The OWASP Podcast Series

Eoin (pronounced Owen for you Yankees) Keary runs a software security practice in Ireland. In his "spare time", he is a global board member for OWASP. At the AppSec Europe 2014 Conference in Cambridge, UK, I spoke with Eoin about how to get more women into the software security industry, starting with their participation in OWASP. About Eoin Keary Eoin Keary has been with OWASP since 2004. He is based in Ireland and runs a software security practice, bccriskadvisory.com. He is currently on the global board of the OWASP foundation, he was elected to the board in 2009. During this time Eoin assisted in founding the OWASP legal entity in Europe and has helped provide structure to OWASPs finances and strategy. Eoin previously lead the OWASP Testing Guide and currently the OWASP Code Review Guide and also contributed to other OWASP projects such as OWASP SAMM, OWASP CISO Guide & CISO Survey, OWASP Cheat sheets, and the OWASP ASVS & ZAP as a reviewer. Eoin also founded the OWASP Dublin chapter in 2006 and the OWASP Ireland event in 2008 which is in its 4th year and also hosted OWASP EU in 2011.

Achim Hoffman is a researcher who has created a tool for listing information about remote target's SSL certificate and testing the remote target against a given list of ciphers. This OWASP project, o-Saft, first gained notice when Jim Manico mentioned it on the OWASP email list. At AppSec Europe 2014, I was able to speak with Achim, along with Matt Tasauro, about the function of the tool and its uses. n About the Project o-Saft is designed to be used by penetration testers, security auditors or server administrators. The idea is to show the important informations or the special checks with a simple call of the tool. However, it provides a wide range of options so that it can be used for comprehensive and special checks by experienced people. O-Saft is a command-line tool, so it can be used offline and in closed environments. However, it can simply be turned into an online CGI-tool (please read documentation first). About Achim Hoffman Co-Autor OWASP: Best Practices: Projektierung der Sicherheitsprüfung von Webanwendungen https://www.owasp.org/images/0/00/OWASP-Projektierung_der_Sicherheitspr%C3%BCfung_von_Webanwendungen_v101.de.pdf Autor Sicherheit von Webanwendungen: BSI-Maßnahmenkatalog und Best Practices http://www.bsi.de/literat/studien/websec/WebSec.pdf Contributor to WASC Web Application Firewall Evaluation Criteria http://www.webappsec.org/projects/wafec/ Co-Author OWASP: Best Practices: Web Application Firewalls http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Best_Practices:_Web_Application_Firewalls Reviewer/Contributor to WASC Threat Classification v1 Deutsche Übersetzung der WASC Threat Classification v1 http://www.webappsec.org/projects/threat/ Reviewer/Contributor to WASC Threat Classification v2 http://projects.webappsec.org/Threat-Classification-Authors

The OWASP Top 10 Privacy Risks Project aims to develop a top 10 list for privacy risks in web applications because currently there is no such catalog available. I spoke with co-leads Florian Stahl and Stefan Burgmair about how the project was started, the selection process for the top 10 risks and their future plans. About Florian Stahl Florian Stahl is a German security and privacy consultant and evangelist. He achieved his master’s with honors in information systems science at the University of Regensburg in Germany and his master's in computer science at Växjö Universitet in Sweden. Florian started his professional career at the Swedish security software vendor Cryptzone in Gothenburg in 2006. He came back to Germany in 2009 and worked as consultant for Ernst & Young in Munich before moving on to msg systems where he currently holds the position as Lead Consultant. Florian has CISSP and CIPP/IT certifications and speaks fluent German, English and Swedish. His aim is to follow a holistic approach by combining technical, organisational and social measures to protect information. He is regular speaker at conferences and writes articles for magazines and on his blog securitybydesign.de. He leads the OWASP_Top_10_Privacy_Risks_Project. About Stefan Burgmair Stefan Burgmair is a German student at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. After he gained his B. Sc. title in Information Systems and Management he now writes his master thesis on the "Top 10 Privacy Risks for Web Applications" at the msg systems. Together with his advisor Florian Stahl, he is managing the OWASP Top 10 Privacy Risks Project.

In anticipation of Security Awareness Month in October, Tom Brennan is planning an event featuring a cross section of various cyber groups in New York and New Jersey. A few weeks ago, I attended a Meet Up in New York City where many of the local groups got together to talk about what they are working on and how that plays into the October event. The Meet Up was VERY loud, so the sound quality leaves a bit to be desired, but the passion and enthusiasm still comes through. The first segment of the show is an introduction with Tom Brennan as he talks about the cross-group event he put together in March and his plans for creating a large, cross-cyber group event for Security Awareness Month in October. I then spoke with Ian Amit, one of the OWASP chapter leaders for New York. He describes what he is working on for the OWASP chapter in New York. Izabela Pelszynska joins us to speak about the Women in Security group, and we end with a round table discussion of the upcoming event in October.

