Have you ever wondered what applications are typically being used in enterprise-scale organisations and what the risks are? A report by Palo Alto Networks has analysed over 3,000 worldwide traffic assessments to produce an aggregated summary report.

This is the first of three posts relating to publications that came out some time ago — I am just catching up, but hopefully they are worth mentioning. This first post relates to the oldest, a report published in February.

The Application Usage and Threat Report, 10th Edition provides regional data on the use of personal, business and custom/other applications on enterprise networks. The last category relates to 8-10% traffic that does not match any known application such as a custom internal application or a commercial application not yet identified in the assessment, and could include malware. The report provides data on:

• Usage of applications by category (e.g. social networking, file sharing, photo, video)
• Application functionality overlap
• Bandwidth usage by category
• Malware and exploit prevalence
• Use of transport layer security.

The conclusions include that social networking, file sharing and video applications are not the most common threat vectors; attackers are masking their activities through custom or encrypted applications. The report's data can be analysed dynamically using a well-designed online tool where the data point information is viewable for each chart element.

The PCI DSS E-commerce Guidelines v2 were a welcome update to the previous version of the document.

One of the new aspects included in the revised guidance was a discussion of the most common e-commerce implementation models (section 3.4) and what responsibilities the merchant and other parties have (section 3.5) under PCI DSS. The models discussed are:

• Merchant-managed e-commerce implementations
  • Proprietary/custom (bespoke) developed shopping cart/payment application
  • Commercial shopping cart/payment application (typically PA-DSS validated)
• Shared-management e-commerce implementations
  • Third-party embedded application programming interfaces (APIs) with direct post
  • An inline frame (or "iFrame") that allows a payment form hosted by a third party to be visually embedded within the merchant's page(s), sometimes also including other intermediaries
  • Customer redirection to a third-party hosted page for payment entry
• Wholly outsourced e-commerce implementations.

While some merchants believe they are "wholly outsourced" already, the definitions should be read. The guidance reminds merchants they still have primary responsibility for particular PCI DSS requirements. In the case of inline frame and hosted payment page approaches, this includes for example securing the web page(s) containing the iFrame code and redirection code and/or function(s) respectively.

During a recent exercise I was involved with, to identify security requirements using the OWASP Cornucopia Ecommerce Website Edition card game, a merchant's payment page hosted by a payment services provider was assessed. The process highlighted additional information security risks than those already mentioned in the PCI DSS information supplement. These related to aspects the merchant still has control over despite the outsourcing — in the exercise it was identified the merchant could customise the template of the payment service provider's page and include self-hosted (by the merchant) content referenced by the template (logo, card brand images, style sheet, and a JavaScript file). I am not sure the existing guidance is explicit enough on this aspect, and some merchants may therefore have a false sense of security, and their own risks, regarding the protection of payment cardholder data in these "semi-outsourced" (i.e. shared responsibility) situations.

If a website security assessment identified any third-party hosted content on authentication, account management or payment web pages — even JavaScript library files and web analytics code — this would normally be worthy of mention. Therefore, I think we should also take note of this merchant-controlled content appearing on payment pages/forms elsewhere, especially if the level of security assurance is different between the two (as is often the case). Merchants can outsource in an attempt to de-scope for PCI DSS and reduce the number of applicable requirements (e.g. to use SAQ A for such an online-only merchant). This may not be adequate if the merchant (its employees, contractors, systems, partners, suppliers etc) still has some control over the partially/wholly outsourced (e.g. payment service provider) hosted page/form.

Merchants should include security review and verification activities during template change processes. But regardless of PCI DSS compliance, what other technical security controls could be considered when selecting an outsourced online payment page or form? If I was a merchant, I would prefer to choose one that enables and enforces the following web application security wish list, in addition to the outsourcer's own existing PCI DSS compliance requirements:

