Fair call but isn't it also about time someone called BS on your
members for the shiny red button marketing of app scanners?
Point them at WebGoat, WebMaven, Hacme Bank and they all fail
miserably. (Note they all pass their in-house written canned test
apps though). I want to see some real test results for these
things. My results show less that 1 in 10 issues in the real world.
Thats horrible.
I say good for OWASP for sticking up for the masses and calling BS
where they see it. Please make sure you cover app scanners as well!
Some people may have been under the impression that this letter was
directed towards the "Web Application Security Consortium" (WASC)
http://www.webappsec.org. To clarify, I believe this letter was
meant
for ANOTHER group including F5, Imperva, NetContinuum, and Teros.
Specifically a challenge they sent to Check Point, Cisco, Juniper,
McAfee and Symantec. Many industry acronyms are very close.
Reference the following URL's for background.
The press release found here:
https://www.netcontinuum.com/newsroom/pressReleaseItem.cfm?uid=42
further industry coverage here:
http://news.com.com/Group+aims+to+create+hallmark+of+security/2100-
1029_3-5443154.html
and here:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041109/sftu090_1.html
Regards,
Jeremiah Grossman
On Monday, November 15, 2004, at 07:34 PM, The OWASP Project
wrote:
An Open Letter (and Challenge) to the Application Security
Consortium
Since its inception in late 2000 the Open Web Application
Security
Project (OWASP) has provided free and open tools and
documentation to
educate people about the increasing threat of insecure web
applications and web services. As a not-for-profit charitable
foundation, one of our community responsibilities is to ensure
that
fair and balanced information is available to companies and
consumers.
Our work has become recommended reading by the Federal Trade
Commission, VISA, the Defense Information Systems Agency and many
other commercial and government entities.
The newly unveiled Application Security Consortium recently
announced
a "Web Application Security Challenge" to other vendors at the
Computer Security Institute (CSI) show in Washington, D.C. This
group
of security product vendors proposes to create a new minimum
criteria
and then rate their own products against it.
The OWASP community is deeply concerned that this criteria will
mislead consumers and result in a false sense of security. In the
interest of fairness, we believe the Application Security
Consortium
should disclose what security issues their products do not
address.
As a group with a wide range of international members from
leading
financial services organizations, pharmaceutical companies,
manufacturing companies, services providers, and technology
vendors,
we are constantly reminded about the diverse range of
vulnerabilities
that are present in web applications and web services. The very
small
selection of vulnerabilities you are proposing to become a
testing
criteria are far from representative of what our members see in
the
real world and therefore do not represent a fair or suitable test
criteria. In fact, it seems quite a coincidence that the issues
you
have chosen seem to closely mirror the issues that your
technology
category is typically able to detect, while ignoring very common
vulnerabilities that cause serious problems for companies.
Robert Graham, Chief Scientist at Internet Security Systems,
recently
commented on application firewalls in an interview for CNET news.
When
asked the question "How important do you think application
firewalls
will become in the future?" his answer was "Not very."
"Let me give you an example of something that happened with me.
Not
long ago, I ordered a plasma screen online, which was to be
shipped by
a local company in Atlanta. And the company gave me a six-digit
shipping number. Accidentally, I typed in an incremental of my
shipping number (on the online tracking Web site). Now, a six-
digit
number is a small number, so of course I got someone else's user
account information. And the reason that happened was due to the
way
they've set up their user IDs, by incrementing from a six-digit
number. So here's the irony: Their system may be so
cryptographically
secure that (the) chances of an encrypted shipping number being
cracked is lower than a meteor hitting the earth and wiping out
civilization. Still, I could get at the next ID easily. There is
no
application firewall that can solve this problem. With
applications
that people are running on the Web, no amount of additive things
can
cure fundamental problems that are already there in the first
place."
This story echoes some of the fundamental beliefs and wisdom
shared by
the collective members of OWASP. Our experience shows that the
problems we face with insecure software cannot be fixed with
technology alone. Building secure software requires deep changes
in
our development culture, including people, processes, and
technology.
We challenge the members of the Application Security Consortium
to
accept a fair evaluation of their products. OWASP will work with
its
members (your customers) to create an open set of criteria that
is
representative of the web application and web services issues
found in
the real world. OWASP will then build a web application that
contains
each of these issues. The criteria and web application will be
submitted to an independent testing company to evaluate your
products.
You can submit your products to be tested against the criteria
(without having prior access to the code) on the basis that the
results are able to be published freely and will unabridged.
We believe that this kind of marketing stunt is irresponsible and
severely distracts awareness from the real issues surrounding web
application and web services security. Corporations need to
understand
that they must build better software and not seek an elusive
silver
bullet.
We urge the Consortium not to go forward with their criteria, but
to
take OWASP up on our offer to produce a meaningful standard and
test
environment that are open and free for all.
Contact: owasp@owasp.org
Website: www.owasp.org
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