Security For Web Developers

Website security made easy. This book covers the most common ways websites get hacked and how web developers can defend themselves. The world has changed. Today, every time you make a site live, you're opening it up to attack. A first-time developer can easily be discouraged by the difficulties involved with properly securing a website. But have hope: an army of security researchers is out there discovering, documenting, and fixing security flaws. Thankfully, the tools you'll need to secure your site are freely available and generally easy to use. Web Security for Developers will teach you how your websites are vulnerable to attack and how to protect them. Each chapter breaks down a major security vulnerability and explores a real-world attack, coupled with plenty of code to show you both the vulnerability and the fix. You'll learn how to: Protect against SQL injection attacks, malicious JavaScript, and cross-site request forgery Add authentication and shape access control to protect accounts Lock down user accounts to prevent attacks that rely on guessing passwords, stealing sessions, or escalating privileges Implement encryption Manage vulnerabilities in legacy code Prevent information leaks that disclose vulnerabilities Mitigate advanced attacks like malvertising and denial-of-service As you get stronger at identifying and fixing vulnerabilities, you'll learn to deploy disciplined, secure code and become a better programmer along the way.

As a web developer, you may not want to spend time making your web app secure, but it definitely comes with the territory. This practical guide provides you with the latest information on how to thwart security threats at several levels, including new areas such as microservices. You’ll learn how to help protect your app no matter where it runs, from the latest smartphone to an older desktop, and everything in between. Author John Paul Mueller delivers specific advice as well as several security programming examples for developers with a good knowledge of CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript. In five separate sections, this book shows you how to protect against viruses, DDoS attacks, security breaches, and other nasty intrusions. Create a security plan for your organization that takes the latest devices and user needs into account Develop secure interfaces, and safely incorporate third-party code from libraries, APIs, and microservices Use sandboxing techniques, in-house and third-party testing techniques, and learn to think like a hacker Implement a maintenance cycle by determining when and how to update your application software Learn techniques for efficiently tracking security threats as well as training requirements that your organization can use

Developers, designers, engineers, and creators can no longer afford to pass responsibility for identity and data security onto others. Web developers who don’t understand how to obscure data in transmission, for instance, can open security flaws on a site without realizing it. With this practical guide, you’ll learn how and why everyone working on a system needs to ensure that users and data are protected. Authors Jonathan LeBlanc and Tim Messerschmidt provide a deep dive into the concepts, technology, and programming methodologies necessary to build a secure interface for data and identity—without compromising usability. You’ll learn how to plug holes in existing systems, protect against viable attack vectors, and work in environments that sometimes are naturally insecure. Understand the state of web and application security today Design security password encryption, and combat password attack vectors Create digital fingerprints to identify users through browser, device, and paired device detection Build secure data transmission systems through OAuth and OpenID Connect Use alternate methods of identification for a second factor of authentication Harden your web applications against attack Create a secure data transmission system using SSL/TLS, and synchronous and asynchronous cryptography

Security Smarts for the Self-Guided IT Professional “Get to know the hackers—or plan on getting hacked. Sullivan and Liu have created a savvy, essentials-based approach to web app security packed with immediately applicable tools for any information security practitioner sharpening his or her tools or just starting out.”—Ryan McGeehan, Security Manager, Facebook, Inc. Secure web applications from today's most devious hackers. Web Application Security: A Beginner's Guide helps you stock your security toolkit, prevent common hacks, and defend quickly against malicious attacks. This practical resource includes chapters on authentication, authorization, and session management, along with browser, database, and file security--all supported by true stories from industry. You'll also get best practices for vulnerability detection and secure development, as well as a chapter that covers essential security fundamentals. This book's templates, checklists, and examples are designed to help you get started right away. Web Application Security: A Beginner's Guide features: Lingo--Common security terms defined so that you're in the know on the job IMHO--Frank and relevant opinions based on the authors' years of industry experience Budget Note--Tips for getting security technologies and processes into your organization's budget In Actual Practice--Exceptions to the rules of security explained in real-world contexts Your Plan--Customizable checklists you can use on the job now Into Action--Tips on how, why, and when to apply new skills and techniques at work

