Secure Coding master course for banking and finance

“Money makes the world go round....” – remember? And yes: it is your responsibility to secure all that. As a fintech company you have to take up the challenge, and beat the bad guys with bomb-proof, secure applications!
If there is a domain where security is critical, it is definitely fintech. Vulnerability is not an option if you want to stay a trusted and reliable vendor with systems and applications that certainly comply with PCI-DSS requirements. You need devoted secure coders with high-level professional attitude and developers eager to fight all coding problems: yes, you need a skilled team of software engineers.
Want to know why? Just for the record: even though IT security best practices are widely available, 90% of security incidents stem from common vulnerabilities as a result of ignorance and malpractice. So, you better keep loaded in all possible ways with up to date knowledge about secure coding – unless you wanna cry!
We offer a training program exclusively targeting engineers developing applications for the banking and finance sector. Our dedicated trainers share their experience and expertise through hands-on labs, and give real-life case studies from the banking industry – engaging participants in live hacking fun to reveal all consequences of insecure coding.

Day 1
o IT security and secure coding
 Nature of security
 What is risk?
 IT security vs. secure coding
 From vulnerabilities to botnets and cybercrime
 Nature of security flaws
 Reasons of difficulty
 From an infected computer to targeted attacks
 Classification of security flaws
 Landwehr’s taxonomy
 The Seven Pernicious Kingdoms
 OWASP Top Ten 2017 (release candidate)
 CWE/SANS top 25 most dangerous software errors
 SEI CERT secure coding standards
o Special threats in the banking and finance sector
 Banking and finance threats – trends
 Banking and finance threats – some numbers
 Attacker model
 Most significant targets
 Industry and regulatory response to threats
 Attacker tools and vectors
o Regulations and standards
 Protecting sensitive information
 Responsibilities
 Managing sensitive data
 Breach disclosure obligations
 PCI DSS compliance
 PCI DSS at a glance
 Protecting cardholder data
 Requirements
 Requirement 6 – Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
 6.1 – Identifying vulnerabilities, risk management
 6.2 – Patching
 6.3 – Secure software development
 6.4 – Policies and procedures
 6.5 – Train the secure coding best practices
 6.6 – Security assessment and attack detection
 6.7 – Documentation and enforcement
o Web application security
 A1 - Injection
 Injection principles
 SQL injection
 Exercise – SQL Injection
 Exercise – SQL injection
 Typical SQL Injection attack methods
 Blind and time-based SQL injection
 SQL Injection protection methods
 Other injection flaws
 Command injection
 Case study – ImageMagick
 A2 - Broken authentication and session management
 Session handling weaknesses – session hijacking and fixation
 Session handling best practices
 Setting cookie attributes – best practices
 Case study – Authentication issues in Danish online banking
 Danske Bank website debug mode information leak
 Danske Bank session leakage and potential hijack vulnerability
 Issues with the NemID centralized single sign-on scheme
 A3 - Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
 Persistent XSS
 Reflected XSS
 DOM-based XSS
 Exercise – Cross Site Scripting
 Exploitation: CSS injection
 Exploitation: injecting the tag
 Exercise – HTML injection with base tag
 XSS prevention
 A4 - Broken access control
 Typical access control weaknesses
 Insecure direct object reference (IDOR)
 Exercise – Insecure direct object reference
 Protection against IDOR
 Case study – Facebook Notes
 Exercise – Authorization bypass
 A5 - Security misconfiguration
 Security misconfiguration
 Configuring the environment
 Insecure file uploads
 Exercise – Uploading executable files
 Filtering file uploads – validation and configuration
 A6 - Sensitive data exposure
 Sensitive data exposure
 Case study – Distributed guessing attack against payment cards
 Information leakage weaknesses in online payment systems
 Practical guessing attack
 Real-world exploitation and countermeasures
 Transport layer security
 Enforcing HTTPS
 A7 - Insufficient attack protection
 Detection and response
 Logging and log analysis
 Intrusion detection systems and Web application firewalls
 A8 - Cross site request forgery (CSRF)
 Login CSRF
 CSRF prevention
 A9 - Using components with known vulnerabilities
 A10 - Unprotected APIs

