[Owasp-Pune] [Owasp-Mumbai] Security Principles
r4y
secureas at gmail.com
Thu Apr 10 14:49:38 EDT 2008
Hi all
Please see attached.. if it helps you in any way.. I personally find it very
useful to refer to it from time to time
Amit
On 10/04/2008, Dharmesh Mehta <dharmeshmm at owasp.org> wrote:
>
> From J.D. Meier
>
>
> If you know the underlying principles for security, you can be more
> effective in your security design. While working on Improving Web
> Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures<http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994921.aspx>,
> my team focused on creating a durable set of security principles. The
> challenge was to make the principles more useful. It's one thing to know
> the principles, but another to turn it into action.
>
> *Turning Insights Into Action*
>
> To make the principles more useful, we organized them using our Security
> Frame <http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/pages/security-frame.aspx>. Our
> Security Frame is a set of actionable, relevant categories that shape your
> key engineering and deployment decisions. With the Security Frame we could
> quickly find principles related to authentication, or authorization or input
> validation ... etc.
>
> Once we had these principles and this organizing frame, we could then
> evaluate technologies against it to find effective, principle-based
> techniques. For example, when we analyzed doing input and data validation
> in ASP.NET <http://asp.net/>, we focused on finding the best ways to
> constrain, reject, and sanitize input. For constraining input, we focused
> on checking for length, range, format and type. Using these strategies both
> shortened our learning curve and improved our results.
>
> *Core Security Principles*
>
> We started with a firm foundation of core security principles. These
> influenced the rest of our security design principles. Here's the core
> security principles we started with:
>
> - *Adopt the principle of least privilege - *Processes that run
> script or execute code should run under a least privileged account to limit
> the potential damage that can be done if the process is compromised
> - *Use defense in depth*. Place check points within each of the
> layers and subsystems within your application. The check points are the
> gatekeepers that ensure that only authenticated and authorized users are
> able to access the next downstream layer.
> - *Don't trust user input.* Applications should thoroughly validate
> all user input before performing operations with that input. The validation
> may include filtering out special characters.
> - *Use secure defaults*. If your application demands features that
> force you to reduce or change default security settings, test the effects
> and understand the implications before making the change
> - *Don't rely on security by obscurity*. Trying to hide secrets by
> using misleading variable names or storing them in odd file locations does
> not provide security. In a game of hide-and-seek, it's better to use
> platform features or proven techniques for securing your data.
> - *Check at the gate*. Checking the client at the gate refers to
> authorizing the user at the first point of authentication (for example,
> within the Web application on the Web server), and determining which
> resources and operations (potentially provided by downstream services) the
> user should be allowed to access.
> - *Assume external systems are insecure*. If you don't own it,
> don't assume security is taken care of for you.
> - *Reduce Surface Area* Avoid exposing information that is not
> required. By doing so, you are potentially opening doors that can lead to
> additional vulnerabilities. Also, handle errors gracefully; don't expose any
> more information than is required when returning an error message to the end
> user.
> - *Fail to a secure mode*. your application fails, make sure it
> does not leave sensitive data unprotected. Also, do not provide too much
> detail in error messages; meaning don't include details that could help an
> attacker exploit a vulnerability in your application. Write detailed error
> information to the Windows event log.
> - *Security is a concern across all of your application layers and
> tiers*. Remember you are only as secure as your weakest link.
> - *If you don't use it, disable it*. You can remove potential
> points of attack by disabling modules and components that your application
> does not require. For example, if your application doesn't use output
> caching, then you should disable the ASP.NET <http://asp.net/>output cache module. If a future security vulnerability is found in the
> module, your application is not threatened.
>
> *Frame for Organizing Security Design Principles*
>
> Rather than a laundry list of security principles, you can use the
> Security Frame as a way to organize and share security principles:
>
> - Auditing and Logging
> - Authentication
> - Authorization
> - Configuration Management
> - Cryptography
> - Exception Management
> - Input / Data Validation
> - Sensitive Data
> - Session Management
>
> *Auditing and Logging*
>
> Here's our security design principles for auditing and logging:
>
> - *Audit and log access across application tiers*. Audit and log
> access across the tiers of your application for non-repudiation. Use a
> combination of application-level logging and platform auditing features,
> such as Windows, IIS, and SQL Server auditing.
> - *Consider identity flow*. You have two basic choices. You can
> flow the caller's identity at the operating system level or you can flow the
> caller's identity at the application level and use trusted identities to
> access back-end resources.
