Secure Coding mailing list archives
Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools
From: Gary McGraw <gem () cigital com>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 05:47:43 -0500
hi arian, Glad you liked the article. I guess my brush was a bit too wide when it comes to dynamic testing. I was really only referring to the Web application testing tools which in my mind "hit the wall" for two reasons. Reason one is that they only work over port80 and are designed to take advantage of the fact that HTTP is a stateless protocol (with a few small caveats). IMPORTANT NOTE: lots of software is not web software (sorry Jeremiah). Reason two has to do with the canned nature of the tests. The generic tests in the black box Web app testing tools are, well, generic. If your software falls prey to those tests, it sucks. IMPORTANT NOTE: Lots of software does, in fact, suck. As you probably know I call those tools "badness-ometers" and also ***suggest that everyone buy and use one***. See this ancient post (and associated informIT article) from 2007: http://www.cigital.com/justiceleague/2007/03/19/badness-ometers-are-good-do -you-own-one/ Now, there are many other kinds of dynamic testing tools (think of any kind of fault injection tool). I wrote a software engineering tome about that way back in 1998 called Software Fault Injection <http://tinyurl.com/4ao6twv>. And you are right that dynamic testing has a place. However, short of fuzzing tools generally tied to a grammar-based protocol and capture-replay tools there are not very many dynamic testing tools that work for non-Web software. Why not? Because genericizing is too hard, making the potential market for a particular tool too small. Security testing plays a key role in the Touchpoints (my own and Cigital's approach to SDLC integration) which are described in Software Security <http://swsec.com>. Hoglund and I also describe some dynamic tools that we screwed around with when writing Exploiting Software in 2004 <http://www.exploitingsoftware.com/>. I am in complete agreement that dynamic testing is important for software security. One quibble with your question. You can't push dynamic testing very far back in the SDLC, because your code has to run before you can test it dynamically. For me, way back in the SDLC means architectural risk analysis or even security requirements analysis. Sorry for the multiple invocations of the way back machine! I must be getting old. gem company www.cigital.com podcast www.cigital.com/silverbullet blog www.cigital.com/justiceleague book www.swsec.com On 2/3/11 7:26 PM, "Arian J. Evans" <arian.evans () anachronic com> wrote:
Great article, Gary. Many of your comments about static technology challenges I have seen and verified first-hand, including multi-million dollar cost overruns. After some great dialogue with John Stevens, I suspect we have had similar experiences. I was just about to write a similar article at a higher level - about how the vast majority of enterprise customers I work with are actively moving security into the SDLC. The time has come, the event has tipped, and SDLC security is indeed mainstream. This is an exciting time to be in the industry. However - I was curious about your comments about dynamic tools "reaching their limit" or something like that, as customers move security efforts deeper into the SDLC. What does that mean? I see customers making extensive use of dynamic testing, and leveraging it deeper and deeper into the SDLC. Enterprises are aggressively rolling out and expanding dynamic testing earlier in the SDLC. Newer dynamic testing technologies help solve/reduce some of the key pain points that static technologies alone are causing them, as you so well illustrated.. . I am very interested in why you sound dismissive of these successful technologies? Your article makes it sound like they are hitting some invisible limit, when in fact hundreds of enterprises are expanding dynamic testing in the SDLC. And these are serious projects that run into the 7-figures. Any insight you can share would be appreciated! Great work identifying the general shift SDLC security is moving mainstream, --- Arian Evans Software Security Referee On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 6:48 AM, Gary McGraw <gem () cigital com> wrote:hi sc-l, John Steven and I recently collaborated on an article for informIT. The article is called "Software [In]security: Comparing Apples, Oranges, and Aardvarks (or, All Static Analysis Tools Are Not Created Equal)" and is available here: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1680863 Now that static analysis tools like Fortify and Ounce are hitting the mainstream there are many potential customers who want to compare them and pick the best one. We explain why that's more difficult than it sounds at first and what to watch out for as you begin to compare tools. We did this in order to get out in front of "test suites" that purport to work for tool comparison. If you wonder why such suites may not work as advertised, read the article. Your feedback is welcome. gem company www.cigital.com podcast www.cigital.com/silverbullet blog www.cigital.com/justiceleague book www.swsec.com _______________________________________________ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L () securecoding org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. Follow KRvW Associates on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/KRvW_Associates _______________________________________________
_______________________________________________ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L () securecoding org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. Follow KRvW Associates on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/KRvW_Associates _______________________________________________
Current thread:
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools, (continued)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Prasad N Shenoy (Feb 04)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Arian J. Evans (Feb 04)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Chris Wysopal (Feb 04)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Chris Eng (Feb 04)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Jim Manico (Feb 04)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Chris Eng (Feb 05)
- free and open online secure coding in C course module Robert Seacord (Feb 04)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Chris Wysopal (Feb 04)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Gary McGraw (Feb 04)
- Re: InformIT: comparing static analysis tools Jeremiah Grossman (Feb 04)