Day 2

Client-side security
JavaScript security
Same Origin Policy
Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
JavaScript usage
JavaScript Global Object
Dangers of JavaScript
Exercise – Client-side authentication
Client-side authentication and password management
Protecting JavaScript code
Exercise – JavaScript obfuscation
History sniffing
Clickjacking Clickjacking
Exercise – Do you Like me?
Protection against Clickjacking
Anti frame-busting – dismissing protection scripts
Protection against busting frame busting

AJAX security XSS in AJAX
Script injection attack in AJAX
Exercise – XSS in AJAX
XSS protection in Ajax
Exercise CSRF in AJAX – JavaScript hijacking
CSRF protection in AJAX
MySpace worm
AJAX security guidelines

HTML5 security New XSS possibilities in HTML5
Client-side persistent data storage
HTML5 clickjacking attack – text field injection
HTML5 clickjacking – content extraction
Form tampering
Exercise – Form tampering
Cross-origin requests
HTML proxy with cross-origin request
Exercise – Client side include



Security architecture
(platform and technology dependent topics)
Application level access control (permissions, sandboxing)

User level access control Authentication
Authorization



Object-relational mapping (ORM) security


Security of Web services
SOAP security SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol
Transport layer security
Message level security

Security of RESTful web services Authentication with REST
Authorization with REST
Vulnerabilities in connection with REST

XML security Introduction
XML parsing
XML injection (Ab)using CDATA to store XSS payload in XML
Exercise – XML injection

Abusing XML Entity XML Entity introduction
XML bomb
Exercise – XML bomb
XML external entity attack (XXE) – resource inclusion
XML external entity attack – URL invocation
XML external entity attack – parameter entities
Exercise – XXE attack
Case study – XXE in Google Toolbar
Case study – XXE in TGI Friday's ordering system


JSON security JSON parsing
Embedding JSON server-side
JSON injection
JSON hijacking
Case study – XSS via spoofed JSON element


Day 3

Requirements of secure communication
Security levels
Secure acknowledgement Malicious message absorption Feasibility of secure acknowledgement
The solution: Clearing Centers

Inadvertent message loss

Integrity Error detection - Inadvertent message distortion (noise) Modeling message distortion
Error detection and correction codes

Authenticity - Malicious message manipulation Modeling message manipulation
Practical integrity protection (detection)

Non-repudiation Non-repudiation

Summary Detecting integrity violation


Confidentiality Model of encrypted communication
Encryption methods in practice
Strength of encryption algorithms

Remote identification Requirements of remote identification

Anonymity and traffic analysis Model of anonymous communication
Traffic analysis
Theoretically strong protection against traffic analysis
Practical protection against traffic analysis

Summary
Relationships between requirements



Practical cryptography
Cryptosystems Elements of a cryptosystem

Symmetric-key cryptography Providing confidentiality with symmetric cryptography
Symmetric encryption algorithms
Stream ciphers
Block ciphers – modes of operation
Comparing the modes of operation
Authenticated Encryption modes Authenticated Encryption
CCM – Counter with CBC-MAC
GCM – Galois Counter Mode
GCM encryption


Other cryptographic algorithms Hash or message digest
Hash algorithms
SHAttered
Message Authentication Code (MAC)
Providing integrity and authenticity with a symmetric key
Random numbers and cryptography
Cryptographically-strong PRNGs
Hardware-based TRNGs

Asymmetric (public-key) cryptography Providing confidentiality with public-key encryption
Rule of thumb – possession of private key
The RSA algorithm Introduction to RSA algorithm
Encrypting with RSA
Combining symmetric and asymmetric algorithms
Digital signing with RSA
Blind signature

The Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) Introduction to DSA algorithm
Digital signing with DSA

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Introduction to ECC


Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack
Digital certificates against MitM attack
Certificate Authorities in Public Key Infrastructure
X.509 digital certificate
Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs)
Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)

