2014-12-04 Developers Forum
Owned by Jamie Thomas
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Agenda
- Quickly review previous meeting minutes (5 min)
- Web Application Security w/ Sherif Koussa CEO of SecurifyLabs
- Review next meeting agenda
Minutes
Developers Forum 2014-12-04
Attendees
- Sherif Koussa
- Burke
- Rafał
- Wyclif
- Ryan
- Michael D.
- Daniel
- Karl
- Tammy
- Willa
- Serghei Luchianov
- Jim Hinson
- Paul
- Mike S.
- Ada
Agenda/Notes
Security Challenges for open source projects
- Attackers can easily research the code for their attack
- Community Awareness – i.e., raising awareness among contributors & users
- Contributors
- Some may be more aware than others
- Users
- Where does responsibility of developer end & consumer's responsibility start?
- For example, OpenMRS assumes the physical box is protected, all unnecessary ports closed, only SSH and TLS access to the box)
- Ineffective Security Models
- A good way to look at software security from a bird's eye view
- Can be scaled to need
- Tries to help organizations form a strategy for software security that is tailored to need
- Helps answers the common questions:
- Where do we start?
- What is the root cause of our security problems?
- Separates software development into 4 functions:
- Governance – leadership, road map
- Construction – development
- Verification – validation, testing
- Deployment – delivering software & support
- There are three security practices that goes into the 4 functions. (Sums up to 12)
- How would SAMM apply to OpenMRS?
- Governance
- Regional Privacy Regulations
- Security Awareness – Toughest challenge among open source community.
- Community Education
- User Education
- Construction
- Regional Security Requirements
- Global/Regional Threat
- Secure Coding
- Verification
- Security Testing
- Security Code Reviews
- Baseline Security Assessment
- Vulnerability Management
- Deployment
- Incident Response
- Developer Guide
- User Guide
Good Examples
- phpBB
- They have a lot of CVEs prior to 2009, then they dropped dramatically (CVE=Common Vulnerabilites and Exposures, see <https://cve.mitre.org/>)
- In 2009, phpBB went into a rewrite for software and got external help from security company to do an audit.
- They fixed the issues discovered by the review
- They created a guideline for secure coding for developers (best practices and for code review)
- Typo3
- Has list of types of security threats (http://docs.typo3.org/typo3cms/SecurityGuide/TypesOfThreats/Index.html)
- NodeJS
- Has a security project
- Tiki Wiki
- Crowdfunded an effort to provide "baseline security testing" and the maintained it with check lists for devs & code review
Moving Forward (*'s indicate level of urgency; *** = most urgent)
- Governance
- Strategy and Metrics **
- Education Strategy *
- Construction
- Security Design Reviews *** (best way to minimize attacks)
- Developer's Guide **
- Verification
- Baseline Security Testing ***
- Deployment
- User's Guide **
- Incident Response ***
- Vulnerability Management **
Questions
- How often should Baseline Security Assessments be done?
- Every major release
(i.e. once every 10 years :-)
- Also depends on how strictly code reviews are maintained
- Not all asssessments are equal (e.g., some vulnerabilities need to be assessed by someone with experience/expertise)
- Is it sufficient to have a list of security-related concerns for code review? Or should we have code reviews focused specifically on security concerns?
- Smaller, easier goals are better. Security-focused reviews might be hard to maintain.
- Formalize security in existing code reviews by having a few key steps (e.g., top 5) that are expected in a code review
- Are there any good tools to automate security issue detection (e.g., like Sonarqube)?
- Static code analysis tools are helpful, but there are high ratio of false positives
- Either invest a lot of time configuring the tool to avoid false positives OR focus on the topmost security threats
- How should we handle security concerns that are reported?
- Are there best practices in other FOSS projects that we can use as a base for our response process?
- CVE, what else?
- Typo3 has a good process
- Is focusing on anonymous attacks (with assumptions of protected box & SSL) a reasonable approach?
- reasonable
Action Items
- Create a "Security Guide" module like our "Style Guide" module to teach devs about common security issues and provide best practice examples
- Look at our previous security audit & get another security audit
- Ensure "Style Guide" and basic module template (examples provided from the community) are using best practices for security
- Ensure that implementers guide has "chapter" on security that not only describes the assumptions/expectations/responsibilities of setting up a system, but also outlines the potential consequences if a step is not taken (e.g., what's the risk if I don't use SSL? what if I don't change my encryption key?)
- Make sure that sonarqube address topmost concerns
- Schedule a future call to discuss specific action items
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TODOs
Transcripts
- Audio recording of the call: Listen online or download (available after the meeting)