Today's OWASP London event was very successful.

The majority of attendees had never been to an OWASP event previously, and three-quarters were developers. My own presentation has been uploaded to:

• Open Office presentation including the animated game
• Static PDF

I have also uploaded an updated version of OWASP Cornucopia - Ecommerce Website Edition (v1.01) with some minor changes and additions:

• Framework-specific card deck discussion added
• Additional FAQs created
• Descriptive text updated
• New cover image, and previous cover image moved to back
• Cut lines added
• Alternative rules and deck subset descriptions added
• Project website and mailing list added
• Cornucopia King cross-reference to AppSensor updated.

Play to win!

Update 10th June 2013: The video recordings from are now available. The videos can be accessed via the links on the EU Tour 2013 London page. The recording of my own OWASP Cornucopia Ecommerce Website Edition presentation is here.

Cornucopia Ecommerce Website Edition v1.00 was uploaded to the OWASP website in February and has now been upgraded to a full OWASP project.

Today, I have completed the new OWASP Cornucopia Project pages which include:

• Description and objectives
• Presentation given at OWASP Netherlands in March
• Links to all the references files, including a new security coding practice requirement identities, created last week
• Instructions on how to play
• Frequently asked questions
• Acknowledgements
• Road map and how to get involved
• Link to the PCISSC information supplement for PCIDSS referencing Cornucopia

Please let me know if you think I can add anything of use to the project pages.

I am also working on some minor updates to the ecommerce website edition's documentation and deck. I will be presenting the project at an event in London shortly.

Following the success of similar events in Latin America, a rolling tour of events with OWASP speakers will be occurring in European Countries, beginning with Cambridge this month.

This first event of the tour has been organised in conjunction with Anglia Ruskin University's Department of Computing and Technology for Monday 13 May 2013.

The agenda lists all the speakers:

• Adrian Winckles, OWASP Cambridge Chapter Leader & Senior Lecturer
• Ross Anderson, Cambridge University Computer Laboratory
• DI Stewart Garrick, Metropolitan Police ECrime Unit
• Justin Clarke, OWASP London Chapter Leader
• Eoin Keary, OWASP Board Member
• Steven van der Baan, OWASP Cambridge Chapter Leader
• ... and myself.

I will be speaking about application security vulnerability severity ranking and prioritisation. This will be of use if you have to create or consume vulnerability assessments and penetration test reports, or are involved in patch management or PCIDSS compliance.

Thank you to Fabio Cerullo and the OWASP team who made this tour happen.

The event runs from 11:00 to 17:15 hrs and is located in LAB 002, Lord Ashcroft Building, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. It is free to attend, but advance registration is required.

I have just had time to catch up on my attendance and participation at Security B-Sides London 2013.

This community-led event was held at the town hall of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on Wednesday 24th April, and was supported by a large number of speakers, educators, volunteers and sponsors. It was an extremely well organised, and useful, day.

Following the very well attended welcome and introduction from the B-Sides London crew, I went to an immensely valuable and engaging presentation by David Rook (aka Security Ninja) on how he introduced and developed an application security programme at his employer Realex Payments. He has got to the point where customers are approaching his company to act as a payment services provider due only to their knowledge of Security Ninja, and so the marketing department kindly designed cartoon-style presentation slides (like the one illustrated above). They also had these printed as booklets to hand-out to those attending the talk at B-Sides London. David described what was done, how it was achieved, and things he would approach differently in hindsight. I won't spoil the plot for you as you will be able to read the booklet yourselves (keep an eye open for a blog post (now available).

After this, I went down to the new Rookie Track where new presenters had been given support through mentoring to give 15-minute presentations. Firstly I listened to Artjom Vassiljev describe how he has built software security testing checks into a continuous integration process with Jenkins.

Following a quick coffee break and catch up with some friends & acquaintances, I returned to the Rookie Track and listened to Diarmaid McManus describe a new Eclipse plugin called ESP he has been working on to help integrate code review checks into developer's coding tools.

Ksenia Dmitrieva provided an introduction to HTML5 risks and gave explanations and examples of common attacks. She also explained the preventative measures which should be used to protect against these issues.

Post lunch, I tracked down Dinis Cruz and we set up our workshop on using OWASP O2 to visualise OWASP AppSensor behaviour. I introduced the concept of application-specific attack detection and response, and described how the ideas might be retrofitted relatively simply to an existing web application such as the bulletin board software phpBB. A review of phpBB's inherent capabilities and logging provide a useful hook for detection points, and responses can include adding users to phpBB's list of "banned IPs" and blocking IPs at the operating system level. Dinis continued with a live demo of the AppSensor demo application, created by Michael Coates, and then he went on to show how AppSensor's new web services Java code can be called directly from within a .Net application TeamMentor.It was good to bounce ideas off the workshop participants and get their thoughts and suggestions on the practicalities of implementing AppSensor-like capabilities.