• Page template administration
  • Each user (e.g. each designated merchant employee) with the ability to upload or edit templates to have a unique identity, and no use of shared accounts
  • Two factor authentication for all access to the outsourcer's systems (e.g. file transfers, web administrative interfaces, web services)
  • User account access limited to a small set of merchant IP addresses
  • Encrypted connections for authentication and template upload/edit
  • Event alert to nominated address/system on template change
  • Automatic stripping of any other party hosted (i.e. non outsourcer and non merchant) content from the template with related event alerting
  • Accessible audit trail of changes
• Payment form/page hosting
  • Only available using Transport Layer Security
  • No other party (i.e. non outsourcer and non merchant) content
  • No use or reliance on any merchant, outsourcer or other party HTTP cookies
  • X-Frame-Options HTTP header, with the value "DENY" for a page that is not framed, else with a value "ALLOW-FROM ..." that (supporting web browsers) only permits the particular form to be framed by the specific individual merchant's whitelist hostnames
  • HTTP Strict Transport Security Header
  • X-Content-Security-Policy/X-WebKit-CSP/Content-Security-Policy header with a strict policy that does not allow any content from other parties (or perhaps just some types of content from the merchant's selected hostnames
  • MIME type and character set HTTP headers correctly defined
  • Strong anti-caching HTTP headers
• Payment form submission
  • HTTP method POST enforced, and no other method permitted
  • Only possible using Transport Layer Security.

This is a somewhat long list, but it would be interesting to know which commonly used payment outsourcers can provide this level of assistance to ecommerce merchants.

Do you profile your customers, clients and citizens with data from your applications?

The European Commission's Article 29 Working Party has published an opinion, in the form of an advice leaflet, to provide input into the current discussions on European data protection reform.

The paper supports that the scope of Article 20 covering processing of personal data for the purpose of profiling or measures based on profiling, and that there should be greater transparency and control for data subjects of profiling and subsequent measures based upon the profile generated, and thus acknowledges the this creates more responsibility and accountability for data controllers.

However, the paper suggests profiling and measures should only be subject to additional control if they significantly affect the interests, rights or freedoms of the data subject.

See further discussion here and here.

The UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is consulting on one aspect of the proposed EU directive on network and information security (NIS), announced in February.

This mandates certain sectors to compulsory reporting of security breaches that have a significant impact on the provision of core services to a national competent authority that would enforce the directive. These sectors include public administration, the finance, energy, transport and health sectors, as well as to "enablers of internet society services" which includes app stores, cloud service providers, social networks and e-payment providers. These requirements are unlikely to apply to individual ecommerce web sites, unless they enable the provision of other information society services.

However the BIS' call for reviews and evidence, with the title "EU Directive on Network and Information Security SWD(2013) 31 & SWD(2013) 32", seeks input on just what a significant impact might be, and thus when notification would be necessary. Some example reporting thresholds are presented that incorporate the number of customers, citizens, clients, etc affected and the duration of the disruption or lack of availability. I note there is no mention of breaches of integrity or confidentiality, nor misuse of these systems whilst maintaining availability.

The consultation closes on 21st June. A response template is included within the document, and views can be returned using a web form, by email or by post.

OFCOM, the UK communications sector's regulator and competition authority, has announced a report on adults' use of media and attitudes.

The Adults' Media Use and Attitudes Report 2013 (complete 181 page print version) discusses media literacy, take-up, preference and media use, understanding, attitudes and concerns, use of the internet and mobile phones, and users in three class — new, "narrow" and non-users.

There is a wealth of valuable data for strategic planning and marketing purposes, but also useful information on security and safety habits and attitudes to regulation of the internet. If you need information to help support decisions around security and usability, this report will have something of use to you.

It is this weekend's best read.

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.

Last week the UK's Department for Business Innovation & Skills published the 2013 Information Security Breaches Survey, created in conjunction with PwC.

The report presents the results of the survey and breaks the findings down for larger (>250 staff), medium and smaller (<50 staff) organisations. The term "cyber" appears 15 times and "APT" only once, so is generally hyperbole-free.

The most interesting data points for me are:

• 18% of "worst breaches" related to websites and internet gateways, and 4% to breach of laws/regulations
• For all breaches, operation disruption typically lasts a week, with 2-4weeks FTE effort responding to the incident, and a quarter of incidents leading to lost business
• Reputation losses were estimated to be between £10,000 and £100,000.

The report is available to download in full free of charge without registration.

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.

The Verizon 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report has been published drawing on data from 19 organisations including the European CyberCrime Center.

The report includes information on 621 confirmed data breaches, the majority of which were financially motivated crime, followed by state-affiliated espionage. Although 93% of the breaches were attributable to outsiders, a significant proportion (14%) were attributable to insiders alone or insiders working with external agents. Attempts to intentionally access or harm information assets without authorisation by circumventing or thwarting logical security mechanisms (labelled "hacking" in the report" accounted for 52% of incidents. Of these, 22% related to the use of web applications.

The report can be downloaded free of charge without registration.

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.