Application Security Weekly (Video)
Manual secure code reviews can be tedious and time intensive if you're just going through checklists. There's plenty of room for linters and compilers and all the grep-like tools to find flaws. Louis Nyffenegger describes the steps of a successful code review process. It's a process that starts with understanding code, which can even benefit from an LLM assistant, and then applies that understanding to a search for developer patterns that lead to common mistakes like mishandling data, not enforcing a control flow, or not defending against unexpected application states. He explains how finding...
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
Fuzzing has been one of the most successful ways to improve software quality. And it demonstrates how improving software quality improves security. Artur Cygan shares his experience in building and applying fuzzers to barcode scanners, smart contracts, and just about any code you can imagine. We go through the useful relationship between unit tests and fuzzing coverage, nudging fuzzers into deeper code paths, and how LLMs can help guide a fuzzer into using better inputs for its testing. Resources Show Notes:
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
What makes a threat modeling process effective? Do you need a long list of threat actors? Do you need a long list of terms? What about a short list like STRIDE? Has an effective process ever come out of a list? Farshad Abasi joins our discussion as we explain why the answer to most of those questions is No and describe the kinds of approaches that are more conducive to useful threat models. Resources: In the news, learning from outage postmortems, an EchoLeak image speaks a 1,000 words from Microsoft 365 Copilot, TokenBreak attack targets tokenizing techniques, Google's layered strategy...
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
CISA has been championing Secure by Design principles. Many of the principles are universal, like adopting MFA and having opinionated defaults that reduce the need for hardening guides. Matthew Rogers talks about how the approach to Secure by Design has to be tailored for Operational Technology (OT) systems. These systems have strict requirements on safety and many of them rely on protocols that are four (or more!) decades old. He explains how the considerations in this space go far beyond just memory safety concerns. Segment Resources: Show Notes:
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
The recent popularity of MCPs is surpassed only by the recent examples deficiencies of their secure design. The most obvious challenge is how MCPs, and many more general LLM use cases, have erased two decades of security principles behind separating code and data. We take a look at how developers are using LLMs to generate code and continue our search for where LLMs are providing value to appsec. We also consider what indicators we'd look for as signs of success. For example, are LLMs driving useful commits to overburdened open source developers? Are LLMs climbing the ranks of bug bounty...
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
ArmorCode unveils Anya—the first agentic AI virtual security champion designed specifically for AppSec and product security teams. Anya brings together conversation and context to help AppSec, developers and security teams cut through the noise, prioritize risks, and make faster, smarter decisions across code, cloud, and infrastructure. Built into the ArmorCode ASPM Platform and backed by 25B findings, 285+ integrations, natural language intelligence, and role-aware insights, Anya turns complexity into clarity, helping teams scale securely and close the security skills gap. Anya is now...
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
In the news, Coinbase deals with bribes and insider threat, the NCSC notes the cross-cutting problem of incentivizing secure design, we cover some research that notes the multitude of definitions for secure design, and discuss the new Cybersecurity Skills Framework from the OpenSSF and Linux Foundation. Then we share two more sponsored interviews from this year's RSAC Conference. With more types of identities, machines, and agents trying to access increasingly critical data and resources, across larger numbers of devices, organizations will be faced with managing this added complexity and...
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
Developers are relying on LLMs as coding assistants, so where are the LLM assistants for appsec? The principles behind secure code reviews don't really change based on who write the code, whether human or AI. But more code means more reasons for appsec to scale its practices and figure out how to establish trust in code, packages, and designs. Rey Bango shares his experience with secure code reviews and where developer education fits in among the adoption of LLMs. As businesses rapidly embrace SaaS and AI-powered applications at an unprecedented rate, many small-to-medium sized businesses...
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
We catch up on news after a week of BSidesSF and RSAC Conference. Unsurprisingly, AI in all its flavors, from agentic to gen, was inescapable. But perhaps more surprising (and more unfortunate) is how much the adoption of LLMs has increased the attack surface within orgs. The news is heavy on security issues from MCPs and a novel alignment bypass against LLMs. Not everything is genAI as we cover some secure design topics from the Airborne attack against Apple's AirPlay to more calls for companies to show how they're embracing secure design principles and practices. Apiiro CEO & Co-Founder,...
info_outlineApplication Security Weekly (Video)
In this live recording from BSidesSF we explore the factors that influence a secure design, talk about how to avoid the bite of UX dragons, and why designs should put classes of vulns into dungeons. But we can't threat model a secure design forever and we can't oversimplify guidance for a design to be "more secure". Kalyani Pawar and Jack Cable join the discussion to provide advice on evaluating secure designs through examples of strong and weak designs we've seen over the years. We highlight the importance of designing systems to serve users and consider what it means to have a secure design...
info_outlineFuzzing has been one of the most successful ways to improve software quality. And it demonstrates how improving software quality improves security. Artur Cygan shares his experience in building and applying fuzzers to barcode scanners, smart contracts, and just about any code you can imagine. We go through the useful relationship between unit tests and fuzzing coverage, nudging fuzzers into deeper code paths, and how LLMs can help guide a fuzzer into using better inputs for its testing.
Resources
- https://blog.trailofbits.com/2024/10/31/fuzzing-between-the-lines-in-popular-barcode-software/
- https://github.com/crytic/echidna
- https://github.com/crytic/medusa
- https://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thin-air.html
Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-336