While many resources for network and IT security are available, detailed knowledge regarding modern web application security has been lacking—until now. This practical guide provides both offensive and defensive security concepts that software engineers can easily learn and apply. Andrew Hoffman, a senior security engineer at Salesforce, introduces three pillars of web application security: recon, offense, and defense. You’ll learn methods for effectively researching and analyzing modern web applications—including those you don’t have direct access to. You’ll also learn how to break into web applications using the latest hacking techniques. Finally, you’ll learn how to develop mitigations for use in your own web applications to protect against hackers. Explore common vulnerabilities plaguing today's web applications Learn essential hacking techniques attackers use to exploit applications Map and document web applications for which you don’t have direct access Develop and deploy customized exploits that can bypass common defenses Develop and deploy mitigations to protect your applications against hackers Integrate secure coding best practices into your development lifecycle Get practical tips to help you improve the overall security of your web applications

This concise and practical book shows where code vulnerabilities lie-without delving into the specifics of each system architecture, programming or scripting language, or application-and how best to fix them Based on real-world situations taken from the author's experiences of tracking coding mistakes at major financial institutions Covers SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting, data manipulation in order to bypass authorization, and other attacks that work because of missing pieces of code Shows developers how to change their mindset from Web site construction to Web site destruction in order to find dangerous code

Modern web applications are built on a tangle of technologies that have been developed over time and then haphazardly pieced together. Every piece of the web application stack, from HTTP requests to browser-side scripts, comes with important yet subtle security consequences. To keep users safe, it is essential for developers to confidently navigate this landscape. In The Tangled Web, Michal Zalewski, one of the world’s top browser security experts, offers a compelling narrative that explains exactly how browsers work and why they’re fundamentally insecure. Rather than dispense simplistic advice on vulnerabilities, Zalewski examines the entire browser security model, revealing weak points and providing crucial information for shoring up web application security. You’ll learn how to: –Perform common but surprisingly complex tasks such as URL parsing and HTML sanitization –Use modern security features like Strict Transport Security, Content Security Policy, and Cross-Origin Resource Sharing –Leverage many variants of the same-origin policy to safely compartmentalize complex web applications and protect user credentials in case of XSS bugs –Build mashups and embed gadgets without getting stung by the tricky frame navigation policy –Embed or host user-supplied content without running into the trap of content sniffing For quick reference, "Security Engineering Cheat Sheets" at the end of each chapter offer ready solutions to problems you’re most likely to encounter. With coverage extending as far as planned HTML5 features, The Tangled Web will help you create secure web applications that stand the test of time.

What every software professional should know about security. Designing Secure Software consolidates Loren Kohnfelder’s more than twenty years of experience into a concise, elegant guide to improving the security of technology products. Written for a wide range of software professionals, it emphasizes building security into software design early and involving the entire team in the process. The book begins with a discussion of core concepts like trust, threats, mitigation, secure design patterns, and cryptography. The second part, perhaps this book’s most unique and important contribution to the field, covers the process of designing and reviewing a software design with security considerations in mind. The final section details the most common coding flaws that create vulnerabilities, making copious use of code snippets written in C and Python to illustrate implementation vulnerabilities. You’ll learn how to: • Identify important assets, the attack surface, and the trust boundaries in a system • Evaluate the effectiveness of various threat mitigation candidates • Work with well-known secure coding patterns and libraries • Understand and prevent vulnerabilities like XSS and CSRF, memory flaws, and more • Use security testing to proactively identify vulnerabilities introduced into code • Review a software design for security flaws effectively and without judgment Kohnfelder’s career, spanning decades at Microsoft and Google, introduced numerous software security initiatives, including the co-creation of the STRIDE threat modeling framework used widely today. This book is a modern, pragmatic consolidation of his best practices, insights, and ideas about the future of software.

Howard and LeBlanc (both are security experts with Microsoft) discuss the need for security and outline its general principles before outlining secure coding techniques. Testing, installation, documentation, and error messages are also covered. Appendices discuss dangerous APIs, dismiss pathetic excuses, and provide security checklists. The book explains how systems can be attacked, uses anecdotes to illustrate common mistakes, and offers advice on making systems secure. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The authors look at the problem of bad code in a new way. Packed with advice based on the authors' decades of experience in the computer security field, this concise and highly readable book explains why so much code today is filled with vulnerabilities, and tells readers what they must do to avoid writing code that can be exploited by attackers. Writing secure code isn't easy, and there are no quick fixes to bad code. To build code that repels attack, readers need to be vigilant through each stage of the entire code lifecycle: Architecture, Design, Implementation, Testing and Operations. Beyond the technical, Secure Coding sheds new light on the economic, psychological, and sheer practical reasons why security vulnerabilities are so ubiquitous today. It presents a new way of thinking about these vulnerabilities and ways that developers can compensate for the factors that have produced such unsecured software in the past.