> - *Log key events*. The types of events that should be logged
> include successful and failed logon attempts, modification of data,
> retrieval of data, network communications, and administrative functions such
> as the enabling or disabling of logging. Logs should include the time of the
> event, the location of the event including the machine name, the identity of
> the current user, the identity of the process initiating the event, and a
> detailed description of the event
> - *Protect log files.* Protect log files using access control
> lists and restrict access to the log files. This makes it more difficult for
> attackers to tamper with log files to cover their tracks. Minimize the
> number of individuals who can manipulate the log files. Authorize access
> only to highly trusted accounts such as administrators.
> - *Back up and analyze log files regularly*. There's no point in
> logging activity if the log files are never analyzed. Log files should be
> removed from production servers on a regular basis. The frequency of removal
> is dependent upon your application's level of activity. Your design should
> consider the way that log files will be retrieved and moved to offline
> servers for analysis. Any additional protocols and ports opened on the Web
> server for this purpose must be securely locked down.
>
> *Authentication*
>
> Here's our security design principles for authentication:
>
> - *Separate public and restricted areas*. A public area of your
> site can be accessed by any user anonymously. Restricted areas can be
> accessed only by specific individuals and the users must authenticate with
> the site. By partitioning your site into public and restricted access
> areas, you can apply separate authentication and authorization rules across
> the site.
> - *Use account lockout policies for end-user accounts*. Disable
> end-user accounts or write events to a log after a set number of failed
> logon attempts. With Forms authentication, these policies are the
> responsibility of the application and must be incorporated into the
> application design. Be careful that account lockout policies cannot be
> abused in denial of service attacks.
> - *Support password expiration periods*. Passwords should not be
> static and should be changed as part of routine password maintenance through
> password expiration periods. Consider providing this type of facility during
> application design.
> - *Be able to disable accounts*. If the system is compromised,
> being able to deliberately invalidate credentials or disable accounts can
> prevent additional attacks.
> - *Do not store passwords in user stores*. If you must verify
> passwords, it is not necessary to actually store the passwords. Instead,
> store a one way hash value and then re-compute the hash using the
> user-supplied passwords. To mitigate the threat of dictionary attacks
> against the user store, use strong passwords and incorporate a random salt
> value with the password.
> - *Require strong passwords*. Do not make it easy for attackers to
> crack passwords. There are many guidelines available, but a general practice
> is to require a minimum of eight characters and a mixture of uppercase and
> lowercase characters, numbers, and special characters. Whether you are using
> the platform to enforce these for you, or you are developing your own
> validation, this step is necessary to counter brute-force attacks where an
> attacker tries to crack a password through systematic trial and error. Use
> regular expressions to help with strong password validation.
> - *Do not send passwords over the wire in plaintext*. Plaintext
> passwords sent over a network are vulnerable to eavesdropping. To address
> this threat, secure the communication channel, for example, by using SSL to
> encrypt the traffic.
> - *Protect authentication cookies*. A stolen authentication cookie
> is a stolen logon. Protect authentication tickets using encryption and
> secure communication channels. Also limit the time interval in which an
> authentication ticket remains valid, to counter the spoofing threat that can
> result from replay attacks, where an attacker captures the cookie and uses
> it to gain illicit access to your site. Reducing the cookie timeout does not
> prevent replay attacks but it does limit the amount of time the attacker has
> to access the site using the stolen cookie.
>
> *Authorization*
>
> Here's our security design principles for authorization:
>
> - *Use multiple gatekeepers.* By combining multiple gatekeepers
> across layers and tiers, you can develop an effective authorization
> strategy.
> - *Restrict user access to system-level resources*. System level
> resources include files, folders, registry keys, Active Directory objects,
> database objects, event logs, and so on. Use access control lists to
> restrict which users can access what resources and the types of operations
> that they can perform. Pay particular attention to anonymous Internet user
> accounts; lock these down on resources that explicitly deny access to
> anonymous users.
> - *Consider authorization granularity*. There are three common
> authorization models, each with varying degrees of granularity and
> scalability: (1.) the impersonation model providing per end user
> authorization granularity, (2.) the trusted subsystem model uses the
> application's process identity for resource access, and (3.) the hybrid
> model uses multiple trusted service identities for downstream resource
> access. The most granular approach relies on impersonation. The
> impersonation model provides per end user authorization granularity.