Web of Trust (WoT) Web of Trust (WoT) – introduction
Challenges of Web of Trust



Security protocols
Secure network protocols
Specific vs. general solutions
SSL/TLS protocols Security services
SSL/TLS handshake



Cryptographic vulnerabilities
SSL/TLS vulnerabilities related to modes of operation BEAST
FREAK
FREAK – attack against SSL/TLS
Logjam attack

Padding oracle attack Adaptive chosen-ciphertext attacks
Padding oracle attack
CBC decryption
Padding oracle example
Lucky Thirteen
POODLE



Crypto libraries and APIs


Day 4

Input validation
Input validation concepts
Integer problems Representation of negative integers
Integer overflow

Integer problem mitigation Integer problem mitigation

Case study – Integer overflow in the Stockholm Stock Exchange Integer wraparound problem when purchasing stocks

Path traversal vulnerability Path traversal mitigation
Case study – Insufficient URL validation in LastPass

Unvalidated redirects and forwards
Log forging Some other typical problems with log files

(some additional platform and technology dependent topics)


Improper use of security features
Typical problems related to the use of security features
Insecure randomness
Case study – Tesco Bank fraud Fraud exploiting deterministic card number generation

Password management Exercise – Weakness of hashed passwords
Password management and storage
Brute forcing
Special purpose hash algorithms for password storage
Case study – the Ashley Madison data breach The loginkey token
Revealing the passwords with brute forcing


Case study – Equifax account freeze PIN code generation
Typical mistakes in password management
Case study – Equifax password management issues
Insufficient anti-automation Captcha
Captcha weaknesses

Sensitive information in memory Protecting secrets in memory
Minimize the attack surface
Core dumps
Swapping
Zeroisation



Denial of service
DoS introduction
Asymmetric DoS
SSL/TLS renegotiation DoS
Case Study – ReDos in Stack Exchange
Hashtable collision attack Using hashtables to store inputs
Hashtable collision


Day 5
Improper error and exception handling
Typical problems with error and exception handling
Exercise – Information leakage through error reporting


Time and state problems


Code quality problems


Security testing techniques
General testing approaches
Source code review Code review for software security
Taint analysis
Heuristics
Static code analysis Static code analysis


Testing the implementation Dynamic security testing
Manual vs. automated security testing
Penetration testing
Stress tests
Fuzzing Automated security testing - fuzzing
Challenges of fuzzing

Proxy servers and sniffers Testing with proxies and sniffers
Packet analyzers and proxies
Exercise – Testing with proxy

Web vulnerability scanners Exercise – Using a vulnerability scanner
SQL injection tools
Exercise – Using SQL injection tools




Deployment environment
Hardening
Patch management
Case study - Shellshock Shellshock – basics of using functions in bash
Shellshock – vulnerability in bash
Exercise - Shellshock
Shellshock fix and counterattacks
Exercise – Command override with environment variables



Principles of security and secure coding
Matt Bishop’s principles of robust programming
The security principles of Saltzer and Schroeder
SEI Cert top 10 secure coding practices


Knowledge sources
Secure coding sources – a starter kit
Vulnerability databases

• Understand basic concepts of security, IT security and secure coding
• Understand special threats in the banking and finance sector
• Understand regulations and standards
• Learn Web vulnerabilities beyond OWASP Top Ten and know how to avoid them
• Learn client-side vulnerabilities and secure coding practices
• Understand security concepts of Web services
• Learn about XML security
• Learn about JSON security
• Have a practical understanding of cryptography
• Understand the requirements of secure communication
• Understand essential security protocols
• Understand some recent attacks against cryptosystems
• Learn about typical coding mistakes and how to avoid them
• Get information about some recent vulnerabilities in the Java framework
• Learn about denial of service attacks and protections
• Get practical knowledge in using security testing techniques and tools
• Learn how to handle vulnerabilities in the used platforms, frameworks and libraries
• Get sources and further readings on secure coding practices