RE: Finally - Curphey award 2004 to SPI Dynamics

["Madsen, Villy" <Villy.Madsen () atcoitek com>]

Jan

Thank YOU!!!!!

It's amazing how a single word will change everything!!!

As they say in the military for : I also feel that providing a standard
tool that they can use to filter input is a bad thing.
         Read  I also feel that providing a standard tool that they can
use to filter input is NOT a bad thing.

It would make things a lot easier if I had just said IS A GOOD THING!!

Which it is!!

Mads, is negating negatives to make a positive a Danish thing, or is it
just a Villy thing ???

Villy



-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Hanekom [mailto:j_hanekom () hotmail com] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 8:38 AM
To: Madsen, Villy
Subject: RE: Finally - Curphey award 2004 to SPI Dynamics


Hi Villy

I'm following this thread, but have trouble making sense of your post...
You say that providing a standard tool to developers to perform input
filtering is a bad thing, but then go on to describe a system which you
seem to say is good and is similar to SPI's solution to the problem.

Could you please explain?

Thanks
Jannie 

-----Original Message-----
From: Madsen, Villy [mailto:Villy.Madsen () atcoitek com] 
Sent: 29 June 2004 15:19
To: Mads Rasmussen; Mark Curphey
Cc: webappsec () securityfocus com; Jeff Williams
Subject: RE: Finally - Curphey award 2004 to SPI Dynamics

While I do not advocate that Developers be allowed to get lazy about
security,

I also feel that providing a standard tool that they can use to filter
input is a bad thing.

Way back a couple of decades ago, I was involved in a Telco project to
rewrite an application used by Long Distance Telephone operators to
manage "Time and Charges" calls.   The application was finally shut down
in 2000.

One of the "breakthroughs" that we pioneered was the heavy use of what
was we called Table Driven IO.  All data input or output from the system
was defined by a set of mapping tables, that defined what the data could
look like, how long it was, and where it was mapped to in the
application data schema. 

The "mapping" applications were general purpose, checked for proper type
- performing whatever data conversions where necessary, guarded against
overflows etc etc.

Sounds very similar to me.

I thought it was a great idea then, and I still do...

One application to vet (the mapping routine), and a bunch of tables to
validate.

Easier than validating all of the code snippets that are "accepting
Input" from the external world....


Villy


Villy Madsen ISP GSEC
Information Security
ATCO I-Tek
Bus: (780) 420-5093
Cell: (780) 975-0110
Fax: (780) 420-3916
Mailto:Villy.Madsen () atcoitek com

The information transmitted is intended only for the addressee and may
contain confidential, proprietary and/or privileged material.  Any
unauthorized review, distribution or other use of or the taking of any
action in reliance upon this information is prohibited.  If you received
this in error, please contact the sender and delete or destroy this
message and any copies.


-----Original Message-----
From: Mads Rasmussen [mailto:mads () opencs com br]
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 5:47 AM
To: Mark Curphey
Cc: webappsec () securityfocus com; Jeff Williams
Subject: Re: Finally - Curphey award 2004 to SPI Dynamics


Mark Curphey wrote:
> Here I am, depressed at the prospect of filling in mountains of
> expense claims from weeks of traveling and approving mundane mails to 
> webappsec about XSS after XSS and along comes a shining light. At last

> an "application security" company that gets it ! Hats of to the folks
> at SPI and the Curphey Award for 2004 for leading the industry down 
> the right path !
>
> http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040628/clm006_1.html

Here is another link http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1617901,00.asp

I don't know about you guys but I have a bad feeling about this. I am 
not sure this is the right path.

The article quotes Caleb Sima, founder and chief technology officer of 
SPI Dynamics saying "It doesn't require developers to learn about 
security," - "You really just need to validate input to eliminate most 
application vulnerabilities."

Shouldn't you at least have a feeling for where the developers makes 
their mistakes to be able to insert the right piece of secure code?

By all means it looks like a cool product, but how much can we trust it?

One of its features is, qoute
"Input Validation objects will check incoming data on web forms to
validate user-supplied input against a set of rules and prevent
parameter manipulation exploits, such as SQL Injection attacks."

Can we trust these "set of rules".
If they opened their technology, the OWASP team could contribute rules 
to such a database and then we just might get somewhere by having a list

of f.ex regular expressions for using the validator classes in .Net or 
input validation in general but that would probably not happen.

I am concerned that products like this just leads to lazy developers.

Jeff what do you think about this? You wanted to start an input 
validation project based on filters, a database like described above 
would be quite handy :o)

Just my two bits

-- 
Mads Rasmussen, M.Sc.
Open Communications Security
www.opencs.com.br
+55 11 3345 2525