>
> *Configuration Management*
>
> Here's our security design principles for configuration management:
>
> - *Protect your administration interfaces*. It is important that
> configuration management functionality is accessible only by authorized
> operators and administrators. A key part is to enforce strong authentication
> over your administration interfaces, for example, by using certificates. If
> possible, limit or avoid the use of remote administration and require
> administrators to log on locally. If you need to support remote
> administration, use encrypted channels, for example, with SSL or VPN
> technology, because of the sensitive nature of the data passed over
> administrative interfaces.
> - *Protect your configuration store*. Text-based configuration
> files, the registry, and databases are common options for storing
> application configuration data. If possible, avoid using configuration files
> in the application's Web space to prevent possible server configuration
> vulnerabilities resulting in the download of configuration files. Whatever
> approach you use, secure access to the configuration store, for example, by
> using access control lists or database permissions. Also avoid storing
> plaintext secrets such as database connection strings or account
> credentials. Secure these items using encryption and then restrict access to
> the registry key, file, or table that contains the encrypted data.
> - *Maintain separate administration privileges*. If the
> functionality supported by the features of your application's configuration
> management varies based on the role of the administrator, consider
> authorizing each role separately by using role-based authorization. For
> example, the person responsible for updating a site's static content should
> not necessarily be allowed to change a customer's credit limit.
> - *Use least privileged process and service accounts*. An important
> aspect of your application's configuration is the process accounts used to
> run the Web server process and the service accounts used to access
> downstream resources and systems. Make sure these accounts are set up as
> least privileged. If an attacker manages to take control of a process, the
> process identity should have very restricted access to the file system and
> other system resources to limit the damage that can be done.
>
> *Cryptography *
>
> Here's our security design principles for cryptography:
>
> - *Do not develop your own cryptography*. Cryptographic algorithms
> and routines are notoriously difficult to develop successfully. As a result,
> you should use the tried and tested cryptographic services provided by the
> platform.
> - *Keep unencrypted data close to the algorithm*. When passing
> plaintext to an algorithm, do not obtain the data until you are ready to use
> it, and store it in as few variables as possible.
> - *Use the correct algorithm and correct key size*. It is
> important to make sure you choose the right algorithm for the right job and
> to make sure you use a key size that provides a sufficient degree of
> security. Larger key sizes generally increase security. The following list
> summarizes the major algorithms together with the key sizes that each uses:
> Data Encryption Standard (DES) 64-bit key (8 bytes) , TripleDES 128-bit key
> or 192-bit key (16 or 24 bytes) , Rijndael 128–256 bit keys (16–32 bytes) ,
> RSA 384–16,384 bit keys (48–2,048 bytes) . For large data encryption, use
> the TripleDES symmetric encryption algorithm. For slower and stronger
> encryption of large data, use Rijndael. To encrypt data that is to be stored
> for short periods of time, you can consider using a faster but weaker
> algorithm such as DES. For digital signatures, use Rivest, Shamir, and
> Adleman (RSA) or Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). For hashing, use the
> Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)1.0. For keyed hashes, use the Hash-based Message
> Authentication Code (HMAC) SHA1.0.
> - *Protect your encryption keys*. An encryption key is a secret
> number used as input to the encryption and decryption processes. For
> encrypted data to remain secure, the key must be protected. If an attacker
> compromises the decryption key, your encrypted data is no longer secure.
> Avoid key management when you can, and when you do need to store encryption
> keys, cycle your keys periodically.
>
> *Exception Management *
>
> Here's our security design principles for exception management:
>
> - *Do not leak information to the client*. In the event of a
> failure, do not expose information that could lead to information
> disclosure. For example, do not expose stack trace details that include
> function names and line numbers in the case of debug builds (which should
> not be used on production servers). Instead, return generic error messages
> to the client.
> - *Log detailed error messages*. Send detailed error messages to
> the error log. Send minimal information to the consumer of your service or
> application, such as a generic error message and custom error log ID that
> can subsequently be mapped to detailed message in the event logs. Make sure
> that you do not log passwords or other sensitive data.
> - *Catch exceptions*. Use structured exception handling and catch
> exception conditions. Doing so avoids leaving your application in an
> inconsistent state that may lead to information disclosure. It also helps
> protect your application from denial of service attacks. Decide how to
> propagate exceptions internally in your application and give special
> consideration to what occurs at the application boundary.
>
> *Input / Data Validation *
>
> Here's our security design principles for input and data validation:
>
> - *Assume all input is malicious*. Input validation starts with a
> fundamental supposition that all input is malicious until proven otherwise.
> Whether input comes from a service, a file share, a user, or a database,
> validate your input if the source is outside your trust boundary.
