RE: Secure software development documents

["Mark Curphey" <mark () curphey com>]

With regards to testing specifically this is a draft of OWASP Testing Part
1. It is essentially a high level view of what to think about when building
a testing function.

It is draft but as we have been threatening to release it for ions I thought
I would at least put this version on Sourceforge to download and get a
flavor of what we (OWASP) are saying. It is not finished (we have a face to
face this Weds to finally conclude this part and the re-write) so please
just read the Chapters 7 and 8 in this context. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are
getting a re-write (significant prune) this week but this may help.

It won't please everyone, especially the silver bullet brigade, but it is a
good attempt and consensus that most people who have been responsible for
building and running security testing of web app software in large dev shops
have agreed on. You have to think strategically and testing after
development is too little too late (despite some marketing claims to the
contrary).

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/owasp/TheOWASPTestingProjectPart1Draft.pd
f?download

This is an interesting point in the software security industry I think. I
have seen two distinct camps forming, those trying to solve the problem by
promoting building better software and tackle the root causes (people,
process and technology) and those selling shinier and shinier silver bullets
(software or services) ;-(

Basically we are saying you need to test your SDLC process itself and then
discrete parts of it such as requirements, design, implementation and
deployment. Today people seem to have a fixation on testing deployment only
which is too little too late and too in-efficient. 

Note: As I was typing this I saw a mail from Skip Carter that re-enforces
this.

-----Original Message-----
From: Scovetta, Michael V [mailto:Michael.Scovetta () ca com] 
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 10:23 AM
To: udayan pathak; webappsec () securityfocus com; secprog () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Secure software development documents

Udayan,

I would recommend first looking at OWASP (http://www.owasp.org/). Their
guide is relatively complete and of good quality. If you have $$$ to spend,
I would recommend the 2-day Blackhat course "Network Application Design &
Secure Implementation"
 (http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-04/train-bh-usa-04-dm.html)
I found the course to be incredibly helpful, and it comes with a custom
manual that is very detailed. Together, these two would probably get you 85%
of the way there. The rest is (a) experience, (b) staying current (bugtraq,
webappsec, etc), and (c) just being an intelligent individual.

Mike Scovetta


-----Original Message-----
From: udayan pathak [mailto:udayan_pathak () yahoo com]
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 7:19 AM
To: webappsec () securityfocus com; secprog () securityfocus com
Subject: Secure software development documents

Hi everyone

I have a query!
 

What are the documentation standards being followed as far as secure
software development is concerned? I find that in the current software
development process the document generated do not/ barely cover the security
of the application being developed.

All the normal documents for requirement specification, requirement
tracking, high level and low level design documents etc have nothing more
than a small section in their template format for security, which looks more
like a formality and hardly serves the purpose.

Especially as far a software testing is concerned one gets the feeling that
the provision for security testing in test cases gets diluted in the sea of
functionality testing.

Has anyone got any insights into this? or any other standard being followed
?

Please let me know

 

Udayan Pathak


        
                
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