Chicago (June 15, 2010) -Security experts from Trustwave, the leading provider of information security and compliance solutions, will deliver briefings at OWASP AppSec Research 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden, June 21-24. The presentations will be delivered by members of SpiderLabs®, the advanced security team at Trustwave responsible for incident response and forensics, penetration testing and application security and security research.
Charles Henderson and David Byrne will present Automated vs. Manual Security: You Can't Filter the Stupid, which will look at the deficiencies in only using automated tools to test application security.
Both Henderson and Byrne have spent many years looking at failures in application security that have led to compromises. Using the information from research and forensic investigations, they will provide real-world examples to illustrate the relative strengths and weaknesses of automated solutions and manual techniques.
Automated tools are capable of detecting simple vulnerabilities and performing highly repetitive tasks. However, there are entire classes of complicated vulnerabilities that are theoretically impossible for automated software to detect due to inherent authorization and logic flaws.
Logic flaws are errors in the intended way in which an application should behave. These flaws cannot be detected with automated tools because they don't understand human logic. A manual test conducted by a security expert is able to pick off unique errors, logic flaws and authorization flaws that automated tools have a difficult time finding. Without actual human testing of an application, attackers are able to evade the system and access information meant only for network administrators. Today, businesses have exhausted automated tools, leaving business logic flaws unaccounted for resulting in an open door for attackers to compromise major applications.
Steve Ocepek and Wendel G. Henrique will deliver, Owning Oracle: Sessions and Credentials, which will demonstrate security issues associated with the default, unencrypted nature of database protocols. As database users perform legitimate queries, information is often transmitted in clear text, easily readable by attackers with access to the data. Using common man-in-the-middle attacks, this presentation will demonstrate how an attacker can downgrade the authentication mechanism, obtain leaked operating system (OS) credentials, and hijack sessions to issue their own queries.
Using a new proof-of-concept tool, thicknet, Ocepek and Henrique demonstrate this approach by gaining unauthorized access to Oracle, the most deployed relational database in the world. Using this new man-in-the-middle tool, the team will demonstrate stealing credentials using downgrade techniques, which enables an attacker to specify a weaker encryption algorithm to decrypt credentials offline. The team will also use the tool to take over existing sessions using TCP hijacking, which enables an attacker to participate in a communication stream between a legitimate user and the database. Both methods ultimately allow an attacker to view data and manipulate configuration, as well as perform their own queries in order to obtain information such as credit card data, customer and partner data, proprietary information and more.
"We're proud to have four members of SpiderLabs speak at the leading Web application security research conference, where we can share our findings with other thought-leaders to help better secure the threat landscape," says Robert J. McCullen, chairman and CEO of Trustwave. "As businesses continue to migrate to e-commerce, it's critical that application security experts are aware of new flaws and attacks to ensure they're implementing the latest methods to help protect sensitive data."
"Our Global Security Report finds that a variety of attacks continue to compromise Web-based, database-driven applications," says Nicholas J. Percoco, senior vice president of SpiderLabs. "It's clear that application security has to be accounted for during the development process before taking an application live. This conference will help educate developers and experts in this space about the latest vulnerabilities and how to protect against them."
About Trustwave
Trustwave is a leading provider of on-demand and subscription-based information security and payment card industry compliance management solutions to businesses and government entities throughout the world. For organizations faced with today's challenging data security and compliance environment, Trustwave provides a unique approach with comprehensive solutions that include its flagship TrustKeeper® compliance management software and other proprietary security solutions including SIEM , WAF , EV SSL certificates and secure digital certificates . Trustwave has helped hundreds of thousands of organizations-ranging from Fortune 500 businesses and large financial institutions to small and medium-sized retailers-manage compliance and secure their network infrastructures, data communications and critical information assets. Trustwave is headquartered in Chicago with offices throughout North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. For more information, visit https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/.