Finally I saw Gavin Holt talking about "NoSQL & Big Data - A Way to Lose Even More Stuff" in which he described the common weaknesses in using NoSQL and attacks that attempt to access such systems and their data. I really liked the 15minute format on the Rookie Track and all three speakers I heard were really good.

Overall, an excellent day. Many thanks to the very professional B-Sides London team in particular for making sure it all happened.

Update 30th April 2013: Link to Security Ninja's slides added. Ksenia Dmitrieva's talk added.

Next week Dinis Cruz and I will be running an AppSensor workshop at Security B-Sides London 2013.

We will be demonstrating and helping attendees of the workshop specify, define and implement application-specific attack detection and real-time response. Our agenda is:

• OWASP AppSensor concept
• Attack detection exercise
• Real world implementation
• Alternative deployment models

We'll be using paper-based materials and real code demonstrations (in .Net, Java and PHP), so just bring your brains along. The workshop is being run from 14:00 to 15:30 hrs on Wednesday April 24th 2013 and can be booked on arrival at the event. It is available on a first come, first served basis. Security B-Sides London is a community-driven free event but requires registration, but due to overwhelming demand there is a waiting list.

We hope to see you there.

Three regional OWASP application security conferences are planned for later this year.

OWASP runs the most comprehensive application security conferences with a very high standard of training courses, speakers and delegates to network with. The next three conferences are:

• August 20-23: AppSec EU Research 2013, Hamburg, Germany
• October 1-4: AppSec Latam 2013, Lima, Peru
• November 18-21: AppSec USA 2013, New York, USA

The calls for training and papers are open for AppSec EU and AppSec USA. I hope to attend both of these. AppSec Asia will occur again in spring 2014.

The European Commission's Article 29 Working Party on the Protection of Individuals has published its opinion on data protection risks for mobile apps.

Opinion 02/2013 on Apps on Smart Devices describes the roles, risks and responsibilities of four groups: app developers, operating systems/device manufacturers, app stores and third parties. It seems slightly odd to lump together "rganisations that outsource the app development and those companies and individuals building and deploying apps", and think this will lead to confusion.

However, in the conclusions on pages 27-28, there are two useful lists under the headings "App developers must" and "The Working Party recommends that app developers", which would be suitable for consideration of inclusion within internal compliance standards for app development.

There was a high attendance at OWASP NL's chapter meeting at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.

Jim Manico was unable to present due to illness but Georgia Weidman, who was speaking at Blackhat Europe 2013, stepped in to present the Smartphone Pentesting Framework (SPF). SPF is the result of a DARPA Cyber Fast Track project, and provides tools and a methodology for penetration testers and security teams to gather information, assess and exploit smart phone devices in the workplace.

We were well looked after at the event. The attendees asked very relevant questions, and I hope my animated presentation showing how to play the Cornucopia card game explained the rules adequately. Thanks to Martin for driving us from Amsterdam to Nijmegen and back.

The presentations are available on the OWASP website.

With the publication of a report by the US Federal Trade Commission, new proposed privacy legislation is gaining support in the United States.

The FTC's report Mobile Privacy Disclosures: Building Trust Through Transparency made recommendations for platform developers, app developers and third parties including advertising networks. The report also commented on how app developer trade associations, academics, usability experts and privacy researchers can contribute.

The Application Privacy, Protection and Security Act of 2013 (APPS Act) discussion draft proposes requirements for user consent, the protection of personal and de-identified data, with enforcement by the FTC.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.

I will be travelling to Nijmegen on Wednesday 13th March having been invited to speak at the OWASP Netherlands local chapter.

At the meeting in the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, I will present two brand new talks.

• "Record It!" — Do you know security event information should be recorded by an application? The presentation will outline which event properties are useful, what should be avoided and how logging can be implemented. In this short presentation, the benefits of good application logging will also be described. The content is drawn from the OWASP (Application Security) Logging Cheat Sheet
• "OWASP Cornucopia" — Microsoft's Escalation of Privilege (EoP) threat modelling card game has been refreshed into a new version more suitable for common web applications, and aligned with OWASP advice and guides. The PCI DSS referenced OWASP Cornucopia - Ecommerce Web Application Edition will be presented and used to demonstrate how it can help developers identify security requirements from the OWASP Secure Coding Practices - Quick Reference Guide.

OWASP board member Jim Manico is also presenting on the subject of "Access Control Design Best Practices". Jim is a great speaker and I am looking forward to this.

The venue is the Beta-faculty, Huygensgebouw, at Heyendaalseweg 135, Nijmegen, Parkeergarage P11. Registration and pizza will occur from 18:30 hrs until 19:15 hrs when my first talk commences. The presentations will end at 21:00 hrs followed by a period for further networking. Registration is free but necessary.