Application Security Weekly (Audio)

What are your favorite resources for secure code? Co-hosts John Kinsella and Kalyani Pawar talk about the reality of bringing security into a business. We talk about the role of the OWASP Top 10 and the OWASP ASVS in crafting security programs. And balance that with a discussion in what's the best use of everyone's time -- developers and appsec folks alike -- in crafting code that's secure by design rather than just secure from scanner results. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-358

Secure code should be grounded more in concepts like secure by default and secure by design than by "spot the vuln" thinking. Matias Madou shares his experience in secure coding training and the importance of teaching critical thinking. He also discusses why critical thinking is so closely related to threat modeling and how LLMs can be a tool for helping developers get beyond the superficial advice of, "Think like an attacker." Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-357

Just how bad can things get if someone clicks on a link? Rob Allen joins us again to talk about ransomware, why putting too much attention on clicking links misses the larger picture of effective defenses, and what orgs can do to prepare for an influx of holiday-infused ransomware targeting. Segment resources https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/how-a-ransomware-gang-encrypted-nevada-governments-systems/ https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint-security/pro-russian-hackers-linux-vms-hide-windows https://www.threatlocker.com/blog/how-to-build-a-robust-lights-out-checklist This segment is sponsored by ThreatLocker. Visit https://securityweekly.com/threatlocker to learn more about them! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-356

Pull requests are a core part of collaboration, whether in open or closed source. GitHub has documented some of the security consequences of misconfiguring how PRs can trigger actions. But what happens when repo owners don't read the docs? Bar Kaduri and Roi Nisimi walk through their experience in reading docs, finding vulns, demonstrating exploits, and working with repo owners to improve their security. Their work highlights the challenges in maintaining good security guidance, figuring out secure defaults, and how so many orgs still struggle with triaging external security reports -- something that's becoming even more challenging when orgs are being flooded with low-quality reports from LLMs. Segment Resources: https://orca.security/resources/blog/pull-request-nightmare-github-actions-rce/ https://orca.security/resources/blog/pull-request-nightmare-part-2-exploits/ Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-355

The post quantum encryption migration is going to be a challenge, but how much of a challenge? There are several reasons why it is different from every other protocol and cypher iteration in the past. Is today's hardware up to the task? Is it just swapping out a library, or is there more to it? What is the extent of software, systems, and architecture that have to be updated or replaced to complete the migration? Can we get it all done by 2030? Sandy Carielli and Martha Bennett join us to answer these questions and dive into one area of tech that hasn't been discussed much when it comes to post-quantum encryption: blockchain. Relevant Forrester Reports: Quantum Computing isn't a Threat to Blockchains - Yet The Architect's Guide to Quantum Security In the news, high standards for open source software, trends in self-hosting, doing the cloud wrong, and is it really always DNS? Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-354

Ransomware attacks typically don't care about memory safety and dependency scanning, they often target old, unpatched vulns and too often they succeed. Rob Allen shares some of the biggest cases he's seen, what they have in common, and what appsec teams could do better to help them. Too much software still requires custom configuration to make it more secure. And too few software makers are embracing secure by default, let alone secure by design. In the news, passively monitoring geosynchronous satellite communications on the cheap, successful LLM poisoning of any size model with a single size dose, security engineering lessons from Signal's post-quantum crypto work, improving security for JavaScript in the browser, and more! This segment is sponsored by ThreatLocker. Visit https://securityweekly.com/threatlocker to learn more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-353

Interest and participation in the OWASP GenAI Security Project has exploded over the last two years. Steve Wilson explains why it was important for the project to grow beyond just a Top Ten list and address more audiences than just developers. He also talks about how the growth of AI Agents influences the areas that appsec teams need to focus on. Whether apps are created by genAI or directly use genAI, the future of securing software is going to be busy. Resources https://genai.owasp.org https://genai.owasp.org/llm-top-10/ LLM security book on Amazon at https://a.co/d/6LZoXxQ This segment is sponsored by The OWASP GenAI Security Project. Visit https://securityweekly.com/owasp to learn more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-352

Software has forever had flaws and humans have forever been finding and fixing them. With LLMs generating code, appsec has also been trying to determine how well LLMs can find flaws. Nico Waisman talks about XBOW's LLM-based pentesting, how it climbed a bug bounty leaderboard, how it uses feedback loops for better pentests, and how they handle (and even welcome!) hallucinations. In the news, using LLMs to find flaws, directory traversal in an MCP, another resource for learning cloud and AI security, spreadsheets and appsec, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-351

Dealing with vulns tends to be a discussion about prioritization. After all, there a tons of CVEs and dependencies with known vulns. It's important to figure out how to present developers with useful vuln info that doesn't overwhelm them. Francesco Cipollone shares how to redirect that discussion to focus on remediation and how to incorporate LLMs into this process without losing your focus or losing your budget. In the news, supply chain security in Ruby and Rust, protecting package repositories, refining CodeQL queries for security, refactoring and Rust, an OWASP survey, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-350

In the news, Microsoft encounters a new cascade of avoidable errors with Entra ID, Apple improves iOS with hardware-backed memory safety, DeepSeek demonstrates the difficulty in reviewing models, curl reduces risk by eliminating code, preserving the context of code reviews, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-349