Hunting Security Bugs [Paperback]

Tom Gallagher (Author), Lawrence Landauer (Author), Bryan Jeffries (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 2006

Learn how to think like an attacker—and identify potential security issues in your software. In this essential guide, security testing experts offer practical, hands-on guidance and code samples to help you find, classify, and assess security bugs before your software is released.

Discover how to:

• Identify high-risk entry points and create test cases
• Test clients and servers for malicious request/response bugs
• Use black box and white box approaches to help reveal security vulnerabilities
• Uncover spoofing issues, including identity and user interface spoofing
• Detect bugs that can take advantage of your program’s logic, such as SQL injection
• Test for XML, SOAP, and Web services vulnerabilities
• Recognize information disclosure and weak permissions issues
• Identify where attackers can directly manipulate memory
• Test with alternate data representations to uncover canonicalization issues
• Expose COM and ActiveX repurposing attacks

PLUS—Get code samples and debugging tools on the Web

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Key Book Benefits: - Delivers practical, hands-oguidance on security bugs, how to find them, and how to help prevent them Provides specific, actionable technical details about security testing - Covers these subjects, among others: - The thought process behind security testing - Research and experience on how to find security bugs - How to classify the bugs you’ve found - What to do when you’ve found a bug - How to tell if a bug is serious and whether it is a security bug - Use of source code to help in security testing - Ways to spot security design flaws

About the Author

Tom Gallagher is the lead of the Microsoft® Office Security Test team, where he focuses on penetration testing, writing security testing tools, and providing security education.

Bryan Jeffries is a software engineer responsible for driving security testing on Microsoft® SharePoint® Products and Technologies.

Lawrence Landauer is a software engineer at Microsoft® where he works on coding, testing, and training projects related to security, personal productivity, and deployment.

Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; 1 edition (June 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073562187X
• ISBN-13: 978-0735621879
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #747,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally something more than a checklist, February 5, 2007

By 

John Jansen (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hunting Security Bugs (Paperback)

As with other reviewers of the book: in an attempt at full disclosure, I also work at Microsoft. I am a Test Lead in the Office organization.

One of the challenges that faces any quality assurance engineer or Test engineer, or whatever our industry has chosen to call us this year is that we are constantly tasked with trying to "test in security" or "find the flaws in the product" after it has already been coded. While this is clearly a PART of our jobs, it is by no means the most important part. This book addresses what I consider to be a much higher priority for the Test Org generally, and Test Engineers specifically: helping reduce security vulnerabilities before they are coded into the product to begin with: as features are being spec'd and as code is being designed.
This book is not a simple check-list testers can use to say "Yes, my feature is secure, Ship It". Rather, it helps place Test into the frame of mind of a hacker, it gives test a set of tools to help find security issues, it outlines an approach to software Test that will cause fewer security issues to be coded at all, let alone have to be fixed post code-complete (or in a Service Pack). Used in conjunction with other test books like _How to Break Software Security_ by James A. Whittaker, this book will help ship more secure products.
Incidentally, I expect hackers will be reading this book in an effort to better understand the science of hunting security bugs, as well as the tools we use to do so - so if you're not using it, I'd expect your attackers will be thankful...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very practical book that will probably make you change the way you to you program, May 7, 2007

By 

Olivier Langlois "www.OlivierLanglois.net" (Montreal, Quebec Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hunting Security Bugs (Paperback)

Beside Bruce Schneier books, this is the second software security book that I am reading. The first being Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way and I have prefered this one because it provides more concrete examples. The book consists of over 20 chapters covering different security areas. As a software developer, some chapters appeared less relevent and less interesting to me and I guess that it is because these chapters are geared principally toward testers. However, at least 2 chapters should be extremely interesting and valuable to developers like myself. It is the chapters that demonstrate with step by step tutorials how a hacker would do to exploit buffer overflow and format string problems. I was already familiar with buffer overflows and I had read a similar chapter about them in Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way but the format string exploits were new to me. As expected since the book is published by Microsoft Press, the book has a strong bias torward Microsoft products (ie.: .NET and ActiveX controls security) but the presented topics are general enough to make this book very valuable even for users of other OSes and/or development tools.

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth every penny!, April 22, 2011

By 

Thomas Distress "sec geek" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunting Security Bugs (Paperback)

I think that this book is a must have for most infosec professionals. I as person that is not a code monkey by trade, but has some basic scripting experience this book was a very easy and informative read. I was surprised I was expecting a very dry read but I actually found this book to be quite engaging. There is great information for users of all levels. If you work with programmers or are getting involved with the SDLC this book is perfect for you.