> - *Centralize your approach*. Make your input validation strategy a
> core element of your application design. Consider a centralized approach to
> validation, for example, by using common validation and filtering code in
> shared libraries. This ensures that validation rules are applied
> consistently. It also reduces development effort and helps with future
> maintenance. In many cases, individual fields require specific validation,
> for example, with specifically developed regular expressions. However, you
> can frequently factor out common routines to validate regularly used fields
> such as e-mail addresses, titles, names, postal addresses including ZIP or
> postal codes, and so on.
> - *Do not rely on client-side validation*. Server-side code should
> perform its own validation. What if an attacker bypasses your client, or
> shuts off your client-side script routines, for example, by disabling
> JavaScript? Use client-side validation to help reduce the number of round
> trips to the server but do not rely on it for security. This is an example
> of defense in depth.
> - *Be careful with canonicalization issues*. Data in canonical
> form is in its most standard or simplest form. Canonicalization is the
> process of converting data to its canonical form. File paths and URLs are
> particularly prone to canonicalization issues and many well-known exploits
> are a direct result of canonicalization bugs. You should generally try to
> avoid designing applications that accept input file names from the user to
> avoid canonicalization issues.
> - *Constrain, reject, and sanitize your input*. The preferred
> approach to validating input is to constrain what you allow from the
> beginning. It is much easier to validate data for known valid types,
> patterns, and ranges than it is to validate data by looking for known bad
> characters. When you design your application, you know what your application
> expects. The range of valid data is generally a more finite set than
> potentially malicious input. However, for defense in depth you may also want
> to reject known bad input and then sanitize the input.
> - *Encrypt sensitive cookie state*. Cookies may contain sensitive
> data such as session identifiers or data that is used as part of the
> server-side authorization process. To protect this type of data from
> unauthorized manipulation, use cryptography to encrypt the contents of the
> cookie.
> - *Make sure that users do not bypass your checks*. Make sure that
> users do not bypass your checks by manipulating parameters. URL parameters
> can be manipulated by end users through the browser address text box. For
> example, the URL http://www.<*YourSite*>/<*YourApp*>/sessionId=10<http://www.%3cyoursite%3e/%3cYourApp%3e/sessionId=10>has a value of 10 that can be changed to some random number to receive
> different output. Make sure that you check this in server-side code, not in
> client-side JavaScript, which can be disabled in the browser.
> - *Validate all values sent from the client.* Restrict the fields
> that the user can enter and modify and validate all values coming from the
> client. If you have predefined values in your form fields, users can change
> them and post them back to receive different results. Permit only known good
> values wherever possible. For example, if the input field is for a state,
> only inputs matching a state postal code should be permitted.
> - *Do not trust HTTP header information*. HTTP headers are sent at
> the start of HTTP requests and HTTP responses. Your Web application should
> make sure it does not base any security decision on information in the HTTP
> headers because it is easy for an attacker to manipulate the header. For
> example, the *referrer *field in the header contains the URL of the
> Web page from where the request originated. Do not make any security
> decisions based on the value of the referrer field, for example, to check
> whether the request originated from a page generated by the Web application,
> because the field is easily falsified.
>
> *Sensitive Data *
>
> Here's our security design principles for sensitive data:
>
> - *Do not store secrets if you can avoid it.* Storing secrets in
> software in a completely secure fashion is not possible. An administrator,
> who has physical access to the server, can access the data. For example, it
> is not necessary to store a secret when all you need to do is verify whether
> a user knows the secret. In this case, you can store a hash value that
> represents the secret and compute the hash using the user-supplied value to
> verify whether the user knows the secret.
> - *Do not store secrets in code*. Do not hard code secrets in code.
> Even if the source code is not exposed on the Web server, it is possible to
> extract string constants from compiled executable files. A configuration
> vulnerability may allow an attacker to retrieve the executable.
> - *Do not store database connections, passwords, or keys in
> plaintext*. Avoid storing secrets such as database connection
> strings, passwords, and keys in plaintext. Use encryption and store
> encrypted strings.
> - *Avoid storing secrets in the Local Security Authority (LSA)*.
> Avoid the LSA because your application requires administration privileges to
> access it. This violates the core security principle of running with least
> privilege. Also, the LSA can store secrets in only a restricted number of
> slots. A better approach is to use DPAPI.
> - *Use Data Protection API (DPAPI) for encrypting secrets*. To
> store secrets such as database connection strings or service account
> credentials, use DPAPI. The main advantage to using DPAPI is that the
> platform system manages the encryption/decryption key and it is not an issue
> for the application. The key is either tied to a Windows user account or to
> a specific computer, depending on flags passed to the DPAPI functions.
