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Justice League

Input Validation and Data Dictionaries

Posted: July 21st, 2010, 8:30am CDT by scott

Tags: Data Security [edit]

Our internal discussion board brought up the topic of input validation last week. The discussion was around the regex for validating an email address. The message was that what seems like a very simple input validation can get complicated if the full standard is supported. As I read the discussion I started thinking about Data Dictionaries and their failed attempt to standardize data definitions within an enterprise.

The history lesson here is that around the time that database management systems were becoming commercialized (1980s) there were products called data dictionaries or data repositories. The idea was that metadata should be kept outside of the DBMS and shared by all of the application code. In the data dictionary nirvana, there would be ONE definition of EmployeeID for the entire enterprise and all applications and database would share this one definition.

Fast forward to 2010. Where are these products today? Just about every client I walk into has a commercial DBMS (Oracle, Microsoft or IBM), but nowhere do we encounter data dictionaries. Why? Because they never got deployed. What enterprises found out is that no one could agree on what an EmployeeID (or any other piece of data) looked like. Sometime it was politics; sometimes it was acquisitions; sometimes it was I18n. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is the same – there are precious few common data definitions in any enterprise.

So, how in the world does one expect to do input validation against data when there are only a precious few data definition that accurately describe data? This seems like a path that will only lead to the same quagmire that data dictionaries fell into.

For the curious, the regex for email addresses is:

(?:[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*|”(?:[x01-x08x0bx0cx0e-x1fx21x23-x5bx5d-x7f]|\[x01-x09x0bx0cx0e-x7f])*”)@(?:(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?|[(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?).){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?|[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]:(?:[x01-x08x0bx0cx0e-x1fx21-x5ax53-x7f]|\[x01-x09x0bx0cx0e-x7f])+)])

(from [www.regular-expressions.info])

Thanks to David Lindsay for the reference.
Security And Market Forces

Posted: March 6th, 2008, 5:04pm CST by jOHN

Tags: Software Security Software Security [edit]
Gunnar Peterson wrote an excellent post lamenting the lack of market forces in the security space.

I don’t know when we’ll see such market forces affecting companies but do agree they would have a positive impact. Certainly, I get why the security space hasn’t been subject to market forces yet though:
- People haven’t historically been ready to pay for it
- Companies haven’t entered the market with something valuable enough to invest in
First: what people are willing to pay for. Simple question: if a development team has a $10M budget, how much does it, say, spend on quality? 10-40%? OK. How much does it spend on software security?

Second: The security space, at least with respect to Software or Application Security, has indeed moved beyond its purely missionary roots: people know they face a problem. People do not, however, know what to do about it.

Lack of direction hasn’t resulted from the vendors’ failed productization of a tool set or services though. No, it’s resulted from the lack of mature solutions in the space. Penetration testing companies were gobbled up last year but my experience has been that, for the most part, customers haven’t been willing to invest in these tools far beyond their initial purchases and the smallest amount of shepherding.

In fact, most organizations I’m working with have seen either a reduction in reliance on or an outright backlash towards penetration testing. Use of static analysis tools and code review, while on the rise, has not reached ubiquity in response (We’ve yet to see what will happen in a broader context, having only completed what I consider to be the early-adopter phase).

What do we do about it? Partnering more closely with customers has been something I’ve felt very strongly about. Listening more closely to them remains crucial. Even involvement at this level can be tricky to fund at all but the most interested customers.

There’s work to do as vendors too. Because, while we’re through the missionary phase, we’re not through the education phase in security. We must spend more time helping clients understand what attainable next steps look like for them. Moreover, I think we have to work with them to solve some of the problems we’ve avoided: we need to clarify salient next steps ;-)

How are we really going to get enough security knowledge in the hands of developers to change their behavior in a sustainable way? How are we going to scale code analysis so that it has some of depth of expertise, manually applied, but all of the consistency and speed of automation?

Technorati Tags: software security
Please Don’t FUD the Animals

Posted: February 7th, 2008, 2:54pm CST by sammy

Tags: Data Security [edit]

I absolutely enjoyed the insight shown by Thomas Wailgum in his recent article “How TJX Avoided Wall Street’s Wrath“, mostly because I have long been in complete agreement with the premise.

With respect to security professionals, unfortunately, TJX now appears to be “the one that got away.” Let me explain, with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

If you’re in the business of providing discount items and the economy is a little weak, then business will be good. Apparently, it won’t matter that you’ve had a mishap or two with the data entrusted to you. It has always been my contention that only a small minority of people really understand the impact of stolen personal data and, even amongst most the people who do “get it,” the theft of nearly 100 million records of personal data is almost meaningless in its enormity. The victims are worried only about one record — theirs. Either it got stolen or it didn’t. And, if it did, it’ll get abused or it won’t. And, if it does, there is an ingrained belief the credit card company will “take care of it.”

Besides, there’s a huge sale and my niece needs galoshes — the green ones that look like frogs.

Yes, I believe that, as a rule, people care about the persona of the organizations they patronize. On the other hand, I believe we are at a point where the idea that “Stuff happens” because “Hackers did it” has seeped into the public consciousness much more deeply than “It’s the big, bad conglomerate’s fault.”

Virtually everyone can feel outrage at accounting scandals and multi-million dollar salaries and insider trading and so on, especially when you’re clipping coupons to make ends meet. On the other hand, virtually everyone had been impacted by “hackers.” Phishing, spyware, malware, malicious web sites, Internet scams, spam, MySpace worms, fake wireless hotspots, lions, tigers, bears — everyone has felt the sting of “the bad guy.” I claim that for Mr. and Mrs. Average American, it’s almost natural to feel a little sorry for TJX, to feel a camaraderie even, like “Hey, welcome to the club.”

Sure, we all believe they should have done more. On the other hand, I shouldn’t have clicked on that email attachment last year. I’m quite happy with my physical attributes, but it really sounded like a good deal. And that Nigerian gentleman sounded so sincere. And who doesn’t want a few new MySpace friends. We all make mistakes, right?

But what about those of us in the consulting business who have to convince organizations to put their trust in us. They have to believe us when we say that not spending on {data|information|application|software|IT} security can have intolerable business consequences. TJX would’ve made such a great example of just what intolerable really means — a veritable poster child for “See! I wasn’t kidding!” And now it’s ruined.

Okay, I don’t really want their stock to tank and have thousands more people affected. On the other hand, the least TJX could’ve done was fire a wing of executives so they could serve the consulting industry as an example in endless PowerPoint presentations for decades to come. (I still occasionally see technology demos that claim things such as, “And this could’ve even stopped the Morris worm.”) Now, we’ll have to go out of our way to omit TJX. We can’t bring up an example where nothing that bad really happened — for the organization, not the people affected by the thieves, of course. Now, instead of answering the question “How do we prevent this happening to us?”, consultants will have to answer the question “How do they get out of it so easily?”

Yeah, I’m sure it was rough in their executive suites for a while, but I’ll bet everyone is breathing easier now, walking around saying, “Woo-Hoo, we didn’t pull a CardSystems!” TJX has a very respectable 5-year stock climb, including three splits, and the current trade price is solid. Would they prefer to have invested a little more in IT security? Of course. Would they prefer not have unplanned millions in expenses? Of course. Do huge, unplanned expenses happen to large companies with some regularity? Of course. This one is special to us because we have some insight into how relatively easily it could have been avoided or detected, but for many, it really is business as usual.