Book Image

Security-Driven Software Development

By : Aspen Olmsted
Book Image

Security-Driven Software Development

By: Aspen Olmsted

Overview of this book

Extend your software development skills to integrate security into every aspect of your projects. Perfect for any programmer or developer working on mission-critical applications, this hands-on guide helps you adopt secure software development practices. Explore core concepts like security specifi cation, modeling, and threat mitigation with the iterative approach of this book that allows you to trace security requirements through each phase of software development. You won’t stop at the basics; you’ll delve into multiple-layer att acks and develop the mindset to prevent them. Through an example application project involving an entertainment ticketing software system, you’ll look at high-profi le security incidents that have aff ected popular music stars and performers. Drawing from the author’s decades of experience building secure applications in this domain, this book off ers comprehensive techniques where problem-solving meets practicality for secure development. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained the expertise to systematically secure software projects, from crafting robust security specifi cations to adeptly mitigating multifaceted threats, ensuring your applications stand resilient in the face of evolving cybersecurity challenges.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Modeling a Secure Application
8
Part 2: Mitigating Risks in Implementation
13
Part 3: Security Validation

Buffer overflows

Buffer overflows are a common type of software vulnerability that occurs when a program writes more data to a buffer (temporary data storage area) than allocated for. This can lead to unpredictable behavior, crashes, and, in some cases, exploitation by attackers to execute malicious code. Defenses against buffer overflows are essential to enhance the security of software applications. Here are some key defenses:

  • Use safe string functions - Replace standard, non-bounds-checked string functions (for example, strcpy, sprintf) with their safer counterparts (for example, strncpy, snprintf) that allow specifying the maximum number of characters to copy.
  • Bounds checking - Perform explicit bounds checking before copying data into buffers. Ensure that the input data length does not exceed the allocated buffer size.
  • Memory-safe languages - Choose programming languages that provide memory safety, such as Rust, or languages with memory management mechanisms such...