At 2014 SOURCE Boston, Josh Corman told me that Wolfgang Goerlich had an interesting DevOps story to tell. I sat down and spoke with Wolfgang and was astounded to hear a tale that could have come straight out of Gene Kim's book, The Phoenix Project. Listen in as Wolfgang describes the process of taking over a project that was mired in technical debt, falling behind in deliverables to stakeholders and in need of a new way of thinking. To me, this story is one of the strongest statements for DevOps that I've heard. About Wolfgang Goerlich As Vice President of Consulting Services at VioPoint, Wolfgang supports clients by advising, identifying, and assisting in managing information security risk as well as mentoring VioPoint’s consulting team. Wolfgang, known for his outstanding leadership in the technology and information security community, is the co-founder of OWASP Detroit and an organizer of the annual BSides Detroit conferences as well as an accomplished speaker at regional and national security events.

Dwayne Melancon, CTO of Tripwire, has an interesting idea: turn your team into gamers, let them build their internal images and support that vision. This isn't the type of thing you'd expect to hear at a security conference. In this short conversation, I talk with Dwayne about how to implement employee game theory within your project team. About Dwayne Melancon I was a contributor to both the Visible Ops Handbook and Visible Ops Security Handbook, working with authors Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford. As part of this effort, I have worked as a researcher with Carnegie Mellon’s SEI, the University of Florida, and the IT Process Institute in their studies and benchmarking of IT best practices. I work with numerous corporations around the world on IT service management improvement and IT security, and have teamed with the Institute of Internal Auditors in its pursuit of Generally Accepted IT Principles. As a frequent, highly-rated speaker at national and regional itSMF, ISACA, ISSA, IIA and other industry events, I present on how to achieve world-class IT results. Using a framework of essential IT controls, I provide operations, security, and audit audiences with prescriptive steps they can take to improve IT change policies, procedures and systems.

The HeartBleed bug is running rampant on many major sites such as Chase and Yahoo while people are scrambling madly to find solutions. At the SOURCE Boston Conference this morning, I caught up with Melissa Elliot from VeraCode as she was examining the impact of the HeartBleed on Yahoo, using software from Jared Staffer of JSPenguin.org. I asked her to describe what she was seeing. Have a listen... About Melissa Elliot I am 0xabad1dea (the zero-x is silent), a professional application security researcher also known as Melissa Elliott. If my name breaks your website we have a personal problem. My long-term goal is to convince programmers that the security of everything from the global economy all the way up to online Pokémon battles is in their hands and they need to take that responsibility seriously. My primary means of interacting with the community is through my extremely active Twitter account.

In March 2014, Rio Okada and his team in Japan organized the first AppSec APAC event in Japan. I called Rio to ask how the event went. Joining the conversation with me and Rio is Robert Dracea, Tobias Gondrom and Jerry Hoff. During our call we talked about what made the event so successful and how that success might be used in future AppSec events. Have a listen.

Ivan Bütler and his team at the Hacking Lab have whipped up a fun challenge for the Easter season. The Hacky Easter Challenge is a white-hat hacking competition for fun and education. Sign up and start your quest for easter eggs! No need to be a "1337 h4xor" - there are challenges of different difficulty. About Ivan Bütler Ivan Bütler is the co-founder and CEO of Compass Security, a Swiss Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing company located in Switzerland and Germany. Besides his own business he is also a tutor at both, the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Ivan is a regular speaker at international conferences (Blackhat USA, IT Underground Warsaw, OWASP AppSec). Ivan is in the board of the Swiss Cyber Storm 4 Conference Committee and as such, responsible for the CTF and Hacking platform for the European Cyber Security Challenge 2014/2015, a cyber talent competition between Austria, Switzerland and Germany and may others from the European Union. He is the founder of Hacking-Lab – a remote security lab that is being used world-wide by security enthusiasts and security professionals to train their hands-on experience. Hacking-Lab is partnering with OWASP and provides free OWASP TOP 10, OWPASP Hackademics and OWASP WebGoat challenges.

The OWASP Top Ten Proactive Controls Project is spearheaded by Jim Bird and Jim Manico. According to Jim Bird, it is a list of security techniques that should be included in every software development project. I spoke with him about the evolution of the project and how he envisions it being used by the OWASP community, and specifically by developers. Resources for this Broadcast OWASP Top Ten Proactive Controls Project Jim Bird on LinkedIn About Jim Bird Jim Bird is a software development manager and CTO with more than 25 years of experience in software engineering, with a special focus on high-integrity and high-reliability systems. Jim is currently the co-founder and CTO of a major US-based institutional trading service, where he is responsible for managing the company’s technology group and IT security programs. Jim has worked as a consultant to IBM and to major stock exchanges and banks globally. He was also the CTO of a technology firm (now part of NASDAQ OMX) that built custom IT solutions for stock exchanges and central banks in more than 30 countries. Jim is an active contributor to OWASP, helps out as a member of the SANS Analysts program on application security, and rants about Agile software development, project management and application security topics on his blog “Building Real Software.