We look into the supply chain saga of the XZ Utils backdoor. It's a wild story of a carefully planned long con to add malicious code to a commonly used package that many SSH connections rely on. It hits themes from social engineering and abuse of trust to obscuring the changes and suppressing warnings. It also has a few lessons about software devel…

Sometimes infosec problems can be summarized succinctly, like "patching is hard". Sometimes a succinct summary sounds convincing, but is based on old data, irrelevant data, or made up data. Adrian Sanabria walks through some of the archeological work he's done to dig up the source of some myths. We talk about some of our favorite (as in most dislik…

One of the biggest failures in appsec is an attitude that blames users for security problems. A lot of processes and workflows break down because of an insecure design or insecure defaults. Benedek Gagyi chats with us about the impact of the user experience (UX) on security and why it's not only important to understand how to make a user's life eas…

Lots of companies need cybersecurity programs, as do non-profits. Tyler Von Moll talks about how to get small organizations started on security and how to prioritize initial investments. While an appsec program likely isn't going to be one of the first steps, it's going to be an early one. What decisions can you make at the start that will benefit …

A majority of internet traffic now originates from APIs, and cybercriminals are taking advantage. Increasingly, APIs are used as a common attack vector because they’re a direct pathway to access sensitive data. In this discussion, Lebin Cheng shares what API attack trends Imperva, a Thales Company has observed over the past year, and what steps org…

The need for vuln management programs has been around since the first bugs -- but lots of programs remain stuck in the past. We talk about the traps to avoid in VM programs, the easy-to-say yet hard-to-do foundations that VM programs need, and smarter ways to approach vulns based in modern app development. We also explore the ecosystem of acronyms …

Farshad Abasi joins us again to talk about creating a new OWASP project, the Secure Pipeline Verification Standard. (Bonus points for not being a top ten list!) We talk about what it takes to pitch a new project and the problems that this new project is trying to solve. For this kind of project to be successful -- as in making a positive impact to …

Check out this interview from the ASW Vault, hand picked by main host Mike Shema! This segment was originally published on Dec 13, 2022. Threat modeling is an important part of a security program, but as companies grow you will choose which features you want to threat model or become a bottleneck. What if I told you, you can have your cake and eat …

We've been scanning code for decades. Sometimes scanning works well -- it finds meaningful flaws to fix. Sometimes it distracts us with false positives. Sometimes it burdens us with too many issues. We talk about finding a scanning strategy that works well and what the definition of "works well" should even be. Segment Resources: https://www.lacewo…

We can't talk about OWASP without talking about lists, but we go beyond the lists to talk about a product security framework. Grant shares his insights on what makes lists work (and not work). More importantly, he shares the work he's doing to spearhead a new OWASP project to help scale the creation of appsec programs, whether you're on your own or…

We return to the practice of presentations, this time with a perspective from a conference organizer. And we have tons of questions! What makes a topic stand out? How can an old, boring topic be given new life? How do you prepare as a first-time presenter? What can conferences do to foster better presentations and new voices? Segment resources: htt…

Where apps provide something of value, bots are sure to follow. Modern threat models need to include scenarios for bad bots that not only target user credentials, but that will also hoard inventory and increase fraud. Sandy shares her recent research as we talk about bots, API security, and what developers can do to deal with these. Segment resourc…

It's time to start thinking about CFPs and presentations for 2024! Eve shares advice on delivering technical topics so that an audience can understand the points you want to make. Then we show how developing these presentation skills for conferences helps with presentations within orgs and why these are useful skills to build for your career. Visit…

We kick off the new year with a discussion of what we're looking forward to and what we're not looking forward to. Then we pick our favorite responses to "appsec in three words" and set our sights on a new theme for 2024. In the news, 23andMe shifts blame to users for poor password practices, abusing Google's OAuth2 through a MultiLogin endpoint, R…

HTTP RFCs have evolved: A Cloudflare view of HTTP usage trends, Career Advice and Professional Development, Active Exploitation of Confluence CVE-2022-26134 Visit https://securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/secweekly Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly Show Notes: htt…

We will provide a short introduction to OWASP SAMM, which is a flagship OWASP project allowing organizations to bootstrap and iteratively improve their secure software practice in a measurable way. Seba will explain the SAMM model, consisting of 15 security practices. Every security practice contains a set of activities, structured into 3 maturity …

Service meshes create the opportunity to make security a team sport. They can improve observability and service identity. Turning monoliths into micro services sounds appealing, but maybe not every monolith needs to be broken up. We'll also talk about the maturity and design choices that go into service meshes and when a monolith should just remain…

We have a lot of questions about standards. How do standards emerge? How do standards encourage adoption? How do they stay relevant as development patterns change and security threats evolve? We have standards for web appsec (HTML, HTTP), all sorts of protocols, and all sorts of authentication (OAuth, OpenID). Learning how these standards come abou…

We cover appsec news on a weekly basis, but sometimes that news is merely about the start of a new project, sometimes it's yet another example of a vuln class, and sometimes it's a topic we hope doesn't become a trend. So, what themes have we seen and where do we see them going? Here are a few headline topics that have alternately generated yays an…

This year we've talked about vulns, clouds, breaches, presentations, and all the variations of Dev, Sec, and Ops. As we end the year, let's talk about starting things -- like starting an appsec program or an appsec career. But is there still a need for an appsec team? Or has it turned into specializations for areas like cloud security and bug bount…

Firmware security is complex and continues to be an industry challenge. In this podcast we'll talk about the reasons firmware security remains a challenge and some best practices around platform security. Segment Resources: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/04/27/firmware-blind-spots/ https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/09/28/hardware-security-…

In the rapidly evolving landscape of application security, 2023 brought significant changes with the rise of generative AI tools and an increase in automated threats. In this discussion, Karl Triebes takes a deep dive into the major trends of the past year, examining their impact on the industry and shedding light on what security professionals can…

A lot of appsec conferences have presentations for appsec audiences -- but that's not often the group that's building apps. What if more developer conferences had appsec content? We talk with Josh about security from the developer's point of view, both as an audience hearing about it and as a presenter talking about it. We discuss the importance of…

The categories of security tools that we're most familiar with have struggled to keep up with how modern apps are designed and what modern devs need. What if instead of being beholden to categories, we created tools that solved problems devs have today in the types of apps they build today? And what if we had more dev leadership to influence securi…

We return to discussions of OAuth and all sorts of authentication. This time around we're looking at the design of authentication protocols, the kinds of trade-offs they weigh for adoption and security, and how a standard evolves over time to keep pace with new attacks and put to rest old mistakes. Segment resources: https://fusionauth.io/docs/v1/t…