measures that can used to harden web and application servers as well as other components in your infrastructure
• Understand and implement the processes and measures associated with the Secure Software Development (SSD)
• Acquire the skills, tools, and best practices for design and code reviews as well as testing initiatives
• Understand the basics of security testing and planning
• Work through a comprehensive testing plan for recognized vulnerabilities and weaknesses

Session: Foundation

Misconceptions

• Thriving Industry of Identify Theft
• Dishonor Roll of Data Breaches
• TJX: Anatomy of a Disaster
• Heartland: What? Again?

Security Concepts

• Terminology and Players
• Assets, Threats, and Attacks
• OWASP
• CWE/SANS Top 25 Programming Errors
  • Categories
  • What they mean to your web applications

Defensive Coding Principles

• Security Is A Lifecycle Issue
• Minimize Attack Surface
• Manage Resources
• Application States
• Compartmentalize
• Defense In Depth - Layered Defense
• Consider All Application States
• Not Trusting The Untrusted
• Security Defect Mitigation
• Leverage Experience

Reality

• Recent, Relevant Incidents
• Find Security Defects In Web Application

Session: Top Security Vulnerabilities

Unvalidated Input

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• Identifying Trust Boundaries
• Qualifying Untrusted Data
• Implementing An Effect, Layered Defense
• Designing An Appropriate Response
• Testing Defenses And Responses

Overview Of Regular Expressions

• Regular Expressions
• Working with Regular Expressions in Java

Broken Access Control

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• Authorization Security Overview
• Defending Special Privileges Such As Administrative Functions
• Application Authorization Best Practices

Broken Authentication And Session Management

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• Multi-Layered Defenses Of Authentication Services
• Password Management Strategies
• Password Handling With Hashing Using JCE/JCA
• Mitigating Password Caching
• Testing Defenses And Responses For Weaknesses
• Alternative Authentication Mechanisms
• Best Practices For Session Management in JEE
• Defending Session Hijacking Attacks
• Best Practices For Single Sign-On (SSO)

Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Flaws

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• Character Encoding Complications
• Blacklisting
• Whitelisting
• HTML/XML Entity Encoding
• Trust Boundary Definition
• Implementing An Effective Layered Defense
• Designing An Appropriate Response
• Cross-Site Request Forgeries (CSRF)
• Understanding CSRF
• Defending Against CSRF
• Output Encoding - Why
• Output Encoding - How
• Output Encoding - Best Practices

Injection Flaws

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• Qualifying Untrusted Data
• JDBC, PreparedStatements, and StoredProcedures
• Hibernate Best Practices
• XML Best Practices
• Third Party API’s
• Implementing An Effective Layered Defense
• Designing An Appropriate Response

Error Handling And Information Leakage

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• JEE Application Exception Handling
• Error Response Best Practices
• Error, Auditing, And Logging Content Management
• Error, Auditing, And Logging Service Management
• Best Practices For Supporting Web Attack Forensics

Insecure Storage

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• Data Leakage
• Risk Minimization
• Cryptography Overview
• JCS/JCE
• Data Encryption
• Partial/Complete
• Property/Deployment/Configuration Files

Insecure Management of Configuration

• Description with working example
• Defenses
• System hardening
• JEE application server configuration "Gotchas!"
• Hardening software installation

Direct Object Access

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• Java Byte Code Verifier
• XML/DTD/Schema/XSLT Best Practices

Spoofing

• Description With Working Example
• Defenses
• Protecting Your Clients
• Defending Against Cross Site Request Forgeries
• Phishing Defenses

Session: Best Practices

Defensive Coding Principles Revisited

Java Best Practices

• Code Obfuscation
• JAAS Usage
• Java 2 Security and Policy Files
• Signing JAR Files

Session: Defending XML Processing

Defending XML

• Understanding Common Attacks And How To Defend
• Operating In Safe Mode
• Using Standards-Based Security
• XML-Aware Security Infrastructure
• JAXP Safe Mode

Defending Web Services

• Security Exposures
• Transport-Level Security
• Message-Level Security
• WS-Security
• Attacks And Defenses

Defending Ajax

• Ajax Security Exposures
• Attack Surface Changes
• Injection Threats And Concerns
• Effective Defenses And Practices

Session: Secure Software Development (SSD)

• SSD Process Overview
  • CLASP Defined
  • CLASP Applied
• Asset, Boundary, and Vulnerability Identification
• Vulnerability Response
• Design and Code Reviews
• Applying Processes and Practices
• Risk Analysis

Session: Security Testing

• Testing as Lifecycle Process
• Testing Planning and Documentation
• Testing Tools And Processes
  • Principles
  • Reviews
  • Testing
  • Tools
• Static and Dynamic Code Analysis
• Testing Practices
  • Authentication Testing
  • Session: Management Testing
  • Data Validation Testing
  • Denial Of Service Testing
  • Web Services Testing
  • Ajax Testing

Session: Appendix: Security Design Patterns

Design patterns introduction

JEE Web Application Security Design Patterns

• Authentication Enforcer
• Authorization Enforcer
• Intercepting Validator
• Secure Base Action
• Secure Logger
• Secure Pipe
• Secure Service Proxy
• Intercepting Web Agent

Upcoming Dates & Locations