> DPAPI is best suited for encrypting information that can be manually
> recreated when the master keys are lost, for example, because a damaged
> server requires an operating system re-install. Data that cannot be
> recovered because you do not know the plaintext value, for example, customer
> credit card details, require an alternate approach that uses traditional
> symmetric key-based cryptography such as the use of triple-DES.
> - *Retrieve sensitive data on demand*. The preferred approach is
> to retrieve sensitive data on demand when it is needed instead of persisting
> or caching it in memory. For example, retrieve the encrypted secret when it
> is needed, decrypt it, use it, and then clear the memory (variable) used to
> hold the plaintext secret. If performance becomes an issue, consider caching
> along with potential security implications.
> - *Encrypt the data or secure the communication channel*. If you
> are sending sensitive data over the network to the client, encrypt the data
> or secure the channel. A common practice is to use SSL between the client
> and Web server. Between servers, an increasingly common approach is to use
> IPSec. For securing sensitive data that flows through several
> intermediaries, for example, Web service Simple Object Access Protocol
> (SOAP) messages, use message level encryption.
> - *Do not store sensitive data in persistent cookies*. Avoid
> storing sensitive data in persistent cookies. If you store plaintext data,
> the end user is able to see and modify the data. If you encrypt the data,
> key management can be a problem. For example, if the key used to encrypt the
> data in the cookie has expired and been recycled, the new key cannot decrypt
> the persistent cookie passed by the browser from the client.
> - *Do not pass sensitive data using the HTTP-GET protocol*. You
> should avoid storing sensitive data using the HTTP-GET protocol because the
> protocol uses query strings to pass data. Sensitive data cannot be secured
> using query strings and query strings are often logged by the server
>
> *Session Management *
>
> Here's our security design principles for session management:
>
> - *Use SSL to protect session authentication cookies*. Do not pass
> authentication cookies over HTTP connections. Set the secure cookie property
> within authentication cookies, which instructs browsers to send cookies back
> to the server only over HTTPS connections.
> - *Encrypt the contents of the authentication cookies*. Encrypt
> the cookie contents even if you are using SSL. This prevents an attacker
> viewing or modifying the cookie if he manages to steal it through an XSS
> attack. In this event, the attacker could still use the cookie to access
> your application, but only while the cookie remains valid.
> - *Limit session lifetime*. Reduce the lifetime of sessions to
> mitigate the risk of session hijacking and replay attacks. The shorter the
> session, the less time an attacker has to capture a session cookie and use
> it to access your application.
> - *Protect session state from unauthorized access*. Consider how
> session state is to be stored. For optimum performance, you can store
> session state in the Web application's process address space. However, this
> approach has limited scalability and implications in Web farm scenarios,
> where requests from the same user cannot be guaranteed to be handled by the
> same server. You should secure the network link from the Web application to
> state store using IPSec or SSL to mitigate the risk of eavesdropping. Also
> consider how the Web application is to be authenticated by the state store.
> Use Windows authentication where possible to avoid passing plaintext
> authentication credentials across the network and to benefit from secure
> Windows account policies.
>
> *Using the Security Design Principles*
>
> This is simply a baseline set of principles so that you don't have to
> start from scratch. You can build on this set and tailor for your specific
> context. I find that while having a set of principles helps, that you can't
> stop there. To share the knowledge and help others use the information,
> it's important to encapsulate the principles in patterns as well as show
> concrete examples and create precise, actionable guidelines for developers.
> Personally, I've found Wikis to be the most effective way to share and
> manage the information.
>
> *Additional Resources*
>
> - patterns & practices Improving Web Application Security<http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994921.aspx>(MSDN)
> - patterns & practices Security Engineering Explained<http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998382.aspx>(MSDN)
> - Security Design Principles<http://www.guidanceshare.com/wiki/Security_Design_Principles>(Guidance Share)
>
> *My Related Posts*
>
> - Security Frame<http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/pages/security-frame.aspx>
> - How To Use Guidance Explorer to Do a Security Code Inspection<http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2007/12/13/how-to-use-guidance-explorer-to-do-a-security-code-inspection.aspx>
> - Guidance Share Sweep<http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2008/01/02/guidance-share-sweep.aspx>
>
>
> View article...<http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2008/04/07/security-principles.aspx>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OWASP-Mumbai mailing list
> OWASP-Mumbai at lists.owasp.org
> https://lists.owasp.org/mailman/listinfo/owasp-mumbai
>
>
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